Opinion
It's not Jeffrey Epstein who will bring Trump down
Back in late March, I wrote a piece about US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth committing what some at the time said was the biggest breach in national security in US history. Hegseth “accidentally texted” war plans to the editor of The Atlantic. Hegseth also organized those war plans using an unsecured messaging platform, which pretty much guaranteed America’s enemies knew about them in advance.
My argument in that piece: in another time and place, this historic scandal would have led to the downfall of powerful men, but we live in this time and place, of autocratic rule, in which Donald Trump is seen by his followers as literally infallible. In such an age, old-fashioned political scandals aren’t possible. “But her emails” was the last of a dying breed.
I wrote that piece believing there would never be daylight between Trump and MAGA or between Trump and a rightwing media apparatus that has the power to bend the will of the Washington press corps.
But then came the Jeffrey Epstein memo released by the Department of Justice, which communicated to the Trump’s followers that the truth about how the world really works – QAnon – is not only false but they were suckers for believing it. That triggered a subterranean reaction.
All of a sudden, figures like Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson are questioning Trump’s intentions, which means reporting by the mainstream press is having more impact than it normally would.
This is important. The choices made by the Washington press corps are often determined by whether they will affect the president’s base. The Hegseth story was serious on the merits. It was worthy of months of coverage. But it didn’t get far, because MAGA thought either it was a nothingburger or blamed reporters for making Trump look bad. The president was never responsible for his choices. So the scandal died.
But the questions are now coming from inside the house. The media landscape is so profoundly different that if mainstream reporters start talking about Trump’s age and infirmity with the same frequently and intensity with which they talked about Joe Biden’s, it will be entirely due to the MAGA faithful’s fruitless search for a good-faith reason why their champion is standing with “the deep state,” instead of against it.
I don’t want to get ahead of myself, so I called in Jennifer Schulze. She’s a longtime Chicago journalist and publisher of Indistinct Chatter, a newsletter about the news.
Trump himself won’t let the Epstein story die, Jennifer told me, giving reporters more opportunities to dig in: “There is something rather enjoyable about watching this hot mess.”
John Stoehr: The White House press corps is normally deferential to Donald Trump, in the sense that reporters haven't determined how aggressive they should be with a man seen by many as invincible. The Epstein case may be against that grain. What are you seeing?
Jennifer Schulze: It's too early to tell where the press corps comes down, given that so many who routinely ask Trump questions aren't news reporters, but MAGA personalities. But the ones who are actually journalists — and still permitted to be in the pool — are going to keep asking questions. Good for them. It is a very big story with lots of layers. Trump is keeping it in the news, too. So every day, reporters keep having additional opportunities to ask him and his administration about it.
Perhaps the more immediate question is about the MAGA media. There seems to be a split, and that split is driving the story that the real journalists are covering. So ... thank God for MAGA media?
MAGA’s varied responses to the Epstein story is a story, and it will continue to be a story as this mess shakes out. We have come to expect MAGA media to be in lockstep with Trump, all promoting the same narrative, so it is newsworthy that these splits are developing.
I'm especially interested in watching what Fox does. So far, Trump's state media outlet is following his lead. Media Matters has a headline that says it all: "Trump told MAGA to be quiet about Jeffrey Epstein. Fox News obeyed." Media Matters has some interesting data to support that. It reports that last Monday, Fox mentioned Epstein only eight times but mentioned former President Joe Biden 158 times. Fox has really not broken from Trump in his second term, but like with other stories, the Fox audience may rebel at least a little bit.
Other MAGA media is reporting the story but you can feel their pain. Some are literally begging Trump to release the Epstein files. Others are flailing, trying to point the blame at Pam Bondi or Democrats. There is something rather enjoyable about watching this hot mess.
The Epstein issue seems to expose the problem of staffing your administration with MAGA media personalities. Dan Bongino, for instance, appears to have decided that he has more incentive to break with Trump than stick with him. And those incentives will snowball quickly inside and outside MAGA media. Thoughts?
Poor Dan Bongino.
For years, he railed to his very large audience about the Epstein files, promising to get to the bottom of it when Trump is elected. Now Trump's president (again) and Bongino lands the No. 2 job at the FBI, but what happens? He fails to deliver. What does he do? He calls in sick. Reality has kicked him (and many MAGA faithful) in the butt.
Who knows what Bongino will end up doing. I'm not sure it matters. People go in and out of Trumpworld all the time. True believers and grifters like Bongino can't quit Trump for good. I do hope more news coverage turns to how much money Bongino and others have made by polluting the information ecosystem with the Epstein file lies, etc. It has been their lifeblood. But so, too, has their connection to Trump
The Democrats have done a pretty good job so far of turning the Epstein case into a real wedge issue. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), who is notoriously bad at media, said that either Trump lied about the conspiracy or is covering it up, a brilliant framing of the story that complements the press corps' need to conflict. How does it look from your end?
This is the fighting stance many Democratic voters have been looking for from Democrats. The Epstein case is nauseating (and yes, there are actual victims that deserve attention in the ongoing coverage), but it's a perfect opportunity for Democrats to hammer Trump on how one of his biggest conspiracy theories is falling apart, how his typically stuck-like-glue base is fracturing; how his appointees are flailing.
I do think Democrats can walk and chew gum at the same time so I'm glad to see them giving it such a good effort. Trump has made it easy for Democrats in some respects. He's making mistake after mistake, and keeping the story front and center, because he is so remarkably undisciplined. The attack lines write themselves.
I also think a cowed news media is finding some spine with the Epstein coverage because, again, the stories almost write themselves. Every hour, there's a new outburst from Trump or MAGA media type, etc.
There has been nothing but scandals since day one, but the press corps has not been able to make any of them stick. I'm thinking here of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Trump could blame the media, the Democrats, the deep state, anyone, and the MAGA faithful would go along. Not this time, which means the Washington press corps can really dig in — until Trump fires Fed Chair Jerome Powell or starts a war. But even then, the MAGA faithful might not follow along.
Here's what's different: Trump is keeping the story in the headlines. He is like an open fire hose. As long as the press keeps asking about the Epstein files, he'll keep saying crazy stuff that becomes the basis for the next wave of stories. Meanwhile, reporters are digging up all kinds of sidebar stories, including the MAGA media response, Bongino watch, maneuvers by Congress, etc. We have the Wall Street Journal story about Trump's birthday letter to Epstein and how Trump himself called the editor to pressure her to kill the piece. Trump trying to kill a news story should be headline news for days.
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This Trump hatchet man is a danger like no other
By Paul M. Collins Jr., Professor of Legal Studies and Political Science, UMass Amherst
President Donald Trump’s nomination of his former criminal defense attorney, Emil Bove, to be a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, has been mired in controversy.
On June 24, 2025, Erez Reuveni, a former Department of Justice attorney who worked with Bove, released an extensive, 27-page whistleblower report. Reuveni claimed that Bove, as the Trump administration’s acting deputy attorney general, said “that it might become necessary to tell a court ‘f––– you’” and ignore court orders related to the administration’s immigration policies. Bove’s acting role ended on March 6 when he resumed his current position of principal associate deputy attorney general.
When asked about this statement at his June 25 Senate confirmation hearing, Bove said, “I don’t recall.”
And on July 15, 80 former federal and state judges signed a letter opposing Bove’s nomination. The letter argued that “Mr. Bove’s egregious record of mistreating law enforcement officers, abusing power, and disregarding the law itself disqualifies him for this position.”
A day later, more than 900 former Department of Justice attorneys submitted their own letter opposing Bove’s confirmation. The attorneys argued that “few actions could undermine the rule of law more than a senior executive branch official flouting another branch’s authority. But that is exactly what Mr. Bove allegedly did through his involvement in DOJ’s defiance of court orders.”
On July 17, Democrats walked out of the Senate Judiciary Committee vote, in protest of the refusal by Chairman Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, to allow further investigation and debate on the nomination. Republicans on the committee then unanimously voted to move the nomination forward for a full Senate vote.
As a scholar of the courts, I know that most federal court appointments are not as controversial as Bove’s nomination. But highly contentious nominations do arise from time to time.
Here’s how three controversial nominations turned out – and how Bove’s nomination is different in a crucial way.
Robert Bork
Bork is the only federal court nominee whose name became a verb.
“Borking” is “to attack or defeat (a nominee or candidate for public office) unfairly through an organized campaign of harsh public criticism or vilification,” according to Merriam-Webster.
This refers to Republican President Ronald Reagan’s 1987 appointment of Bork to the Supreme Court.
Reagan called Bork “one of the finest judges in America’s history.” Democrats viewed Bork, a federal appeals court judge, as an ideologically extreme conservative, with their opposition based largely on his extensive scholarly work and opinions on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
In opposing the Bork nomination, Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts took the Senate floor and gave a fiery speech: “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.”
Ultimately, Bork’s nomination failed by a 58-42 vote in the Senate, with 52 Democrats and six Republicans rejecting the nomination.
Ronnie White
In 1997, Democratic President Bill Clinton nominated White to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. White was the first Black judge on the Missouri Supreme Court.
Republican Sen. John Ashcroft, from White’s home state of Missouri, led the fight against the nomination. Ashcroft alleged that White’s confirmation would “push the law in a pro-criminal direction.” Ashcroft based this claim on White’s comparatively liberal record in death penalty cases as a judge on the Missouri Supreme Court.
However, there was limited evidence to support this assertion. This led some to believe that Ashcroft’s attack on the nomination was motivated by stereotypes that African Americans, like White, are soft on crime.
Even Clinton implied that race may be a factor in the attacks on White: “By voting down the first African-American judge to serve on the Missouri Supreme Court, the Republicans have deprived both the judiciary and the people of Missouri of an excellent, fair, and impartial Federal judge.”
White’s nomination was defeated in the Senate by a 54-45 party-line vote. In 2014, White was renominated to the same judgeship by President Barack Obama and confirmed by largely party-line 53-44 vote, garnering the support of a single Republican, Susan Collins of Maine.
Miguel Estrada
Republican President George W. Bush nominated Estrada to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2001.
Estrada, who had earned a unanimous “well-qualified” rating from the American Bar Association, faced deep opposition from Senate Democrats, who believed he was a conservative ideologue. They also worried that, if confirmed, he would later be appointed to the Supreme Court.
However, unlike Bork – who had an extensive paper trail as an academic and judge – Estrada’s written record was very thin.
Democrats sought to use his confirmation hearing to probe his beliefs. But they didn’t get very far, as Estrada dodged many of the senators’ questions, including ones about Supreme Court cases he disagreed with and judges he admired.
Democrats were particularly troubled by allegations that Estrada, when he was screening candidates for Justice Anthony Kennedy, disqualified applicants for Supreme Court clerkships based on their ideology.
According to one attorney: “Miguel told me his job was to prevent liberal clerks from being hired. He told me he was screening out liberals because a liberal clerk had influenced Justice Kennedy to side with the majority and write a pro-gay-rights decision in a case known as Romer v. Evans, which struck down a Colorado statute that discriminated against gays and lesbians.”
When asked about this at his confirmation hearing, Estrada initially denied it but later backpedaled. Estrada said, “There is a set of circumstances in which I would consider ideology if I think that the person has some extreme view that he would not be willing to set aside in service to Justice Kennedy.”
Unlike the Bork nomination, Democrats didn’t have the numbers to vote Estrada’s nomination down. Instead, they successfully filibustered the nomination, knowing that Republicans couldn’t muster the required 60 votes to end the filibuster. This marked the first time in Senate history that a court of appeals nomination was filibustered. Estrada would never serve as a judge.
Bove stands out
As the examples of Bork, Estrada and White make clear, contentious nominations to the federal courts often involve ideological concerns.
This is also true for Bove, who is opposed in part because of the perception that he is a conservative ideologue.
But the main concerns about Bove are related to a belief that he is a Trump loyalist who shows little respect for the rule of law or the judicial branch.
This makes Bove stand out among contentious federal court nominations.
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Trump's rage threatens to unearth his biggest skeletons
Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported a 50th birthday album for Jeffrey Epstein that included a drawing, note, and signature from Donald Trump — an album compiled by Epstein’s longtime girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, who was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in prison for conspiring with him to sexually abuse minors.
Given the president in turn filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the WSJ and owner Rupert Murdoch for “knowingly and recklessly” publishing “numerous false, defamatory, and disparaging statements” allegedly causing Trump “overwhelming financial and reputational harm,” there has been a minimal amount of reporting on and discussion of other documents, if not evidence per se, that have made accusations of in tandem sexual abuse of minors involving Epstein and Trump.
For example, Salon has reported on Maria Farmer, a sexual accuser and former employee of Epstein who on two occasions, in 1996 and 2006, told the FBI to look into Trump.
Similarly, Raw Story has reported on one lawsuit filed by Katie Johnson (a pseudonym) against defendants Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey E. Epstein in 2016.
In that lawsuit, Katie Johnson v. Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey E. Epstein, filed on April 26, 2016 in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, the plaintiff alleges that the defendants “did willfully and with extreme malice violate her Civil Rights under 18 U.S.C.: 2241 by sexually and physically abusing” her, “by forcing her to engage in various perverted and depraved sex acts by threatening physical harm to Plaintiff Johnson and also her family.”
In the same complaint, “Katie Johnson” further alleges that the defendants violated her civil rights “by making her their sex slave.”
She also “alleges that she was enticed by promises of money and a modeling career to attend a series of underage sex parties held at the New York City residence of Defendant Jeffrey E. Epstein and attended by Defendant Donald J. Trump.”
The lawsuit sought $100 million in damages.
You can read the complaint for yourself if you are interested in the scandalous details. I am more interested in referencing a similar federal lawsuit filed in New York not long after Johnson’s case was dismissed on the grounds that it had not raised civil rights claims under federal law.
In that second case, Jane Doe v. Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey E. Epstein, filed in the United States District Court Southern District of New York on October 3, 2016, the plaintiff’s complaint alleges that she was the victim of “rape, sexual misconduct, criminal sexual acts, sexual abuse, forcible touching, assault, battery, intentional and reckless infliction of emotional distress, duress, false imprisonment, and defamation.”
However, when the accuser was to hold a news conference on November 2, 2016, it was abruptly called off.
Attorney Lisa Bloom had previously arranged for her client to appear at Bloom’s Woodland Hills law office. At the appointed time, Bloom told the assembled journalists and TV cameras that “Jane Doe has received numerous threats today…she is too afraid to show her face…She is in terrible fear.”
“Katie Johnson” spelled out in the California lawsuit: “I loudly pleaded with Defendant Trump to stop, but he did not. Defendant Trump responded to my pleas by violently striking me in the face with his open hand and screaming that he would do whatever he wanted. … Immediately following this rape, Defendant Trump threatened me that, were I ever to reveal any of the details of Defendant Trump’s sexual and physical abuse of me, my family and I would be physically harmed if not killed.”
During the 2016 presidential campaign, other lawsuits and claims by 26 women were made against Trump for sexual assault.
Only two defamation lawsuits and a sexual abuse claim filed by E. Jean Carroll, that resulted in damages totaling $88.3 million, ever came to fruition.
Nevertheless, it is highly likely that those California and New York filed lawsuits are among the flagged items mentioning Trump collected by the thousand-plus FBI agents working on 24-hour shifts to comb through some 100,000 pages of the Epstein files.
Needless to say, this type of information is precisely what Trump does not want revealed now or anytime in the future to the American people of any political persuasion.
Of course, should Donald J. Trump v. The Wall Street Journal not be tossed out of court, then most if not all of this material would become available to the Journal’s attorneys through discovery.
- Gregg Barak is an emeritus professor of criminology and criminal justice at Eastern Michigan University and the author of several books on the crimes of the powerful, including Criminology on Trump (2022) and its 2024 sequel, Indicting the 45th President: Boss Trump, the GOP, and What We Can Do About the Threat to American Democracy. The third book in this Trump trilogy, Regime Change, Authoritarian Treason, and the Outlaw-in-Chief: President Donald Trump’s Struggle to Kill U.S. Democracy & Realign American Global Power, will be published after the 2026 midterm elections.
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Trump’s ultimate crime goes beyond mere lawbreaking
When historians look back on this era, they’ll inevitably ask how a nation built on principles of democracy, justice, and equality allowed one man to commit such a broad range of crimes and abuses, and whether Donald Trump is indeed the most dangerous criminal in American history.
To fully grasp the gravity of Trump’s actions, consider the extensive categories of his criminal and potentially criminal conduct, each more disturbing than the last.
First, there’s the relentless financial corruption. Trump has long played fast and loose with the law when it came to his finances. In New York, his company was convicted of tax fraud and financial manipulation designed to deceive lenders and inflate his wealth. Trump University was shuttered after a $25 million fraud settlement, its “students” left feeling defrauded.
His charitable organization, the Trump Foundation, was dissolved following revelations that funds intended for charity were instead used to benefit Trump personally and politically, and to pay off Pam Bondi in Florida where he and Jeffrey Epstein were living (she was AG for almost a decade and never went after Epstein).
But Trump’s shady financial dealings didn’t begin or end with these public scandals. For decades, he was closely associated with New York’s organized crime families. Trump Tower itself was built using concrete provided by mob-linked companies.
Roy Cohn, Trump’s mentor and attorney as I detail in The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink, was a notorious fixer and lawyer for mob figures such as Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno and Paul Castellano.
Trump’s casinos also regularly skirted the law, drawing scrutiny from federal investigators for potential money laundering linked to organized crime, and his former casino manager recently revealed to CNN that Trump and Epstein once even showed up together with underage girls in tow (the White House denies the story).
Trump’s long relationship with Epstein further exposes his moral bankruptcy and possible criminality. The two were close associates and owned residences near each other in New York and Palm Beach, socializing together frequently.
Trump famously described Epstein as a “terrific guy” who enjoyed the company of beautiful women, some “on the younger side.” Multiple reports suggest Trump knew about Epstein’s exploitation of minors, yet Trump continued their association until public scandal made it inconvenient.
Then there are Trump’s questionable international relationships, with none more alarming than his mysterious affinity for Vladimir Putin. Trump’s first administration consistently favored Russian interests, dismissing election interference findings from American intelligence agencies, undermining NATO, and, in his second administration even withholding military aid from Ukraine, thus benefiting Putin’s geopolitical ambitions.
While the full nature of Trump’s entanglement with Putin remains hidden, Trump’s obsequious behavior toward the Russian dictator raises serious questions about financial leverage or compromised loyalties. For example, the only major country in the world Trump chose not to impose tariffs on this year was Russia.
Trump’s disturbing Russian connections also include his 2016 campaign manager and close confidant, Paul Manafort, whose career was dedicated to installing pro-Putin autocrats and corrupt oligarchs across Eastern Europe, including Ukraine and Albania. Heidi Seigmund Cuda writes about his recent Albania connection in her great Bette Dangerous Substack newsletter.
Manafort was convicted of multiple felonies, including tax and bank fraud, stemming from his shady dealings overseas, actions intimately connected with Putin’s broader geopolitical ambitions, for which Trump pardoned him.
Trump’s choice of Manafort to lead his 2016 campaign wasn’t coincidental; it signaled to Moscow an openness to influence, further raising troubling questions about Trump’s susceptibility to foreign manipulation and complicity in Manafort’s criminal schemes.
Trump’s election interference is equally alarming. It began with hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal to manipulate public perception during the 2016 campaign, for which he was convicted of felony election manipulation charges in Manhattan last year.
More brazenly, Trump attempted to subvert democracy in Georgia when he lost the 2020 election by demanding of Georgia’s Secretary of State, “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”
His attempts to cling to power by any means necessary reached a terrifying crescendo with the conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election, ultimately joined by over 100 Republican members of Congress. This led to a federal indictment, making him the first former president charged with seeking to destroy the very democratic system that put him into power.
Trump’s abuse of presidential authority is chillingly unprecedented. Robert Mueller’s investigation laid out multiple instances where Trump criminally obstructed justice, brazenly interfering with federal investigations. He solicited foreign interference from Ukraine in the 2020 election, a move that led to his first impeachment.
Trump’s presidency was also marred by repeated violations of the Emoluments Clause as he profited directly from foreign governments funneling money through his hotels and golf clubs. He pitched Teslas from the White House in flagrant violation of the Hatch Act (penalty: 5 years in prison). Even after leaving office in 2021, Trump illegally retained classified documents and obstructed federal efforts to retrieve them, leading to further federal charges.
One of the most grotesque and morally bankrupt chapters of the Trump presidency unfolded in the early months of the Covid pandemic, when Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly made the political calculation that the virus was “only hitting Blue states” and disproportionately killing Black Americans so it could be weaponized.
According to reporting at the time, Kushner convened a secretive White House task force of mostly male, white, preppy private-sector advisors who concluded that a robust federal response to minimize deaths would be politically disadvantageous. Their analysis was clear: since it was primarily Democratic governors and Black communities suffering the early brunt of the pandemic (NY, NJ, WA), Trump could politically benefit by blaming local leadership and withholding meaningful federal aid.
It was a cynical — and deadly — strategy to let the virus burn through the opposition’s voter base that ultimately led to an estimated 500,000 unnecessary American deaths and gave us as the second-most Covid deaths per person in the world.
This approach not only explains the administration’s chaotic and insufficient response to testing, supplies, and coordination, it exposes a level of callous — morally, if not legally criminal — political calculus rarely seen in modern American history since the days of the Trail of Tears.
Leaked documents and internal communications at the time confirmed that federal resources were distributed unevenly, often favoring Republican-led states.
Trump also regularly lashed out at Democratic governors like Gretchen Whitmer and Andrew Cuomo while ignoring their pleas for ventilators and PPE. As the death toll mounted, Trump publicly minimized the virus, holding rallies and rejecting masks, while privately admitting to journalist Bob Woodward that Covid was “deadly stuff.”
This wasn’t just negligence: it was targeted neglect driven by racism and partisanship, carried out in the middle of a once-in-a-century public health emergency.
Beyond these abuses of power, Trump openly incited political violence. His rhetoric fueled vigilantism and violent confrontations at rallies.
Most infamously, on January 6th, 2021, he incited an insurrection designed to halt the peaceful transition of power in a stunning betrayal without precedent in American history. He encouraged extremist and white supremacist groups like the Proud Boys, Three Percenters, and Oath Keepers, effectively endorsing domestic terrorism.
Right up until he took office and corruptly shut them down, investigations continued into potential wire fraud and misuse of funds from Trump’s “Save America” PAC, alongside scrutiny into financial irregularities involving his Truth Social platform.
Investigations into obstruction, witness intimidation, and potential bribery — now blocked as the Supreme Court has put him above the law, or shut down by his toadies — further compound his record of potential crimes.
Yet Trump’s ultimate crime goes beyond mere lawbreaking. He has methodically eroded democratic institutions, weaponized disinformation to undermine public trust, and attacked the traditionally nonpartisan independence of the judiciary, intelligence agencies, military, and law enforcement. His assaults on the press are right out of Putin’s playbook. Trump’s relentless assault on truth and democracy normalizes authoritarianism and political violence.
Thus, his most dangerous crime is not simply corruption or obstruction, nor even incitement of insurrection: it’s the deliberate attempted destruction of American democracy itself. This crime, far more profound than any individual act, threatens the survival of the republic itself.
If America is to survive as a free nation, we must confront the reality of Trump’s actions. He isn’t merely a criminal; he’s become the most dangerous criminal in American history precisely because his actions imperil the very foundations of our democracy.
Allowing such crimes to go unpunished risks setting a precedent that future would-be autocrats may follow, forever tarnishing the promise of American democracy. Once he’s out of power, our nation’s new mantra must become, “Never forget, never forgive, never again.”
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This part of Trump's lawlessness is most troubling of all
Rule of law. Due process. Separation of powers.
Many of us were taught that these are the core principles of our government that protect us and our democracy. Now, we’re living through dire threats to these fundamental values. Since taking office, U.S. President Donald Trump has launched a relentless assault on America’s judiciary and legal system — with dire consequences for people across the country.
Trump’s systematic dismantling of judicial authority isn’t a Beltway issue for Washington insiders. The American people recognize these actions for what they are: a threat to their own rights and ability to be treated fairly by the courts. Our polling of voters in battleground states demonstrated that 74% of those voters — including Democrats, Independents, and Republicans — are concerned that Trump’s actions could allow the government to violate their rights with no consequences.
And the administration’s flouting of the law has already directly threatened Americans’ basic safety: Trump’s unprecedented deployment of the military and national guard in California, against the wishes of state and local governments, escalated an already volatile situation and put civilians in danger.
It goes without saying that our courts aren’t perfect — and, indeed, as the administration’s assault on their independence demonstrates, real reforms will be needed to our judiciary and legal system in the years ahead to right the ship.
But put simply, this administration has no respect for the separation of powers — attacking judges who issue opinions contrary to Trump’s agenda and signaling a clear willingness to circumvent the rule of law altogether.
One of the earliest examples of Trump’s defiance of lawful court orders came just a few weeks after he was sworn back into office, when Judge John McConnell Jr. ordered the unfreezing of billions in federal grant money. The administration's refusal to comply meant communities nationwide lost funding for essential services, causing mass panic and confusion across the country. When the administration ignores orders to reinstate critical support for communities, American families and children suffer.
And now, Trump and his administration openly admit to ignoring the courts. For months, the Department of Justice provided excuse after excuse for why they hadn’t facilitated the Supreme Court-ordered return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland father they wrongfully sent to El Salvador. Last month — though the administration continues to persecute him — Garcia was brought back to the U.S., proving that had the federal government wanted to obey the Supreme Court in April, they could have.
This creates a dangerous precedent for everyone in America: Legal protections are meaningless if the government can disregard them at will. What happens when your Social Security benefits are wrongfully denied? When your healthcare coverage is illegally terminated?
This pattern of defiance goes hand in hand with Trump and his allies’ targeting of the legal system overall.
Trump’s MAGA Republicans in Congress have filed articles of impeachment against federal judges Trump doesn’t like, and Republican leadership is advancing harmful legislation to kneecap the power of the courts. They are working to eliminate the power of the judiciary to pause Trump’s dangerous, illegal executive actions nationwide. Without this protection, your rights would depend entirely on where you live. An unconstitutional policy could be paused in California but continue harming families in Texas, Florida, and Ohio.
The administration’s shake down of our nation’s largest and most lucrative law firms similarly impacts access to justice. By punishing firms for political reasons, and then extorting them for nearly a billion dollars in legal services, Trump is trying to create a culture of fear in the legal community where few are willing to challenge government actions and all work to bolster his power.
Our judiciary or legal system overall is not perfect. Far from it. And when we’re out of this mess, work must continue to strengthen the independence and fairness of our courts.
But we need strong courts and strong lawyers more than ever at this moment. Without them, Trump and his congressional allies will have free rein to enact any and all harmful policies regardless of established law or the Constitution. And hardworking Americans who just want to care for their families and loved ones will be the ones to suffer.
But the American people are seeing right through these attempts to rig our government in favor of the rich and powerful. Since Trump’s inauguration, millions of people have participated in protests across the country.
When ordinary people are willing to take to the streets, it is time for the most powerful among us to call a spade a spade and not duck away from the full crisis facing our country.
The momentum is starting to shift: Members of Congress have begun sounding the alarm on Trump’s unprecedented attacks on judicial independence, and law firms like WilmerHale, Perkins Coie, and Jenner and Block are fighting back against Trump’s unconstitutional executive orders.
We need more courageous action. And while it is critical that the protests and civic engagement we’ve seen across the country continue, we also need that action to come from the most powerful: lawmakers at all levels of government, law firms, corporations, and university systems.
If we value our ability to seek justice when wronged and ensure equal protection under law, we must recognize our justice system is under siege. Defending our courts isn’t only about preserving institutions — it’s about protecting our rights and our freedoms before it’s too late.
- Maggie Joe Buchanan is the interim executive director at Demand Justice
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The three ways Trump is shafting his base
Trump is shafting his base economically in three ways most Trump voters don’t see or know. It’s important that they do.
Prices are rising
The Consumer Price Index has risen 2.7 percent from a year earlier. That’s the fastest pace since February. The trend is worrying, especially for working-class consumers who have to sacrifice a larger portion of their paychecks to buy what they bought before.
So-called “core” inflation — which strips out volatile food and energy prices, and is therefore a more reliable measure for underlying price pressures — is rising even faster: up 2.9 percent from the same time last year.
Trump’s tariffs are to blame
Trump’s tariffs are the major culprit. Prices rose noticeably on appliances, clothing and furniture — all products heavily exposed to Trump’s import taxes from Canada, China and other major trading partners.
Prices will almost certainly rise further over the course of the summer, as new so-called reciprocal levies go into effect, including 50 percent import tax on Brazil and an eye-popping 50 percent import tax on copper, all set to take effect Aug. 1.
The Yale Budget Lab has estimated that consumers will face an overall effective import tax rate of 20.6 percent. That’s the highest in 115 years, the equivalent of a $2,800 hit in yearly household income.
$2,800 is a far bigger deal for lower-income consumers than higher-income. Much of Trump’s working-class base will be hurt.
Trump’s fight with the Fed is making everything worse
Trump wants Fed Chair Jerome Powell to cut interest rates in order to stimulate spending. But there’s no way Powell is going to do that with core inflation picking up.
Trump doesn’t have the power to fire Powell but Trump is trying to pressure him with a White House investigation of an expensive renovation of the Fed’s headquarters, which Trump may try to use as a pretext for firing him. Earlier today, Trump again tore into Powell over both interest rates and the cost of the renovations to the Fed’s headquarters.
Trump’s pressure on Powell is worrying investors that Trump won’t allow Powell or his replacement to control inflation.
This worry is raising inflationary expectations — already causing lenders to raise longer-term interest rates. The worry is also eroding confidence in the safety and stability of the U.S. dollar, which is plunging in value.
Trump voters are facing a triple whammy
Lower-income American consumers will be hit with three big cost increases:
(1) Import taxes (Trump’s tariffs), which will rise further on August 1. These import taxes will take a bigger bite out of the wallets of lower-income Americans than higher-income.
(2) On top of the import taxes, the declining dollar makes everything imported from the rest of the world even more expensive. Again, lower-income Americans will be hit harder than higher-income.
(3) Trump’s Big Ugly bill will cut Medicaid, Food Stamps which will raise the costs of healthcare and food for lower-income Americans, including much of Trump’s base.
Income inequality is wider than it’s been since the first Gilded Age. Trump’s policies — import taxes (tariffs), pressure on the Fed which is driving down the dollar, and Big Ugly cuts in Medicaid and Food Stamps in order to help finance a tax cut mainly for the rich — will further widen it.
Many of the working-class people who voted for Trump will be harmed the most.
They need to know.
- Robert Reich is a professor emeritus of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com
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This Trump fixer is not the man to reveal the Epstein truth
Donald Trump is not messing around with this Jeffrey Epstein thing.
Cornered like a rat between needing to appease his base by doing something about those smirking photos of him with the sex-offender — but not at all comfortable with something spiraling out of control — Trump has summoned his mob muscle memory to split the difference.
Just send a nice man to pay a little visit to Ghislaine Maxwell in prison. You know, just to chat her up about her plans to discuss what she may or may not know about her late boyfriend Epstein’s illicit activities that may or not have involved facilitating those illicit activities with famous people.
No one in particular. Just an emphasis, perhaps, on what Maxwell may not know. But with no any specific famous person in mind.
Sounds innocent enough to me.
The visitor apparently will be Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, certainly an appropriate representative of the Department of Justice. And Blanche’s independence should hardly be questioned just because of Trump’s long-established history of insisting that the DOJ serve as his personal law firm.
It is true that “Blanche represented Trump in both the 2020 election interference case in Washington and the Florida case accusing the former president of hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate,” as the Associated Press reported, adding: "In both cases, the defense team successfully mounted a legal strategy focused heavily on delaying the cases until after the election.”
And, of course, Blanche was part of Trump’s team in that annoying New York prosecution for which the former president was found guilty of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in an effort to influence the 2016 by disguising hush-money payments to porn-star Stormy Daniels as legal fees. That now-moot verdict is under appeal.
So, Blanche is clearly an honest broker here, just as he was in representing Trump ally Paul Manafort against some Russia hoax thing. And if you’re looking for a common denominator here, it is this: Mr. Blanche is one very competent lawyer known for his formidable and aggressive cross-examination style.
And ultimately good outcomes for his clients.
Against that backdrop, came this tweet today from Blanche, which only cynics might view as a just a little bit wide of the strike zone in the candor department.
“Justice demands courage. For the first time, the Department of Justice is reaching out to Ghislaine Maxwell to ask: what do you know?”
Well, of course justice demands that. And what better unbiased source than Trump’s lawyer to assure the world, “No one is above the law — and no lead is off-limits.”
Even by Trump’s standards, that does seem just a bit audacious on its face. But what do I know? It’s not like I’ve ever had first-hand dealings with Blanche.
Perhaps it might be better if someone more authoritative weighed in. Maybe like Lev Parnas.
In a piece published on Tuesday on his Substack, Lev Remembers, Parnas writes:
“But almost none of these pundits know Todd Blanche like I do. I want to take you back and remind you: Todd Blanche was originally Paul Manafort’s attorney. Later, he was supposed to be on my legal team. But when I made the decision to stop protecting Trump’s criminal operation and started telling the truth, Blanche quickly became my adversary. He stayed on to represent my co-defendant, Igor Fruman, and worked against me at every turn.”
We don’t know exactly what Trump’s fixer plans to say to Ghislaine Maxwell. But we do know she’s serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking and conspiracy. We do know she shared a criminal enterprise — and a silence pact — with Epstein that conveniently kept many powerful names off the record.
And we do know she’s at least an acquaintance of Donald Trump, who was apparently at least an acquaintance of Jeffery Epstein. Although, Trump’s defenders can point out that, four years after Epstein’s death in prison, Trump retroactively banned him from Mar-a-Lago, maybe.
So what should we expect to come from Mr. Blanche’s nice visit to Ms. Maxwell?
Give me a break.
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Two red states are about to get redder thanks to brazen GOP cheats
Ohio and Texas could do it. Both states could steal enough congressional seats with new gerrymandered maps for voting districts to fortify the Republican majority in the U.S. House next year.
Rigging the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections with gerrymandered congressional districts drawn to guarantee GOP wins is paramount to protecting the Trump regime from political opposition.
By the time voters go the polls in 16 months, the ramifications of shredded safety nets, hiked tariff prices, lowered job growth, eliminated health insurance, gutted federal agencies, and expanded militarized raids in American neighborhoods may be acute.
The electorate may well be fuming and motivated to end, or at least put a check on, Trumpian madness by rejecting the rubber-stamping Republican majorities in Congress. The GOP-led U.S. House, with its exceedingly slim margin of command, is most vulnerable to a Democratic flip in the midterms.
Persuading voters on the merits of a highly unpopular agenda that hammers working families with the largest cuts to Medicaid and food aid in history, and showers the ultra-rich with huge tax breaks that add trillions of dollars to the national debt, is a tall order for Trump’s servile coalition on Capitol Hill.
So rather than take a chance on a losing argument, Trump wants the fix to be in before any vote is cast in the pivotal election. Redrawing congressional districts to give lopsided partisan advantages to one party fits the bill.
The felon-in-chief pressured the Republican governor of Texas to call a special legislative session this week with a rare ask of lawmakers: Consider redrawing congressional districts ahead of the midterm elections.
The Texas Republican Party hailed the unusual request to revise redistricting in the state mid-decade as “an essential step to preserving GOP control in Congress and advancing President Trump’s America First Agenda.”
There you go. A candid endorsement of politically manipulated district boundaries — that dilute votes and disenfranchise whole constituencies — to hold on to power.
If the Texas legislature can turn more blue districts into red ones through unfair, undemocratic gerrymandering, Republicans could pick up four or five seats in Congress and pad the House majority with predetermined election outcomes.
Ohio Republicans also plan to bolster the narrow GOP majority in the U.S. House with two or three seats they intend to skew red when they draw a new congressional map soon.
Republicans lord over every aspect of redistricting in the state. They can easily ram through another unconstitutional redistricting map that flagrantly ignores the rule of law again and disregards the overwhelming mandate of voters for fairer, more competitive, more representational districts in Ohio.
Under one-party rule in Ohio, Republicans don’t have to follow the clear text of the state constitution on drawing legislative and congressional districts that broadly represent statewide voting preferences without unduly favoring one political party over another.
They have repeatedly brushed off Ohio Supreme Court orders to comply with constitutional redistricting amendments approved by over 70% of Ohioans.
They ran out the clock on challenges to their lawless gerrymandering until they could replace an independent state supreme court with a partisan panel.
This year Republican majorities in the legislature, the Ohio Supreme Court, and the Ohio Redistricting Commission will have another crack at out-gerrymandering the congressional voting districts they originally approved because the shelf life of the current maps — Ohioans have been forced to use for two elections — was limited to four years with no Democratic buy-in.
The congressional boundaries drawn in 2025 will dictate the next three elections. Expect even more lopsided districts designed to cement Republican dominance in Ohio.
The party is eying at least two congressional districts, represented by Democrats Marcy Kaptur in Toledo’s 9th and Emilia Sykes in the Akron-based 13th, to turn into solid Republican strongholds.
Cincinnati Democrat Greg Landsman, representing Ohio’s 1st district, could also be targeted with newly configured boundary lines that stretch into deep red territory.
What is no doubt taking form now, while unaware Ohioans vacation, is another unlawful scheme to win elections, not on merit, persuasion, or robust competition, but by cheating.
By circumventing constitutional mandates on redistricting with the blessings of accommodating Republican justices. By hollowing out the one person, one vote principle that asserts each individual’s vote should carry equal weight in the electoral process. (Gerrymandering stacks the deck by roping 2-to-1 ratios of Republican voters into failsafe GOP districts that consign opposition voters to statistical irrelevancy.)
But the fix is in to destroy any semblance of representative government in Ohio and steal a couple of congressional seats to secure a Republican majority in the U.S. House that will green-light whatever Trump wants.
In the coming months, Republican operatives in the state will go through the motions of consensus-making with Democrats in the Statehouse and on the redistricting commission but it’s all for show. GOP kingpins have no incentive to play fair or do right by Ohio voters — who voted twice to reform redistricting and end partisan gerrymandering.
Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman and his coterie of legislative lackeys will do as they please.
Without any check on their power in the state, they will put party over people to secure Republican congressional majorities by rigging the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections with unconstitutionally gerrymandered districts to keep absolute rule — not self-governance.
- Marilou Johanek is a veteran Ohio print and broadcast journalist who has covered state and national politics as a longtime newspaper editorial writer and columnist.
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Paramount and CBS must answer one simple question
Timing is everything.
The news that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert will end in May 2026 has focused on whether his termination was part of a “deal” (implicit or explicit) to get Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval of the pending merger between CBS parent company Paramount and Skydance Media. If so, it was another “bend-the-knee” moment in the media’s ongoing capitulation to U.S. President Donald Trump’s attack on democracy’s foundational institutions.
But the timing of the announcement itself is raises a critical unanswered question: Why now? It was either pandering to Trump, management’s incompetence, or both.
The cast of characters
Skydance owner David Ellison is the son of Oracle billionaire founder Larry Ellison, Trump’s friend and supporter.
Through her family’s holding company National Amusements, Sheri Redstone owns a controlling interest in Paramount and is a member of its board of directors.
If the FCC approves the Skydance-Paramount merger announced in July 2024, Skydance will pay National Amusements $2.4 billion.
Colbert has become one of Trump’s fiercest TV critics. Beginning in 2016 and continuing for nine consecutive seasons, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has been the highest-rated program in its time slot.
The timeline
- In September 2024, Trump urged CBS to fire Colbert.
- Days before the 2024 election, Trump filed a frivolous lawsuit accusing CBS of bias in broadcasting a 60 Minutes interview of then-Vice President Kamala Harris. The complaint alleged that the edited interview and associated programming were “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference” intended to “mislead the public and attempt to tip the scales” in Harris’ favor.
- Prominent First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams said that “the First Amendment was drafted to protect the press from just such litigation.” Harvard Law School Professor Rebecca Tushnet called it “ridiculous junk and should be mocked.” Attorney Charles Tobin warned, “This is a frivolous and dangerous attempt by a politician to control the news media.”
- February 6, 2025: Redstone told the Paramount board she wanted to settle Trump’s lawsuit.
- April 13: Trump said CBS “should lose their license” and he hoped that his appointed FCC chair Brendan Carr “will impose the maximum fine and punishment.”
- April 22: Bill Owens, the producer of 60 Minutes — a 30-year veteran of CBS — resigned with this warning: “[O]ver the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for 60 Minutes, right for the audience.”
- April 27: 60 Minutes co-anchor Scott Pelley praised Owens and offered an unprecedented on-air rebuke of Paramount: “Stories we’ve pursued for 57 years are often controversial — lately, the Israel-Gaza war and the Trump administration. Bill made sure they were accurate and fair — he was tough that way. But our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires.”
- May 4: 60 Minutes aired a segment quoting prominent attorneys criticizing Trump for unlawfully targeting Big Law firms. In response, Trump threatened to sue CBS for defamation again, but he never did.
- July 1: CBS settled Trump’s frivolous 60 Minutes lawsuit regarding the Harris interview by contributing $16 million toward Trump’s future presidential library.
- July 14: In Colbert’s first appearance after a two-week vacation, he returned to The Late Show and joked that Paramount’s settlement with Trump was “a big fat bribe.”
- July 15: Skydance’s David Ellison was in Washington to meet with FCC chairman Carr and other FCC officials. Later the company said Ellison “discussed Skydance’s commitment to unbiased journalism and its embrace of diverse viewpoints, principles that will ensure CBS’ editorial decision-making reflects the varied ideological perspectives of American viewers.”
- July 17: During the taping of The Late Show, Colbert informed his audience that CBS had informed him the prior evening that he and his program had been terminated, effective May 2026.
- July 18: Trump wrote on Truth Social: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings…”
The other possibility
Already swirling in controversy over the departure of 60 Minutes producer and settling the Trump case, Paramount and CBS anticipated the outrage and skepticism that terminating Colbert and The Late Show would generate.
Contemporaneously with Colbert’s firing, George Cheeks (co-CEO of Paramount Global and president and CEO of CBS), Amy Reisenbach (president of CBS Entertainment), and David Stapf (president of CBS Studios) issued a statement declaring: “This is purely a financial decision against a challenging backdrop in late night. It is not related in any way to the show’s performance, content, or other matters happening at Paramount.”
Following the announcement, “leaked” reports from anonymous CBS sources and “sources close to the network” suggested that The Late Show was losing millions of dollars yearly.
Maybe it was. But that argument proves too much.
“[T]wo people familiar with the show’s finances” told The New York Times anonymously that the show “was racking up losses of tens of millions of dollars a year.”
If true, the losses weren’t a new problem. And there’s no evidence that CBS gave Colbert, who produces the top-rated show, an opportunity to explore less expensive production possibilities.
So why announce cancellation of the program 10 months before it would leave the air in mid-2026?
It’s possible — but unlikely — that Colbert’s contract required 10-months’ advance notice of termination. But if so, CBS’ failure to include such context to blunt the otherwise apparent connection to the merger was a profound management failure.
On the other hand, if Colbert’s contract did not require 10 months advance notice prior to termination, the announcement was either: 1) one more effort to grease the Paramount-Skydance merger skids by “bending the knee” to Trump; or 2) a different management failure that intensified the preexisting cloud over CBS’ integrity.
Either way, Paramount and CBS owe shareholders and viewers an answer to a simple question: Why now?
Their first press release was an exercise in obfuscation.
- Steven J. Harper is an attorney, adjunct professor at Northwestern University Law School, and author of several books, including Crossing Hoffa — A Teamster's Story and The Lawyer Bubble — A Profession in Crisis. He has been a regular columnist for Moyers on Democracy, Dan Rather's News and Guts, and The American Lawyer. Follow him at https://thelawyerbubble.com.
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These people were meant to hold Trump to account. They are utterly failing to do so
The President of the United States posted a FAKE VIDEO TO THE ENTIRE WORLD Sunday night, of a kneeling Barack Obama being placed in handcuffs, and we are supposed to go along like it is just another day in America.
This has got to stop, before we wake up one day soon to find it is already too late.
Our working press has so completely lost the thread right now it would be laughable if it wasn't so damn dangerous and disgusting.
The same media that made a meal, and regularly dined off, the America-loving Joe Biden’s allegedly declining cognitive skills during the bulk of his term in office, still can’t bring itself to accurately report on the most dangerous and corrupt person in U.S. history, the America-attacking, Donald Trump.
In fact, it might even be worse than that, because from here it looks like many in the Fourth Estate have completely surrendered to the gruesome man, who already spurred the most violent assault on our Capitol since 1814, and then did nothing but root for its success for three terrifying hours.
Our country is hanging by a thread.
You know it, I know it, and hundreds of millions of people around the world know it, yet our media is still treating it all like we are in the bottom of the seventh inning of some baseball game.
Rather than taking a deep, damn collective breath, and assessing just how rotten a job they are doing reporting on the most significant news story since the Civil War, our media seem more interested in cashing in on the crimes of the century.
When dark places like CBS News aren’t filling their bottomless pockets by intentionally dumbing down their “news” product, they are bowing to the sickening king, and helping him fill his.
This isn’t the first time I’ve raised this alarm, and won’t be the last. I know I am hardly alone, and can see you nodding in sad agreement as you read these furious words, but every now and then I need to take a breath and scream out loud that THIS IS NOT HOW JOURNALISM IS SUPPOSED TO WORK, DAMMIT.
This is one of those days.
HOW, are there STILL not entire news desks in our major media hubs devoted to nothing but this relentless attack on America? HOW isn’t currying favor with fascists across the globe, while punishing democratic leaders, not a 24/7, all-points bulletin?
World wars have started this way, for crying out loud.
And as I’ve pointed out many times, if we lose this war — and right now we are being pummeled by this grotesque administration and its slimy Republican Orcs — the first thing to go will be our editorial independence in this country.
So rather than using the skills and news sense they are taught as journalists to defend this once-honorable profession by simply accurately reporting on this dangerous attack, they are going out of their way to aid and abet it.
How bad is it?
Well, The New York Times decided to lead its front page this morning paying homage to the arsonist, instead of reporting on the horrific damage he’s done with his nuclear-powered blowtorch:
It’s bad enough the Times decided to lead their paper with an “analysis” piece rather than the gory facts. But it gets worse — much worse — when they treat it all like some “unifying” conquest by the sickening Trump as he heroically pulls his revolting base together to keep up their attack on as many innocent human beings as possible in this country.
I guess they figure since they have already normalized caging human beings in alligator-infested swamps where they are forced to eat like dogs, and swiping healthcare from millions so they can slowly die … there’s no reason to make a big deal about a president spending his time in office sharing disgusting, fascist videos that are so clearly designed to tap into his voters’ most base and racist instincts.
The video that the communication staff (Stephen Miller) eagerly cobbled together for Trump shows Obama in an orange jumpsuit pacing in a cell. I will not be sharing the video here, but if you wander off into any of the likely dark corners of the Internet (or Fox News), you can find it.
And if you are saying he did this as a distraction from this slowly developing Jeffrey Epstein story, then you need to clean out your brain, and open your eyes, because we are long past the distraction stages of this active fascist takeover, and knee-deep in all the carnage.
Stop normalizing any of it, just because you and our damn media can’t keep up with all of it.
Trump is in a steady mental and physical decline, and is doing everything he can to drag America through the sewer and to hell with him.
Our mainstream media doesn’t need to follow him there, but they do need to find some high ground, and start reporting on it with some damn urgency for God’s sake.
(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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There's a tidal wave of reform coming — and Trump can't see it
When Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem unleashed her ICE shock troops on Los Angeles last month, she said: “We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialist” leaders.
Minutes later, California Senator Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from the press conference and put in handcuffs.
The specter of socialism is being used by Trump and his goons to make America even more authoritarian.
Trump even threatens to “run” New York City if its voters choose Zohran Mamdani — a Muslim of Indian descent and avowed democratic socialist — as their next mayor.
“We have tremendous power at the White House to run places when we have to,” says Trump, warning that he might step in and take control if New Yorkers elect Mamdani.
Trump is using the word “socialism” to slam everything the public needs and to justify cruel cuts in the nation’s safety net.
Trump’s just-enacted Big Ugly Bill will push more than 11 million Americans off Medicaid. Another 2 million Americans will lose food stamps. The savings will help finance a big tax cut for the wealthiest Americans.
But the next time they’re up for election, Republican lawmakers may be shocked to discover how many Americans prefer the “socialism” of Medicaid and food stamps to the socialism-for-the-rich tax cuts in the Big Ugly.
Medicaid alone has 83 percent favorability. Among Republicans, it’s a remarkable 74 percent.
Trump and his lackeys are living in another century if they think they can use “socialism” as a cudgel.
As early as 2011, the Pew Research Center found that almost as many voters under the age of 30 held a positive view of socialism as of capitalism.
During the 2016 Democratic primaries and then again in 2020, young people all over America wore buttons reading “feel the Bern” in honor of democratic socialist Bernie Sanders.
Whether it’s called socialism, democratic socialism, or enlightened capitalism, societies need to pool resources for the common good.
As it is, America spends very little on social insurance compared to other rich nations.
More than 26 million Americans still lack health insurance — and, as noted, at least 11 million more will lose it as a result of the Medicaid cuts in Trump’s Big Ugly.
We’re the only industrialized nation without paid family leave. We’re also the only one without minimal assistance for people in need.
Most other rich nations subsidize college for their young people, yet a large percentage of American households cannot afford to give their kids a four-year college education without going deeply into debt.
Most other rich nations also provide more comprehensive unemployment insurance, cheaper access to child care, and far more help with elder care.
These other nations aren’t “socialist.” They’re capitalist. But they take better care of their people.
American capitalism is the harshest in the world. Inequality here is worse than in any other rich nation. And our politics is far more polluted with big money.
These features are connected. Vast and growing inequalities of income and wealth have spawned big money into politics — with which the rich have gained tax cuts and corporate subsidies while limiting or reducing social spending.
Which is why America has lower tax rates on the super-rich than any other rich nation, one of the lowest life spans of all rich countries, and a higher percentage of homeless people. Trump’s new Big Ugly will make all this worse.
I don’t believe Americans will continue to tolerate this growing socialism for the rich and worsening social squalor for everyone else. Whether or not Zohran Mamdani is elected mayor of New York, we’re going to see a tidal wave of reform.
Most Americans need stronger safety nets and deserve a bigger piece of the economic pie, and they know it.
If you want to call this socialism, fine. I call it fair.
- Robert Reich is a professor emeritus of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com
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Only one scandal could really hurt Trump — and make him more dangerous than ever
Elon Musk is probably chuckling as Trump flails — the firestorm around the Epstein documents arguably started when the Tesla and SpaceX owner tweeted that Trump was in the files. Which has led to some significant changes in the Trump/media/politics/deep-state landscape that it’s important to review. They include questions about the future of Trump, his cult followers, a possible power struggle between Trump and Rupert Murdoch, and JD Vance’s presidential ambitions.
To begin: if you want everything around the Epstein furor to make sense, all you have to understand is that Donald Trump has been leading a cult.
Like Jim Jones did. Like Charles Manson did. Like Rajneesh did here in Oregon. Unlike Manson, but more like Rajneesh and Jim Jones, however, Trump’s cult is fairly large and preexisted his appearance on the scene. And that’s part of his problem.
It’s large enough to have in it three kinds of people.
The first kind of person is the “true believer.” They make up most of the Trump cult members, what we call MAGA. They’re usually pretty much willing to overlook anything Dear Leader does, much like the devoted followers of Rajneesh and Jim Jones.
And then there are the “facilitators.” These are cynical people who don’t believe the cult leader’s BS, but go along with it — and even promote it — because it works to their benefit. They are typically parasitic. They usually make their money from the members of the cult, or get power from them (votes in this case), and often use their position in the cult to gain other benefits like sexual favors or fame.
In this case the facilitators are the Republican politicians who are begging money from their followers and voters, and then vote to screw those followers on behalf of the cult leader — Trump — and his billionaire friends. The morbidly rich keep the cult facilitators in line by funding their elections and, in the case of Republican Supreme Court justices, their lavish lifestyles.
When you understand that it’s a cult and that some of the people who seem high-up in it are true believers and not facilitators, suddenly Marjorie Taylor Greene’s behavior makes sense when she seems to attack Trump: she’s a true believer. She’s completely bought into the conspiracy nuttery that brought him to office twice.
You also begin to understand why Chuck Grassley ran that Senate judiciary committee the way he did to push through Emil Bove over the objections of the Democrats and literally hundreds of former lawyers, judges, and Department of Justice officials: Grassley is a cynical facilitator.
And you understand why the Republican congressman from Kentucky, Thomas Massey, has joined with Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna to demand release of the Epstein documents and essentially turned on Trump.
Massey represents the third kind of person in a cult, who only shows up typically toward the early stages of the collapse of the cult, and then presents a real danger to the cult leader.
This third category are “the true believers who have suddenly seen a crack in reality,” the false reality that the cult leader has created around them. You could call them “former true believers.” Once they saw the light through that crack — saw the real world — they realized that they were being lied to.
When a cult is on the verge of collapse, these kinds of people become more and more numerous as more and more people begin to wake up from the cult leader’s trance.
At that point, they turn on the cult leader the way a spurned lover turns on the previous object of their affection. They become angry and vengeful. They demand answers. They want to know how they got sucked in and why: “Who did this to me? And to whose benefit?”
This is how Donald Trump’s world is disintegrating right now, and the danger is that, like Jim Jones, Charles Manson, and Rajneesh, he may destroy a lot of lives when he goes down.
He may not kill them like Jim Jones did — although he already arguably killed a half-million of his cult followers with the malicious, incompetent way he handled COVID — but he will destroy many of the people and institutions around him. This is what narcissists do when they begin to psychologically collapse.
As I noted two weeks ago, my late friend Armin Lehmann was there when he gave Hitler the information that the war was lost. He stood outside Hitler’s door when he shot himself. He wrote a book about it, and told me that Hitler wanted Germany destroyed by the Allies because the German people, he believed, had “let him down.”
This is “narcissistic collapse,” which I’ve written about several times over the past dozen or so years. Donald Trump is almost certainly going to hit this state of mind (he’s already close), and many of his “true believer” followers are in the midst of their own personal narcissistic collapses right now.
And that is what makes this a very dangerous moment for America.
Suing Murdoch, for example, was an extraordinarily reckless and dangerous thing for Trump to do. Newscorp isn’t going to roll over and pay Trump a bribe, in all probability, because he needs them more than they need him.
Murdoch, after all, is the guy who created the cult that Trump has come to dominate: they’re called “Fox News viewers.” He created it long before Trump came along: he and Roger Ailes simply let Trump into it back in 2015 because he was good for ratings and thus increased profits.
So, once Murdoch decided that Trump could benefit his cult and make money for his television network (and even lower his taxes), he let Donald believe that he was the leader of the cult. And for many people in that Fox “News” Viewer cult, Trump actually did become the leader.
But the real guy who controls the cult is Rupert Murdoch. It’s not Donald Trump. Trump is just today’s figurehead. Sort of like with the Catholic Church, Trump is the pope right now. But when the pope goes, he gets replaced.
The institution lives on, and you can bet your bottom dollar the Murdoch family is not going to let the cult that they’ve built with Fox “News,” the cult that has made them billions of dollars and given them the power to influence governments on three continents, dissolve.
They’ll jettison Trump long before they’ll let go of that kind of power.
The way Murdoch’s father, Sir Keith Murdoch, first created this cult back in the 1940s was by feeding the readers of his newspapers in Australia a steady diet of racist outrage, fear, and anger. As historian John C. McManus writes in his definitive book Fire and Fortitude: The US Army in the Pacific War, 1941-1943:
“As American soldiers began arriving in numbers during the early months of 1942, they were greeted with tremendous enthusiasm by the Australians, many of whom couldn’t hide their immense relief at the soothing presence of the GIs. … Appreciative crowds gathered at piers and station platforms to greet incoming ships and troop trains. Waving and cheering, they studied the newcomers with great curiosity.”
But Sir Keith Murdoch thought he could make a pile of money by turning Australians against Americans. Inflaming nationalist and xenophobic sentiments would sell papers, goose advertising, and make him rich.
Thus, as McManus documents:
“A chain of newspapers owned by Sir Keith Murdoch, father of latter-year media magnate Rupert Murdoch, earned a reputation among the yanks as relentlessly anti-American. Truth, a particularly brassy Melbourne tabloid, often published lurid tales of GI rapes of innocent Australian girls and seduction of married women.
“On occasion, Australian soldiers vented their frustration over such tales with violence. Small groups of Diggers roamed around some of the cities, beating up any American soldiers whom they saw dating local girls. … An American soldier was even shot and killed one morning as he emerged from the house of a married woman.”
Eventually, the hate against Americans that Murdoch had stirred up blossomed into full-fledged riots in multiple Australian cities, creating a real problem for the war effort but boosting Murdoch’s newspaper sales (and, presumably, profits) into the stratosphere as his papers developed their own cult following in Oz.
Keith then passed the cult and the media outlets that had created it along to Rupert, who then took his brand of cult-forming “journalism” (Fox called it “entertainment” when they were sued by Dominion Voting Systems) to England and then, ironically, to America.
By definition, people who live in a cult live in an unreality. A fictitious world. That’s the key to how the cult and its leaders control them: they convince the cult members that they’re the only ones who truly understand how the world works, that they have “secret knowledge,” and that everyone outside the cult is either blind, evil, or both.
This creates an us-versus-them narrative so powerful it replaces facts, isolates them from reality, and makes loyalty to the cult and its perceived leader more important than truth itself.
People who watch Fox “News,” for example, believe that what they hear on NPR is “liberal propaganda,” which is why they support defunding public broadcasting. What they actually hear on public broadcasting, however, is just the news. It reflects reality. Actual reality. But they think it’s liberal propaganda because their cult told them so.
In much the same way Jim Jones’ followers and Charles Manson’s followers didn’t listen to their friends when they tried to share reality with them or point out how they had been indoctrinated, brainwashed, and lied to, the people in the Fox “News” cult don’t want to listen to reality. They want the comfortable lies and the excuses for hate and outrage that they have wrapped themselves in for years.
Murdoch now has to make a tough decision. He’s already gotten most of what he needed from Trump — a massive tax break for himself and his family, and deregulation of the broadcast and internet space — so he only needs Trump now because Donald makes for good television.
But “good television” can work two ways for a public official, for or against them. If Trump has sufficiently pissed off Murdoch, or he thinks that Trump’s beginning to harm the GOP and thus the cult that the Murdoch family and their well-paid talent largely control, he could give Trump the old heave-ho.
So if Trump gets thrown out of the Fox “News” Viewer cult — essentially gets fired as the cult leader — the cult will continue. It would simply lose a very small percentage of its hard-core true believers who’d completely surrendered their personalities to Trump, and even those folks are probably retrievable.
The problem for Murdoch and other facilitators of the Fox “News” Viewer cult that Trump now leads is who will fill the vacuum that’ll be created when Trump is gone, whether it’s from natural causes or an impeachment or 25th Amendment action that Murdoch and Fox could provoke. Who will continue to defend the interests of the morbidly rich and the monopolistic parts of corporate America and become the next leader of the GOP?
JD Vance is unlikely to be able to fill Trump’s shoes, which has to be giving Murdoch heartburn. Vance has virtually no hold at all on the Fox “News” Viewer cult that Trump today dominates.
He is not beloved by the cult; if anything they think of him as weak and effeminate. He supposedly uses eyeliner. He married a brown-skinned woman and has brown-skin children. His wife refuses to adopt Christianity.
“He must be weak,” is the consensus across much of the white racist base that constitutes the MAGA-sphere.
Nonetheless, Vance himself apparently thinks he can take over for Donald. He’s deluding himself, of course, but he appears to believe it. Just look at how he just publicly demanded that Trump’s “artwork” be released by the Wall Street Journal or the FBI.
He knows a release of more damaging evidence of Trump’s long-term relationship with Epstein — and thus, in the minds of the cult followers, participation in the deep state conspiracy that exploits children while it runs the world — could inflict incredible damage on Trump, and even make Vance president.
What man who believes destiny and God want him to become president wouldn’t jump at something like that? Remember, JD Vance said the following about Donald Trump:
“I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon … or that he’s America’s Hitler.”
“[Trump is] a disaster and a bad man. A morally reprehensible human being.”
“Fellow Christians, everyone is watching us when we apologize for this man.”
Vance understood the cult even before he cynically pretended he was part of it when he saw Trump was prevailing: like most other Republican politicians and the billionaires who fund them, he’s an exploiter, a cult “facilitator.”
It’s extremely unlikely, however, that he’ll ever become the leader of the Fox Viewer cult; it’s unlikely, in fact, that the subset of the Fox cult that has formed around Trump will survive as Trump followers.
As John Hobbes famously said, “Men heap together the mistakes of their lives and create a monster they call destiny.” With the Epstein revelations turning into a torrent, that’s now the story of Donald John Trump.
When Trump is gone — and that day will eventually come — his corner of the Fox “News” Viewer cult will most likely shatter back into dozens of smaller organizations, many of which will simply be returning to their roots: Proud Boys, Three Percenters, anti-abortion freaks, rightwing preachers hustling their congregations, etc.
After all, as Maureen Dowd points out, Trump has now become the deep state he once decried. He’s creating the very “FEMA Camps” that had Republicans and Fox “News” Viewer cult members hysterical when Obama was president.
He’s developing a masked, anonymous, unaccountable nationwide secret police force and is compiling massive amounts of intelligence on everyday Americans. Between his spy agencies and data brokers, he has access to anybody’s social media posts, emails, and medical and travel records. He’s given ICE full and unfettered access to everybody’s Medicaid and other government records.
If rightwingers keep protesting him or demanding more information about Jeffrey Epstein, they will be next in his crosshairs and that could begin the final stage of his participation in the Fox “News” Viewer cult. He’s already called them stupid, hysterical, and told them they’re dupes for the Democrats, claiming he no longer wants their support.
Thus, we stand very close to what may be a true crossroads moment for America.
If Trump survives this politically, he’ll most likely begin a serious crackdown modeled after the June, 1934 Night of the Long Knives (albeit probably less bloody), purging his opposition within his own ranks much like Putin did a decade ago in Russia and Orbán is doing now in Hungary. It’ll further damage American democracy and make it much harder for us to recover our previous New Deal and Great Society political and economic systems.
On the other hand, if Trump goes down in flames and Vance, Mike Johnson, Ted Cruz, or somebody equally weak tries to step in and take over the cult, it could spell doom for the GOP for a generation.
So get out the popcorn, but maybe you should also have something a little more defensive than that. Get ready. It’s gonna be a rough ride, but in all probability we’ll make it through without the kind of damage that Germany or the people at Jonestown suffered.
Wish us all luck. We need it — and citizen activism — now more than ever before.
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