After Easter: MAGA gets back on message following holiday
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
The Republican Party finally meets its reckoning
We’ve spent years watching Donald Trump attack our democratic institutions, inflame divisions, and corrupt the public discourse.
But focusing solely on Trump misses the larger, more disturbing reality: Trump isn’t acting alone. He’s a dangerous pathogen that found the perfect host in today’s Republican Party, an organism already compromised and eager to be infected.
The evidence of this dangerous symbiosis is alarming and immediate. Just days ago, America crossed a threshold that should chill every citizen who still believes in the rule of law.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a young man living peacefully in Maryland with no criminal record, was ripped from his home and deported to El Salvador — not by rogue agents, not by mistake, but in deliberate defiance of multiple federal court orders.
A judge had explicitly ordered that Garcia not be deported. The U.S. Supreme Court had intervened. And still, the Trump-controlled Department of Justice — under Attorney General Pam Bondi — refused to comply.
Garcia vanished from U.S. soil like a political dissident in a dictatorship. Senator Chris Van Hollen flew to El Salvador to find him yesterday, only to be denied access. The Salvadoran government wouldn’t even confirm his location. Garcia now sits detained, alone in a foreign country, denied lawyers, family, or recourse.
He’s not a criminal — he’s a political hostage. His only crime was existing under an administration that believes it is above the law.
This isn’t abstract. This is what the death of democracy feels like. A court order ignored. A life uprooted. A senator stonewalled.
And it’s a precedent set: if the executive branch can disappear a legal US resident despite Supreme Court orders, democracy is already bleeding out right in front of our eyes.
To fully comprehend the gravity of our situation, we must recognize that Trump is both a symptom and a disease. Like any opportunistic virus, he didn’t invent the weakness — he exploited it. The Republican Party, drifting toward authoritarianism since Nixon, became the perfect host.
From the backlash to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, to Nixon's Southern Strategy, to the Tea Party’s billionaire-funded anti-government rage against our first Black president, the GOP built a party on grievance and fear. It corroded democratic norms for decades. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, union busting, judicial stacking, demonizing immigrants and queer people, rightwing propaganda media — all laid the groundwork.
Trump didn’t create this environment. He walked into it, flipped the switches, and set it ablaze. He didn’t poison the well. He found it already poisoned and drank deeply.
What’s particularly chilling is how methodical Trump’s attack on democracy has been.
He’s spent years convincing millions that elections are fraudulent — despite no credible evidence. This isn’t just the tantrum of a defeated candidate. It’s a calculated attempt to destroy the one institution that makes a republic function: trust in the vote. When citizens no longer believe their ballots count, democracy dies.
That was the goal. Undermine faith in the system so completely that only Trump — and those who pledge loyalty to him — are seen as legitimate.
His authoritarian instincts were never hidden. He praised dictators like Putin, Orbán, MBS, and Kim Jong Un. He demanded personal loyalty from government officials, attacked the judiciary, and labeled the free press “the enemy of the people.” Every move was pulled straight from the autocrat’s playbook, designed to erode checks on his power.
The insurrection on January 6 was not an outlier, but rather the inevitable outcome of years of lies, hate, and democratic erosion. Trump didn’t just incite a mob; he sat and watched — gleefully — as it ransacked the Capitol, hunted lawmakers, and shattered windows in the temple of democracy. He delayed help. He wanted it to succeed.
And the Republican Party? It shrugged. Which is the key to both understanding and stopping Trump.
None of this destruction would be possible without the Republican Party’s active complicity. They are not passive bystanders; they are eager enablers. Leaders who once called Trump “dangerous” and “unfit” now parrot his lies and excuse his crimes.
Why? Because they’ve traded principle for power. The “party of family values” excused porn star hush money because it helped rig the 2016 election. The “party of fiscal responsibility” celebrated massive tax cuts for billionaires that exploded our nation’s deficit. The “party of national security” turned a blind eye as Trump aligned with America's adversaries and vilified NATO.
They sold their souls. And for what? Judges? Tax cuts? A fleeting grip on power?
At the core of this transformation is the deliberate cultivation of cruelty as political strategy. Trump’s policies were never just misguided: they were purposefully cruel.
The separation of children at the border wasn’t a failure; it was a feature. Designed to cause pain. Designed to deter. Designed to send a message that America no longer welcomed the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, at least when their skin is not white.
His refusal to return Kilmar Garcia to his family and community (and over 200 others) is not an outlier. It’s the same cruelty repackaged. The same contempt for legal restraint. The same hunger for domination. And if he’s not stopped by Republicans on the Supreme Court or Republicans in Congress, history and his own words tell us he’ll be coming for you and me next.
Beyond policy, Trump has waged a relentless war on truth itself. He didn’t just lie; he declared war on the very idea of truth. He called climate change a hoax. He politicized a deadly pandemic. He turned science into a partisan enemy and transformed medical expertise into a battleground.
The result? Hundreds of thousands of unnecessary Covid (and now measles) deaths. A public so divided they couldn’t agree on masks or medicine. That wasn’t an accident. It was the point: destroy our shared reality, and you can then more easily destroy democracy.
Perhaps most destructive of all, Trump didn’t merely inherit America’s divisions: he weaponized them. He didn’t unify urban and rural, rich and poor, Black and white: he pitted them against each other for personal gain. Rage was his currency. Fear his strategy. When people are busy hating each other, he knows, they don’t notice who’s robbing them blind.
What we now face is no longer a political party but a vicious, cruel cult of personality. Today’s GOP isn’t defined by principles or policies: Disagree and you’re exiled — just ask Liz Cheney. Ask Adam Kinzinger. Ask Mitt Romney.
Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t represent a fringe any longer; she is the mainstream now. Her recent town hall — where dissenters were tased — wasn’t an aberration. It’s the new GOP, where violence is celebrated as a tool, not a last resort, and elected officials revel in their own cruelty, brutality, and ability to ignore the needs of their constituents while taking millions from their donors.
She’s the perfect reflection of Trump: His pathological narcissism drives much of his destructive behavior. A man who cannot tolerate criticism, admit fault, or share the spotlight will burn down democracy itself to protect his fragile ego.
When faced with a choice between national interest and personal gratification, Trump invariably chooses the latter. His demand for absolute loyalty — to him personally, not to the nation or the Constitution — reveals a man who sees America not as a nation to serve but as a stage for his own aggrandizement.
There’s also method in Trump’s chaos. By keeping the country in a constant state of outrage and crisis, he prevents organized resistance and meaningful accountability. The chaos isn’t accidental; it’s strategic, designed to exhaust opponents and normalize previously unthinkable behavior. Each new outrage makes the previous one seem quaint by comparison, creating a downward spiral of degraded expectations.
Trump has weaponized division for political gain. He doesn’t simply observe American divisions; he actively creates and exploits them. By turning Americans against each other — urban versus rural, white versus non-white, native-born versus immigrant — he creates tribal loyalties that override ethical concerns or policy considerations. A divided America is easier to manipulate and control than a united one.
What’s most terrifying about this transformation is that Trump has created a blueprint for future authoritarians. He’s shown how to destroy a developed, advanced democracy from within — legally, slowly, under the guise of patriotism.
And the Republican Party? It’s not just following the map. It’s paving the road.
The critical question before us isn’t whether Trump has damaged America. He has. The question is whether that damage is reversible.
— Can we still rebuild?
— Can Republican elders return to principle?
— Can billionaire donors withdraw their support and allow democratic values to reassert themselves?
— Will it take a second Republican Great Depression to shock the party awake?
Americans don’t yet know any of the answers here, but we do know this: inaction is surrender.
Our democratic survival depends on recognizing that Trump is the virus, but the Republican Party is the host. And if we don’t treat the host, the next authoritarian will be worse. Smarter. More effective. More dangerous.
What happened to Kilmar Garcia could happen again. It will happen again, in fact, if we let it. Our democratic immune system — the press, the courts, business and the legal profession, the voters — must fight back. Because we are running out of time.
Rebuilding what they’ve destroyed will require more than simply removing Trump from power; it will demand a fundamental recommitment to democratic values and institutions by the GOP.
Republicans: Wake up!
You are the last firewall. This is your reckoning. Your move.
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Farmers in deep-red state spell trouble for Trump as he mocks the Constitution
Before this week, I didn’t think I could feel any deeper shame than I felt in February, watching Trump and Vance in the Oval Office attacking a real hero of democracy, Ukraine’s President Zelensky. Then, on Monday, Trump sat in the same chairs with President Bukele, brutal dictator of a notorious banana republic, and invited him to openly mock the United States Supreme Court.
Trump and Bukele tag-teamed their choreographed refusal to return Abrego Garcia to the US, which amounted to telling the Supreme Court ‘No,’ they will ‘not’ obey its unanimous order to remove Garcia from the El Salvador hell hole where Trump is paying Bukele to keep him.
Watching them act in concert, shame took a back seat and something uglier emerged. The words ‘appalling,’ ‘dangerous’ and ‘outrageous’ fall short.
Kidnapping in plain sight
What Trump and Bukele did to Garcia and hundreds of others thrown into a foreign gulag without due process, under Trump’s order, was not deportation. It was state-sanctioned kidnapping.
Deportation, or removal, is a legitimate power of the federal government. It is a legal term, one that is accompanied by legal process. A legal deportation incorporates assumptions of legality not present here: notice to the accused, legitimate evidence, and an opportunity to be heard. None of the men sent to El Salvador’s CECOT were granted any of this process.
And the arrests themselves are thuggish and unprofessional. Watch the video of the arrest of Rumeysa Ozturk. Ozturk, a grad student at Tufts, was walking down a city sidewalk when she was suddenly approached by masked agents in plain clothes. They surrounded her, grabbed her phone, and put her in an unmarked van. Terrified, she screamed, and probably thought she was being mugged. Her offense? Writing an op-ed for the school newspaper criticizing the war in Gaza.
Trump’s open defiance
The Trump administration is now acting in direct defiance of federal court orders. Leading up to the recent Supreme Court decision on Garcia, Trump’s DOJ defied the direct orders of federal judge James Boasberg, who ordered the Trump administration to turn back two planes full of Venezuelans headed to El Salvador.
On Wednesday, Boasberg found probable cause that Trump’s agents acted in criminal contempt of court. Boasberg wrote that the administration had engaged in “willful disobedience of judicial orders,” and that, “The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders -- especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it.”
Team Trump similarly defied federal Judge Paula Xinis’ orders in the Garcia case, rulings upheld by the Supreme Court directing Trump to facilitate the man’s return to the US. Notwithstanding these court orders, Trump and his masked henchmen are still arresting people off the streets, shoving them into a van, and flying them to a foreign dungeon without due process.
Kidnapping, criminal contempt are not “core executive functions”
In the much-maligned criminal immunity decision giving Trump the license he is now abusing, Chief Justice Roberts emphasized that Trump “is not above the law.” Roberts explained in his 43-page ruling that presidents have absolute immunity only for their official acts when those acts relate to the core powers granted to them by the Constitution – for example, the power to issue pardons, veto legislation, recognize ambassadors, and make appointments.
There is nothing in the Constitution that allows a president to deport people to foreign gulags without due process or contact with the outside world; the 8th Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment says just the opposite. Moreover, an order of criminal contempt is a crime and can carry a fine or prison sentence. As such, Trump’s continuing actions fall outside the rule of law, and outside the ‘core powers’ granted to him under the Constitution.
Roberts, while taking a broad view of what constitutes a president’s “official responsibilities,” emphasized that a president’s immunity does not apply to actions that “are manifestly or palpably beyond his authority.” When courts conduct the official/ unofficial inquiry, Roberts added, they cannot designate an act as unofficial “simply because it allegedly violates the law.”
Here, there is no room for “allegedly,” given the Supreme Court’s clear ruling on Garcia. (Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, parts of which were likely unofficial, never made it to a judicial determination on the merits because the case was dropped when he was re-elected.)
Trump is not immune from criminal liability
Even though presidents are not traditionally prosecuted while in office- hence Trump’s strong interest in staying in office past his second term- Trump may well be impeached, or removed due to growing suspicions of insanity, under the 25th Amendment. The possibility that Trump may be exposed to criminal liability sooner than he thought should give him pause, especially since, as a convicted felon, he has a stronger claim to an El Salvador prison cell than most of the men he’s putting there.
His unprecedented and unhinged vengeance attacks against Americans may also support setting aside the tradition against prosecuting sitting presidents. Deferring the prosecution of a sitting president is a DOJ policy, not a law.
As I see it, kidnapping (or even deporting) people in defiance of direct court orders places Trump’s conduct outside the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling. There is no case where defying federal court orders has been deemed a “core power” of the presidency, nor could there be. Such a finding would upend the balance of powers woven throughout Articles I, II and III. As Judge Boasberg observed, allowing Trump to freely “annul the judgments of the courts of the United States” would make solemn “mockery of the constitution itself.”
‘Mockery’ is what we saw from Trump and his dictator straw man on Monday. It may take months or even a year or two, but the anger on display from a bunch of farmers in deep red Iowa- showing they do care about due process and obeying court orders- strongly suggests Trump will not get away with it.
Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
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Defiance of the rule of law from a power-drunk and demented president gone rogue
On Monday, El Salvador’s self-described “cool dictator” President Bukele appeared in a skit in the Oval Office with Donald Trump, where both men pretended they couldn’t undo their own actions in imprisoning Abrego Garcia. Both Trump and Bukele delivered Oscar-worthy performances as they smirked for the cameras, mocking the audacity of a Supreme Court that would dare restrain a president’s unconstitutional overreach.
Acting pursuant to an agreement between the US and El Salvador, Trump officials arrested Garcia, a father and sheet metal worker, on March 12, 2025, held him without a hearing despite a known court order protecting him from deportation, and flew him to an El Salvador prison. After a DOJ lawyer truthfully admitted the administration’s error in court, Pam Bondi placed the lawyer on permanent leave.
Under Trump’s unprecedented, 8th Amendment-defying arrangement, he paid Bukele $6 million to incarcerate more than 200 people in the notoriously harsh El Salvador prison known as CECOT. Prisoners at CECOT walk in chains, are not allowed visitors or correspondence, sleep 75 to 80 men to a cell, are never allowed outdoors, and, in the words of Bukele’s justice minister, are “never expected to leave” the prison.
The farce
In response to last week’s unanimous Supreme Court order directing Trump “to facilitate” Garcia’s return to the US, Trump said he had ‘no control’ over El Salvador and that it was ‘up to President Bukele to decide’ what to do. For his scripted response, Bukele said there was ‘no way’ he’d send Garcia back to the US, calling the idea “preposterous” because releasing him would be like “smuggling a terrorist into the US.”
Every judge in every courthouse in the nation, including Judge Boasberg, who ordered the administration to turn planes headed to El Salvador around, knows that all Trump has to do is ask, and Bukele would release Garcia to the custody of US officials within an hour. On Wednesday, Boasberg found probable cause that Trump’s team acted in criminal contempt of court.
Trump and Bukele, together, put Garcia into CECOT. Now pretending that they can’t get him out insults the intelligence of every American outside the Fox News bubble.
Bukele governs El Salvador under draconian ‘States of Exception’
After he was elected president of El Salvador in 2019, Bukele declared a state of emergency in 2022 to “tackle gang crime and sky-high homicide rates.” Bukele’s state of emergency extinguished free speech and protest rights, disappeared media critics, and wiped human rights and legal process off the books.
El Salvador today, under the Bukele regime’s continuing state of emergency, arrests and imprisons people on mere suspicion, detaining thousands of people on suspicion alone- no due process, no trial, and no review. According to NPR, a news outlet Trump now seeks to silence, Bukele’s state of emergency has led to the imprisonment of 85,000 people, of which only 1,000- less than 2%- have been convicted of a crime.
Trump’s own State Department, under the Bureau of Consular Affairs, still cautions travelers about El Salvador. They advise, “In March 2022, Bukele declared a “State of Exception” in response to an increase in gang murders:
- The State of Exception allows local authorities to arrest anyone they think is involved in gang activity.
- It suspends several constitutional rights. This includes the normal protections of criminal procedure, like the right to a speedy or fair trial.
- Tens of thousands of people are currently in prison under the State of Exception.
- Several U.S. and other foreign citizens have been detained under the State of Exception. They remain in prison and have yet to face trial.”
Given the accurate description of Bukele’s abuses, one wonders whether Marco Rubio is even aware that the warning still appears on the State Department’s website.
Trump shares Bukele’s love of “Emergency Declarations” and gulags
Bukele’s ‘State of Exception’ under his “national emergency” is the legal cover Bukele employs to silence his critics and send people to gulags with no legal process. States of Exception were also Hitler’s initial cover for controlling the media, dispatching SS henchmen, and sending millions of innocent people to unthinkable deaths.
Like Bukele, Hitler, and other autocrats throughout history, Trump is also fond of declaring “national emergencies,” the precursor to rogue police powers. After only three months in office, Trump has already declared six national emergencies including a “US border emergency,” a “National Energy Emergency,” and a national emergency designating “Cartels and Other Organizations as Foreign Terrorist Organizations.”
During his performance with Bukele, Trump previewed his plan to imprison American citizens in El Salvador too, suggesting that Bukele needed to “build five more” enormous CECOTs. This was not new: Trump says he “looks forward to watching” Tesla vandals (he called them ‘sick terrorist thugs’) get sent to permanent prison in El Salvador.
Without question, sending Americans to CETOC, where no un-staged press gets in and no realtime photos get out, would violate the 8th Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment. It is as blatantly unconstitutional as targeting law firms, federal employees, and universities for their political views.
The District Court Judge needs to find Bondi’s team in contempt
At Tuesday’s hearing in the Garcia case, Judge Xinis told DOJ attorneys to expect quick discovery on whether the DOJ’s failure to act to return Garcia amounted to Contempt of Court. From the beginning of Xinis’ case, like Boasberg’s case, Trump’s DOJ has filed late, defiant and disrespectful pleadings, ignored direct court orders, and, as to SCOTUS ruling that Trump’s DOJ must ‘facilitate’ Garcia’s return, pretended not to understand plain English.
I don’t share the widespread legal opinion that the Roberts Court intended to give Trump an off-ramp in the Garcia case by parsing “effectuate” vs. “facilitate” in their 9 to 0 order. The intent and spirit of their ruling was crystal clear; if Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, or Gorsuch wanted to back Trump’s illegal conduct, they would have dissented. None did.
Instead, as I see it, Trump is teasing out an ambiguity in the order that simply doesn’t exist. It is plain defiance of the rule of law from a power drunk and demented president gone rogue.
Judge Xinis has ordered the Trump administration to provide daily updates on steps the government has taken to return Garcia, but as of this writing, Trump’s defiance persists. The next step is for both Judge Xinis and Judge Boasberg to require under-oath testimony of DOJ decision-makers, going as high up the ladder as necessary to get answers. Whoever next defiantly withholds the truth, or persists in claiming they “don’t know” what they ought to, should be held in contempt of court.
As Garcia perishes in an inhumane cell in El Salvador, Trump’s henchmen should be also be imprisoned while he waits. They should spend as many weeks, months or years behind bars as it takes for federal courts to get the truth. And they should be reminded, Bondi particularly, that Trump’s criminal immunity does not extend to kidnapping, and will not protect their law license if they continue to defy the court.
Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
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Evil is never going to go away — and there's only one thing we can do
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
-Dr. Martin Luther King in his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”
Those magic words were written 62 years ago today and still echo like thunder across our charred American countryside as a madman and his morally corrupt henchmen in the Republican Party try to burn everything to the ground.
These words are as true today as they were then, and there is victory in honoring them.
Just as we were six decades ago, and six decades ago before that … we are a country capable of producing great men like King, and rudderless deviants like Trump. Visionaries like Lincoln, and stone-cold bigots like Lee ...
I’m afraid this will never change, my friends, because six decades from now when Trump is long extinct, evil will once again grow out of the muck and mire, and good men and women will fight from the sturdy foundation of what is good and right to put it down.
King’s words endured, and speak to us all six decades later. Trump’s words land like slop on some pavement, and mean nothing six seconds after he’s said them.
One man possessed depth, vision, and courage, and was guided by a north star hanging high in the sky leading us to a place where all men are created equal. The other man is a coward, who has been blinded by a terminal case of hate, and has the singular ability to always go lower no matter what.
One man spoke for the good and righteous, the other for himself, and the morally weakest among us.
Today, I am not here to tell you what is wrong in this country — we’ve heard about enough of that — I am here to tell you all that is right.
You are right. I am right.
I am not going anywhere. Are you …?
The good and righteous aren’t quitters and have done nothing but fight for what is most certainly right in this country since her inception. Elected presidents not kings. Voting rights for all, women’s rights, social programs that benefit everybody, environmental protections, and countless other good deeds and ideals that are just too damn long to list here.
Countless hundreds of thousands of Americans have given their lives on foreign battlefields because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Evil men must be stopped in their tracks when they gas and incinerate people. Evil men must be stopped in their tracks when they pack up innocent people in the dark of night and send them off to perish in dirty jails …
And while the good and righteous have been knocked down through the centuries, we have always pulled ourselves back up, and together have risen to our feet — stronger for the battle.
Evil is never going away, good people. This is both terribly sad, and easier to deal with in the knowing …
When we won the rights for women in the ‘70s, evil didn't get up and leave town. It lingered … bided its time … drooled in the darkness … readied itself to pounce on us again.
When Hitler was finally stopped in his bloody tracks, evil didn't get up and go away — it once again waited to have its way with a moral weakling like Trump to get on with its hideous, never-ending mission.
Sure, life would be easier if everybody would just finally see the light, but there is just too much to be gained by the few by keeping the many in the dark.
Today I am telling you that the sun is slowly rising across America after setting in 2016. It is a never-ending revolution of an unsteady nation confirmed by a history the purveyors of evil would rather you didn’t read.
We should shout this out.
The good and righteous are stepping into the accelerating light. They are making their voices heard and their votes count. They are dragging our politicians into that light and making them account for their actions — good and bad.
When I read King’s words again this morning, they filled me with strength, and a righteous fury.
He would have wanted us all to stand on his shoulders and reach for the sky.
He would have wanted us all to keep fighting for all who bled, and sweat, and cried for what is right before us.
He would have wanted us all to stay strong so that the generations who will follow, will have a sturdy platform that they, too, can stand on while they fight for what is most certainly right, and reach even higher toward King’s north star.
I am telling you today that victory is in the trying, and as long as we are trying we will never be defeated.
NOW READ: It's already begun: History offers an ominous lesson about economic crashes
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, and follow him on Bluesky here.
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Why Trump voters will love him even more if he faces public protest over Social Security
In a recent edition, I wrote about how most people most of the time choose to believe in the existence of certain eternal rules that powerful figures must obey, and how they continue to believe in these rules even as powerful figures break them over and over again.
As if proving my point, a reader replied with a commonly held opinion that holds that Donald Trump’s attacks on Social Security are going to be a bridge too far for his own supporters. The cracks are showing, this reader said. If even a fraction of magaland breaks away, it’s over.
I think it’s important to challenge this conventional wisdom, because it allows people to believe that politics in America is like an act of God. With it, they can indulge the idea that outcomes are not the product of blood, sweat and tears. Instead, outcomes just … happen, as they are “supposed to” in this exceptional country, this shining city on the hill.
In the case of Social Security, what’s supposed to happen is that any attempt by a Republican to change the safety-net program will be met with instant political death. They touched the proverbial third rail.
But that’s not happening. The regime is damaging Social Security, on purpose, by cutting thousands of staffers, implementing phony “anti-fraud” measures, and by generally rendering it dysfunctional.
In time, the regime will argue that the only solution to the “shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud” in Social Security, as Trump said in the State of the Union address, is to privatize it.
Former Director of the Social Security Administration Martin O’Malley said as much: “What they’re trying to do, even as they threaten to close offices, is to jam them up and give people the worst possible experience they can have. Then after wrecking it, they can rob it.”
In other words, the regime is breaking certain eternal rules that most people most of the time choose to believe will constrain powerful figures all by themselves. The political reaction is still taking shape, but whatever it is, it should not be rooted in the mistaken belief that certain eternal rules will constrain powerful figures all by themselves.
I’m going to challenge the conventional wisdom another way by saying that everyone overestimates the willingness of Americans to “rise up in protest” of the regime's attacks on Social Security. At the same time, we underestimate the willingness of Americans to just accept what's going on if it unfolds slowly enough and under cover of enough lies.
We are already seeing a preview of this with Signalgate. That’s the story about the country’s highest-level national security officials talking about war plans on an unsecure messaging platform, compromising military operations and government secrets. It wasn’t one of the most stunning breaches. It was the most stunning breach.
The public reaction was fearsome, with three quarters of Americans saying the debacle was serious and deserving of accountability. Even a majority of Republicans said as much, according to a CBS News poll.
One week later, however, and the regime is now saying “case closed.”
Classified information about airstrikes in Yemen was shared on Signal. A respected journalist was “accidentally” included. Jeffrey Goldberg published some of the texts, proving their sensitive nature.
The truth was in plain sight, but even so, no one has been held responsible and no one will be. The regime lied with so much force, consistency and ruthlessness that the press corps has dropped it, and as a consequence of that, everyone else is going to drop it, too.
You could say Signalgate and Social Security are too different to compare. One is about abstractions, like government secrets and national security. The other is about something that’s as concrete as it gets. You could say there’s no way people are going to drop it if those monthly checks don’t come on time or if elders are on the streets.
But remember the conventional wisdom: that the regime’s attacks on Social Security are going to be a bridge too far even for Trump’s supporters and that once a fraction of them break away, it’s over.
That presumes something that the liberal opposition should never presume, which is that Trump supporters will blame him. Fact is, they will blame whatever he tells them to. If those checks do not come on time, if grandma is forced to live on the streets, it’s not going to be his fault. It’s the fault of fraud or incompetence or inefficiancy – or a deep state that’s trying to stop Trump from making America great again.
Liberals presume that Trump voters will lose faith the moment they encounter hardship as a result of his actions. It will be the reverse, almost certainly. Their faith will deepen, as their suffering deepens.
And Trump voters will get behind him even more, to their own detriment, if he faces public protest over Social Security. He could crack down on demonstrators in the name of “national security” and fighting “terrorism.” He has has already said that a tell-all book written by a former administration official was “designed to sow chaos and distrust” in the government. Such crimes are now being cited as reason for deporting virtually anyone to a Salvadoran prison.
Liberals tend to put Trump voters at the center of American politics, because that’s what the Washington press corps does. But in doing so, liberals make themselves dependent on the continuation of certain eternal rules working in their favor, even when they no longer apply.
The regime is only three months old, but it is already sparking a major political reaction. Whatever it becomes, it should be on its own terms, not terms that were defined during a political age different from ours.
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It's already begun: History offers an ominous lesson about economic crashes
In three weeks, on my birthday May 7th, it’ll be exactly 80 years since Germany signed terms of surrender at the headquarters of US General Dwight D. Eisenhower in Reims, France.
That year, 1945, also signaled the official end of the Republican Great Depression. And May 7 of this year may well signal the beginning of the Second Republican Great Depression, the fourth major economic crash in our history. Troublingly, every one of the prior three financial crises also tripped off a major war.
As Neal Howe points out in his book The Fourth Turning Is Here, it was roughly 80 years or four generations from the Credit Crisis of 1772 which provoked the American Revolutionary War until the Panic of 1857, which set the stage for the Civil War.
Another 80 years passed between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the end of the Republican Great Depression (which triggered WWII) and May 7, 1945. And here we are, exactly 80 years later, on the verge of another depression and possibly a third world war.
Howe posits that 80 years is how long it takes for the generation that made the mistakes that produced the last depression to die off and thus not be available to warn about those same errors being repeated. And depressions almost always lead to wars.
(While recessions typically last months to a year and involve modest declines in stocks and increases in unemployment, depressions typically last years and cause massive losses with unemployment as high as a third of all Americans.)
But it’s not just the passage of eight decades that indicates the Second Republican Great Depression — and possibly America’s next Great War — is upon us. For that, we find the same conservative greed and corruption that provoked the Credit Crisis of 1772, the Panic of 1857, and the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s.
All three were caused by wealthy speculators interacting with a corrupt administration (in 1772 it was the Brits), which is exactly what we’re seeing again today in the most corrupt administration in US history.
Give Trump and his corrupt cronies millions in campaign cash or purchases of his digital “coins” and he’ll give you and your industry an exception to his tariffs; hell, give him enough money to win an election and he’ll even let you take over and then gut the American government and fire all the people conducting investigations into you and your companies.
Advertising revenue is the earliest of the early warning indicators: Last week, the CEO of the advertising agency that sells ads for my radio show called to let us know that advertisers are pulling back, across the board, on pretty much every form of media in every sector. They can see that consumers are themselves pulling back — anticipating a combined recession and tariff-driven inflation — meaning advertising will produce smaller revenue returns.
Meanwhile, both JPMorgan and Wells Fargo tell The Financial Times (for an article titled (“Warning lights flash for US consumer strength as credit defaults rise”) that they’re seeing significant and concerning defaults across the system among their credit card holders. And tourism to America, which is a massive industry representing about 4% of our GDP, has collapsed.
Today. Now. In other words, it’s already begun.
Since consumer spending drives about 80 percent of America’s GDP, this is a disastrous turn of events that feeds on itself: As people buy less to build up their savings, companies suffer from lower sales. That causes them to lay off workers, who then can’t buy anything, further deepening the recession.
China isn’t taking Trump’s little trade war lightly, either; they’re right now crippling the UK steel industry (which they largely own because the conservative Boris Johnson administration stupidly sold it to the Chinese) in “an act of hybrid warfare designed to punish the UK and Donald Trump” as the headline in the Express cites.
And forget about tariffs; the Chinese government is blocking “direct exports of major U.S. commodities including beef, poultry and liquified natural gas through an array of bureaucratic blocks and tricky third-party sales deals.” Additionally, they’ve blocked the export of vital rare earth minerals we need to manufacture chips, displays, and advanced weaponry.
The goal is to cripple America economically in response to Trump’s threats and bluster, and it’s working.
Most concerning, though, is what’s happening to the bond markets and the dollar; this is where the signs don’t just point to recession but possibly a Second Republican Great Depression that could explode unemployment and last years.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note jumped from 4% to over 4.5% within a week this month, marking one of the sharpest increases on record. This is an warning that the rest of the world is losing confidence in the US as a “safe haven” for their money.
You’ll recall that when the bond market went “wobbly,” Trump paused his major tariffs on every country in the world except China. That’s how frightening the event was.
The backstory is that he was apparently forced into this by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, himself the former Chairman of both the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada (the equivalents of our Fed).
Carney reportedly got together recently with leaders of Europe and Japan to plan their response to Trump, and — being a former central banker — knew the biggest threat he and other democracies in the world could wield against Trump would be a 1929-style collapse of the US bond markets.
All they’d have to do is to begin to carefully dump their holdings of US treasuries, and it could force Trump to back down to avoid a massive market crash and freeze of the dollar-based system of international finance.
About $8.5 trillion of the US’ $36 trillion national debt is held by foreign governments (as treasuries), including $350 billion by Canada, $1 trillion by Japan, an estimated $1 trillion by China, and between $1.5 and $2 trillion by the EU.
If they were to coordinate the process of dumping their bonds, he reportedly suggested, it would flood the market with US bonds and make it harder for the American Treasury Department to sell new debt issues, forcing us to increase the rate of interest we pay.
This would drive up US mortgages (which just jumped above 7%!) and other credit, make it harder for companies to finance expansion and new operations, while increasing the $1+ trillion annual interest cost to the US government to fund our own debt. The result, if sustained over even a few months, could be devastating.
And, sure enough, it appears that’s exactly what they did this past week when bond yields shot up, forcing Trump to put a 90-day pause on most of his tariffs.
On top of that, the dollar is falling at the same time bond yields are rising, something that hasn’t happened since the last Republican Great Depression.
This bond dump threatens America’s position as the holder of the world’s reserve currency, as well as possibly producing a liquidity crisis similar to what had Treasury Secretary Hank Paulsen’s hands trembling when, in 2008, he announced that the nation’s banking system had “frozen up” and needed a multi-trillion-dollar bailout from Congress and our Fed (which Bush gave to the banks and their executives).
And if you think that’s an exaggeration or fear-mongering, consider this headline from The Financial Times yesterday: “US dollar’s haven status under threat, fund managers warn.” The article cites numerous credible sources, all arguing in one way or another that Trump’s erratic behavior is threatening to throw America into an existential fiscal crisis that we may not recover from for years.
Should Carney, et al, continue dumping US debt and China jump in by bailing on their known $760+ billion in treasuries while continuing their boycott of US goods, it could bring our financial system to its knees.
And this, just as Republicans in Congress are trying to raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion (which will have to be borrowed by selling that amount in additional treasuries) to fund their planned $4.5 trillion tax gift to Elon Musk and America’s other billionaires (including Trump and the 13 billionaires in his cabinet).
Highlighting the danger, the headline in Friday’s Financial Times is, for finance experts, a virtual primal scream: Liquidity worsens in $29tn Treasury market as volatility soars. At the same time, our nation’s debt has crossed the “100% of GDP” threshold, a dangerous and expensive reality that increases the risk of a financial crisis here in America.
And, taking that out of our own hands, fully 30% of that debt is held outside the US and could be dumped without regard to its impact on America (or because of that impact, if punitive).
Republicans are entirely responsible for this loaded debt gun that’s now being put to our heads. Reagan’s tax gifts to billionaires (which is still in effect) have cost America at least $20 trillion; Bush’s have cost us around $6 trillion, plus another $6 trillion for the two illegal wars he lied us into to win the 2004 election; and Trump’s last tax cut cost us an estimated $5 trillion. That’s $37 trillion, and our national debt right now only stands at $36.22 trillion.
And they did it all because of Jude Wanniski’s “Two Santas” theory from 1976, which argued that when there’s a Republican in the White House he should spend like a drunken sailor (which stimulates the economy, creating the appearance of good times) to drive up the national debt.
Then, Wanniski argued, when a Democrat comes into office, Republicans should scream and squeal about the national debt “that our children will have to pay” to force Democrats to “shoot their Santa” of Social Security and other social programs in the face.
Every Republican president since Reagan has followed the plan, and the result, in part, is that as Trump’s stupid tariff policies push us to the edge of another depression we now are so deeply in debt that we lack the tools to respond.
Donald Trump has bankrupted or thrown into crisis virtually every business he ever started prior to jumping into crony capitalism politics in 2016. He’s truly that much of an incompetent bumblefuck. And now he’s doing it to The United States of America.
After all, as I’ve written before, if you want to bring manufacturing back to the United States with tariffs you do it gradually, sector by sector, product by product, through Congress (as the Constitution specifies) so businesses know those tariffs will last longer than a presidential whim.
Making that point and highlighting the danger and stupidity of Trump’s actions, famed investor Ray Dalio told NBC’s Meet the Press this weekend:
“Right now we are at a decision-making point and very close to a recession. And I’m worried about something worse than a recession if this isn’t handled well.”
Batten down your financial hatches and get ready; this is going to be rough for everybody except the morbidly rich, who are rubbing their hands with gleeful anticipation at the upcoming “buying opportunity of the century” to acquire everything from small companies to real estate to stocks, all on sale at massive, depression-era-level discounts.
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Everything Trump is doing makes perfect sense if you understand one simple fact
Everything Donald Trump is doing and will do makes perfect and sudden sense if you understand one simple fact: For him, it’s all a show.
He views the White House as a sound stage, like the set made to look like a boardroom where he performed for NBC on The Apprentice. He sees the people around him as a supporting cast, who can each be easily and quickly replaced (and often are) if they fail to play their roles the way he thinks will work best for the program.
Partly, this is because this is all he knows how to do. He was a terribly incompetent businessman, pissing away his father’s entire fortune on a series of businesses that he ran into the ground, one after the other:
Trump Steaks, Trump Water, Trump Board Game, Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Castle, Trump Vodka, Trump Mortgage, Trump Magazine, Trump Ties, Trump Cologne, Trump Vitamins, Trump Ice, Trump Suits, Trump Homes, Trump Financial, Trump Institute, Trump New Media, Trump Shuttle Airline, Trump Plaza Hotel, Trump University, New Jersey Generals, Tour de Trump, Trump Magazine, etc. Every single one failed, some spectacularly.
The only real success he’s had in his entire life — before entering politics — was the TV program that Mark Burnett carefully staged and choreographed, NBC carried and promoted, and GE invested in by paying for his acting lessons. It succeeded because Donald had no control over it; he just showed up and did what the show’s writers and Burnett told him to do.
Running the White House like a reality show also fits well with his personality and his psychopathology. As a sociopath or psychopath (as psychiatrists Dr. Bandy X. Lee and Dr. Justin Frank both mentioned on my radio program), his brain was already wired to view other people as mere props in the grand play of his life: people with his affliction have little ability to empathize with others or even to recognize other people as fully human.
It’s why he was so absent from parenting his own kids, why he serially cheated on every one of his three wives, why he uses people up and then discards them and has done so his entire life. It’s why he bonded so tightly with fellow psychopath Roy Cohn, who gleefully sent an innocent Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair just for his own entertainment.
It explains why he’d send an innocent man to a horrible prison in El Salvador and then argue that he shouldn’t be brought back to the US; not admitting a mistake is far more important to his narcissism-riddled ego than imagining the terror Armando Garcia, his wife, and his two children (including his nonverbal, autistic son) must be feeling.
Running the White House as a reality show also explains Trump’s “casting” for his cabinet and senior officials. As he’s repeatedly proclaimed, he’s far more interested in their being telegenic and able to perform for the cameras than being competent. He was entranced by “Mad Dog” Mattis, who’s now replaced by the equally colorfully-nicknamed Lt. Gen. John Dan “Razin” Caine.
And his cabinet officers — particularly those who share Trump’s sociopathy — know that their job isn’t to run their agencies competently; it’s far more important that they get in front of cameras as often as possible.
While Biden’s cabinet officers were expected to show up at work every day, keep their staffs and agencies on the straight-and-narrow, and produce results for the American people, Trump only wants public performance and fealty. After all, it’s just a show.
Thus, Kristi Noem travels the country in tight tops or ICE uniforms, pointing big guns and showing off her hair extensions and $60,000 Rolex watch to El Salvadoran prisoners. Bob Kennedy goes to funerals and entertains conspiracy nuts. Pam Bondi appears so often on Fox “News” (with her little gold cross above her cleavage) that that network should pay her a salary. Ditto for Karoline Leavitt.
You could see it all on display at yesterday’s televised cabinet meeting show, as billionaire after billionaire lavished Trump with praise, occasionally having to wipe the slobber from their mouths. Or when, the day before, Trump bragged, “I’m telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are!”
This understanding also explains how and why Trump is so dangerous to average Americans and such a threat to world peace.
This man who’s doesn’t appear to maintain a drivers’ license because he’s been chauffeured everywhere since he was a child — who grew up in a 23-room mansion filled with servants, silk, and gilt — has no understanding of the lives and struggles of everyday citizens who must worry about their kids, their homes, and their jobs.
It explains why he’s just fine with billionaire-funded Republican legislators — many among them also sociopaths — gutting Medicaid, defunding public schools, denying the climate crisis, worsening student debt, privatizing Medicare, and refusing to pay for food banks and school lunches.
Not to mention his right-hand-billionaire, Elon Musk, condemning millions of people across the planet to horrible deaths from HIV and TB by destroying USAID while he’s crippling Social Security and firing hundreds of thousands of federal workers who are now desperately trying to figure out how to pay their mortgages or put their kids through school.
The biggest danger from Trump’s performance-based presidency isn’t the damage he’s doing to Americans, however. It’s his constant craving for the show to be bigger, more spectacular, and have better ratings. He wants adulation and eyeballs, and — like throughout the rest of his life — doesn’t care who it hurts.
For that, he’s climbed up onto the world stage and just these past two weeks has declared a spectacular trade war against the planet’s second-largest economy with the second-largest military (soon to surpass ours).
Fully fifteen percent of China’s GDP is tied up in exports to the United States, and the country was already in a fiscal mess as they’re experiencing the crash of a housing bubble, deflation, and an internal debt crisis. Backing President Xi into a corner as Trump is doing is extraordinarily reckless; Trump, however, correctly believes it’ll increase his ratings and add drama to his show.
It could also, though, easily lead to World War III, and China has a larger army, larger navy, and a nuclear stockpile that could wipe out America a dozen times over. Plus, they’ve developed a tight alliance with Russia; this would be a reprise of the Allies-Axis conflict that was World War II, except this time Russia won’t be on our side and Europe may well try to sit the conflict out.
It’s tempting to want to just sit back and watch the daily drama of the Trump Show, not thinking it will affect us or our families. That, however, would be a huge mistake because no matter how entertaining or shocking it may be, it will eventually come for each and every one of us.
NOW READ: Trump is about to target something far more terrifying than tariffs
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Gretchen Whitmer just did us all a huge favor
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer stands, as U.S. President Donald Trump (not pictured) signs executive orders and proclamations, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 9, 2025.
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“Let’s give more hard-working people a fair shot at a decent life. And let’s usher in, as President Trump says, a ‘Golden Age’ of American manufacturing.”
-Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) Wednesday spouting MAGA rhetoric before a meeting with the America-attacking Donald Trump in the Oval Office.
“She’s really done an excellent job. She’s a very good person.”
-The America-attacking Donald Trump during the meeting with Whitmer, in which he moved her around like a piece of used office furniture, before converting her into a photo/op where he once again said the 2020 election was “rigged.”
First, I want to thank Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer for getting all this out of the way early before a 2028 presidential election that may or may not happen.
By doing us the courtesy of not wasting our time any longer pretending she’s anything but a complete phony we can move on to rooting for and supporting candidates who really do share our ideals, and understand the extreme danger we are in right now in America.
Because either you understand that, or you don’t. This is no time for playing cute, and screwing around in the squishy middle.
Until her embarrassing public surrender Wednesday, I actually had Whitmer pegged for possible stardom.
I believed in “Big Gretch” and wrote glowingly about her and the women in Michigan, who had played a large part in facilitating the resistance against the ghastly Trump the past seven years. Frankly, they were inspirational and made me proud to support a party that stood up for voters, and against those who facilitated violent attacks against them.
Sure it was an easy stand to take, but I appreciated their toughness, panache and zeal nonetheless. They were on the right side of the fight, and damn, I was proud to fight alongside them.
Turns out, there is nothing Whitmer will do for the good people of Michigan unless she thinks it is good for herself, and that is just terribly, terribly sad.
Her political career died an ugly death Wednesday, because she’s too damn weak, and self-centered to understand that real leaders don’t walk into enemy territory and surrender to racist tyrants, they fight them every damn step of the way.
Here’s how AP reported her self-induced kidnapping to the vile woman-abusing Trump:
“She was feet from his desk when he signed a pair of memoranda directing the Justice Department to investigate two of his critics and signed an executive order exacting retribution against a law firm whose work he opposed.”
A national Democratic strategist quoted by NBC-News put it this way:
“It is a massive indictment on Whitmer and her team’s judgment to, first, not have an answer on the tariff question and then go the White House and get absolutely played by Donald Trump to the point she is caught in the Oval Office as he signs one of his revenge and retribution executive orders and says 2020 was rigged.”
Another strategist, who admires Whitmer put it more succinctly:
“Just a f------ disaster.”
There was no damn reason for Whitmer to be within three states of the White House, yet there she was literally in the lions (er, lyin’s) den. Worse, this was not the first time she has met with this monster since he was reelected.
Watching her show so little self-respect for herself is absolutely painful. Watching her show so little respect for people like myself, who have supported her with my time treasure, and endorsement is absolutely galling.
In a feeble statement, Whitmer claimed she was brought into the Oval Office in front of the press "without any notice" and emphasized her presence was not an "endorsement of the actions taken or statements" made at that event.
Sure, OK. She just happened to be at the bank with the crook while it was being robbed …
All of this surrendering and capitulation by “marquee” Democrats points to a larger problem within the fast-fading party itself. People are sick and tired of their sick and tired act.
Either you believe what you are saying, or you don’t. Either you believe Trump is an extreme danger to our democracy, the rule of law, clean air and water, and any damn American value you tell us you care about, or you don’t.
Only roughly one in four Americans have a favorable opinion of a party that has become littered with out-of-touch “leaders” running on the old, stale fumes of recycled garbage.
From a CNN poll last month:
Democrats and Democratic-aligned independents say, 57% to 42%, that Democrats should mainly work to stop the Republican agenda, rather than working with the GOP majority to get some Democratic ideas into legislation.
The survey was taken March 6-9, days before 10 Democratic senators — including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — voted with Republicans in the chamber to advance a GOP-authored spending bill to avert a government shutdown, much to the chagrin of many other Democratic lawmakers and progressive critics.
The majority’s desire to fight the GOP marks a significant change in the party’s posture from the start of Trump’s first term. A September 2017 poll found a broad 74% majority of Democrats and Democratic leaners saying their party should work with Republicans in an attempt to advance their own priorities, and just 23% advocating for a more combative approach.
They simply aren’t listening to us.
Too many Democratic leaders aren’t fighters, they are whiners, right Schumer?
Instead of standing up for Americans, they are doing nothing at all, or even worse: They are rolling over for Trump.
It’s pathetic.
Was there ever a better illustration of how little they think of us when just days after losing the most important election of our lifetimes, Joe Biden eagerly invited the America-attacker back to the White House and the scene of the January 6, 2021 crime, and in front of roaring fire flashed his toothy smile, and heartily exclaimed, “Welcome back!”
I’ll never be able to unsee that. “Welcome back.” Holy hell …
And, say, have you been reading all these stories recently about the never-ending sniping between the Clintons, Biden, Kamala Harris and Barack Obama teams during the most important election of our lifetimes?
We’re out here knocking on doors with our hair on fire, shoveling our hard-earned cash out the door and were (are) frankly terrified of what another Trump term would mean, while these inbred, lifetime campaigners were airing petty feuds behind closed doors.
The party needs a bath.
A few Democrats like Cory Booker, and Sens. Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren, Reps. Jasime Crockett, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez before him, have finally owned up to their their gross inaction, and are busy doing what they were elected for — the very least of which should be standing relentlessly against a two-bit, lying crook who sees good people on both sides of a KKK rally, and whose violent attack on our vote may have irreparably wrecked this country for good.
Democratic Party leadership is full of too many complete phonies, and the only ones who can’t seem to see this are the so-called leaders themselves.
A lot is rightfully made of Republicans’ appalling refusal to take on the odious Trump, but tell me: When are Democrats going to start taking action on their own?
Why are Schumer and Dick Durbin still leading the Democratic senate?
Unless they see a 29 percent approval rating as something to be proud of …
Ya know, what happed here in Wisconsin last week should be instructive to Democrats going forward. There are lessons to be learned.
We won a crucial Supreme Court race up here by double-digits, because instead of it being about professional politicians, the race was simply about the issues.
By electing Judge Susan Crawford, thus ensuring liberals will control this court until at least 2028, Wisconsinites by huge margins signaled they don’t want billionaires like the grotesque Elon Musk interfering with our elections.
Wisconsinites said they believe in fair political maps.
Wisconsinites said they believe in a woman’s right to choose.
In fact, the only national politician who got involved up here was the despicable Trump himself, who gave a full-throated endorsement of the race’s ultimate loser, Brad Schimel.
That terrible tandem lost by a whopping 10 points, an almost unheard of margin in this razor-close state.
Turns out, Trump’s toxic agenda is not popular here, and this vote happened BEFORE people’s life savings were battered by these destructive tariffs that Whitmer wants to politely haggle over, instead of doing everything in her power to shove in the nearest s---can.
The Democratic Party is broken, people, and it’s OK to say that.
It would be far, far worse not to.
We have the power, so we must demand change, dammit.
Unless you don’t think we’re worth it …
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, and follow him on Bluesky here.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Since this piece published, The New York Times has reported this: “The day after the inauguration, Ms. Whitmer penned a handwritten letter — which has not been previously reported — congratulating Mr. Trump, saying she looked forward to working together and praising his support for the auto industry in his first address, according to a person who relayed the text of the letter. Ms. Whitmer included her cellphone number and invited Mr. Trump to call her if she could be of any help to him.”
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There’s a new dress code in Trump’s DC — and it’s straight out of a dictator’s playbook
— Trump’s legal serfs: when law firms bow to the Don. Trump is bragging about how he’s forced five more major US law firms to kiss his a-- and give away $940 million in free services to his favorite causes. So far, the rogues gallery of cowardly law firms which have put money above principle includes Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Allen Overy Shearman Sterling, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft, Paul Weiss, Skadden Milbank & Willkie, and Farr & Gallagher. On the other hand, three major firms are suing Trump’s administration for their efforts to intimidate and extort them (my words, not theirs), including Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, and WilmerHale. And over 1600 attorneys who work for the big firms that have bowed down to Trump’s intimidation have signed a letter demanding they do better.
They wrote: “When we are united, we cannot be intimidated. These tactics only work if the majority does not speak up. Our hope was that our employers, some of the most profitable law firms in the world, would lead the way. That has not yet been the case.” One of the very first things authoritarians do when they seize control of a country — from Hitler in the 1930s to Putin in the early 2000s — is to seize control of the country’s legal system.
Typically they follow a twofold strategy of punishing independent judges and terrifying attorneys; Trump is doing both with a shocking level of speed and zeal. This is how democracy dies, not with a bang but with a pro bono agreement.
— The Empire shudders: how Trump’s trade tantrum could trigger America’s fall. China can destroy Trump (and America) if Mark Carney doesn’t do the job first: China produces 90% of the world’s rare earth minerals, which America needs to build chips, jet engines, advanced displays, missiles, avionics, and a whole spectrum of other applications, many specific to the military and advanced computer manufacturing. And on April 4th, in response to Trump’s first tariff tantrum, they put export controls on the seven (samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium and yttrium) most critical for US manufacturers and the US military. We have some reserves, but if this lasts for months it could seriously damage our military and advanced manufacturing capabilities.
Trump appears to believe that President Xi will come to him any day now to “kiss my a--” (as he bragged a few days ago about other governments’ leaders), but the Chinese dictator is showing no signs of bending or bowing, responding to Trump’s “stupid” 145% tariffs with a blanket 125% tariff of their own.
Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney — himself the former Chairman of both the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada (the equivalents of our Fed) — got together last week with leaders of Europe and Japan to plan their response to Trump. About $8.5 trillion of the US’ $36 trillion national debt is held by foreign governments (as Treasuries), including $350 billion by Canada, $1 trillion by Japan, and between $1.5 and $2 by the EU. If they were to coordinate the process of dumping their bonds, he reportedly suggested, it would flood the market with US bonds and make it harder for the the American Treasury Department to sell new debt issues, forcing us to increase the rate of interest we pay.
This would drive up US mortgages and other credit, make it harder for companies to finance expansion and new operations, and increase the cost to the US government to fund our own debt: the result, if sustained over a few months, could be devastating. And, sure enough, it appears that’s exactly what they did this past week when bond yields shot up, forcing Trump to put a 90-day pause on most of his tariffs.
This threatens America’s position as the holder of the world’s reserve currency, as well as possibly producing a liquidity crisis similar to what had Treasury Secretary Hank Paulsen’s hands trembling when, in 2008, he announced that the nation’s banking system had “frozen up” and needed a multi-trillion-dollar bailout from Congress and our Fed (which Bush gave to the banks and their executives), and throw America into a severe recession or possibly even a second Republican Great Depression. Should Carney, et al, continue dumping US debt and China jump in by bailing on their $760 billion in treasuries, it could bring our financial system to its knees just as Republicans in Congress are trying to raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion (which will have to be borrowed by selling that amount in treasuries) to fund their planned $4.5 trillion tax gift to America’s billionaires.
Highlighting the danger, the headline in yesterday’s Financial Times is, for finance experts, a virtual primal scream: Liquidity worsens in $29tn Treasury market as volatility soars. Hang onto your seats (and your assets): this could get insanely wild — and dangerous for all of us — before long. (And it’s amazing how the mainstream media is missing/ignoring these two stories.)
— Was there a “lack of urgency” in the Supreme Court deportation ruling about the Maryland father wrongly deported to El Salvador’s most notorious prison? You Betcha... Will the Republican justices keep sucking up to Trump? Is a frog’s a-- watertight? The Supreme Court issued one of the most mumbling, mealy-mouthed decisions in a century, giving Trump’s gestapo plenty of time to continue the torture of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the husband of a US citizen and father of three (including a nonverbal autistic child) along with over 200 others, over 70% of whom have no criminal record according to CBS. The Trump regime’s lawyers went to court yesterday and basically stalled, saying they didn’t know where Garcia is or what his status is, a clear and naked lie.
If nothing else, when El Salvador’s hard-right (arguably neo-Nazi) president Nayib Bukele visits the White House this coming Monday, he could simply bring Garcia and the others with him. But don’t hold your breath; he and Trump are both gleeful about their ability to incarcerate and torture a legal US resident without any legal due process in complete violation of the US Constitution and international law. The simple reality is that Trump is transforming America into a police state, step by step, and aligning himself with some of the planet’s worst autocrats while crapping on our closest allies…just like I’ll bet Putin taught him how to do.
— Seniors are first in the line of fire as Trump’s tariff bomb explodes. Top Senate Democrats just proposed an emergency Social Security payment boost: Senators Chuck Schumer, Ron Wyden, and Elizabeth Warren are putting forward legislation to increase the monthly Social Security payments of everybody in the country by $200 a month to compensate for the coming Trump tariff inflation. The Social Security Emergency Inflation Relief Act is a response to the early signs that inflation — and shortages — are about to explode as both major and minor retailers across the nation are cancelling orders for Chinese goods rather than pay a 145% import tax (tariff). These cancellations will produce shortages and drive up prices, hitting low income people the hardest (as Republican policies always do).
If nothing changes over the next week or two, expect major inflationary impact to sweep America starting in a big way next month. Meanwhile, Republicans promise to kill this Senate effort to give a raise to people on Social Security, because it may show down their plan to hand trillions to their billionaire benefactors. Finally, I’m already seeing signs that America has already slipped into a recession: Every time we’ve had a recession in the 22 years I’ve been doing my radio show, the early indicator is that advertisers begin to cut back on their ad budgets for radio. I heard from our ad agency this week that this has begun, so we’re looking at ways to tighten our belts, financially speaking. I predict, based on this “early warning system” that hasn’t failed me yet, that we’ll all see the impact of the Trump recession within a few weeks. We gave Trump a loaded gun and he pointed it straight at our feet and began blasting away. Will this break the spell this cult leader has on his followers? Stay tuned.
— Authoritarian Alert! There’s a new dress code in Trump’s Washington, and it’s straight out of a dictator’s playbook. Remember Mao Zedong and those little red pins with a gold image of his head on them? Stalin had them, too, as does Kim Jong Un; as Dean Blundell notes, if you fail to wear your Kim pin properly, you can get arrested in North Korea. Trump apparently loved the idea of having similar pins with his head on them, as do some of his cabinet members; FCC Chairman Brendan Carr was spotted wearing a Trump head pin in DC this week. Trump’s apparently selling pure gold versions, although you can get gold-like ones on amazon for as little as ten bucks. What’s next? A mandate that we all carry a little booklet of Trump’s most famous sayings? (“I moved on her like a b-----. I couldn't get there and she was married. … You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful... I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the p-----. You can do anything.”) G-d help us all…
— The SAVE Act: What could possibly go wrong with the House-passed bill requiring proof of citizenship to vote — Hillary sends out a warning about it — I've been warning about this for months! I’ve written several times about the GOP’s latest strategy to purge millions of American women from the nation’s voting rolls with their new SAVE Act, which passed the House this past week (with the votes of four democrats: Ed Case (HI), Henry Cuellar (TX), Jared Golden (ME), and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA). They’re doing this because women are about 7% more likely to vote Democratic than men. As Hillary Clinton noted on Xitter yesterday: “The House just passed the Republican voter suppression measure that threatens voting access for millions of Americans, including 69 million women whose married names don’t match their birth certificates.”
Ever since 1980, when Heritage Foundation co-founder Paul Weyrich proclaimed the goal of the GOP should be to “reduce the voting population,” the party has sponsored thousands of pieces of legislation — hundreds of which have been made into law — to make it harder to register, harder to vote, and easier to get purged from voting rolls or have your vote thrown out. This bill, which will next be debated in the Senate (will Fetterman join Republicans and vote for it like these four turncoat Dems did in the House?), is the most serious assault on women’s right to vote since Republicans first opposed the 19th Amendment in 1920. Let your senators know you’re not happy and they should vote to filibuster and then defeat it.
— Crazy Alert! The next market crash or maybe even a war may be engineered by a robot — and nobody will be accountable. “Evil robots” could start a financial crisis or a world war in order to profit the corporations that own them, without those corporations even knowing about it? The Bank of England — not an organization prone to conspiracy thinking — issued a warning this week about what might happen when stock trading firms deploy AI robots to handle making money for them. The fear is that the robots will figure out what Naomi Klein wrote an entire book about: Disasters represent an opportunity to make big bucks. If an AI computer could infiltrate an air traffic control system and crash a plane, for example, right after betting big on airline stocks falling, it could make a fortune for its owners.
The Bank’s report noted, “Models might learn that stress events increase their opportunity to make profit and so take actions actively to increase the likelihood of such events.” They added: “AI could facilitate collusion or other forms of market manipulation” without the “human manager’s intention or awareness.” Yikes! Maybe it’s time for some legislation to get this genie under control?
NOW READ: Everything Trump is doing makes perfect sense if you understand one simple fact
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Trump is drinking his own Kool-Aid as evidence of his dementia grows
Trump didn’t just end his ill-conceived tariff drama, he only postponed it. Again. It’s not good news, it’s just delayed news.
Economists know that the best conduit to a healthy economy is stability. Yet the only reliable commodity from the Trump administration to date has been instability. In under three months of Trump’s second term, the chaos has been so relentless that even Fox News propagandists have, at times, fumbled their spin.
To effectively strategize for the kinds of volatility Trump will keep inflicting on the world—economic, climate, military, and everything in between— business experts should use the next ninety days to consider what’s really driving the mayhem: As many experts see it, Trump doesn’t have buyers’ remorse, he has dementia. Trying to reason with him is like trying to reason with a man who barks when it rains, and the sooner they know, the better.
World trade policy driven by unfounded paranoia
Trump argues that Europeans and other advanced economies "owe" the United States for past and current trade imbalances, because he does not understand the basics of global trade. If Americans buy more from another country than that country buys from us, Trump registers that as proof that we are being “ripped off.” It’s a paranoia-driven claim that borders on gibberish.
Countries do not buy and sell the same dollar amounts from one another in part because they are not the same size: a country that is 1/10th the size or population of the US cannot import the same amount we import, in part because what would they do with ten times more tires and machinery than their population needs? Trump also ignores that currency valuations vary widely, making dollar value comparisons idiotic. Last Econ 101 point, some countries export coffee and sugar while others export cellphones and robots, and the costs of each are simply not comparable. These are basic trade realities that eluded Trump’s simplistic, ChatGPT-generated “tariffs chart.”
In response to bond yields crashing over his tariff scheme, Trump came out with a plan this week to “negotiate” with more than 75 countries, but his aim remains nonsensical: he wants to flatten trade deficits with every country that imports lower amounts of American goods than they export. Trump’s failure to grasp that the numbers don’t match because they cannot match, due to size, populations, currencies and differing commodities, is driven by his paranoia.
Trump’s persistent belief that he is being taken advantage of doesn’t reflect strength, it reflects advancing dementia.
Trump is drinking his own Kool-Aid
Trump’s tariffs debacle also suggests he drinks his own kool-aid. Trump, with the help of his propaganda machine, convinced 49% of US voters that the Biden economy was a catastrophe. In fact-based reality (a phrase no longer redundant), based on all standard economic metrics including GDP, labor and wage growth, investment levels, and retreating inflation, Biden rebuilt an historically strong economy from the covid ashes Trump left behind.
Both the foundational belief- that the US economy is struggling and in need of Trump to “save it,”- and the belief that our allies are “ripping us off” reflects the same underlying pathology of delusion that drove Trump to insist that the 2020 election was “stolen” despite all evidence to the contrary.
I’m no psychiatrist, but you don’t need a medical degree to understand that barking ‘up is down’ with a megaphone is delusional.
The art of the squeal
Mental health professionals sounded the alarm over Trump’s dementia during his first term; their professional alarm continues to grow with mounting evidence in his second. But it shouldn’t take an expert. In both word and deed, Trump’s behavior is bizarre even to lay observers.
At the National Republican Congressional Committee meeting last week, Trump belittled every world leader whose economy he was intentionally harming, bragging, “These countries are calling us up. Kissing my ass… They are dying to make a deal. “Please, please, sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything, sir. And then I’ll see some rebel Republican, you know, some guy that wants to grandstand, saying: ‘I think that Congress should take over negotiations.’ Let me tell you: you don’t negotiate like I negotiate.”
Aside from the fact that he caved the next day, evidently kissing his own ass, only a mentally impaired man would belittle allies and political colleagues this way. Trump and his uneducated supporters may think his comments look strong, but to any honest observer, including those ‘grandstanding Republicans’ who want Congress to perform its constitutional duty,the comments look unhinged. They suggest Trump thinks trying to bully and degrade world leaders, with their own elections and political reputations to consider, is an effective way to manage relationships. As China’s vow to fight his trade war to the bitter end shows, his impaired judgment is a formula for disaster.
Evidence that Sir has dementia is everywhere; where is the 25th Amendment?
Trump’s disastrous commentary on world trade tracks with his other unhinged conduct, with evidence so compelling any lay person can interpret it for themselves:
·He insists he is not joking about serving a third term, despite the clarity of the 22nd Amendment which bars a president from seeking more than two terms;
·He deluded himself about the 2020 election; for every state Trump lost, he claimed he was “cheated,” demandingthat supporters “find” additional votes to cancel his loss;
·Just before the election he claimed on Fox News that the audience went “crazy” during his “crushing” debate performance against Kamala Harris. There was no audience during that debate, and by all national accounts, Harris trounced him.
·By the New York Time’s count, he made 64 outrageous, un-factual, and unmoored from reality claims one week before the election, in one speech alone.
·For his 79th birthday, he is now planning a massive military parade through the streets of Washington, DC, with an estimated cost of over $92 million, at a time when DOGE has gutted the federal government to “cut costs.”
These examples are just the tip of a fast-melting iceberg; he also bragged about spending “a great day in Louisiana” after he spent the day in Georgia; he often says North Korea is “trying to kill me,” (he means Iran); and as late as November, he was still talking about his race against Biden, despite Biden having left the race over a month earlier.
Experts have not been shy in their assessments either. More than 3000 credentialed psychiatrists, psychologists and mental health professionals have added their signatures to a petition circulating currently, stating that Trump has probable dementia. They also concluded that their duty to warn the nation outweighed their duty to refrain from diagnosing in absentia.
In my mind, the pertinent question looming now is, what other dangerously insane act will it take before Republicans locate their missing spines and join Democrats in invoking the 25th Amendment?
Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are published in Alternet, Chicago Tribune, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
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