A slight hiccup in Trump's Nobel Peace Prize plans
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
Hit them where it hurts: Loyalty to Trump is costing CEOs billions
Today I want to assess Saturday’s No Kings protests in the context of American capitalism.
Standing up against Donald Trump is not only important politically and morally. It’s also profitable.
Diversity, for example, is good for business. CEOs that have scaled back their companies’ diversity programs in response to Trump’s attacks have misread the market and are now suffering the consequences.
When Target rolled back DEI, the company confronted a consumer boycott, which led to a 17 percent drop in the value of its stock. A similar boycott of Walmart has contributed to an 18 percent drop in its stock value in the past month alone.
Palantir, a data analysis and technology firm whose contracts with the federal government are expanding, has taken heat over its rejection of DEI and coziness with Trump. (In a recent speech to the Economic Club of New York, Palantir CEO Alex Karp told the audience that DEI programs are antithetical to meritocracy.)
On the other hand, corporations like Costco and Apple, which have stood firm against Trump and in favor of DEI, have done well.
That’s because diversity is good for business. Investors and consumers often consider a company’s commitment to diversity in making their decisions. Most big institutional shareholders such as BlackRock and Vanguard believe that a diverse workforce and customer base increases corporate profits.
Costco’s management says its DEI efforts have helped it attract and retain a wide range of employees and improve merchandise and services in stores. “Among other things, a diverse group of employees helps bring originality and creativity to our merchandise offerings, promoting the ‘treasure hunt’ that our customers value,” Costco said in its proxy statement to investors.
Similarly, law firms that have refused to cave to Trump’s blackmail are being rewarded by clients, while those that have surrendered are being penalized.
At least 11 major companies — among them Oracle, Morgan Stanley, Microsoft, and McDonald’s — have shifted their legal work to firms that have stood up against Trump and away from firms that struck deals with him, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Microsoft dropped Paul, Weiss — one of the first law firms to surrender to Trump —and signed on with Jenner & Block, which took the administration to court. (A federal judge struck down Trump’s executive order against Jenner, saying it was “doubly violative of the Constitution.” Trump is appealing.)
Legal talent is also parting ways with firms that surrendered to Trump. Key lawyers and rainmakers are joining firms that have held their ground.
Paul, Weiss lost four of its partners after its surrender. One is among America’s top antitrust litigators; another co-chaired its litigation department.
As many as seven partners are exiting Willkie Farr & Gallagher in the wake of its surrender to Trump and joining rival law firm Cooley, which has helped successfully challenge one of Trump’s orders in court.
Corporate clients and legal talent are deserting law firms that surrendered to Trump because the surrenders have brought into question the integrity of these firm’s managing partners.
General counsels at various companies told The Wall Street Journal that they doubted that firms surrendering to Trump could be relied upon to represent them — in court or at the negotiating table — since they couldn’t stand up for themselves.
At a recent luncheon at Cipriani in Midtown Manhattan, Brooke Cucinella, a top lawyer for Citadel — a large hedge fund headed by Republican megadonor Ken Griffin — told a group of corporate lawyers that the company likes to work with law firms that aren’t afraid of a fight.
The lesson should be clear to CEOs and top managers: Surrendering to Trump is bad for business.
Another lesson: boycotts work. The consumer boycott of Target for abandoning DEI has been hugely costly to the corporation. Similarly with Walmart. The boycott of Tesla due to Elon Musk’s destructive role has caused investors to flee.
Remember: Corporations are little more than the power of their brands to attract consumers, and their ability to attract talented people to manage and innovate. If they surrender to Trump, their brands are likely to suffer since most Americans don’t approve of Trump’s bullying. And some of their most talented people are likely to leave, since many can’t abide Trump’s attempts to undermine our democracy.
Saturday’s No Kings Day protests were hugely successful. We should keep the heat on Trump as both consumers and investors — boycotting corporations and firms that cave in to him and rewarding those that don’t.
Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/
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Deeply ignorant MAGA cashed in on lawmaker's assassination
Just hours after Minnesotans learned that Democratic House leader Melissa Hortman had been assassinated, right-wing influencer Collin Rugg, who has 1.8 million followers on X, posted a “report” that hinted that she’d been killed because of a recent vote on ending undocumented adults’ ability to enroll in MinnesotaCare, a subsidized health insurance for the working poor.
Mike Cernovich, another right-wing influencer who has 1.4 million followers on X, took Rugg’s post and amped it up, but in the “just asking questions” style of many conspiracy theories:
“Did Tim Walz have her executed to send a message?”
They were deeply ignorant about the MinnesotaCare issue.
Walz and Hortman — who was instrumental in passing legislation allowing undocumented people to sign up for MinnesotaCare as speaker of the House in 2023 — negotiated a compromise with Republicans in the Minnesota Legislature to end eligibility for adults, but keep it for children. They did so to win necessary Republican support in the 67-67 House to pass a state budget. Without it, state government would have shut down on July 1.
Both Hortman and Walz signed the compromise agreement in mid-May. This week, Hortman spoke tearfully about how difficult the vote was for her, but she was bound to vote yes on the issue because of the prior agreement.
The “theory” of Hortman’s killing was further undercut by the vote of Democratic Sen. John Hoffman — who was also targeted by the suspect — against rolling back MinnesotaCare for undocumented Minnesotans.
Rugg and Cernovich’s posts were shared widely and just the start of the disinformation.
Once law enforcement sources began revealing a suspect, right-wing influencers ran with an insignificant detail: That Vance Luther Boelter was a “Walz appointee.”
Like many states, but even more so here, Minnesota is home to hundreds of nonpartisan and bipartisan boards and commissions, which are composed of thousands of people who typically win the appointment by simply volunteering. There are 342 open positions on Minnesota boards and commissions. Boelter was appointed to the Workforce Development Council by Walz’s predecessor Gov. Mark Dayton and reappointed by Walz.
It was the equivalent of calling a Sunday school volunteer an “appointee of the bishop.”
No matter, the Murdoch media machine, specifically the New York Post, had their headline: “Former appointee of Tim Walz sought….”
Cernovich had his greasy foil hot dog wrapper and began constructing a hat:
“The Vice President candidate for the Democrat party is directly connected to a domestic terrorist, that is confirmed, the only question is whether Tim Walz himself ordered the political hit against a rival who voted against Walz’s plan to give free healthcare to illegals.”
Walz had no such plan. He had signed an agreement to end eligibility for undocumented adults.
Joey Mannarino, who has more than 600,000 followers on X, was more crass:
“Rumor has it she was preparing to switch parties. The Democrats are VIOLENT SCUM.”
It was a ridiculous “rumor.” One of the last photos of Hortman alive was an image of her at the Democratic-Farmer-Labor’s big annual fundraising event, the Humphrey-Mondale dinner, which took place just hours before her assassination.
No matter, Cernovich wanted his new friends in federal law enforcement to act:
“The FBI must take Tim Walz into custody immediately.”
Finally, fresh off his humiliating defeat at the hands of President Donald Trump, world’s richest man Elon Musk quote-tweeted someone again falsely alleging Hortman was killed by “the left” and added:
“The far left is murderously violent.”
The suspect’s “hit list,” according to an official who has seen the list, comprised Minnesotans who have been outspoken in favor of abortion rights. CNN reported that it also included several abortion clinics, which doesn’t sound like the work of “the left.”
Right-wing influencers marred Hortman’s death and smeared Walz on a pile of lies.
In a different, saner world, they would be humiliated and slink away. But the smart money is that during the next moment of national crisis and mourning, they will again lie for profit.
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These damn politicians! I'm fed up — and I'm done
Political parties and their politicians have never been less popular, and I’d argue it’s about time.
This probably isn’t something a guy who makes his living writing about this toxic environment should be on his high horse touting right now, but let’s face it, for the most part, our politics have become big-money recycling efforts stuffed to overflowing with worn-out ideas, and double-talkers who only go away to write books.
They have become an unwelcome, outsized portion of too many of our lives, and nag at us for more of our time and treasure.
Fact is, warts and all, we got ourselves into this mess and we are the only ones who will get us out. We’ve assigned too much power to mere politicians and their money-laundering machines to clean things up when we’re the ones with all the power.
While I’ll never vote for a Republican again during what’s left of my life, because I prefer our public servants weren’t members of a cult, I’m plenty disappointed with too damn many Democrats these days.
This would put me in the vast majority of America, by the way, and the sooner the over-served party I vote with starts getting that, the better it will be for everybody.
Truth is, most Americans aren't affiliated with political parties, and aren’t running around with their hair on fire. They have lives to lead, children to raise, dogs to walk, marriages to hug, bills to pay, and politicians to ignore.
I see their political inaction as dangerous and even selfish, but I grudgingly get it.
They aren't tuned into Fox or MSNBC or CNN or any of these other dreadful places where sharpies draw seven-figure salaries to creatively warn us that the end of the world is coming each day in an effort to draw coveted viewers, who will dutifully tune in tomorrow, no matter what happened yesterday.
For most of America, the constant partisan noise that is flowing downhill off of Capitol Hill and echoing in their ears is just making their difficult lives more difficult.
I have come to understand I am way the hell out of balance right now. I’m overwhelmed by the madness, and lately a bit underwhelmed by the things that truly matter like my family, and all those beautiful animals out there.
It’s not them, it’s me.
I’m a relatively fit dude, who loves a good hike or a swim, but for the first time in my life my blood pressure’s running high. The doc asked me about any recent lifestyle changes that might explain it, and I shook my head and flashed one of those “are you kidding me; have you seen WHAT is in the White House?” kind of smiles.
So I’m cutting back on the salt, and keeping my eyes and ears open for some clear air and perspective.
As to these damn politicians and parties that are eating the majority of us alive, I have a prediction for you: We’re going to be OK, because we are slowly discovering they don’t matter as much as they seem to think they do.
And if you are asking, “What kind of drugs are you on, Earl? Have you seen what is going on in Washington?” I am answering with a question: “What did you see in November that I didn't?”
The Democrats are running the same old tired leadership and messaging out there that lost back then, and the reprehensible Republicans are mistaking all that for a mandate, while losing one special election after another. They got a big, beautiful bill out there, that is going to hurt tens of millions of Americans, and make things easier for billionaires, and ironically for Democrats, who are going to win elections despite themselves because of it.
I swear to you there’s not a single person I talk to on the Left who doesn’t think we deserve better. NOT ONE. And I’ll bet you a shiny quarter that you are hearing the same thing.
It’s OK to admit that, people. I’d argue it’s even necessary if we want the change we think we deserve.
Most Americans, no matter which way they lean politically, have decided they have better things to do than hold their breath while the tails of the bloated big-money oligarchs wag all those political dogs.
These days, all you have to do is look down to see that America’s two major parties are in the gutter. Endless polling backs this up. Most of this actually has Democrats in worse shape than Republicans.
Here’s just one of those lopsided polls that back up all my assumptions. I’ll share a pair of slides from that poll here, and ask you to focus mostly on the “neither party” columns:
Which political party’s views are closer to your own on each of the following issues:
Like I said, a lot of people in America are fed up with the state of our politics, and have no faith in the politicians to fix it.
And I’ll admit it, these numbers irk the hell out of me as a liberal, but I’ve been around long enough to know America lacks taste. We are a mostly fat, ignorant nation isolated by the two largest oceans in the world, and enough weaponry to blow up the Milky Way.
We are armed and dangerous.
Hell, it’s the un-evolved Year of 2025, and we’re still spending our time warning about the end of our democracy, hollering for a woman’s right to choose what is best for HER, and that diversity, equity and inclusion are all about fairness, not favoritism.
You’d figure climate change would be accepted as reality by now, and everybody would get that vaccines save lives.
It’s helluva lot to process.
There’s been too much idolization of politicians the past couple of decades or so, and I figure social media has a lot to do with it. You want to idolize something, maybe start with our teachers and nurses, who don’t have time for all this political bulls--t.
I’ve been on the streets protesting five times since November’s massacre, and can tell you that the people I’ve run into aren’t there because they are fighting for the Democratic Party, they are there because they are angry, standing up for themselves, and want some damn change in this country.
The politicians have mostly avoided these things, because I reckon they have nothing to say that the people haven’t heard before.
The Democratic Party needs a complete reboot, and to work on understanding what people are really feeling outside the Beltway. The people in the party who understand that first will fare handsomely later.
I’m not wrong about this.
So now we see who is really listening, and who just wants to hand us more of the same.
Until then, I’ll see you in the streets.
Now pass the low-sodium salt …
(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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Don't let GOP billionaires' gripes fool you — this is not ok
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mehmet Oz, and two Trump administration colleagues recently published an op-ed in The New York Times justifying the GOP’s attempt to cut Medicaid and SNAP benefits by imposing draconian prove-you’re-working paperwork and hoop-jumping requirements on recipients. In their article titled “Trump Leadership: If You Want Welfare and Can Work, You Must,” they noted: “Our agencies are united in a very straightforward policy approach: Able-bodied adults receiving benefits must work.”
Which raises the question: “Why?”
Why is it that anybody working full-time in the richest country in the history of the world should need any sort of government assistance just to eat and stay healthy? Shouldn’t a full-time paycheck — any paycheck for any sort of work — pay enough that people can live a decent life?
As Senate majority leader John Thune said yesterday, “The best health care is a job…” What he failed to note was that that’s true of Denmark but not America.
What, after all, is the point of a minimum wage if not to make sure that people who are working don’t have to steal just to stay alive? Shouldn’t any reasonable capitalist society be organized in such a way that a single full-time worker can raise a family, put their kids through school, take an annual vacation, and have a reasonable retirement?
This is not a new or novel idea.
Among the developed world, the U.S. stands virtually alone in imposing punitive, bureaucratic work requirements for access to food, housing, and health care, all services that are treated as rights in most other wealthy nations.
Welfare in pretty much every other developed country in the world is limited to the disabled, sick, or caregivers because everybody who’s working is making enough to cover their basic living expenses. In Denmark, for example, McDonald’s workers earn $22/hour, in addition to getting six weeks of paid vacation, generous pension contributions, overtime pay, and paid sick leave. (And a Big Mac costs ~$5.75 there, compared to $5.69 here.)
This “if you work, you can live a good life” notion isn’t even a new or novel idea for the United States. Progressive Republican President Theodore Roosevelt, a quarter-century before his distant cousin Franklin got a minimum wage passed into law, proposed the same in August, 1912, when he told an audience in Chicago:
“We stand for a living wage … [It] must include enough to secure the elements of a normal standard of living — a standard high enough to make morality possible, to provide for education and recreation, to care for immature members of the family, to maintain the family during periods of sickness, and to permit of reasonable saving for old age.”
We got close to this during the golden age of America’s middle class, created by FDR’s New Deal programs in the 1933-1980 era, when about a third of Americans had a good union job which formed the wage and benefit floors other employers had to compete with, causing two-thirds of Americans to be able to live a middle class life with a single paycheck.
I saw this myself. When I was five, my father sold Rexair vacuum cleaners and World Book Encyclopedias door-to-door. We lived in a garage converted to a one-bedroom house and every month visited what my brothers and I called the “cheese store” (the county-run surplus food facility) to get a free brick of American cheese, a big canvas bag of dried macaroni, and a box of powdered milk.
Then, the next year, dad got a job at a unionized tool-and-die shop. Within a year we’d bought a three-bedroom house in a new south Lansing suburb and dad had a brand-new car, the first that didn’t have holes in the floorboard. Every year we took a vacation, driving all over the country. We bought our first-ever TV that year, along with a living room full of furniture to sit on to watch it.
In other words, a good job and the Machinists Union lifted my family from poverty into the middle class. And we stayed there: in 2006, dad died in that same house he’d bought brand-new in 1957, which is now occupied by one of my nieces and her family.
By 1980, about a third of all American workers were represented by a union. Between that and the top 74% income tax bracket, America’s middle class grew faster than any had in world history.
Income and wealth were broadly distributed: the average CEO only took, at most, 30 times his employee’s salaries. The top tax rates made it a waste of time to try to take more out of the company, and stock distributions as compensation and corporate stock buybacks were functionally illegal then.
All that changed, of course, with the neoliberal Reagan Revolution of 1981, which led us to the mess we’re in today.
It’s a moral crime that anybody working full time in America must depend on the largess of government or philanthropy to live a decent life: a minimum wage should provide for a minimum standard of living, not a poverty-filled struggle.
A study published by The Journal of the American Medical Association found that states that raised their minimum wage into the $15/hour range (DC, Washington, California, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Rhode Island, and Illinois) had welfare participation rates that were about a third lower than states hanging onto the federal $7.25/hour minimum.
In other words, welfare benefits have become subsidies to cheap-labor employers; without those benefits, people couldn’t afford to work for crap wages and employers would be forced by the marketplace itself to pay their workers better.
Back in 2016, the Economic Policy Institute found that raising the minimum wage from $6.75 to $8.00 per hour back in the day in California decreased state public assistance payments by $2.7 billion. It only makes sense.
Thus, the entire GOP effort to impose draconian, paperwork-rich “work requirements” on Medicaid and SNAP recipients boils down to two things:
1. Cheap labor Republicans want us all to pay taxes to subsidize the lifestyles of people whose employers should be paying them enough to live a decent life.
2. They want to make it harder and harder for those people who are legitimately in poverty because of disability, age, or a lack of local work opportunities to get benefits so they can reduce federal outlays to fund tax cuts for billionaires.
In other words, it’s all about screwing working people to keep taxes low on billionaires and profits high in corporate America.
So, the next time some billionaire-funded Republican mouthpiece like Kennedy or Oz complains about “able-bodied people on welfare,” don’t just challenge the cruelty — challenge the con.
Ask them why they think the richest nation in the history of the world can’t afford to guarantee that a full-time job comes with a living wage.
Ask why they’re hell-bent on protecting low wages and corporate profits instead of working families.
And then ask the real question: Who benefits when work doesn’t pay — the struggling single mom trying to feed her kids, or the billionaire writing the checks to keep this scam going?
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The clock's ticking on Trump's immunity — and he just broke the law
This week, when border czar Tom Homan threatened to arrest California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Donald Trump goaded him on, telling reporters, “I would do it if I were Tom. I think it's great!” and adding, “Gavin likes the publicity but I think it would be a great thing.”
While Trump brays about having a Democratic governor arrested and Kristi Noem had a Democratic U.S. senator tackled for asking questions, someone should tell them that two can play that game. In the State of California, inciting public violence is a crime. Commonly known as inciting a riot, under California Penal Code (PC) 404.6 it is a crime to deliberately exacerbate violence by encouraging peaceful protesters to engage in violence. PC 404.6 states:
Anyone who with the intent to cause a riot does an act or engages in conduct urging a riot, or urges others to commit acts of force or violence, or the burning or destroying of property, and at a time and place and under circumstances that produce a clear and present and immediate danger of acts of violence or destroying of property, is guilty of incitement to riot.
Every law enforcement agency in the U.S., including the FBI, knows and teaches that an excessive show of force will turn peaceful protesters into violent rioters, almost instantaneously. Recommended de-escalation methods are even published on Trump’s Department of Justice website.
Nationwide police and FBI anti-escalation standards coupled with Newsom’s objections to the military’s presence lead to one conclusion: Trump sending troops into LA based on the fiction of an “invasion” is deliberate provocation. Trump is trying to incite violence to serve his own political goals of declaring martial law, in violation of California’s Penal Code, and should be arrested for same.
Nothing radicalizes citizens faster than being brutalized by state force
Whomever is advising Trump in LA knows the quickest and surest way to radicalize any population is to use or display disproportionate force against unarmed people. A disproportionate government response to civic unrest predictably triggers anti-government sentiment, and causes violence that feels like self-defense. Military advisors know this, every police chief in the nation knows this, counterinsurgency experts know this.
Every law enforcement organization in the US trains its officers to de-escalate — to diffuse violence rather than exacerbate it. The FBI acknowledges, through its Crisis Negotiation Unit, that de-escalation is “crucial in keeping police officers out of harm’s way … anecdotal and impressionistic evidence clearly reflects that this methodical approach to managing crisis events has saved thousands.”
The FBI has provided de-escalation training to law enforcement agencies across the U.S. for the past 50 years, so it’s impossible that Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Kash Patel, Trump’s FBI director, are unaware of it. Trump may have deliberately chosen unqualified clowns for his cabinet, but every one of them has attended enough rubber chicken conferences to know the importance of de-escalation.
By sending the military into LA for what started out as largely peaceful protests, Trump is doing the opposite of what his own police intelligence counsels. Newsom is hip to what Trump is doing, and has made clear that Trump is putting the LA public, the police, and military members in harm’s way. As he and the mayor of LA keep telling Trump, who knew it already, heavy-handed violence from the government never pacifies dissent, it causes violence to explode exponentially, which is Trump’s plan.
Trump’s police state
Trump has made no secret of his plan to recall thousands of American troops from overseas to station them instead on American soil. His goal, modeled after his fascist idol in Hungary, Viktor Orbán, is to impose a police state under which the media, judges, and political opponents are silenced, imprisoned, or worse, for criticizing him. With tanks in the streets and Fox News propaganda running 24/7, Trump will be able to remain in office until he appoints Don Jr. his successor. Trump’s objective is to remain in power, which he has admitted, to insulate himself from legal accountability until he dies.
To that end, he has done everything in his power since returning to office to instigate violence on the streets, and not just in LA. So far he’s tried to incite riots by arresting a Black mayor, arresting a Black member of Congress, arresting a sitting judge, kidnapping brown people on their way into work, and sending migrants to foreign gulags without due process, all while filming and televising the cruelty as widely as possible.
Republicans are scared s–––less or they’d stop this madman. Their cowardice is on display before the rest of the world.
Watch what a member of Canada’s parliament, Charlie Angus, just said in a formal statement about Trump’s conduct in LA. Offering solidarity and prayers for the people of California, Angus delivers a full-throated indictment of Trump’s police state, noting, “We’re not talking about creeping fascism here. This is full-on police state tyranny from gangster president Donald Trump.”
In a fiery (and delicious) 10-minute speech from the Canadian Parliament, Angus rages that a convicted felon and sexual predator dares to threaten Canada’s sovereignty. Angus urges his fellow Canadian lawmakers to block Trump from entry into Canada and to bar Trump’s scheduled attendance at the upcoming G7 conference.
Withhold federal funds — and arrest Trump
Newsom is correct to consider withholding federal taxes from a fascist president determined to defund states, universities, and organizations he doesn’t like.
A state withholding federal taxes is unprecedented, except for a brief period during the Whiskey Rebellion when farmers in Pennsylvania refused to pay the whiskey tax. It’s also logistically complex because federal taxes are paid by employers and state residents directly. But what Trump is doing to destroy the nation is also unprecedented; 95% of his executive orders exceed his constitutional authority.
The state of California is the nation’s biggest “donor state,” meaning it pays $83 billion more to the federal government every year than it receives — nearly three times as much as the next biggest donor state. In addition, California taxpayers contribute more than any other state to total federal taxes, according to Internal Revenue Service data. In FY 2023-24, California’s “total federal taxes were $806 billion — nearly twice as much as Texas, which contributed $417 billion, and more than twice the $384 billion New York contributed.” So whatever damage our toddler-in-chief hopes to inflict on California’s governor and state economy will assuredly ripple throughout the national economy.
Acknowledging that what Trump is doing to California is “pure theater,” Newsom should take his own advice. He can start with serious talk about how to withhold funds from Washington (because two can play that game too), and consider having Trump arrested. Even though a sitting president can’t be prosecuted while in office, they are not immune from arrest or criminal charges or prosecution after leaving office. There’s at least one precedent — President Ulysses S. Grant was brought into custody for speeding.
The point isn’t sending Trump to prison, where he’d be today if not for the Federalists he installed on the Supreme Court. The point is fighting Trump’s theater fire with theater fire. Trump has cast himself as the strongman star of his own fascist reality show, but he’s not the only official with the power to have people arrested for breaking the law.
- Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are found @ Alternet, Chicago Tribune, Howey Political Report, Indiana Democrats’ Kernel of Truth, Inside Indiana Business, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News, South Florida Gay News, State Affairs, and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
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Horror in Minnesota is all on Trump
As I was typing a piece on Saturday morning, endeavoring to stitch together Flag Day, our army’s birthday, and the peaceful marches against tyranny that were going off all over the United States of America, I got a chilling news bulletin — that two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses had been shot in their homes by a madman impersonating a police officer.
This is what I knew as my fingers hit the keyboard:
State Representative Melissa Hortman and husband, Mark, have died in the attack at their home in the Minneapolis suburbs. State Senator John A. Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were also shot multiple times at their house in a nearby suburb, but remain alive.
Minnesota Gov.Tim Walz has called this a “political assassination.”
This will be a developing, gruesome, and very American story for some time to come. I want to be careful to honor the victims while channeling my sadness and rage at the state of things in my country in as precise a manner as possible.
So let me start here:
What happened in Minnesota can surprise ABSOLUTELY NOBODY who has been paying even the slightest amount of attention to the sickly state of America in 2025.
It is perhaps the most predictable thing I have seen coming in the roiling wake of a week in which we have seen a U.S. senator — a son of Los Angeles — tackled and handcuffed for simply asking a puppy-shooting, ineffectual wax figure to explain herself, and to stop lying about the reason for her agency’s invasion of the city he grew up in. There were no apologies for this disgusting incident.
We have watched helplessly while human beings, one after another, have been swept off our streets by masked monsters, who may or may not be impersonating government law enforcement officers.
We have watched as this grotesque president whipped young, impressionable soldiers into a frenzy and made sure to empty their pockets and fill his by selling them his warped MAGA memorabilia on one of our army bases.
We have gone so far past the unimaginable, it is impossible to know where to begin to connect with the normal.
But let me be crystal clear on this: ALL OF IT lies at the fat little feet of the convicted felon, who attacked this country on January 6, 2021, did nothing to stop that attack for hours and instead rooted for its success, and has continued to intentionally throw gasoline on the raging fires he has so eagerly stoked, starting in the vicinity of 2010 when he questioned President Obama’s citizenship.
THAT was the catalyst for everything that has followed, and has lead us to lawmakers and their families now being slaughtered in their homes.
IT IS ALL ON HIM.
Perhaps I am not helping right now, but like so many of you I have grown weary and disgusted waiting for people with heft and alleged status to say what we all know to be true.
The gaslighting has gone on long enough.
My God, this mess of a man stood in our nation’s capital in that odd way he does … ample ass out, jutted, orange chin forward … and did his best Mussolini impression by keeping the tanks running on time on their way down our streets.
Are you reading this????????
TANKS.
All this to honor himself on his 79th birthday. If there is any good news here, and you have to squint hard to see it, he has climbed another notch on the actuarial life table.
I have said enough for now, my friends. Like you I am aching inside. My fury wringing out tears …
I took part in our march here in Madison, Wisconsin, joining tens of thousands of other hearty souls who love their country enough to assemble peacefully on her behalf.
We are still the lucky ones. Nobody has turned their guns on us — yet.
(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)
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This horrific chaos kills any lingering doubts about America
The top news item about the president’s recent address at Fort Bragg was that the Army vetted the soldiers who appeared behind Donald Trump so that only his supporters were seen in video of the event.
The second news item was that none of them were fat.
All that is terrible enough, but it isn’t the worst part.
The worst part is what the event suggests about the enduring appeal of Trumpism, which is to say, the power of America’s totalitarian drift.
Is it temporary or permanent? Will it die with Trump?
The president’s public breakup with billionaire Elon Musk seemed to suggest it might. Writer Daniel Roberts told me recently that it exposed the fragility deep in the heart of the Trump coalition.
“Without Trump as a unifying figure (and, again, I use ‘unifying’ loosely), it has always seemed obvious to me that this coalition collapses,” Dan said. “They might all still vote Republican, but without Trump, it’s going to be constant internecine warfare between them.”
But then, less than a week later, Musk relented, saying that he went too far. The Trump coalition may be more resilient than we think.
Then there’s Fort Bragg.
It was basically a campaign rally featuring all the familiar gripes and grievances. The difference was the audience, men and women in uniform who enthusiastically cheered and jeered. Trump slandered Joe Biden. He smeared American cities. He railed against “wokeness.”
And they roared in response.
The backdrop, of course, was Los Angeles. The president had dispatched 700 Marines. He commandeered 4,000 of California’s National Guard. ICE and Border Patrol are acting like the president’s secret police, snatching people in the night, attacking citizens for expressing their right of free speech, wearing masks to hide their identity and prevent any attempt at accountability. And officials are using the language of warfare to describe their intended goals.
“We are not going away,” Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem said. “We are staying here to liberate [Los Angeles] from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”
This is in addition to the hard-to-pin-down sense that politics is coming to an end and that disagreements will be settled by force. This sense has been ambient, but it snapped into hard focus yesterday. Instead of answering questions raised by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) during a press briefing, Noem had him thrown out and handcuffed.
Liberals looked on that moment in disbelief in the same way they disbelieve the regime can accomplish what it’s setting out to do, namely, making America white again. The country is just too diverse, liberals tell themselves. It can’t get rid of millions of people. For that reason, state violence in LA is really the outcome of its impotence.
Yet the president is reportedly planning to expand the use of the Guard in a broader immigration crackdown. In his Fort Bragg speech, he smears Los Angeles, calling it a “trash heap,” invoking the memory of “enemies within” that are, he has said, worse than enemies abroad.
And they whooped and hollered, like the president’s personal army.
Then there’s the fact that Trump is spending tens of millions of dollars on a military parade this weekend, on his birthday, in the wake of his regime’s illegal impoundment of congressionally approved money for everything from cancer research to public libraries. And if you have a problem with the parade, he said, forget about expressing dissent.
Any protest will be met with “a very heavy force,” he said.
If you think handcuffing Padilla was bad, just wait.
“Understand: Nothing Trump does with our military will be to protect the citizens of the United States of America,” D. Earl Stephens told me. “Everything Trump does with our military will be to protect himself from the citizens of the United States of America. Will he succeed?
Earl publishes the newsletter Enough Already and is a regular contributor to Raw Story.
“We are at the most dangerous juncture in America since the beginning of the Civil War,” he told me Thursday.
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Trump's long-festering dream finally gets its wake up call
Ever since he was ignominiously blocked from shooting George Floyd protesters, Donald Trump has been itching to sic the military on U.S. citizens. Seizing California’s National Guard and sending U.S. Marines into Los Angeles to deliberately escalate violence brings his long-festering fever dream closer to life.
Trump’s former Defense Secretary Mark Esper has recounted how, during a White House meeting in 2020, Trump looked at Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and asked why he couldn’t just shoot protesters, adding, “It was (both) a suggestion and a formal question. And we were just all taken aback at that moment as this issue hung very heavily in the air.”
Milley pushed back on that suggestion and other illegal Trump impulses, eventually leading Trump to call for Milley’s execution and revoke his security detail. During Trump 1.0, Trump apparently suggested shooting protesters enough times that Esper issued a public statement opposing the use of the Insurrection Act against protesters, enraging Trump.
Trump made sure that would not happen again in his second administration by appointing a dangerously unqualified defense secretary with few moral qualms. As a Fox News host, Pete Hegseth echoed Trump’s desire to deploy the military against protesters. He defended war criminals who ‘killed the right people in the wrong ways,’ advocating “total war against our enemies… All of ’em, you stack bodies, and when it’s over, then you let the dust settle and you figure out who’s ahead.”
A trillion-dollar defense budget to kill whom, exactly?
Even though the U.S. is not at war, and Trump has shamefully abandoned our NATO military alliances, Hegseth waxes hard on “lethality,” and rails against “woke” laws that punish soldiers for indiscriminate killings. Trump/Hegseth seek a trillion-dollar defense budget, not to defend America from foreign enemies who are now Trump’s mentors, but to attack “enemies within,” i.e., Americans who oppose Trump’s agenda.
None of this, including Trump’s deliberate escalation of violence in LA, was unforeseen. Who can forget how Kamala Harris was panned as histrionic when she said Trump would sic the military on U.S. citizens, following his promise to do just that? In October, 2024, Trump said he’d use the military against the biggest threat to America — Americans who don’t support him.
“I think the (main problem we face) is the enemy from within,” Trump said, adding: “We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the big — and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen.”
Both he and Hegseth have already weeded out military officers who would honor their oaths to the Constitution over illegal orders from Trump. This week, Hegseth inadvertently confirmed that the military, under Trump, will become a domestic force when he testified before Congress, saying, “We’re entering another phase, especially under President Trump with his focus on the homeland, where the National Guard and Reserves become a critical component of how we secure that homeland.”
It’s galling that no congressman has connected the dots and asked about explosive military spending that Trump/Hegseth have signaled will be used against Americans.
Dubious legal grounds
As of this writing, Trump has not declared martial law, but recent Trump history, paired with his glaring mental illness, suggests it’s “when,” not “if.”
Trump’s plan to use troops to impose his domestic agenda is decidedly un-American. Today it includes deportations and manufacturing civil unrest; tomorrow, Trump’s goons will round up journalists who criticize him, judges, Democrats, and political opponents, as just happened Thursday when Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) was tackled to the ground for trying to ask Kristi Noem questions.
If you have any doubt, watch Trump’s illegal and partisan address at Ft. Bragg, where he led troops in uniform to wildly “boo” journalists, California’s governor, and LA’s mayor. If you have any lingering naivety, still hoping soldiers will honor their oaths and not follow America’s Hitler, that speech will erase it.
For now, Trump is acting in LA pursuant to a presidential memorandum deploying the National Guard under a rarely used federal law, 10 U.S.C. § 12406. Under that code, a president possesses the power to federalize the National Guard only when there is “a rebellion or danger of rebellion” against federal authority, or when the president cannot execute federal laws. As Trump sees it, this assessment depends on his own untrained and undisciplined opinion. Under that statute, however, the National Guard can only support other law enforcement officers and defend federal property.
The Posse Comitatus Act also remains in effect, prohibiting the use of the military as a domestic law enforcement agency, except in extraordinary circumstances not yet present in LA despite Trump’s best efforts. The Insurrection Act of 1807, the authority under which Hegseth sent active Marines to LA, is a broader set of statutes granting Trump the power to use military force in specific circumstances, including suppressing armed rebellion, civil disorder, or other extreme circumstances where the states are unable to maintain public order.
Gov. Gavin Newsom formally objected to Trump sending troops, because California in general, and LAPD in particular, have sufficient resources to maintain order. Newsom knows that when US Marines start shooting civilians, whether in LA, Chicago, or New York, violence will ratchet up to the necessary threshold to circumvent Posse Comitatus and allow Trump to declare martial law.
Protest Saturday June 14, on No Kings Day
Trump has now declared the power to deploy armed forces anywhere in the U.S., insisting he can send the National Guard to “locations where protests against [ICE] functions are occurring or are likely to occur.” Like an unhinged cartoon genie granting his own wish, Trump just declared, with spittle on his chin, “We’re gonna have troops everywhere.”
We’ll see about that. Republicans in Congress may have lost their voices and their balls, but the American people haven’t. Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr. defeated the Trump/Hegseths of their time by wielding nonviolent resistance as a strategic weapon. We will do the same.
On Saturday, June 14, millions of Americans will protest Trump on No Kings Day, as Trump enjoys his $45 million ego-fest military parade in DC. The protests will continue, and they will grow. As Justice Louis Brandeis said about civic engagement, “In a democracy, the most important office … is not the presidency, and it’s certainly not governor. The most important office is … citizen.”
- Sabrina Haake is a 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her columns are found @ Alternet, Chicago Tribune, Howey Political Report, Indiana Democrats’ Kernel of Truth, Inside Indiana Business, MSN, Out South Florida, Raw Story, Salon, Smart News, South Florida Gay News, State Affairs, and Windy City Times. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
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Trump crushed every democratic safeguard — except one
Trump wants blood.
The spectacle is the point. The helicopters. The uniforms. The rumble of armored personnel carriers down the boulevards of Los Angeles. The former president of the United States — now reinstalled in the White House through judicial (Citizens United) and electoral (Musk’s money and X) sleight-of-hand that would make Orbán proud — sent U.S. Marines into an American city.
Marines who are trained in killing people. Quickly, efficiently, ruthlessly. Not crowd control, not defending the constitutional right to protest, not arresting and Mirandizing: just shedding blood. Blowing things up and killing people is what this most lethal fighting force in the world does so well. And Trump just sent them into our civilian streets.
At the same time, Donald Trump is presiding over the most openly corrupt regime in the history of this country.
He’s looting the treasury in broad daylight, giving away a $4 trillion tax cut to his billionaire donors and golf buddies, repealing clean air and water protections while wildfires torch the west and hurricanes batter the south, and inviting domestic terrorists into the halls of power. His family and cronies are raking in billions from foreign governments — from Saudi royals to Russian oligarchs to Chinese front companies — with not even a fig leaf of legality.
Meanwhile, he’s gutted the FBI’s domestic terrorism unit, turned the Department of Homeland Security into a political police force, and is laying off scientists from NOAA and NASA because they keep insisting that the Earth is, in fact, burning from the poisons his fossil fuel billionaire friends sell.
And now, as his approval ratings begin to wobble and questions mount about his finances, his backroom deals, and his erratic behavior, he reaches for the oldest play in the authoritarian playbook: provoke unrest then send in the troops.
As LA Mayor Karen Bass said:
“These tactics sow terror in our communities and disrupt basic principles of safety in our city.”
This is not new. Nixon tried it. Hitler perfected it. Mussolini reveled in it. Trump is following a script so old and worn that it should’ve been burned for kindling by now, but here we are again.
In the early 1970s, as opposition to the Vietnam War reached a boiling point, Richard Nixon didn’t try to calm the waters: he deliberately stirred them. He referred to student protesters as “communists” and “bums,” cheered on violent pro-government mobs like the one that beat peaceful demonstrators during the Hard Hat Riot in New York, and did everything he could to push the country into a cultural war fever.
Nixon’s goal was simple: make protest look like rebellion, make rebellion look like terrorism, and make himself look like the only one who could restore “law and order.”
He succeeded, for a while, and it even got him re-elected in 1972. But the price was Watergate, war crimes, and a generation’s trust in government flushed down the drain.
Now Trump, with Stephen Miller whispering fascist bedtime stories in his ear and Steve Bannon howling about civil war from the sidelines, is picking up where Nixon left off. But this time the stakes are even higher, and the intentions are even clearer.
Trump’s deployment of Marines to Los Angeles under the absurd claim of needing to “protect the public” from leftist “urban insurgents” is not about law enforcement. It’s about spectacle. It's about optics. It’s about setting the stage for something much darker.
Like Viktor Orbán in Hungary or Recep Tayipp Erdoğan in Turkey, Trump is using public protests as both scapegoat and smokescreen. The plan is to provoke confrontation, paint it as insurrection, and then invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, a 200-year-old law that allows a president to deploy the military domestically and override governors and mayors.
Once that happens, the road to full dictatorship is wide open.
The Insurrection Act suspends Posse Comitatus, the 1878 law that prevents the U.S. military from being used as a domestic police force. With a stroke of a pen, Trump can militarize every protest, shut down dissent, seize media infrastructure, or even delay — or “postpone” — elections on grounds of public disorder.
Think that’s far-fetched?
Trump has already floated the idea of suspending elections. He joked in 2020 about “12 more years.” His allies in Congress and right-wing media are openly calling for him to stay in office “as long as necessary.” A majority of Republican voters now say they’d support postponing elections “in an emergency.” And who defines the emergency? Trump does.
The recent calls for the military to intervene aren’t about securing streets; they’re about testing the waters. If there’s not enough public backlash to sending Marines into Los Angeles, what’s next? Troops in Seattle? Chicago? Portland? Atlanta? Your town?
This is how democracies die: not with a bang, but with a series of flags, uniforms, and carefully orchestrated TV shots showing a president “taking control.”
- And while all this is happening, where’s the coverage of the $4 trillion tax giveaway to the morbidly rich?
- Where’s the outrage over the billions flowing into Trump’s money bins from foreign governments in violation of the Emoluments Clause?
- Where’s the investigation into the domestic terrorism unit Trump dismantled while neo-Nazis train in camps in Michigan and Florida?
- Where’s the climate report that was buried?
- Where are the Epstein files?
- Where’s the fury over his push to gut Medicaid and privatize our social safety net?
The answer: they’re all buried beneath a pile of riot gear and tear gas canisters.
This is the playbook. Distract, divide, and dominate.
Hitler provoked street clashes with pro-democracy protestors, his brown shirts starting street brawls, then used the Reichstag fire as the excuse to seize emergency powers. Mussolini’s Blackshirts beat and murdered union organizers to manufacture a crisis, then demanded — and got — martial law. Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines used student protests to declare martial law and cancel elections: I was working in that country the week he fled to Hawaii. Erdoğan used unrest in Gezi Park to round up journalists, rewrite the Turkish constitution, and jail his political rivals.
It’s not just history. It’s prophecy.
Trump has studied these men, either directly or through his cadre of enablers and strategists. Bannon once said he admired Lenin because he wanted to “destroy the state.” Miller has been pushing for suspension of habeas corpus. Trump himself tried to deploy the military in 2020 during the George Floyd protests but was held back — barely — by Defense Secretary Mark Esper. Esper’s gone now. In his place? Loyalists.
So what do we do?
We do the one thing that autocrats have never figured out how to fully suppress: we show up.
We take to the streets, not in violent defiance but in peaceful, defiant unity. We reclaim the tools of democracy — voice, presence, solidarity — and we make it clear that we see what he’s doing and we are not going to let it stand.
That’s why this coming Saturday matters more than ever.
No Kings Day isn’t just a rally. It’s a declaration. That we will not be ruled by strongmen. That we do not recognize the Trump family as royalty. That we believe in the power of the people and the promise of our republic.
That no matter how much bloodshed Trump tries to provoke, he will not succeed.
Because when you stand in a crowd of thousands, arm-in-arm with your neighbors, flags flying not in fear but in resistance, you remind the would-be tyrant of something he desperately wants to forget: we outnumber him.
We always have. We just need to show up.
Tag, we’re it.
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Trump can spit on our founders' graves — but he can't run from Lincoln's truth
We’re now living in an early-stage police state.
After Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) was assaulted for saying, “I’m Sen. Alex Padilla and I have a question for the Secretary,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary and notorious puppy murderer Kristi Noem went on Fox “News” and lied to the American people, saying that he hadn’t identified himself, she didn’t know who he was, and that he was “lunging into the room.”
The violence inflicted on Padilla was the point. And it’s being celebrated in real time by MAGA, Fox, and the Trump administration.
After all, dictators can’t be dictators without first cowing the people, terrifying even elected officials, and asserting their absolute and unlimited power to use violence anywhere, any time, and under any circumstances they choose.
“We are not going away,” Noem said in a snarling comment that provoked the question from Padilla. “We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialist and the burdensome leadership that this governor [Gavin Newsom] and that this mayor [Karen Bass] have placed on this country.”
For the record, the job of the federal government is not to “liberate“ cities from the leaders they have elected. That’s what Putin did when he forced all the elected governors of the Russian states (oblasts) to resign and replaced them with men he appointed. Even suggesting it is deeply and profoundly un-American.
This is the Trump administration once again nakedly asserting that they are above the law, are committed to acting without ethical or moral restraint, and that they have no obligation to honor the constitutionally defined oversight role of members of Congress. That they are intent on running a dictatorship here in America, not a democratic republic.
They have arrested and are prosecuting a member of the House of Representatives who was simply doing her job at an immigration detention center in New Jersey. They are ignoring explicit orders by federal judges and the Supreme Court. They are literally disappearing people, including American citizens, off the streets of our cities. And now they’ve taken a United States senator to the ground.
This is not what the people who fought and died to create and sustain this country had in mind.
The genius of the Founders was Montesquieu’s idea of three branches of government with checks on each other’s power. It’s essential to democracy.
Trump (2nd branch) has been trashing judges (3rd branch) and has now violently attacked a congresswoman and a US senator (1st branch). He’s spitting on the graves of the Framers of our Constitution.
And to emphasize their ignoring the Constitution and its requirement that both Congress and the courts can exercise oversight of the president, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said:
“The courts should have no role here. There is a troubling and dangerous trend of unelected judges inserting themselves into the presidential decision-making process.”
Similarly, they refuse to respect the right of American citizens to protest that’s laid out in the First Amendment, “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Trump came right out and said that if anybody in Washington, DC tries to protest his birthday parade on Saturday, he will meet them with violence:
“For those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force. Very big force!”
That wasn’t a threat against vandals or even people who might try to disrupt Dear Leader’s birthday celebration: it was a threat against people who may “protest.”
This echoes the behavior of Hitler’s goons in the early 1930s as they set out to violently intimidate anybody — particularly members of Parliament — who may challenge him. Or Commissioner Bull Connor as he bloodied protesters in Birmingham in the 1950s and 1960s.
Under Trump and Noem, federal agents have been given carte blanche to use violence against non-white people (it’s probably no coincidence that Sen. Padilla is a brown-skinned son of Mexican immigrants), including kidnapping them in broad daylight and sending them to foreign concentration camps with no access to due process whatsoever.
Noem could easily have taken the senator’s question, or just said, “I’m happy to meet with you after this press conference.“ Instead, she chose escalation and violence, which is why Democrats are today calling on her to resign.
Now, in response to the violence Noem and the FBI directed against a US senator, the professional propagandists at Fox “News” are peddling rationalizations and repeating Noem’s lie that she didn’t know who Padilla was. FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino issued a statement “thanking” the men who beat Padilla to the ground. House Speaker Mike Johnson implied Padilla was trying to inflict violence on Noem and called for him to be censured by the Senate.
It appears that Republicans are circling the wagons, defending the assault on Padilla, Trump’s illegal infliction of armed troops on the streets of Los Angeles over the objections of the governor and mayor, and his and Noem’s efforts to stir up trouble in California that they can then exploit Reichstag Fire-style.
Are there any John McCain Republicans left? Any patriots who revere the Constitution and respect the rule of law? Any who are willing to call out Trump’s brutal dictator-inspired corruption and excesses?
The question is an urgent one, because right now the only people who can stop America’s descent into tyranny are the Republicans in the House and Senate. If just a small handful grow a spine, Trump could be stopped in his tracks.
Will it happen? History suggests that massive public opinion holds the answer to that question. It ended, for example, both the presidency of Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War.
As Abraham Lincoln famously said in his debate with Stephen Douglas:
“In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces judicial decisions.”
Saturday will be this era’s most visible expression of public opinion. Stay tuned and stay peacefully active.
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This Navy veteran is shaking with rage at these MAGA tchotchkes
By now, you have most likely heard of the disgraceful appearance by Donald Trump at Fort Bragg in North Carolina on Tuesday.
The convicted felon’s remarks to Army personnel were partisan, incendiary, anti-American and belong in a dumpster and/or Mar-a-Lago, not a United States military base.
Except it was even worse than any of us thought ...
Thanks to some stellar reporting by Military.com, we are learning today that U.S. taxpayers essentially funded a vulgar MAGA rally at a U.S. Army facility.
The appearance by the president of the United States of America had NOTHING TO DO with the morale and good order of our troops and everything to do with HIM, as he stirred these young men and women into a partisan frenzy.
Things were so out of hand, that there were actually booths set up to sell grotesque MAGA merchandise and memorabilia to our troops. This didn’t just cross a line, it obliterated it, and was against myriad Defense Department regulations.
From military.com reporting:
I am admittedly shaking with rage as I type this, friends, because as a veteran I could have never conceived of something like this in my lifetime. These are the kinds of things that happen in other troubled countries — many of which WE actually have helped to liberate with our blood in the past.
I want to keep this missive brief, because I encourage you to read and share widely the comprehensive piece that I linked to above. Please do this.
As the retired managing editor of Stars and Stripes, the editorially independent newspaper that serves the troops and their families overseas, I want to commend the continued good work the folks at Military.com are continuing to do stateside. I assure you they are experts on the military, and wedded to top-notch journalism. Their work has never been more important as the U.S. slides toward fascism.
We are in the most precarious moment in our nation’s history since the beginning of the Civil War. Anybody who is not reporting it this way is dangerous, completely out of their depth, and should not be taken seriously.
Since day one of this anti-American administration I have been warning with some precision that we were heading toward this terrible juncture, and I wish nothing more than to report to you that I was wrong.
Turns out, I actually underestimated the pace of our descent into authoritarianism. Unless there is some significant pushback by our military, fellow citizens, the press, the Democrats and the reprehensible Republican Party, it is hard to see how we survive this.
Before signing out, I am again calling on our military leadership past and present, and fellow veterans everywhere, to speak out loudly against this ongoing attack THAT WE KNOW IS WRONG.
For now, stay strong, lean on each other, and call your political representatives (202-224-3121) to make your voices heard.
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A silver lining on the dark Trumpian cloud
We are relearning the meaning of “solidarity.”
This week, across America, people have been coming together.
We may disagree on immigration policy, but we don’t want a president deploying federal troops in our cities when governors and mayors say they’re not needed.
We may disagree on how laws should be enforced, but we don’t want federal agents to arbitrarily abduct people off our streets or at places of business or in courthouses and detain them without any process to determine if such detention is justified.
Or target hardworking members of our community. Or arrest judges. Or ship people off to brutal prisons in foreign lands.
We may disagree on freedom of speech, but we don’t think people should be penalized for peacefully expressing their views.
We may disagree on the federal budget, but we don’t believe a president should spend tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on a giant military parade designed in part to celebrate himself.
As we resist Trump’s tyranny, America gains in solidarity. As we gain solidarity, we feel more courageous. As we feel courageous and stand up to Trump, we weaken him and his regime. As we weaken Trump and his regime, we have less to fear.
In downtown Kansas City, Missouri, this week, protesters holding signs reading “solidarity” marched from the underpass toward the north lawn of Kansas City’s World War I Museum and Memorial. The demonstration was peaceful. “I felt it was my right and my duty to come here as what I had to go through to come here and yell,” one of them told KSHB.
In Denver, a peaceful crowd gathered outside the Colorado state capitol to speak out against Trump’s immigration policies and march in solidarity with Los Angeles protesters. They carried flags and signs with slogans like “Abolish ICE,” “No human is illegal,” and “Keep the immigrants. Deport the fascists!”
In downtown Tucson, hundreds gathered at the Garces Footbridge, over Congress and Broadway, to show their solidarity. Later, reminders of the protest remained written in chalk on sidewalks: “No one is illegal on stolen land,” “Love over Hate,” and “Free Our Families.”
In Boston, many gathered outside of the Massachusetts State House to express solidarity, saying it’s time to speak up against what they call Trump’s “reign of terror over the immigrant community.” Protesters cited the cases of two local students whom they said ICE abducted and detained for no reason, Rümeysa Öztürk and Marcelo Gomes de Silva.
In Sioux City, Iowa, protesters marched along Singing Hills Boulevard, outside the ICE office, to peacefully protest. One of them, Zayden Reffitt, said, “We’re showing people that we’re not going to be silent and we’re not just going to let all this go through without us saying something about it.”
In Chicago, thousands marched through the Loop, shutting down CTA bus service and creating a standstill on DuSable Lake Shore Drive near Grant Park. When police tried to detain a man in a bicycle helmet, protesters could be heard yelling “no violence” and “let him go.” As Ivanna Vidal explained, “I’m a first-generation citizen, my parents were born in Mexico. It’s something I’m super-passionate about. My family is safe, but there are many who aren’t. This is impacting our community, and we need to stand up for those who can’t speak up for themselves.”
In Des Moines, protesters at Cowles Commons rallied against Trump and in solidarity with others. “We’re here to stand up for members of our community. For immigrants. For migrants. For refugees. For people with disabilities. For people on Medicaid. For seniors. For all the working class, because we are all under attack right now,” said Jake Grobe. “And Trump is trying to scapegoat immigrants and make them the enemy, calling them criminals.”
In Austin, Texas, some five hundred people gathered in front of the Texas Capitol and began marching down Congress Avenue and advancing down 7th and 8th Streets before stopping in front of the J.J. Pickle Federal Building. Demonstrators held flags and signs while chanting, “Whose streets? Our streets.” Local and state law enforcement deployed pepper spray and flash bang grenades against the protesters, arresting more than a dozen people, according to Gov. Greg Abbott.
In San Antonio, hundreds gathered outside City Hall, chanting, “People united will never be divided!” and holding signs that read, “No human is illegal” and “I’m speaking for those who can’t.”
In Sacramento, they gathered in Cesar Chavez Plaza before marching to the ICE federal building on Capitol Mall. “The country is going in the wrong direction,” one named Chris (who would go only by her first name) said. “We need people to get out there. It’s all about the numbers, getting people on the streets peacefully.”
It was much the same in Raleigh, N.C., in St. Louis, and in hundreds of other cities.
***
All across America, people who have never before participated in a demonstration are feeling compelled to show their solidarity — with immigrants who are being targeted by Trump, with people who are determined to preserve due process and the rule of law, with Americans who don’t want to live in a dictatorship.
Peaceful protests don’t get covered by the national media. Most of the people who come together in places like Des Moines and Kansas City to express their outrage at what Trump is doing aren’t heard or seen.
Yet such solidarity is to be celebrated. It is the foundation of the common good. And although the number of people expressing it is still relatively small, it is growing across the land.
This is the silver lining on the dark Trumpian cloud.
Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com
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