Maybe Trump's war room needed Jane Goodall's touch
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
Top Dems finally see Trump has given them the fight of their lives — here's how to win it
As many of you know, I have been critical of what passes for the Democratic leadership gasping for air and a clear message in the toxic exhaust of the immoral Trump/Republican efforts to drive the United States of America off a cliff.
Their insistence on pushing lightweights like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries to lead us during these dangerous days has been tone deaf and insulting. At a time we so clearly need fighters, and patriots who can effortlessly and forcefully articulate easy-to-digest talking points, we instead have timid letter-writers, monotone men who inspire sleep, not action.
Somehow the party still doesn’t understand that legislation and political backroom brawling have been replaced by public street fighting, and doing everything possible to seize the message, and win and win again in the court of public opinion.
Unfortunately, perception is everything in the Cell Phone Era, and right now most Americans do not like what either party is dialing up.
Forgetting the Democrats’ failures to break through, I still admittedly have a damn hard time with anybody who can’t see the differences between party that wants to poison our air and drinking water, and a party that wants to protect these things … a party that wants to release the names of the lowlifes who befriended a child-rapist, and the other that wants these people (and one orange one in particular) protected at all costs.
The stark differences between the two major parties in America are endless, and any failure to see this is intellectually lazy at best, and willingly ignorant at worst.
And while it is correct to say they both lean on the dirty money from all these corporate thugs to keep them in work, it is equally correct that America has never been more politically polarized. This has nothing do with the differences in the colors blue and red, and everything to do with the gaping distance between what is right and what is wrong.
Democrats are not perfect, but they are vastly more honest, moral, and decent than Republicans, too many of whom I have absolutely no problem classifying as racist liars.
In fact, I just described their president right there.
Fact-check it.
We are in the early days of this Trump/Republican shutdown of our government, and it feels to me like Democrats have stiffened their upper lips, are unified, and have finally found a hill worth dying on. By allowing Trump and his Republican majority to shut down the government they so clearly hate, Democrats have been given a platform and a megaphone to take a bold message to the American public, and win that battle of public opinion.
Finding themselves on an equal perch to make their case has rarely happened the past decade or so, because Trump — even while he was out of office — has been afforded the opportunity to suck the oxygen out of every room thanks in large part to a corporate media that is run by right-wing billionaires, who are more interested in profits than the truth.
Every hour the Trump shutdown continues, more people will learn just how badly Republicans are screwing them, while they stand up for billionaires, and against the working folk in this country. (Oh … and that they will do literally ANYTHING to keep us from seeing the Epstein Files, because once the government opens again, it could well be there is finally enough votes in Congress to release them.)
Trump and his pathetic Republicans have overplayed a really bad (bruised) hand, and Democrats must make them pay.
Poll after poll shows Americans are blaming Republicans for yet more needless pain in their lives. As more and more of them learn that nine years later, Republicans’ only alternative to Obamacare is a diabolical scheme that will double their healthcare premiums, support for the grotesque Republicans will only continue to erode.
A new Kaiser Family Foundation poll revealed that a whopping 78 percent of Americans say Congress should EXTEND enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits due to expire at the end of the year, including … are you ready for this … 57 percent of MAGA.
As always, Republicans are making it harder on the families they allege to care about, not easier.
Just ask any farmer ....
We are coming off a week in which Trump somehow outdid himself as the most repulsive man in the world. His ugly, anti-American Mussolini act at Quantico last week was another one of those five-alarm fires that should have ended it for this sickening man. You should never get a second chance to publicly rally our military against the citizens they are supposed to defend and serve.
Of course, he never should have gotten a second chance after violently attacking us on Jan. 6, 2021, either.
The man is a traitor, and completely unfit for any duty outside of stiffing some caddie on one of his garish golf courses, which is exactly where he was yet again Saturday, showing just how little he cares about his job or Americans.
He is in declining mental and physical health, and this, too, is becoming more apparent every day.
He is a blowhard gasping for air.
America and her hard-won democracy are in the same peril they were before Trump’s shutdown began last Wednesday, but more and more Americans finally seem to be seeing they have a helluva lot more to lose than to gain with Republicans in leadership.
This shutdown is the Republicans’ doing. They have the House, the Senate, and the presidency. They are being exposed for their insistence to extend tax cuts for the rich, while doing their level best to screw everybody else.
By not caving to these vandals, Democrats are on the right side of the fight, yes, but more important: They have claimed the coveted high ground from which they can finally take their message to the American people, and the fight to Trump’s pathetic Republicans.
- (D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)
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This clear scale shows how American democracy is in terminal decline
For generations, Americans have been taught that the United States is the world’s beacon of democracy. Politicians across the spectrum speak of the nation as a “shining city on a hill,” a place where freedom and the rule of law set the standard for the rest of the world. But the truth is harder to swallow: the U.S. is drifting away from liberal democracy and toward authoritarianism.
A survey of more than 700 political scientists conducted by Bright Line Watch in 2020 found that the vast majority believe the U.S. is rapidly moving toward some form of authoritarian rule. Scholars rated American democracy on a scale from zero (complete dictatorship) to 100 (perfect democracy). After Donald Trump’s first election in November 2016, they gave it a 67. Several weeks into his second term, the score had plunged to 55.
Elections, rights, and freedoms are under attack — and America is running out of time to save its democracy. The experts’ warnings are not abstract; they reflect a country where voter suppression, gerrymandering, corporate influence, a compliant Supreme Court, and executive overreach are eroding the foundations of democratic governance. When citizens are uninformed — or choose not to vote — the systems of power tilt toward elites, making it easier for authoritarian forces to consolidate control. Authoritarian forces also thrive on fear — fear of immigrants, political opponents, or anyone deemed an outsider — turning Americans against one another and eroding the inclusive ideals that once defined the nation as a melting pot.
One of the hallmarks of authoritarian systems is the concentration of power in a single office. In the US, the presidency has been steadily amassing authority for decades. Presidents of both parties have expanded executive power — from Woodrow Wilson, who during and after World War I oversaw a massive expansion of federal authority, centralized control over the economy, and signed the Espionage and Sedition Acts to suppress dissent, to more recent administrations.
After September 11, 2001, Congress handed the executive branch sweeping powers through the Authorization for Use of Military Force, essentially giving presidents a blank check for war. Since then, presidents have increasingly governed through executive orders and “emergency” declarations, bypassing Congress altogether.
Barack Obama further expanded executive authority through extrajudicial drone strikes, targeting individuals abroad without judicial review or due process, demonstrating that executive power can be exercised unilaterally and with limited accountability.
Meanwhile, Congress has been paralyzed by polarization and gridlock, leaving lobbyists and corporate donors to fill the vacuum. The Senate’s structure, which gives Wyoming and California the same representation despite a 70-fold population difference, allows minority rule to dominate national policy. Gerrymandering and voter suppression further hollow out electoral accountability. A government that concentrates power in the executive while undermining the voice of ordinary citizens is not functioning as a democracy.
Authoritarian governments also justify extraordinary powers in the name of “security.” The U.S. is no exception. The National Security Agency’s mass surveillance programs, exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013, revealed a government that watches its citizens on a scale once unthinkable. At home, local police departments increasingly resemble military units, rolling out armored vehicles and tear gas against peaceful protesters.
We saw this during Occupy Wall Street, Standing Rock, and Black Lives Matter uprisings. The deployment of force against citizens exercising their constitutional rights should alarm anyone who values democracy. Yet the normalization of militarized policing has created what philosopher Giorgio Agamben wrote as a “state of exception” — where emergency measures become everyday tools of governance.
Yes, Americans still enjoy constitutional rights — but too often these rights exist more on paper than in practice.
Free speech? Tell that to whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning, Snowden, or Reality Winner, who were prosecuted under the Espionage Act for revealing government misconduct.
Voting rights? They’ve been under relentless attack, especially since the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which gutted protections for minority voters. States have since imposed strict voter ID laws, purged voter rolls, and closed polling places in Black and Latino communities.
Even fundamental rights like reproductive freedom are being stripped away. The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned Roe v. Wade, unleashing a wave of state-level abortion bans. Millions of women and people who can become pregnant no longer have control over their own bodies. That’s not democracy; that’s state control of private life.
Another clear sign of authoritarian drift is the domination of politics by wealthy elites. Since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision, corporations and billionaires have been able to pour unlimited money into elections. Political campaigns are dominated by super PACs and billionaire donors. Our democracy is no longer guaranteed — from Wall Street to the White House, power is slipping into the hands of a few.
Political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page found in 2014 that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy,” leaving ordinary voters almost powerless to shape the laws that govern them.
The authoritarian character of the United States cannot be understood solely within its borders. With more than 750 military bases worldwide and a defense budget larger than the next ten nations combined, the United States functions as a global empire. Military interventions — from Iraq to Afghanistan to drone strikes across the Middle East and Africa — have often been launched without meaningful Congressional approval.
Empire abroad normalizes authoritarianism at home. Militarized policing, mass surveillance, and a bloated national security state are justified by the logic of “permanent war,” which also benefits defense contractors, private security firms, and other corporate interests that profit from endless conflict. As Hannah Arendt wrote, imperialism abroad often requires repression at home. That warning has become reality.
The United States still holds elections and maintains a written constitution, but appearances are misleading. The US still calls itself a democracy, but in practice, authoritarian forces are calling the shots. What makes American authoritarianism distinctive is its velvet glove: it is not a dictatorship in the classical sense but a regime where democratic symbols cloak undemocratic realities. Its most effective disguise is the illusion of freedom itself — an ideology of free market capitalism that promises choice while consolidating power in the hands of a few.
Americans are told they live in the land of opportunity, yet the choices available to them — whether in the marketplace or at the ballot box — are increasingly constrained by corporate monopolies and two political parties beholden to the same economic elites. Recognizing this drift is the first step toward reversing it. Unless structural reforms are undertaken — curbing corporate power, restoring voting rights, protecting civil liberties, and demilitarizing both foreign and domestic policy — the United States risks cementing its place not as the defender of democracy but as an exemplar of its decline.
It is a bitter irony that 66,000 living World War II veterans — who risked everything to fight authoritarianism abroad — now witness the creeping authoritarianism at home and the steady erosion of the freedoms they fought to secure. Their sacrifices are a reminder that democracy is fragile and must be actively defended.
Democracy is not self-sustaining. If Americans care about preserving freedom, they must act: vote in every election — from school boards to city councils to state legislatures — and recognize that their power extends beyond the ballot box. As consumers and shareholders, they can choose carefully which corporations they support, amplifying businesses that align with democratic values while withdrawing support from those that undermine them.
Citizens can also engage directly with elected officials, starting meaningful discussions to make their voices heard, and volunteer with nonpartisan nonprofit advocacy organizations and watchdog groups that protect the democratic process, civil rights, and corporate and government accountability and transparency. Pushing for structural reforms that rein in executive power and corporate influence, challenging fear-mongering narratives, and defending the rights of marginalized communities are all essential steps to reclaiming and preserving democracy.
We each have a role to play. Wake up, America! It’s one thing to recognize the nation’s slide toward authoritarianism and complain about it — it’s another entirely to take action. Be no bystander; democracy depends on participation. We ignore its demise at our peril.
- Martina Moneke writes about art, fashion, culture, and politics. In 2022, she received the Los Angeles Press Club’s First Place Award for Election Editorials at the 65th Annual Southern California Journalism Awards. She is based in Los Angeles and New York.
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One Trump rant displayed the true banality of evil
World leaders meet every September for the United Nations General Assembly. There have been plenty of weird moments over the years: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe on the table in 1960 to stop the leader of another country from criticizing him, Fidel Castro going on for more than four hours in a speech that same year, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez calling US President George W. Bush the “devil” in 2006.
President Donald Trump has had his odd UN moments as well. In 2017, he lashed out against North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as a “rocket man ... on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.” The following year, Trump returned to the podium to claim that “in less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.” He was surprised to hear the audience laugh at this absurd boast.
Trump returned to the UN last month for an even more bizarre performance. For an hour, he berated the assembled leaders with his usual grievances and overstatements. As usual, he played up his rescue of the US economy (even as it teeters on a precipice because of his tariffs) and prevention of a “colossal invasion” at the border (though the numbers of migrants had been going down in the final year of the previous administration). He repeated his claim that he ended seven wars (he hasn’t). He claimed that he “has the highest poll numbers I’ve ever had” (at 39 percent, they’re actually at their lowest level).
But he also went on an extended riff on why he should have gotten the contract to renovate the UN headquarters, asserted that all countries are “going to hell” because of migration, claimed that Christianity is “the most persecuted religion on the planet today,” and insisted that he “was right about everything. And I don’t say that in a braggadocious way, but it’s true.”
All of this was disconcerting, but foreign leaders often come to the UN to tell lies.
It’s what Trump said in his UN address about climate change and renewable energy that went beyond mere lies.
Climate change, Trump announced, is “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world ... All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people... If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.”
The “green scam” involves clean energy, which Trump has steered the United States away from.
“We’re getting rid of the falsely named renewables. By the way, they’re a joke. They don’t work. They’re too expensive.”
Climate change predictions, in fact, have been all too accurate. Last year was the warmest on record. The glaciers are melting faster than ever before. Superstorms are intensifying around the planet, even in the United States.
Renewable energy, meanwhile, works very well. I discovered just how well renewable energy works just this week when an accident caused an interruption in the electricity grid in our neighborhood and our solar panels kept our refrigerator humming. Solar and wind power now produce electricity at rates much cheaper than the lowest-priced fossil fuels (41 percent cheaper for solar, 53 percent for offshore wind).
The UN, of course, has identified climate change as a major — if not the major — threat to humanity. You can’t fault Trump for not being bold. But it was as if he had stood up at a conference of astrophysicists and announced that the US government now believed that the Earth is at the center of the solar system. He would not only be wrong; He would be proposing to destroy all of the industries based on the science of astrophysics — satellites, space stations, and the like.
Similarly, Trump’s ideas about climate change are not just wrong or even just unworkable. They are evil. By pushing for the return of fossil fuels in the United States and elsewhere, Trump is putting the effort to arrest climate change beyond reach. The planet is heading toward a brick wall, and Trump has not only taken his foot off the brake, he has pushed down hard on the accelerator.
Trump once criticized the Obama administration for not doing enough to address climate change. Now, because of the political and financial support of the fossil fuel lobbies, he has executed a U-turn. As a result, more and more people will die as a result of heat, flooding, and famine. One recent study in Nature estimates over 240,000 deaths per year because of heat, disease, floods, and other direct effects of climate change. Trump’s claims, in other words, amount to the denial and perpetuation of a mass murder.
In her essays about Nazis and genocide, the philosopher Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “the banality of evil.” She rightly identified the faceless bureaucrat as the modern era’s personification of crimes against humanity. These bureaucrats were not motivated primarily by ideology or the will to power. Incapable of empathy, they were doing their job as just another cog in the machinery of evil.
There are many such banal personifications of evil in modern society — the CEO of a nuclear weapons production facility, the judge who signs off on the deportation of a Russian dissident back to the country that will imprison or execute him, the flak who writes the government press release about Israeli military actions in Gaza. You will not read about these people in the newspaper. They are just doing their jobs.
Trump is not like that. He wants to be in the public eye 24/7. He wants to be heralded as the person responsible for dramatic change in the United States and the world. He thinks that he’s not only doing good in the world but that he is the best person in the world.
This is evil in the age of social media. It is evil committed by people who believe that they are the stars of their own movies and the rest of us are just extras.
Trump’s evil, of course, resides in his actions. But it is also because he denies collective action. Trump’s evil is that of extreme narcissism.
Climate change can only be stopped by everyone pulling together and acting in concert. But that flies in the face of Trump’s boast that he alone can solve the world’s problems. His bragging is not just a personality quirk or even the sign of a personality disorder. It is an essential element of his particular form of evil.
- John Feffer is the author of the dystopian novel "Splinterlands" (2016) and the director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. His novel, "Frostlands" (2018) is book two of his Splinterlands trilogy. Splinterlands book three "Songlands" was published in 2021. His podcast is available here.
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Mad King Donald reveals what's driving his Portland obsession — and it's just insane
When over the weekend federal Judge Karin Immergut (a Trump appointee) blocked Trump from deploying Oregon’s National Guard to Portland, Trump said she “should be ashamed of herself” because “Portland is burning to the ground.”
Trump promptly ordered the California National Guard to Portland.
Apart from the obvious question of how Trump can so blatantly defy a federal judge, there’s a deeper puzzle here. Where did he get the idea Portland is burning to the ground?
Nine days ago, when Trump first threatened to send troops to Portland, Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, told him there was no reason.
“He thinks there are elements here creating an insurrection,” Kotek said after her call with Trump. “I told him there is no insurrection here and that we have this under control.”
Trump responded to Kotek this way:
“I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? … They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place … it looks like terrible.”
Why the factual discrepancy between what Governor Kotek told Trump about Portland and what he believed was happening there?
In the suit seeking an injunction to stop Trump from sending troops to Portland, which Judge Immergut granted, the state of Oregon alleged that Trump relied on videoclips from Portland protests over the murder of George Floyd that took place in 2020.
According to the lawsuit,
On September 5, 2025, “Fox News aired a report on Portland ICE protests that included misleading clips from Portland protests in 2020. Shortly thereafter, President Trump appeared to reference events in the same misleading Fox News report when speaking to the press. A reporter asked which city President Trump planned to send troops to next, and he said he was considering targeting Portland because of news coverage the night before. President Trump alleged that ‘paid terrorists’ and ‘paid agitators’ were making the city unlivable, further stating … ‘if we go to Portland, we’re gonna wipe them out. They’re going to be gone and they’re going to be gone fast.’”
During the hearing on Oregon’s lawsuit, Trump’s Justice Department argued that “the record does show a persistent threat,” offering as evidence a Trump post on Truth Social.
“Really?” asked Judge Immergut. “A social media post is going to count as a presidential determination that you can send the National Guard to cities? That’s really what I should be relying on?”
The Justice Department’s attorneys then cited reports from the Portland Police Bureau that protest crowds were “very energized,” numbering “over 50 to 60” people.
But attorneys for Oregon pointed out that the same police documents showed the protests had become much smaller and subdued — 8 to 15 people at any given time, “mostly sitting in lawn chairs and walking around … Energy was low, minimal activity.”
What can we learn from this mess?
First, Trump is now openly defying the order of a federal court.
Second, the most powerful person in the world apparently decided to use potentially lethal force on Americans on the basis of a five-year-old Fox News clip that crossed his television screen.
Third, Trump evidently does not have a process for getting current, verified information before he makes big decisions.
For over a century, every other president has been at the center of a system of information, flowing from people who have expertise in assessing the relevance and truth of that information — people who provide him with recommendations as to how to respond to a crisis, along with alternatives and assessments of the advantages and disadvantages of each alternative.
Trump, by contrast, is making potentially lethal decisions on the basis of whatever happens to be shown on the television he’s watching.
Fourth, although Trump has never thought much about the quality of information he receives before making decisions — in his first term he bragged about his infallible “intuition” — we have every reason to believe he’s becoming demented (see here) and his capacity to think more compromised than ever.
Fifth, to the extent anyone is making decisions in the White House, it’s the troika of Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, and JD Vance — who appear to have taken control over much of what Trump hears and sees (including, perhaps, five-year-old Fox News clips?). Their strategy seems to be aimed at making war on Democratic states.
Which brings me to the sixth point: We should be very concerned. A disturbed man and his fanatical advisors are making potentially life-threatening decisions on the basis of what he sees on television.
He’s also defying a federal court. He’s ordering federal troops to forcefully occupy an American city whose mayor and governor don’t want him to. He’s already causing people — some of whom are American citizens — to be arrested and detained without due process.
He’s also bombing vessels in international waters — killing people whom he claims, without evidence, are smuggling drugs into the United States.
Meanwhile, much of the federal government is shuttered. Republicans in Congress are AWOL. Democrats in Congress are trying to use their limited leverage to get health insurance back for some 20 million Americans.
We’re in trouble, friends.
Trump and his enablers want a violent confrontation in Portland to justify their illegal move. I urge you not to fall into their trap. Don’t protest there.
But do peacefully demonstrate on Oct. 18 — in every town and city across America.
- Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/
- Robert Reich's new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org.
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'Oh, hell no!' 'Defunct' DeSantis has a really bad idea for life after his governorship
Hard times are on the horizon.
Unemployment rates are creeping up, especially in the public-service sector, and, like many others, Florida’s current governor will soon be out of a job.
He’s got only 15 months left to ride the taxpayer gravy train.
Once a promising presidential candidate, accustomed to hearing himself called “DeFuture,” Ron DeSantis will be DeThroned, DeMoted, DeFunct.
In common with thousands of recently — or soon to be — laid-off government workers, he may experience DePression.
Rumor is he harbors ambitions to again run for the White House — assuming there are elections in 2028.
The problem with this plan is that in 2024, America met him and America said, “Oh, hell no!"
DeSantis was a truly, epically, terrible candidate. They had to remind him to smile.
Polls show him favored by only 10% of Republican voters: Ahead of Marco Rubio but way, way behind JD Vance.
When people think you’re weirder than JD Vance, you might want to adjust your ambitions and rethink your career path.
Perhaps go for something a little more realistic.
Never fear: DeSantis has plenty of options.
He prides himself in making sure Florida is “Open for Business,” so why not open a business?
Maybe a surf shop in his hometown of Dunedin: Ron Ron.
Sure, Ron Jon might sue, but DeSantis is a lawyer: He can surely handle it.
Speaking of the law, as long as he keeps his bar license current, why not practice whatever it was he learned at Harvard?
Oh, maybe that’s not such a good idea. Lawyers, even Florida lawyers, are expected to perform a certain amount of pro bono work every year, representing the poor and the powerless.
DeSantis doesn’t much like the poor and the powerless.
The university option
Still, he could open a boutique firm, specializing in suing school librarians, middle school teachers, college professors, and anyone else who smells “woke” to him.
Shoot, he could become a college professor himself!
Evidently anyone can.
Seems politicians finding themselves between elected gigs can always find a university home.
Mike Haridopoulos, who now represents the Space Coast in Congress, used to teach at UF and Brevard Community College.
When Secretary of State Marco Rubio got term-limited out of the Florida Legislature, Florida International University paid him 23 grand a year to teach one class — around seven times what your average adjunct pulls in per course.
Maybe DeSantis could teach a political science class called “Authoritarianism for Fun and Profit.”
Other washed-up politicos, including Richard Corcoran, Manny Diaz Jr., and Jeannette Nuñez, all scored top jobs as university presidents. DeSantis could, too.
All he has to do is push somebody out, the way he did at New College or at the University of West Florida, and “suggest” he’s obviously the best possible choice. Given that he appointed most of Florida universities’ boards of trustees, it’s a safe bet he’d get what he wants.
But perhaps he’d prefer to reconnect with those “blue-collar” roots he’s always talking about and do something a bit less exhausting than the day-to-day business of firing academics for mentioning race and gender.
How about opening his own specialty restaurant?
He could lean into Donald Trump’s affectionate nickname for him: Call it Meatball Ron’s Fine Dining, home of the No-Lab-Meat Polpette.
He likes to say that while he grew up in Tampa Bay, his true home is the Rust Belt of his parents’ Ohio.
You know, declining Industrial Heartland, home of Real Americans (Real American places do not have beaches, leggy pink birds, or free-range Burmese pythons), casseroles, corn fields, Vice President J.D. Vance, and rampant addiction to opioids.
He could sell farm equipment. Foster our amber waves of grain.
Only thing is, farmers can’t afford tractors. John Deere is losing money and laying off workers, thanks to tariffs on steel and aluminum, retaliatory Chinese tariffs on soybeans, and diminished crop sales owing to Trump’s gutting of USAID.
Back to the roots
On second thought, maybe DeSantis could sell fish bait.
Given the rate of inflation at the grocery store, a lot of us may soon have to start catching our own dinner.
Or go back to his first, best love, baseball, at which — as he reminds us on every other page of his memoir — he was really good, awesomely good.
Luckily, the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, a beloved minor league team located in the governor’s birthplace, are hiring everything from Kid Zone Attendant to Assistant Concessions Manager.
Some day he could even try out for the team.
It would be like a movie!
Maybe not.
DeSantis claims he cares about Florida’s economy, so why not contribute to our agriculture industry?
Given the mass deportations and immigrants’ fears they’ll be dragged off by ICE, even if they’re legally here, Florida farmers can’t find people to harvest their crops.
Strawberry fields forever — also tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbages, and cane.
The governor clearly thinks 12-hour days in our world-renowned Florida sunshine build character: A bill he signed last year bans local government from requiring employers to give workers water and heat breaks.
But let’s get real real. While Ron DeSantis likes to talk up learning a trade instead of getting a degree from a snooty college (or, in his case, two snooty colleges) where you will undoubtedly become a Marxist follower of that Imp of Satan Greta Thunberg, he bleached that blue collar long ago.
In other words, Ordinary Joe jobs won’t cut it.
The man doesn’t fly commercial.
There’s always Disney World
Anyway, he might not leave Tallahassee at all.
It all depends on his wife, and, maybe, his hand-picked Number Two.
Jay Collins, former state senator, former Green Beret, a man whom DeSantis calls “the Chuck Norris of Florida Politics,” says he and his family have been “praying about” his running for governor.
Collins also says he would consider the “brilliant” Casey DeSantis as his running mate.
Floridians will have Thoughts about this.
First of all, Florida’s First Lady has not ruled out her own run for governor, even though the Current Occupant of the White House has endorsed the 30-watt U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, giving him a large advantage with Florida MAGAs.
She has other political liabilities too, including $10 million in Medicaid overbilling settlement money “donated” to Hope Florida, a charity she founded, which mysteriously (and illicitly) ended up going to an outside PAC.
Investigations continue.
Collins has his own problems. He rejects “the woke mind virus,” but, as right-wing news site “Florida’s Voice” has reported, at Operation BBQ Relief (they provide barbecue meals to disaster victims), the charity he worked for, he was in charge of overseeing their robust DEI policies.
As the few remaining Floridians who aren’t too exhausted to care have noticed, Collins has yet to formally announce his candidacy.
Meanwhile, the seas rise, the heat gets more intense, the water gets dirtier, the rich get richer, the poor can’t afford to go to the doctor, library shelves get emptier, public schools crumble, and people get fired for exercising their First Amendment rights on social media.
This is the Florida DeSantis will bequeath us.
If he and Casey fail to hold onto political power in this state, perhaps they’d like to move to Ohio and immerse themselves in that rich Rust Belt culture.
Or, if all else fails, there’s always Disney World.
Surely, they’d hire him to play a character. Donald Duck, maybe? Or Pluto?
Walking around in one of those big heads, nobody can tell if you forget to smile.
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Hallelujah — a leading Dem finally uses the right word to describe Trump
I could be wrong, but JB Pritzker may be the first Democrat to apply the d-word to Donald Trump. More importantly, the Illinois governor may be the first to link Trump's criminality to his dementia. And! He may be the first to explain America’s existential crisis in context of a remedy.
A threefer! Pritzker said:
"It appears that Donald Trump not only has dementia set in, but he's copying tactics of Vladimir Putin. Sending troops into cities, thinking that that's some sort of proving ground for war, or that indeed there's some sort of internal war going on in the United States is just, frankly, inane, and I'm concerned for his health. There is something genuinely wrong with this man, and the 25th Amendment ought to be invoked."
Like I said, I could be wrong. California Governor Gavin Newsom came close to saying it. Last month, his social media account mocked one of Trump’s Truth Social posts, parsing all the lives, with a zinger on top: “Take your dementia meds, Grandpa. You are making things up again.” (Newsom has also said there’s something wrong with Trump. He suggested his cognition has decayed dramatically since his first term.)
But that’s as close as Newsom got, and as far as I can tell, no Democrat as high as Pritzker has said outright that Trump is demented.
This is not to say no one has been talking about it directly. I have. USA Today’s Rex Huppke has. The New Republic’s Greg Sargent has. The Hill’s Chris Truax has. There are dozens more examples. (There’s also a repertoire of wink-wink-nudge-nudge that the Democrats have used since Joe Biden dropped out of the campaign. Kamala Harris talked a lot about Trump’s “stamina” and “weakness.” Others followed her lead.)
But that’s pretty much the extent of it. Despite wall-to-wall coverage of Biden’s mental state, now to the point where some respectable journalists are claiming there was a vast conspiracy to cover it up, the Washington press corps seemed to have priced into their coverage of Trump his obvious deterioration. There’s barely a hint of anything about it. Absolutely no one has used the d-word in their reporting. It’s enough to make you wonder if there’s a vast conspiracy to cover it up.
I will say that something changed this week, at least in terms of coverage by the New York Times, which tends to be a bellwether for newspeople. A piece on his gathering of top military brass resulted in this reaction from a seasoned Times-watcher: “I assert that the New York Times has changed its approach to writing about Trump.”
The article, headlined “Trump Gave the Military’s Brass a Rehashed Speech. Until Minute 44,” was about how difficult it is to pick out the newsworthy bits from Trump’s speeches, as they tend to be retreads of the same things he’s always going on about.
Despite addressing elites of the American military, Trump twaddled on about Biden and the “infamous autopen”; about the unfair media; about tariffs; about the border; about “the time he went to a restaurant in Washington to eat dinner”; and even the “Nobel Peace Prize he felt he had earned.”
As Times reporter Shawn McCreesh said: “These were pretty much the same things he talked about a day earlier while standing next to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in the State Dining Room at the White House, which were the same things he talked about at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service in Arizona, which were the same things he talked about at Windsor Castle and at Chequers in England.”
But then, out of that miasma of mangled words, broken thoughts and disconnections arose “something new. Something different,” McCreesh wrote. The president of the United States said that “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.”
To make sure you don’t miss it, McCreesh repeats those words in italics. “‘We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military,’ the president of the United States said.”
McCreesh is reporting, not commenting. He’s not saying directly that Trump looks like an old man whose brain is so broken he can’t stop perseverating on the same five topics or that out of that word salad, he sometimes spews the pristine proclamations of a dictator. Instead, he takes a reportorial approach toward arriving at a similar conclusion. He’s showing, in other words, not telling, and the showing is clear.
“It has become harder to perceive the occasionally revealing things the president says … because of the way he sometimes says them,” McCreesh wrote. “For a 79-year-old, he’s often shown a great deal of energy, but he seemed a bit sapped Tuesday. As his remarks went on and on, his voice took on a more monotonous quality. A day earlier, when he spoke … Mr. Trump sounded out of breath at times.”
McCreesh could have taken a different reportorial approach.
He could have backgrounded the word salad and focused on how the “training ground” remark is in keeping with all the other dictatorial things Trump has said, which altogether are in keeping with Project 2025, published prior to the election. McCreesh could have focused on how, with each of these statements, the president seems to be coming around to publicly embracing that manifesto, after having renounced it. Indeed, such an approach would have gone viral. Just today, Trump said, in essence, he lied when he said he had nothing to do with it.
In short, McCreesh could have set aside the word salad to establish continuity between, say, the president who led an attempted insurrection and the president who said, years later, “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.”
Instead, McCreesh foregrounds Trump’s word salad to suggest that something has changed, and that such change could itself suggest that his dictatorial statements are the exception to the rule. “Thousands of words pour forth from the president’s mouth,” he wrote. “Sometimes, he tucks in a wild insight about the direction he is taking the country.”
Which brings me back to Pritzker. He’s why I’m dwelling on this piece and the way McCreesh wrote it. In being the first leading Democrat to use the word “dementia,” Pritzker's doing something similar — foregrounding Trump’s deteriorated mental state such that all the crazy things that he’s doing in defiance of reason, morality, the Constitution and the law are downstream from there. (McCreesh’s foregrounding is, of course, implicit while Pritzker’s is explicit).
While other Democrats are making what seem to be ideological or policy-based arguments against the president — he’s a threat to your freedoms or he’s failing to protect your health care — Pritzker can take what you might call a position of big-hearted centrism. He can stand against Trump’s tyranny while at the same time genuinely lament that his disease has turned him into a despot. Now the dementia has set in, Pritzker said, Trump is copying Putin. “I'm concerned for his health.”
This won’t be fully convincing to a lot of people, myself included, but its effectiveness with independent voters might bring us around in time. Pritzker, or another ambitious Democrat, could easily pivot this framing to include all those things that swing voters thought he was going to do but didn’t. Why is food still so expensive? Why did my electric bill go up? Why didn’t Trump do what he said he was going to do? You could, as liberals often do, say that he lied, or that he actually wants to immiserate the middle class. But that would require changing swing voters’ minds. It would require them to admit they were wrong. Probably more effective to say, well, he’s gone mad with the dementia.
It’s the difference between the patient and his sickness. He isn’t saying, “We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds,” because he’s a fascist. He’s saying it because he’s sick. While the symptoms are the same, the diagnosis is politically what matters.
Consider comments made by Jack Cocchiarella. A CNN host asked the young YouTube influencer for his thoughts on the government shutdown.
“Trump to me is kind of this dementia-addled nursing home patient in the White House right now,” he said. “He’s leaning on [budget director Russell] Vought, he’s leaning on [Deputy Chief of Staff] Stephen Miller, because he doesn’t want to get the job done.
“He just doesn’t seem interested in negotiating. He’s taking pleasure in what Russ Vought said, which would be the traumatizing of federal workers. That was their goal coming into this administration. So it seems like that’s all they wanna do. And I don’t know how that gets any Democrat, who actually cares about people who are gonna see their premium double, triple, to come to the table, and why would you?
“This Administration doesn’t want to engage.”
Nothing here about Trump being fascist. Cocchiarella merely thinks he doesn’t want to negotiate with Democrats because he’s old and mean.
Since last year’s election, the Democrats have been in debate with themselves. Some say they need to keep sounding the alarm about Trump’s threat to democracy. Others say that didn’t work last time and they should focus on “kitchen-table issues,” which is to say, economics.
Dementia, in the way that Pritzker used it, could be the link between them. Why is Trump acting like a dictator? Why didn’t he do more to bring down my grocery bill? Same answer. It’s as elegant as it is simple.
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We might finally have found Trump's most ludicrous and dangerous lie
Donald Trump is declaring war on Democratically-controlled states. He has no purpose in sending military forces into blue-state cities other than to exercise his imperial power over cities and states who reject his anti-democratic agenda.
Military intervention in neighborhoods filled predominantly with people of color does nothing but terrorize residents and can increase civilian deaths and undermine effective, on-going crime-prevention strategies. It has no lasting impact on the violent crime rate in a city and is nothing more than a political show of authoritarian power worthy of Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, or Xi Jinping.
If Trump really cared about reducing violent crime, he would start with the 10 states with the highest gun-death rates in the country, all controlled by Republicans. He would learn what the federal government should be doing to reduce violent crime from the 10 states with the lowest gun-death rates, nine of which are Democratically controlled, including California and New York.
Rather than sending troops into New York City, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., or Chicago, Trump should hold up these cities as models for violent crime reduction, each having lowered their gun homicide rates significantly. He would encourage cities in Republican-controlled states such as New Orleans, St. Louis, Birmingham, and Kansas City to follow the best practices of the blue-state cities that are making their citizens safer from gun violence.
If Trump cared about reducing violent crime, he should do what President Bill Clinton did in in 1994 through the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. Clinton provided $14 billion in federal funding to add 100,000 new community police officers across the country, reducing crime over the next 10 years well below its projected level.
If Trump cared about reducing violent crime, he would employ evidence-based measures at the federal level proven to reduce gun violence. He would start by enacting federal gun control laws that have proven most effective in other countries and in states with the lowest gun violence rates: universal background checks, licensing for gun buyers, Red Flag laws, safe storage laws, and bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.
Trump would take steps to reduce poverty in America’s inner-cities, a leading cause of gun violence throughout the world. To that end, he would provide federal funding to help create inner-city jobs and reduce the high unemployment rate among young Black men. He would increase funding for historically underfunded schools and for communities to clean up blighted areas, creating a more inviting environment that has proven effective in reducing criminal activity.
Trump would provide more federal funding for community anti-violence programs. Through the collaborative efforts of social services, police departments, healthcare providers, and community leaders, communities are reducing gun violence through on-going violence intervention programs. The federal government could help to fund such programs on a national scale.
Of course, Trump will do none of those things to reduce gun violence because first, they are supported or have been implemented by Democrats, and second, he doesn’t care.
In fact, by opposing all gun-control legislation, supporting a national concealed-carry law, stripping Medicare coverage from millions of low-income Americans, and cutting federal funding for a number of social services programs, Trump will make America’s gun-violence problem only grow worse.
Trump’s first term of office revealed his impact on reducing gun violence. From 2019 to 2020, there was a 15 percent increase in US gun deaths. 2020 saw the largest number of gun deaths ever recorded in the US: 45,222. For Trump’s second term, we can expect more of the same save the gun violence reductions a number of blue states are making.
Trump characterizing himself as a “law and order” president is among the biggest frauds he has perpetrated. No president has ever personally assaulted the rule of law like Trump. No president has ever pardoned more than 100 convicted criminals who violently assaulted Capitol police officers. No president has ever done less to make America a safer place for every American to live.
Siccing the military on cities in blue states is a perfidious scam, conning people into believing that Trump is making a difference. It is yet another tyrannical power play to punish and vilify blue states and to rev up MAGA followers who relish Trump’s every outrage.
Millions of Americans who have participated in anti-Trump rallies in blue states have chanted and held aloft signs reading “NOT MY PRESIDENT!” How right they are.
- Tom Tyner is a freelance editorialist, satirist, political analyst, blogger, author and retired English instructor
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This utter Trump toady hasn't reached the depth of his most notorious predecessor — yet
By Douglas M. Charles, Professor of History, Penn State.
Three converging events in the 1970s — the Watergate scandal, the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from the Vietnam War and revelations that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had abused his power to persecute people and organizations he viewed as political enemies — destroyed what formerly had been near-automatic trust in the presidency and the FBI.
In response, Congress enacted reforms designed to ensure that legal actions by the Department of Justice and the FBI, the department’s main investigative arm, would be insulated from politics. These included stronger congressional oversight, a 10-year term limit for FBI directors and investigative guidelines issued by the attorney general.
Some of these measures, however, were tenuous. For example, Justice Department leaders could alter FBI investigative guidelines at any time.
Donald Trump’s first presidential term seriously tested DOJ and FBI independence, notably, when Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017. Trump claimed Comey mishandled a 2016 probe into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s private email server, but Comey also refused to pledge loyalty to the president.
Now, in Trump’s second term, prior guardrails have vanished. The president has installed loyalists at the DOJ and FBI who are dedicated to implementing his political interests.
As a historian of the FBI, I recognize the FBI has had only one other overtly political director in the past 50 years: L. Patrick Gray, who served for a year under President Richard Nixon. Gray was held accountable after he tried to help Nixon end the FBI’s Watergate investigation. Whether Trump’s current director, Kash Patel, has more staying power is unclear.
After Hoover
Ever since Hoover’s death in 1972, presidents have typically nominated independent candidates with bipartisan support and law enforcement roots to run the FBI. Most nominees have been judges, senior prosecutors or former FBI or Justice Department officials.
While Hoover publicly proclaimed his FBI independent of politics, he sometimes did the bidding of presidents, including Nixon. Still, Nixon felt that Hoover had not been compliant enough, so in 1972 he selected Gray, a longtime friend and assistant attorney general, to be Hoover’s successor.
Gray took steps to move the bureau out of Hoover’s shadow. He relaxed strict dress codes for agents, recruited female agents and pointedly hired people from outside the agency — who were not indoctrinated in the Hoover culture — for administrative posts.
Gray asserted his authority with blunt force. FBI agents at field offices and at headquarters who resisted Gray’s power were censured, fired or transferred. Other senior officials opted to leave, including the bureau’s top fraud expert, cryptanalyst and skyjacking expert, and the head of its Crime Information Center.
Agents regarded these moves as a purge, and press reports claimed that bureau morale was at an all-time low, charges that Gray denied. According to FBI Associate Director Mark Felt, who became Gray’s second in command, 10 of 16 top FBI officials chose to retire, most of them notable Hoover men.
Gray surrounded himself with what journalist Jack Anderson called “sharp, but inexperienced, modish, young aides.” FBI insiders called these new hires the “Mod Squad,” a reference to the counterculture TV police series.
Gray helps Nixon
In contrast to Hoover, who had rarely left FBI headquarters and publicly avoided politics, Gray openly stumped for Nixon in the 1972 campaign. He was so rarely spotted at FBI headquarters that bureau insiders dubbed him “Two-Day Gray.” At the request of Nixon aide John Ehrlichman, Gray told field offices to help Nixon campaign surrogates by providing local crime information.
Gray cooperated with Nixon to stymie the FBI’s investigation of the 1972 Watergate break-in and the ensuing cover-up. He provided raw FBI investigative documents to the White House and burned documents from Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt’s White House safe.
When Nixon had CIA Deputy Director Vernon Walters ask Gray, in the name of national security, to halt the FBI’s investigation, Felt and other agency insiders demanded that Gray get this order in writing. The White House backed down, but Nixon’s directive had been recorded. That tape became the so-called “smoking gun” evidence of a Watergate cover-up.
Felt, in classic Hoover fashion, then leaked information to discredit Gray, hoping to replace him. Gray resigned in disgrace.
While Felt never got the top job, he is now remembered as the prized anonymous source “Deep Throat,” who helped Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their Pulitzer Prize-winning Watergate investigation. But it was internal FBI resistance, from Felt and agents at lower levels, that led to Gray’s departure.
Political from the start
Campaigning in 2024, Donald Trump vowed to “root out” his political opponents from government. Realizing he was a target because of his investigation of the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, FBI director Christopher Wray, whom Trump nominated in 2017, resigned in December 2024 before Trump could fire him.
In Wray’s place Trump nominated loyalist Kash Patel, a lawyer who worked as a low-level federal prosecutor from 2013 to 2016 and then as a deputy national security appointee during Trump’s first term.
Patel publicly supported Trump’s vow to purge enemies and claimed the FBI was part of a “deep state” that was resistant to Trump. Patel promised to help dismantle this disloyal core and to “rebuild public trust” in the FBI.
Even before Patel was confirmed on Feb. 20, 2025, in an historically close 51-49 vote, the Justice Department began transferring thousands of agents away from national security matters to immigration duty, which was not a traditional FBI focus.
Hours after taking office, Patel shifted 1,500 agents and staff from FBI headquarters to field offices, claiming that he was streamlining operations.
Patel installed outsider Dan Bongino as deputy director. Bongino, another Trump loyalist, was a former New York City policeman and Secret Service agent who had become a full-time political commentator. He embraced a conspiracy theory positing the FBI was “irredeemably corrupt” and advocated “an absolute housecleaning.”
In February, New York City Special Agent in Charge James Dennehy told FBI staff “to dig in” and oppose expected and unprecedented political intrusions. He was forced out by March.
Patel then used lie-detector tests and carried out a string of high-profile firings of agents who had investigated either Trump or the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. Some agents who were fired had been photographed kneeling during a 2020 racial justice protest in Washington, D.C. — an action they said they took to defuse tensions with protesters.
In response, three fired agents are suing Patel for what they call a political retribution campaign. Ex-NFL football player Charles Tillman, who became an FBI agent in 2017, resigned in September 2025 in protest of Trump policies. Once again, there are assertions of a purge.
Will Patel be held accountable?
Patel’s actions as director so far illustrate that he is willing to use his position to implement the president’s political designs. When Gray tried to do this in the 1970s, accountability still held force, and Gray left office in disgrace. Gray participated in a cover-up of illegal behavior that became the subject of an impeachment proceeding. What Patel has done to date, at least what we know about, is not the equivalent — so far.
Today, Patel’s tenure rests solely upon pleasing the president. If formal accountability — a key element of a democracy — is to survive, it will have to come from Congress, whose Republican majority has so far not exercised its power to hold Trump or his administration accountable. Short of that, perhaps internal resistance within the administration or pressure from the public and the media might serve the oversight function that Congress, over the past eight months, has abrogated.
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Step by awful step, Trump is using this 12-stage plan to seize total control
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” —Abraham Lincoln
“The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions and make them one people. To render us again one people, acting as one nation, should be the object of every man really a patriot.”—Thomas Jefferson
People are baffled. Why are Trump and his Republican lickspittles so intent on gutting our government, destroying our alliances and reputation around the world, and screwing working class people while transferring over $50 trillion to the morbidly rich?
Historian Kevin M. Kruse captured the zeitgeist brilliantly, reflecting widespread public bewilderment when he posted over on BlueSky:
“We’ve had fuckups in the White House before, but never a president who seemed so deliberately intent on being a fuckup. It’s been said before, but if these people were actual agents of an enemy power seeking to divide, dismantle and destroy the USA they wouldn’t be doing anything different.”
So, let’s engage in a simple thought experiment. If you or I were hired by Vladimir Putin, an angry group of billionaires who want to end democracy, or a wealthy serial killer, and our orders were to tear our country apart and make us vulnerable to foreign takeover, what would we do? What steps would we take?
As I mentioned a few days ago, if we follow the Dictator’s Playbook there actually is a simple, 12-step formula to make that happen.
The first step would be to turn Americans from E Pluribus Unum (“Out of Many, One”) into hate-filled warring factions. Turn us against each other. Divide us by race, religion, gender, region, education, income, and whether we live in cities or rural areas.
In Immanuel Kant’s Perpetual Peace (1795), he described the first three strategies that “despotic moralists” use to rip apart the fabric of a society. They were Fac et excusa (“Act now, and make excuses later”), Si fecisti, nega (“If you commit a crime, deny it”), and Divide et impera (“Divide and conquer”). Jefferson perhaps inspired Kant when, in 1787, he wrote, “Divide et impera [is] the reprobated axiom of tyranny…”
When Hitler claimed that Jews, Gypsies, and queer people weren’t “real Germans,” he was invoking that principle. Joe McCarthy tried to divide us by political ideology. David Duke said we should be separated by skin color.
Its most recent invocation was just this week when Trump and Pete Hegseth told our nation’s generals that most Black, Hispanic, and female officers were only in their positions because of their gender or skin color. “Whiskey Pete” was blunt, claiming that Ronald Reagan’s invocation of America’s traditional belief that “our diversity is our strength” was an “insane fallacy.”
Next, we’d want to immiserate as many Americans as possible, creating a huge pool of mostly white men who are pissed off because they’d been left behind economically and feel locked out of the American Dream.
That strategy would include several steps:
- Destroy unions that bind workers together with their employers and raise standards of living.
- Gut programs that lift people out of poverty and into the middle class, including high-quality universal public education, low-cost college, and inexpensive access to healthcare.
- Ship manufacturing overseas to low-wage nations while using incoherent, ever-changing whim-based tariffs to batter the domestic economy.
- Build media operations that demonize “the other,” telling them Blacks, Hispanics, queer people and women are the cause of their troubles.
- Ban books that embrace diversity and teachers who use them.
- Spread hate and conspiracy theories via powerful social media and search engine algorithms that make them seem normal, coarsening the entire culture.
- Throw people off programs offering healthcare, student debt repayment, and housing subsidies.
Third, we’d want to destroy people’s faith in straightforward news. Loudly proclaim that it all has a “leftwing bias” and can’t be trusted, that reporters are elite “enemies of the people,” and attack the media relentlessly.
Fourth, shatter people’s faith in reality itself. Challenge science and expertise. Flood the zone with conspiracy theories. Convince citizens to stop taking commonsense steps to protect themselves and their children including vaccinations, precautions against airborne diseases, or measures to slow climate change. Sow confusion until they no longer know who to believe, and then offer yourself as the only source of truth.
Fifth, deconstruct international alliances that go back centuries by alienating traditional friends and embracing openly hostile foes while tearing up norms of defense, trade, and commerce.
Sixth, fracture citizens’ faith in their elected officials and the government itself. Legalize the practice of morbidly rich people and giant corporations buying legislation and the loyalty of politicians with cash by claiming that “money is speech” and “corporations are persons.” Define opposition political parties as “radical,” “dangerous,” and “outside the mainstream.”
Seventh, turn the military and police forces of the nation against its own people, making them terrified of challenging armed, masked men in the streets, kicking in their doors at midnight. Start with vilified minorities like immigrants and, when they’re “under control,” turn those forces against anybody who dissents from the new single-party rule.
Eighth, demolish faith in the nation’s currency by seizing political control of the central bank while villainizing its leadership.
Ninth, run scams to accumulate as much wealth as possible in the hands of Dear Leader and his close cronies while refusing to raise the minimum wage so as to keep people in poverty.
Tenth, use the power of government to force institutions — corporations, universities, law firms — into complete submission and even explicit collaboration in the enshitification of the nation.
Eleventh, seize control of the legislative and judicial branches so your law-breaking, election-rigging, and bribe-taking is never held to account. Openly and brazenly break laws like the Hatch Act that forbids the use of any government agency or property for political or commercial purposes.
Force agencies to make illegal, partisan statements denigrating the opposition party and defy anybody who calls out that naked criminality. Sneer and laugh at those who demand that people committing crimes in office should be held accountable.
Twelfth, turn the nation’s premiere law enforcement agencies into tools for punishing political enemies while ignoring the crimes of friends of the regime, thus destroying faith in equality under the rule of law and terrorizing anybody who speaks out.
All of these 12 simple steps have been used by every despot in history, from the ancient Roman Empire through the kings of the Dark Ages to the fascists of early 20th century Europe to today’s strongmen including Orbán, Putin, Erdoğan, El-Sisi, Maduro, Netanyahu, and Modi.
Whether Trump has put America on this road at the insistence (or by the payment from) Putin, rightwing American billionaires, or just his own authoritarian impulses and with strategies he’s learned from Orbán and Putin, it doesn’t have to end with America resembling today’s Russia or Hungary.
The good news is that multiple countries have elected men to leadership who tried to run through this list and were stopped before they could finish the job. Instead of letting their leaders turn their nations into permanent autocracies, the people rose up and took the power back for themselves and their democracies.
They include Ukraine, the Philippines, Brazil, Poland, Zambia, Sri Lanka, Guatemala, Peru, South Korea, Romania, North Macedonia, Slovakia, Gambia, Malawi, Moldova, and South Africa.
History shows that any democracy can fall into tyranny if its citizens grow cynical, give up, or look away. The question — the only question that matters now — is whether enough of us will choose to stand up, to act, and to reclaim what generations before us fought and bled to pass along, like the citizens of those countries listed above have done in the recent past.
If they can do it, so can we. Tag, we’re it!
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This vile spectacle showed how Trump's hatred threatens us all
We are just a few days removed from the most toxic, anti-American speech ever given by a sitting President of the United States, and I am not letting it go, dammit.
And neither should you.
While addressing a gathering of military leadership from across the globe at Marine Corp Base Quantico in Northern Virginia Tuesday, the vile, America-attacking Donald Trump called on our generals and admirals to “… use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military,” so that he can attack us again.
There’s no sense being cute about it, or trying to sanitize it. The President of the United States is intent on using our military against us. And because I am one of the few in media — or the Democratic or Republican Party for that matter — who refuse to just merrily skip to the next Trump-made catastrophe, I want to repeat this again, until everybody hears it and understands it:
NOTHING Trump does with our military will be to protect the citizens of the United States of America. EVERYTHING Trump does with our military will be to protect himself from the citizens of the United States of America.
By words and by deed it is clear as day that Trump has absolutely no respect for the country he violently assaulted, nor our men and women who wear the uniform, because like any authoritarian leader he sees them as servants to him, and not our country.
And just so there was no misunderstanding about his objectives, Trump went on to say that the people who protest against him in America and disagree with his policies are, “The enemy within.”
Can you please read that again?
Look, while these words might pour out of his dirty mouth like contaminated water from an overflowing toilet because he is such a dreadful public speaker, they are nevertheless scripted and tested for affect before he ever harrumphs upon some poor, unsuspecting stage to use them.
The President of the United States was very intentionally telling us he will use our military against any American he doesn't like, which we all know is a very long, damn list.
I suggest we take this very damn seriously.
Just a decade ago, if you heard the leader of any country say these things, you would have rightfully said, “Thank God I live in the United States where these kinds of terrible things never happen.”
Trump’s vile speech should have triggered a national discussion that would be reaching a fever pitch right now. Instead, we’ve just moved on to more drama: the predictable Trump/Republican shutdown of our United States Government that they so clearly hate.
We have dealt with shutdowns before, but never a president who is so intent on using our military to attack us.
All pressure should be brought to bear on these military leaders that this kind of thing is not remotely OK in America. As a veteran and journalist who worked closely with military leadership during my professional career, I would like to think that the vast majority of these men and women understand this.
Don’t get me wrong, I dealt with a few screwy, power-drunk flag officers during both my time at Stars & Stripes, and as a sailor way back when, but for the most part, I have confidence that most of these people understand nuclear-grade fascism when they see it and hear it.
I’d think they also know when they are being insulted by their punk of a secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, who can’t hold his liquor, his tongue, or handle a tricky communications platform like Signal.
So a suggestion: Locate the nearest military base to your home and contact the commanding officer (CO). Tell him or her how outraged you are by the commander in chief’s unbecoming conduct. If you can’t get to the CO directly make sure you are in contact with a base public affairs officer.
These folks are generally very responsive, and if I have this at all right, will be relieved by your concern. As I typed Tuesday after Trump’s grotesque speech: “Any flag officer who wasn’t deeply disturbed and insulted watching this unhinged rant isn’t worth the uniform she or he is wearing, and should apply for a job cleaning Trump’s pool.”
We have entered the most dangerous time in America history since our Civil War.
We may yet be able to solve this terrible mess politically, but if Trump continues to succeed in militarizing our troops against us, we are finished.
Done.
This is not the time to move on to the next thing, just because Trump and his odious Republicans want you to.
This is the time to fight back, because we have to.
- (D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)
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This Jersey Dem clearly sees Trump for what he really is
Andy Kim rode a wave of anti-Trump rage to flip a Republican-held House seat in 2018, then latched onto anger at establishment New Jersey Democrats last year to score a promotion to the U.S. Senate.
Now that the federal government is in turmoil, shut down because of a partisan spat over Obamacare subsidies, with President Donald Trump using the shutdown as an excuse to target projects in Democratic-led states, does Kim regret his decision to begin a career in Congress during what seems like the absolute worst time to be there?
I asked him this question Thursday and didn’t get an answer. But Kim, a Democrat, reminded me that, at this point, he’s a government shutdown vet.
“I was sworn in during a government shutdown,” he said, referring to the 2018-19 shutdown. “Thankfully we were able to flip the House Representatives and take back the gavel there, but it’s sad to see just like the lack of willingness to actually engage in anything that resembles governance.”
Kim was in New Jersey this week to chat with residents about the shutdown and the Trump administration’s move to use it as a reason to kill or delay things like the Gateway project, a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River intended to replace aging tunnels damaged by Hurricane Sandy. Kim likened Trump’s actions to “mafia tactics.”
“It just shows that he’s willing to harm the American people just for his own political purposes,” he said.
Trump and Republicans have been adamant that the shutdown is the fault of Democrats. The U.S. Senate this week considered one Dem-led stopgap budget bill and one Republican bill. The GOP measure won more than 50 votes, but neither scored the 60 it needed to pass. When I asked Kim whether it would be fair to say Democrats are indeed blocking a bill with majority support, he said no because Trump and Republicans know that they should have produced a bill that would have gotten 60 votes.
“First and foremost, again, the Republicans are in firm control over this government and they know how this works, which is you’ve got to have bipartisanship on these negotiations, which they just chose not to do,” he said. “We’ve been reaching out to have negotiations. We reached out starting this summer to sit down and have negotiations. Donald Trump didn’t agree to it until the day before the shutdown.”
When I asked the White House to comment on Kim’s criticism, it blamed his party for the budget mess.
“Andy Kim and his fellow Senate Democrats shut down the federal government in a bid to strong-arm Republicans into giving free health care to illegal immigrants,” said White House spokesman Kush Desai. “The Democrats’ government shutdown affects everyone and requires the Administration to make decisions to keep mandatory government functions operational. The Democrats can choose to reopen the government at any time.”
The claim about free health care is a canard. Immigrants without legal status are ineligible for the federal subsidies at the heart of the budget dispute. Democrats want to extend federal aid for health insurance purchased in the Obamacare marketplaces, since costs are expected to skyrocket without them. Republicans do not — though states can and have allowed undocumented immigrants to obtain subsidized health care. Here in New Jersey, children under 19 can enroll in Medicaid no matter their legal status. There are indeed noncitizens who are eligible for federal subsidies, but not every noncitizen is in the U.S. illegally (for now).
Kim is more hopeful than I am that lawmakers will come to their senses and broker a deal. He said he was involved in a productive dialogue with senators from both sides of the aisle on Wednesday.
“And I did hear from a number of them, the Republicans, that they share concerns on the health care side. They’re feeling the pressure, which is why, again, [House] Speaker [Mike] Johnson just kept them home,” he said. “He doesn’t want them here feeling the pressure and the heat about this,” he said.
Here’s why I’m not hopeful: The 2018-19 shutdown lasted for about one month, and that was back when Trump was way more interested in playing the game and surrounded by a few people who appeared interested in curbing his more insane instincts. His reascension to the presidency after years of prosecutions and two assassination attempts has him, well, emboldened would be a polite word. And judging by his public remarks since the shutdown began, he’s having a gay old time.
So what’s going to get this to stop? An appeal to reason? Trump is sh––posting from the Oval Office. Reason is in the rearview mirror.
- Editor Terrence T. McDonald is a native New Jerseyan who has worked for newspapers in the Garden State for more than 15 years. He has covered everything from Trenton politics to the smallest of municipal squabbles, exposing public corruption and general malfeasance at every level of government. Terrence won 23 New Jersey Press Association awards and two Tim O’Brien Awards for Investigative Journalism using the Open Public Records Act from the New Jersey chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. One politician forced to resign in disgrace because of Terrence’s reporting called him a "political poison pen journalist.” You can reach him at tmcdonald@newjerseymonitor.com.
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These GOP tactics just show you can't deal with cheats and liars
I don’t know who is going to win the fight over the shutdown of the US government. I do know that it’s wrong for Donald Trump and the Republicans to do nothing while 24 million Americans enrolled in state exchanges watch their health insurance premiums spike by two, three or four times. I know it’s wrong for them to steal $1 trillion in Medicaid from 83 million people, who can’t live without it, and hand it over to people who are so rich they will never notice an extra $1 trillion.
I know you can’t make deals with liars and cheaters. Even if the president and his party agreed today to the Democrats’ terms, there’s no assurance they won’t turn around tomorrow and impound the money they said they would spend. Trump has already impounded — illegally — billions and billions, some with the Supreme Court’s blessing. This mistrust is deepened by the increasingly extortionist language coming out of the White House. The press secretary said this week that if the Democrats “don't want further harm on their constituents back home, then they need to reopen the government. It's very simple.”
That’s what criminals say when they’re blackmailing you.
There are two schools of thought in American politics, specifically among liberals and within the Democratic Party — between those who want to game things out in terms of “good” and “bad” strategy and those who are sick of gaming things out and want to focus on the good and the bad. Who is going to win the shutdown fight? I don’t know and to a degree, I don’t care. The Trump cartel is evil. It must be fought. It must be forced to face the truth about itself and what it has done. That’s what I care about. If saying so puts me in the minority, so be it.
On Tuesday, Jake Grumbach brought my attention to a superb illustration of this conflict between strategy and truth. An economist at UC Berkeley, Grumbach commented on a conversation between Ezra Klein, the New York Times columnist and podcaster, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, perhaps best known as the author of Between the World and Me.
Their chat touched on many things, but the standout topic was Charlie Kirk.
In the aftermath of Kirk’s murder last month, Klein wrote that Kirk “was practicing politics in exactly the right way. He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion.”
This might be true if you squint hard and tilt your head, but Klein’s goal wasn’t to represent reality accurately. It was to bridge political divisions that he believes triggered the spasm of violence that ultimately killed Kirk.
In contrast, here’s what Coates said about Kirk:
“I don’t take any joy in saying this, but we sometimes soothe ourselves by pointing out that love, acceptance, warmth — that these are powerful forces. I believe they are. I also believe hate is a powerful force. I believe it’s powerful, a powerful unifying force, and I think Charlie Kirk was a hate-monger. I really need to say this over and over again that I have a politic that rejects violence, that rejects political violence. I take no joy in the killing of anyone, no matter what they say. But if you ask me what the truth of his life was, the truth of his public life, I would have to tell you it’s hate. I would have to tell you it was the usage of hate, and the harnessing of hate towards political ends.”
On the one hand is a liberal who is willing to say nice things about a hateful dead man, even though those nice things are not grounded in reality, for the purpose of easing tensions with hateful living people. Tell them some sweet little lies and just maybe things will get better.
On the other hand is a liberal who is unwilling to say nice things about a hateful dead man, because those nice things are false, and because he knows that no amount of nice is going to stop hateful living people from hating him. Bargaining with evil obscures evil outcomes. While those sweet little lies might feel good, the devil always gets his due.
“The main point I think most are missing [about Klein’s interview with Coates],” Grumbach said, “is that Klein is saying the role of the journalist-intellectual is to do strategic politics, whereas Coates [is saying] the role of the journalist-intellectual is to tell the truth.”
And truth is, demagoguery is not debate. Calling Kirk a debater obscures the fact that he was a demagogue. Propaganda is not persuasion. Kirk didn’t try to persuade college students so much as humiliate, or demonize, them into submissive silence. Lying is not the same as free speech, but Kirk attacked those who tried “censoring” his lies. It may seem strategic to accept certain falsehoods as if they were true in order to avoid conflict, but that’s if the other side wants unity. Kirk, Trump and the rest never saw a point in that. Indeed, gestures of peace, no matter how mutually beneficial, are provocations of war.
On Tuesday, Trump told admirals and generals “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.” He also suggested military leaders “could be tasked with assisting federal law enforcement interventions against an ‘invasion from within’ Democratic-led cities, such as Chicago and New York City,” the Military Times reported.
As usual, Times columnist Jamelle Bouie was blunter and clearer: “The president of the United States wants to use the American military to kill American citizens on American soil. That's the whole story!”
There was a time for strategic politics with Republicans, back in the day when they recognized the basic humanity of Democrats, but that time is gone. Trump and his party will not be constrained by morality, the Constitution or the law. So the more liberals (like Klein but not only Klein) pursue strategic politics, in the hopes of “turning down the temperature,” the more it looks like complicity or worse.
If the Democrats choose to bargain with Trump over the shutdown, knowing that he will betray them once their backs are turned, they would not only enable his crimes, but protect him from their consequences. They would permit him to avoid facing the truth.
“We have to understand that standing up matters, that our voice matters, to not give into the cynicism, because that is what they rely on in order to perpetuate this idea that they have total immunity from consequences,” New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on the night the government shut down. “They will experience the consequence of this, but [the Democrats] have to be the consequence.”
You cannot make a deal with a criminal for whom you must be the consequence. If he faces the truth, maybe. But not until then.
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