Opinion
This big beautiful bill is the ugliest thing ever seen
The old professor in me thinks the best way to convey to you how utterly awful the so-called “one big beautiful bill” passed by the House last night actually is would be to give you this short ten-question exam. (Answers are in parenthesis but first try to answer without looking at them.)
1. Does the House’s “one big beautiful bill” cut Medicare? (Answer: Yes, by an estimated $500 billion.)
2. Because the bill cuts Medicaid, how many Americans are expected to lose Medicaid coverage? (At least 8.6 million.)
3. Will the tax cut in the bill benefit the rich or the poor or everyone?(Overwhelmingly, the rich.)
4. How much will the top 0.1 percent of earners stand to gain from it? (Nearly $390,000 per year).
5. If you figure in the benefit cuts and the tax cuts, will Americans making between about $17,000 and $51,000 gain or lose? (They’ll lose about $700 a year).
6. How about Americans with incomes less than $17,000? (They’ll lose more than $1,000 per year on average).
7. How much will the bill add to the federal debt? ($3.8 trillion over 10 years.)
8. Who will pay the interest on this extra debt? (All of us, in both our tax payments and higher interest rates for mortgages, car loans, and all other longer-term borrowing.)
9. Who collects this interest? (People who lend to the U.S. government, 70 percent of whom are American and most of whom are wealthy.)
10. Bonus question: Is the $400 million airplane from Qatar a gift to the United States for every future president to use, or a gift to Trump for his own personal use? (It’s a personal gift because he’ll get to use it after he leaves the presidency.)
Most Americans are strongly opposed to all of these things, according to polls. But if you knew the answers to these ten questions, you’re likely to be in a very tiny minority. That’s because of (1) distortions and cover-ups emanating from Trump and magnified by Fox News and other rightwing outlets. (2) A public that’s overwhelmed with the blitzkrieg of everything Trump is doing, and can’t focus on this. (3) Outright silencing of many in the media who fear retaliation from the Trump regime if they reveal things that Trump doesn’t want revealed.
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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Read it: Open letter ridicules DeSantis as uniting Florida in hate
Dear Gov. DeSantis,
Congratulations! You’ve achieved something rare in our deeply divided country. You’ve once again united a lot of people from disparate backgrounds and beliefs.
Of course, you’ve united them against you and one of your agencies — but that’s a price you’re apparently willing to pay, over and over, and I salute you for it.
Last year, you brought people together to stop your plan to put golf courses, 300-room hotels, and pickleball courts in state parks.
Then they united to protest your proposal to swap some state forest land with a golf course developer.
Because of the public outcry, the golf course developer withdrew its request for the state forest land. Meanwhile, the Legislature unanimously passed a bill to prevent you or any other governor from ever again trying to ruin state parks with golf courses, a bill you’ve promised to sign into law.
With these two crises mostly resolved, this would be the point at which public enthusiasm for protecting our state lands would begin to wane. People would stop protesting and go back to more mundane pursuits, such as binging episodes of “Poker Face.” (I hear there’s one set in Florida!)
Fortunately, Gov. D, that didn’t happen — thanks to your new scheme to keep people engaged. Good job!
Last week, word got out that the state was considering a land swap with a mysterious private company that wanted 600 acres of the Guana River Wildlife Management Area. In exchange, the company, identified only as The Uplands LLC, offered to hand over 3,000 acres of less desirable land scattered around St. Johns, Lafayette, Osceola, and Volusia counties.
Eric Draper. when he was Florida State Parks director, via Eric Draper
“It’s just a way to swap jewels for junk,” former Florida State Parks director Eric Draper told me.
Suddenly, boom! People were out protesting again, waving signs that said things like “We’re not Guana take this!” which I thought was a nice shout-out to Twisted Sister.
Your land swap was so unifying, it was roundly condemned by everyone from 1000 Friends of Florida to the White House. Even legislators from your own party began clamoring for answers.
It was a brilliant move, sir, like something you’d see in 3-D chess.
But then Uplands LLC chickened out.
In the face of such widespread public outrage, the company’s attorney announced Monday that his client would withdraw its proposal. The vote on the land swap, scheduled for Wednesday, was canceled.
It’s a shame, really. Everyone sure was spoiling for another big showdown.
It’s also too bad that one of Florida’s best state employees lost her job over your scheme.
Wile E. Coyote goes boom
For seven years, you’ve made it clear that you’re no fan of Florida’s outstanding Government in the Sunshine Law. But in this case, Mr. D, you apparently used the Sunshine Law the way you’d use your favorite putter to drill one straight into the hole.
Nobody knew about this Guana land swap until it suddenly popped up on the agenda of a somewhat obscure government group last week. That means the owners of that Guana River property, namely the Florida taxpayers, had no more than seven days’ advance notice about what you were up to.
Oh, sir, I applaud the way you played that one! It made people even MORE suspicious that this was some sleazy payback for a campaign contributor.
The legal requirement that this little-known group review the land swap in an open meeting appeared to be the only thing that flushed this secret deal out into the open. The best comment about this happening is one I heard from Albert Gregory, former chief of Florida’s park planning division.
“It’s like Wile E. Coyote is getting the public comment tool out of the Acme box,” he told me, “and it blows up in his face.”
Here’s how it worked out: On May 14, your Florida Department of Environmental Pro — er, what are we calling it now, sir, Providing Cover for Developers? Professing One Thing While Pursuing Another? Proving They Put Politics First?
Anyway, your DEP posted a notice that there would be a meeting of the Acquisition and Restoration Council, or ARC for short, in exactly one week. As I’m sure you recall, that’s a group of 10 people you appointed. Some ARC members are from state agencies, some from scientific institutions such as Tall Timbers Research Station, and some are from private concerns such as ranches and timber operations.
Julie Wraithmell via Audubon Florida
According to Julie Wraithmell, executive director of Audubon Florida, that ARC meeting notice waved a big red flag. ARC doesn’t meet that often, and this meeting was not one of their regularly scheduled ones. Why hold a special session?
The Audubon folks requested DEP send them the agenda, she said, but no one did. Finally, a link to the agenda showed up on the DEP website sometime after 6 p.m. the day the notice was posted, she said. That’s when Audubon learned about the land swap proposal and sounded an alarm for all the state’s environmental groups.
But that’s about all they learned. The agenda item was “really light on details,” Wraithmell told me. “It’s not clear who the applicant is.”
Also unclear: What the applicant intended to do with the state’s property. All the other items on the ARC agenda concerned adding to state lands. This was the only one that would take some away.
Finding the land mines
Once everyone began studying this bare-bones agenda item, they discovered other fatal flaws. Oh, sir, you were so clever the way you planted all those land mines!
For starters, the report for the ARC said the Guana River property had no historically significant sites. But Wraithmell pointed out that Guana River’s official state management plan names more than seven historic sites covered by the property.
The land is managed by a different state agency, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The DEP report on the proposed land swap says the FWC concurred with the agency’s recommendation to approve handing over the taxpayers’ property to a private entity.
But that’s not the way the FWC report reads to me. It simply says it “acknowledges the authority” of ARC and the governor and Cabinet to do what they want with the land. That sure sounds like that agency is far from sold on the idea.
Perhaps the biggest land mine of all is what the law says about how the state can’t get rid of any preserve property until it does one thing.
Clay Henderson, provided by subject
For finding this one, I have to credit Clay Henderson, a longtime environmental activist who’s literally written the book on Florida land preservation programs (“Forces of Nature” — you should read it, sir). The law, he pointed out, says the state must first establish that the land is no longer needed for conservation purposes.
Henderson, in a letter to the ARC members, pointed out that Guana River contains everything from coastal strands to maritime hammocks to pine flatwoods to estuarine wetlands. There are rookeries for wood storks and ancient shell middens.
All of that is important to preserve in our fast-growing state.
Henderson remarked that one of the state’s top land managers called the Guana River property one of the “crown jewels of American conservation.” In other words, not one you’d want to give away to somebody.
So Gov. D, if you were looking for one park parcel to dangle over a dangerous chasm to make a point, I think it’s clear you picked the perfect one.
This Gate is closed
The other big mystery was who wanted the Guana River land so badly.
Good job keeping everyone guessing, governor! The lack of any information made it even more infuriating. It also ensured people would get mad at you and the DEP, not some private entity that might in fact be one of your campaign contributors.
When some nosy Tampa Bay Times reporter asked you point blank to identify your co-conspirator in this effort, you pretended you didn’t understand the question, then dodged any follow-up. You sidestepped as deftly as Charles Durning in “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.” Pretty fancy footwork for a guy who sometimes wears white go-go boots.
The newspaper noted that “the Upland LLC’s business filings with the state don’t list anyone other than a general business services firm as its leader, making the true identity of the entity unclear.” Maybe a better name for the company would have been “Obfuscation Inc.”
There was some speculation that Upland LLC was somehow connected with Gate Petroleum, the company that owns the Ponte Vedra Inn & Club. I contacted Gate and received the quickest “no!” I’ve heard since my long-ago dating days.
Horses riding on trails in Guana River WMA via FWC
A spokeswoman told me the company’s founder and chairman, Herbert Hill Peyton, is the person who first sold the land to the state in 1984. She said he opposes any effort to undo that preservation effort.
The Guana River “is the finest land in Northeast Florida and no portion should be sold, swapped or developed,” Peyton said in a written statement. “This land belongs to the people of Florida and should be preserved forever.” So I guess this Gate is closed.
Herbert Hill Payton via GATE Petroleum Gary Hunter via Holtzman Vogel Law Firm
The only clue we have to the identity of company is the attorney who called off the vote. His name is Gary Hunter, and he’s also a Tallahassee lobbyist whose clients include major developers such as Neal Communities and Alico, not to mention the powerful Association of Florida Community Developers.
Hunter, in his letter, claimed his client had no plans to “develop the acquired land for commercial or community development purposes” and blamed “misinformation” for stirring up all the public anger. He didn’t explain what he meant by “misinformation,” nor did he exclude such development amenities as golf courses.
I tried contacting Hunter to ask about that, but he didn’t respond.
I’m assuming that including Hutner was all part of your plan to keep people conscious of how fragile our state parks, forests, and wildlife management areas are.
Callie DeHaven knew that fact already.
Principles over politics
Callie DeHaven worked her way up to become the director of the DEP’s Division of State Lands in 2017. The division has done some wonderful things, such as adding to the size of the award-winning state park system. That’s why lots of people liked her and liked the job she did.
“Callie was one of the few people left at the agency who had scruples,” Gregory told me.
Dana Bryan via IFAS Callie DeHaven via Southeast Regional Partnership for Planning and Sustainability
“I’ve known Callie for many years and she’s one of the good guys,” said Dana Bryan, who spent 30 years in the Florida Park Service, most of it as chief biologist.
On May 6, though, DeHaven submitted a single-page, handwritten letter to her bosses. “To whom it may concern,” it said. “I hereby resign my position.”
The letter doesn’t explain what happened. Draper, who has fond memories of working with DeHaven, told me she’s not the kind of person to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation. She must have been pushed pretty hard to quit so abruptly.
“There is no doubt she objected to the Guana land swap and resigned rather than give in to developers,” Draper said.
So Gov. DeSantis, if you were trying to find which DEP employees would put principles over politics, I guess your plan worked a little TOO well.
You need to find Ms. DeHaven and bring her back into the DEP. Maybe even promote her to a position of even greater authority.
Callie DeHaven Resignation Letter
Calls to Mom
To show you how well your scheme worked, Gov. D, let me tell you about a woman I met this past weekend in St. Cloud.
Rep. Paula Stark via Florida House
I gave a talk about Florida, and afterward several people came up to me and told me THEIR Florida stories. One of them was state Rep. Paula Stark, who represents the St. Cloud area. She became interested in politics long before she was first elected in 2022. Not her kids, though.
“They are not political at all,” she told me.
What her two adult sons care about is Florida’s environment. They have backyard cameras and love watching wildlife cross from one fenceline to the other, she told me.
But then they found out about the Guana River land swap. Suddenly they were keenly interested in talking to her about politics. They were calling her up and asking, “Mom, why are they doing this?”
And they were ready to do whatever they could to stop it.
The point of this story, Gov. D, is to show you how passionate people are about our wonderful state lands. Even people who don’t care about politics care about saving our dwindling natural resources.
An estimated 50,000 folks signed petitions to oppose the land swap before Uplands gave up. Meanwhile, state Rep. Kim Kendall has vowed to sponsor a bill to make sure this never happens again.
Anyway, congrats on pulling off such an elaborate and clever scheme to make sure Floridians remain vigilant about threats to our state lands.
You better hurry up and find another one, though. Otherwise, they’re liable to start talking about your Hope Florida scandal again.
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There's a hidden provision in that big ugly bill that makes Trump king
I’ve been following with a mixture of dismay and disgust Trump’s One Big Ugly Bill, soon to head to the Senate. I’ll report back to you on it.
But I want to alert you to one detail inside it that’s especially alarming. With one stroke, it would allow Trump to crown himself king.
As you know, Trump has been trying to neuter the courts by ignoring them.
The Supreme Court has told Trump to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia, a legal resident of the United States whom even the Trump regime admits was erroneously sent to a brutal prison in El Salvador. Trump has essentially thumbed his nose at the Court by doing nothing.
Lower federal courts have told him to stop deporting migrants without giving them a chance to know the charges against them and have the charges and evidence reviewed by a neutral judge or magistrate (the minimum of due process). Again, nothing.
Judge James Boasberg, Chief Judge of the federal district court for the District of Columbia, issued a temporary restraining order preventing the Trump regime from flying individuals to the prison in El Salvador without due process.
Judge Boasberg has found that the Trump regime has willfully disregarded his order.
What can the courts do in response to Trump’s open defiance of the judges and justices?
The courts have one power to make their orders stick: holding federal officials in contempt and enforcing such contempt citations against them.
Enforcing a contempt citation means fining or jailing the Trump lawyers who argue before them, and possibly invoking contempt all the way up the line to Trump.
Boasberg said that if Trump’s legal team does not give the dozens of Venezuelan men sent to the Salvadorian prison a chance to legally challenge their removal, he’ll begin contempt proceedings against the administration.
In a separate case, U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis has demanded that the Trump administration explain why it is not complying with the Supreme Court order to “facilitate” the release of Abrego Garcia.
Xinis questions whether the administration intends to comply with the order at all, citing a statement from U.S. Department of Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem that Abrego Garcia "will never be allowed to return to the United States." According to Xinis, "That sounds to me like an admission. That's about as clear as it can get."
So what’s next? Will the Supreme Court and lower courts hold the administration in contempt and enforce contempt citations?
Not if the Big Ugly Bill is enacted with the following provision, now hidden in the bill:
“No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued….”
Translated: No federal court may enforce a contempt citation.
Obviously, courts need appropriated funds to do anything because Congress appropriates money to enable the courts to function. To require a security or bond to be given in civil proceedings seeking to stop alleged abuses by the federal government would effectively immunize such conduct from judicial review because those seeking such court orders generally don’t have the resources to post a bond.
Hence, with a stroke, the provision removes the judiciary’s capacity to hold officials in contempt.
As U.C. Berkeley School of Law Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law Erwin Chemerinsky notes, this provision would eliminate any restraint on Trump.
‘Without the contempt power, judicial orders are meaningless and can be ignored. There is no way to understand this except as a way to keep the Trump administration from being restrained when it violates the Constitution or otherwise breaks the law. …
‘This would be a stunning restriction on the power of the federal courts. The Supreme Court has long recognized that the contempt power is integral to the authority of the federal courts. Without the ability to enforce judicial orders, they are rendered mere advisory opinions which parties are free to disregard.”
With this single provision, in other words, Trump will have crowned himself king. No congress and no court could stop him. Even if a future Congress were to try to stop him, it could not do so without the power of the courts to enforce their hearings, investigations, subpoenas, and laws.
What can you do? To begin with, call your members of Congress and tell them not to pass Trump’s One Big Ugly Bill.
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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GOP is winning its battle against human decency
Here we are again, my friend, watching the age-old story play out before our eyes. The Republicans are preparing to hand out trillions in tax cuts to their billionaire benefactors, and how do they plan to pay for this latest giveaway to the oligarchy? By ripping healthcare away from 13.7 million Americans, including millions of our most vulnerable seniors who depend on Medicaid for their very survival.
But this isn’t just about healthcare policy. This is about the fundamental question that’s defined America since the New Deal: Are we a society that believes in the common good, or are we returning to the brutal Social Darwinism of the Gilded Age?
Let’s remember how we got here. For most of our post-war history, America operated on a simple principle that both parties understood: we take care of each other. This wasn’t socialism or communism; it was basic human decency codified into law.
When Lyndon Johnson signed Medicaid into law in 1965, he wasn’t just creating a healthcare program. He was affirming that in the wealthiest nation in human history, no American should have to choose between medical care and bankruptcy, between their medication and their mortgage, between living and dying because of the size of their paycheck or bank account.
But then came the Reagan Revolution, and with it, the poisonous idea that “government is the problem,” that the market is a god who must be obeyed (and is owned and run by the morbidly rich), and that every person should fend for themselves in the raw jungle of unregulated capitalism.
That’s when we began dismantling the social contract that made America great.
Here’s what the corporate media won’t tell you: Medicaid isn’t just for the “undeserving poor”; it’s the backbone of our system of long-term care for American seniors.
Our beloved Medicare doesn’t cover nursing home care: Medicaid does. In fact, Medicaid pays for 63 percent of all nursing home care in this country.
Think about a grandmother who worked her entire life, paid her taxes, raised her children, and contributed to her community. When she needs long-term care, it’s Medicaid that’s there for her. Not the private insurance industry that spent decades collecting her premiums. Not even Medicare. Just Medicaid. That’s it.
Republicans want to cut nearly $800 billion from Medicaid to pay for their tax breaks for Musk, Trump, and their billionaire friends; they’re working out the details this week in the House of Representatives.
This would be the greatest upward redistribution of wealth in American history, and they’re using our grandparents’ healthcare as the piggy bank.
That type of a massive cut will throw at least 8 and as many as 15 million American Americans, most seniors, out into the streets or eliminate their health coverage. They want to turn American families into financial victims of the for-profit healthcare system that eagerly awaits their arrival because it treats human suffering as a profit center.
This is what oligarchy looks like. This is what happens when a small group of ultra-wealthy individuals capture the government and use it to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. It’s not capitalism: it’s feudalism with a stock market.
When you gut Medicaid, you don’t just hurt individuals, you destroy entire communities. Rural hospitals, already hanging on by a thread, will close by the dozens. We’ve already lost 200 rural hospitals in the past decade because roughly a dozen states refused to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. How many more can we afford to lose?
These aren’t just statistics. These are communities where people have lived for generations, where children grow up, where families build lives. When that hospital closes, when seniors can no longer get care, when pregnant women have to drive three hours to give birth (more than half of all babies’ births in America are paid for with Medicaid) that’s not just healthcare policy. That’s the systematic destruction of American communities to enrich a handful of billionaires.
And it’s not just Medicaid. The Trump-Musk regime is simultaneously sabotaging Social Security, pushing out 7,000 public servants who helped Americans sign up for and claim their earned benefits. They’re declaring people dead who are very much alive, cutting them off from their Social Security, their bank accounts, their very ability to survive in modern society.
This is intentional. This is designed. They want to break these systems so badly that Americans will give up on the idea of government working for regular people, and instead accept that only the wealthy deserve security, healthcare, and dignity in their old age.
So here’s the fundamental question: What kind of society do we want to be?
Do we want — as Republicans preach we should — to be the kind of country where your worth is determined by your bank account? Where getting cancer means you might lose your home? Where growing old means living in fear of bankruptcy? Where the accident of your birth ZIP code determines whether you live or die? Where simply getting an education burdens you financially for the rest of your life?
Or do we want — as Democrats have worked to create since the 1930s — to fully become a society where we share the risks and rewards, where healthcare and education are human rights, where growing old doesn’t mean choosing between medicine and food?
This isn’t just about left versus right. This is about oligarchy versus democracy. This is about whether we’re going to let a handful of billionaires and massive insurance corporations dismantle the social contract that previous generations fought and died to establish.
We are the richest nation in the history of the world. We have the resources to take care of every American. The question is whether we have the political will to make our billionaires pay their fair share, to tax wealth the way we tax work, and to remember that we’re all in this together.
Our seniors didn’t fight in World War II and build the greatest economy in human history so that their grandchildren could watch them die in poverty. They fought to create a country where everyone — everyone — has a shot at the American Dream.
That’s the America worth fighting for. That’s the social contract worth defending. And if we don’t fight for it now, who will?
The choice is ours, America. But we better make it fast, because Republicans and their billionaire owners are coming for our Medicaid, they’re coming for our Social Security, and they won’t stop until they’re defeated or they’ve turned America into a feudal state where the many serve the few.
Is that the legacy we want to leave our children? I don’t believe it. We inherited a “Government Of the People, By the People, For the People.” Will we let them turn it into a government “Of the Billionaires, By the Billionaires, For the Billionaires”?
The time to choose — and to let our elected officials know our choice — is now.
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America said it was ready for change — until a Black man was put in charge
After the Great Depression and World War II, a consensus was born in which most people most of the time believed federal law and the federal government should serve everyone and treat everyone equally.
That they did not actually do that was the political basis for the rights movements that emerged in the decades after the war. Until the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, it wasn’t really possible to say liberalism and democracy were the same thing. Afterward, it was. And every rights movement since that era seemed to affix the idea of political progress, as if history always marched toward it.
But this consensus had the makings of its own undoing. Basically, the forces of white power conceded, saying: “OK, women and Black people (and other outpeople) can have equal rights and equal protection, but they can’t really be in charge of anything. They can’t really have authority, especially not over those of us who are 'real Americans.'” Then came Barack Obama’s election. The whole thing came down.
Samantha Hancox-Li has a different read on history, with different years of the origins of this bargain, what she calls a “constitutional settlement.” In a recent essay for Liberal Currents, for which she is an editor and podcast host, she pegs the present crisis to the end of “the long 1990s,” or the consensus that held between 1982 and 2024. But her point remains – that the biggest question in American politics, the one that animates everything, has always been who belongs and who doesn’t. Her conclusion? “There is America enough for everyone.”
JS: Sometimes I feel like the Democratic Party is still in the 1990s. James Carville, "moderation," the economy before “cultural issues.” You wrote about that recently. What’s the elevator version of your thinking?
SHI: Mainstream Democrats have been sleepwalking for a long time now, imagining that they can just fiddle around the edges of the existing political-economic order and that will be enough.
It is obviously not enough. The cost of living crisis — the housing crisis — is biting harder and harder, and hardest of all in blue states. This is no accident. The economic policies Democrats are offering to the American people do not work. We need to offer a future in which there is enough for everyone — and that means getting rid of our insane process obsessions that prevent people from building green energy and new factories and housing most of all.
JS: The successes of the 1990s are not the failures of the 2020s?
SHI: As I wrote in The Present Crisis and the End of the Long 90s, the constitutional settlement of the long 1990s (1982-2024) included economic, cultural and political components. The economic component was managed inflation and slow growth, palliated by asset inflation (especially home-equity inflation). This was a clear improvement over the stagflation that preceded it, but an inherently unsustainable bargain. We need to return to an economy driven by wage growth — and which builds enough stuff to alleviate the potential for inflation.
The cultural settlement was a kind of racial and sexual hypocrisy. Outright racism and sexism was out, but at the same time, America remained a de facto white man's republic. After the bruising unrest — and occasional extreme violence — of the 1960s and 1970s, this seemed like a good bargain to both sides. But it was likewise inherently unsustainable. The children of that era grew up believing we could be anything we wanted. And when we crashed into the hard barriers that remained, it felt like a betrayal. Meanwhile, the old guard was shocked and appalled that we wanted to rise above our station. Barack Obama, Black Lives Matter, MeToo – these were shocks to their system.
To reforge a new order means delivering on the promise of America. There is America enough for everyone, and anyone who wants to be can become an American — endowed with the same fundamental equality we all possess. This means, among other things, finally resolving the long-stewing border crisis — in favor of radically increased immigration and a clear, simple pathway to citizenship.
JS: You suggest Bidenomics went far, but not far enough. Explain.
SHI: Bidenomics overturned the 1990s consensus in two interrelated ways. First, Biden returned to explicit industrial policy. He promoted massive public investment in specific sectors — computer chips, green energy, batteries — largely due to geopolitical competition from China.
Second, Biden embraced "hot" macroeconomic policy, both from industrial policy and covid-era direct stimulus. This led to dramatic real wage growth, especially among the working class, as well as very strong GDP growth — far stronger than any comparable industrialized country.
The problem is that Biden stimulated the economy without alleviating the artificial scarcity of fundamental goods like housing, health care and education. The resulting inflationary pressures were strongly disliked by many people. Even as real wages increased and consumer goods became ever more available, a safe and secure life seemed out of reach.
The epitome of this problem is a flat-screen TV in the tent of a homeless person — or a brand-new Lexus parked in front of a hundred-year-old tenement in Jersey City that retails for a million dollars. Luxuries have become cheap, even as essentials have grown astoundingly expensive.
What is needed is a policy that can marry a hot economy, high growth, and abundance of fundamental goods for everyone. We don't just want cheap TVs — we want cheap housing, cheap health care, cheap education.
JS: Trump is the backlash against the compromise of the Long 90s falling apart. Are we seeing a backlash to the backlash or is it all vibes now?
SHI: I think that no one has yet been able to put together a political package that can unite the American people around a new constitutional settlement. The landslide victories and political consolidations of FDR and Reagan remain out of reach. Trump is a borderline senile old man, surrounded by scheming courtiers who fight with each other constantly. There is no coherent economic agenda coming from Trump II. Their political projects are based on delusional and conspiratorial thinking. Elon Musk, for instance, appears to sincerely believe the "woke mind virus" is a Marxist conspiracy pushed by a cabal of university professors called "the Cathedral." There is no prospect here of putting together a new consensus.
At the same time, the Democratic Party seems adrift. We are still barnacled over by delusional NIMBYs who are convinced they are rebels against the system, instead of recognizing that they have been putting their preferred policies into place for 40 years – and delivering us into the mess we're in today. We need to clean up our own house, ditch the wreckers and the fools and the NIMBYs, if we are to consolidate the American people around a new program.
JS: A new consensus would probably come out of the immigration debate. Right now, the Democrats are too interested in conceding to Republican bad faith — "open borders" — instead of forging their own path.
SHI: For years, Democrats have been running away from the immigration question. Polling says that immigration is their weak point, so they avoid talking about it — which only furthers that appearance of weakness. And the American people notice.
Just like they've noticed these past few weeks when a few brave Democrats, like Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), made a point of confronting Trump's stupid and lawless and unconstitutional immigration policies, and Trump's poll numbers have dropped like a rock.
Because this is the thing. The border is not a sideshow. The border cannot be a sideshow. The question of immigration is fundamental, because it bears on that fundamental question: what does it mean to be an American? Who gets to be American? Is this a white man's republic — or is America for everyone? Does the Constitution guarantee freedom and due process for all Americans — or do we rip our rights up whenever we get close to the border? We cannot move forward without answering these questions. I would prefer we answer them simply: there is America enough for everyone.
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Sneak move poised to hand Trump even scarier power
At its deepest level, government is a moral force grounded in a moral view of the world.
It may not comport with morality as most of us view it. The Saudi oppression of women, the Russian violence against the queer community, and the Iranian brutal suppression of that nation’s democracy movement are all examples of things most Americans consider immoral.
But each is grounded in a particular moral worldview that those governments and their leaders have adopted.
While America has experienced many dark moral episodes throughout our history, we’ve always held or at least espoused a basic set of moral principles:
- That all people are born equal under the law, and that power should flow up from the people rather than down from elected leaders
- That a free press, free speech, and freedom from religion are essential to liberty
- That defending the basic rights of all people to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is the core function of a democratic republic
Until now.
Republicans in the House of Representatives just inserted into their must-pass “Big, Beautiful” multi-trillion-dollar-tax-break-for-billionaires legislation a provision that would enable the president to designate any nonprofit — from Harvard to the American Civil Liberties Union to your local Democratic party — a “terrorist-supporting organization” that then loses their tax-exempt status, effectively putting them out of business.
And who decides who gets that designation? The president. And he gets do to it in secret.
This is exactly how both Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán first destroyed dissent and free speech in Russia and Hungary.
Trump has been pursuing this for a decade, from his trying to designate Antifa as a “terrorist organization” to his attacks on our universities to his use of Stalin’s phrase “enemy of the people” to describe journalists and opinion writers like me.
One level above these core democratic principles — of free speech, the right to protest, and the power of the people in free and fair elections to change our leadership — are two major reformations that came about after major national upheavals.
The first was after the Civil War, when the nation (at least in principle) embraced the humanity and citizenship of nonwhite people with Reconstruction and the 13th through the 15th Amendments to the Constitution. The second was during the Republican Great Depression, when FDR rebooted our republic to become the supporter of last resort for the working class, producing the world’s first more-than-half-of-us middle class.
Now Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their cabal of rightwing billionaires are trying to dissolve virtually all of this, replacing it with the sort of “illiberal democracy” we see in Russia and Hungary, where there are still elections (but their outcome is pre-determined), still legal protections for the press and free speech (but only when that speech doesn’t challenge those in power), and only the wealthy can truly enjoy safety and security.
After the Saudi, Emirati, and Qatari governments each gave the Trump family massive gifts in the form of billion-dollar development and Trump hotel or golf course licensing deals, Trump made a speech in which he abandoned our 250-year history of advocating democracy around the world.
Of course, as mentioned, we’ve often failed at that mission in the past. Reagan’s support for the death squads in Central America haunt our southern border to this day; Eisenhower’s embrace of the Shah of Iran still rattles the Middle East; and Nixon’s tolerance of Chinese brutality led us, in the name of capitalism, to help that nation’s communist leaders create the most powerful and medieval surveillance state in world history.
But these exceptions prove the rule: when we abandon our own stated principles in foreign relations, those first laid out in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, the results are almost uniformly bad for us, for them, and for democracy around the world. And it becomes even more destructive when this administration rejects American values as it embraces bribes from foreign dictators, harasses journalists, imprisons op-ed writers, and threatens judges.
This issue of morality in government has been at the core of our political debate for centuries. President Harry Truman was explicit about it way back in 1952:
“Now, I want to say something very important to you about this issue of morality in government.
“I stand for honest government… To me, morality in government means more than a mere absence of wrongdoing. It means a government that is fair to all. I think it is just as immoral for the Congress to enact special tax favors into law as it is for a tax official to connive in a crooked tax return. It is just as immoral to use the lawmaking power of the Government to enrich the few at the expense of the many, as it is to steal money from the public treasury. That is stealing money from the public treasury. …
“Legislation that favored the greed of monopoly and the trickery of Wall Street was a form of corruption that did the country four times as much harm as Teapot Dome ever did. Private selfish interests are always trying to corrupt the Government in this way. Powerful financial groups are always trying to get favors for themselves.”
Tragically, for both America and democracy around the world, this is not how Trump was raised and does not comport with the GOP’s current worldview. Fred Trump built a real estate empire through racism, fraud, and deceit. He raised Donald to view every transaction as necessarily win/lose, every rule or regulation as something to get around, and every government official as somebody to be influenced with threats or money.
The GOP embraced a similar worldview with the Reagan Revolution as former Labor Secretary Robert Reich notes in his must-read Substack newsletter:
“But starting with Reagan, America went off the rails. Deregulation, privatization, free trade, wild gambling by Wall Street, union-busting, record levels of inequality, near-stagnant wages for most, staggering wealth for a few, big money taking over our politics.
“Stock buybacks and the well-being of investors became more important than good jobs with good wages. Corporate profits more important than the common good.”
Greed is a type of moral stance. It’s not one that open, pluralistic, democratic societies embrace beyond their tolerance of regulated capitalism, but it is a position that expresses a certain type of morality, one most famously expounded by David Koch and Ayn Rand.
It’s inconsistent with the history of humanity itself, as I document in detail in The Hidden History of American Democracy: Rediscovering Humanity’s Ancient Way of Living. From Margaret Mead pointing out how healed leg bones in hundred-thousand-year-old skeletons show that ancient societies cared for their wounded to the ways Native American tribes dealt with people who stole or hoarded even without the use of police or prisons, the triumph of greed has historically been the exception rather the rule.
When Trump said, “My whole life I’ve been greedy,” it was one of the few honest bits of self-appraisal he’s ever tendered. And it should have warned all of us.
Greed and hunger for power are, ultimately, anathema to our traditional American values.
And it’s high time we began to say so, and to teach our children the difference between a moral nation that protects its weakest citizens while promoting democracy around the world and an “illiberal democracy” like Russia, Hungary, and the vision of today’s GOP.
We’ve been better than this in the past, and it’s high time we return to those moral positions that truly made America great.
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Why are liberals so scary?
We’ve all heard about the nine Republican state Senators who decided they were going to start voting their conscience, only to be censured by their own party. As if they would somehow become contagious.
This series of events reminded me of something I’ve been wondering about, which is: Why it has become so fashionable to present ‘liberals’ as if we are dangerous, scary people. It is now one of those labels that Republicans throw around in order to discredit a person’s character. It showed up on every other flyer that I received during the last election cycle. And of course it’s one of those terms, for example “communist,” that most people probably wouldn’t be able to define if you asked them, even liberals themselves.
So I thought about the qualities that most of my friends have in common. And the top thing on that list would probably be curiosity. I hang out with people who always want to learn more, whether it’s about you, or about the history of the region where they live, or about whatever hobby they’re interested in. And of course that also means that they are readers. Because what is the best way to learn?
Another thing that most of my friends have in common is that they love people. They love meeting new people, they like to be in small groups where they can have discussions. They like to connect. And they like to help. I feel fortunate to know so many people who believe that helping others helps them become better people. And it also helps make the world a better place.
So far, I’m not seeing a lot to be scared of. But let’s keep looking.
Most of my friends love the arts. They love how music and films and dance and visual arts force them to look at things a little differently. They love how songs and movies make them feel something, whether it’s warm or frightening or confusing or ecstatic, the arts bring strong emotional responses into our lives in a way that is always unpredictable and surprising.
Most of my friends also love to be outside. They love what the earth has to offer. They like the challenge of a long bike ride, or a hike into the mountains. They like to hunt and fish, or float one of the incredible rivers that flow through our beautiful state. They value having access to the best that Montana has to offer.
A few days ago, Bruce Springsteen, who is only three years younger than Trump but looks at least 10 years younger, opened his latest tour in Manchester, England by sitting down at the front of the stage and delivering a calm, measured criticism of the current president. He didn’t make anything up or call him a bunch of juvenile names. He didn’t threaten him. He just laid out his opinion of the man’s actions in a way that was thoughtful and most importantly, factual. Here’s how he opened his speech, and it’s pretty brilliant:
“In America, my home, they’re persecuting people for their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. That’s happening now. In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. That’s happening now. In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers. They’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that led to a more just society. They’re abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those who are struggling for their freedom. That’s happening now. They are defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands. And they are removing residents off American streets without due process of law and deploying them to foreign detention centers and prisons. That’s happening now.”
So maybe that’s it. It’s the honesty.
Most of my friends have never been convicted of a felony. Most of them have never been accused of rape, especially by multiple sources. Most of my friends wouldn’t think of referring to another country as a “sh–hole country.” They wouldn’t think to lump an entire race of people into one group and make sweeping generalizations about those people. Most of my wealthy friends wouldn’t think of rubbing their wealth in your face, or bragging about the fact that they don’t pay taxes, because they do. Most of them wouldn’t brag about going into the dressing room of a bunch of teenage girls while they’re getting ready for a pageant.
Most of my friends wouldn’t encourage people to beat the crap out of other people. Most of them wouldn’t make up lies on the spot just to make others look bad because they got their feelings hurt.
So the only thing that I can think of that makes liberals scary is that they try like hell to be honest, and if there’s one thing that scares Republicans at this moment in time, it’s the truth. Springsteen is fortunate to be huge enough that he can lose a huge chunk of his fan base without worrying about his career going off the rails.
But of course that doesn’t stop Donald Trump from trying his damnedest to discredit the man. And among other things, that means hitting him over the head with the dreaded “liberal” label. It didn’t stop Springsteen from doing the same thing at his next few stops, to the dismay of many of his long-term fans, and as someone so accurately pointed out, have they not been paying attention to what this man has stood for from the beginning?
The saddest part about Trump’s tantrums is how utterly childish they are. He always resorts to the most basic insults, saying he never liked Springsteen and that he has no talent—a meaningless insult coming from a guy who pals around with Kid Rock and Ted Nugent. Trump has and always will resort to the lowest form of attack, and that is exactly why he is so threatened by someone like Bruce, who did just the opposite.
So I guess I’ll keep doing what most of my friends have been doing, trying to become better people, failing here and there, but always striving to improve. Telling the truth as well as we know how, without resorting to hissy fits when someone offers constructive criticism. And hopefully it will continue to scare the hell out of these people.
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'In a pickle': GOP heads for 'Virginia wipeout' as candidates refuse to diss 'toxic' Trump
This is primary season and candidates have to double down on what the truest of your party’s true believers truly believe.
The common logic is that you steer as far as you can to the right (for Republicans) or left (among Democrats) to rouse their base voters until they’re ready to chew barbed wire and spit out roofing nails.
Then, after the preseason scrimmage is over, it’s time to tack back toward the center — where the dispositive mass of Virginia’s electorate has repeatedly proved it resides — and, if you still can, appear less the wild-eyed zealot and more the measured, moderate and sane candidate of November.
But something weird is happening this year: folks with no primary opponent seem locked in primary mode, especially within the GOP, where the statewide nominations are already settled.
On the Democratic side, the only statewide candidate without a primary fight is former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who has a bye into the November governor’s election. She and Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, who is unopposed for the Republican nomination, will contend for history’s distinction as the first woman governor in Virginia’s more than 400 years.
There are a half-dozen Democrats — state Sens. Aaron Rouse of Virginia Beach and Ghazala Hashmi of Chesterfield County, former Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, Prince William County School Board member Babur Lateef, lawyer and labor leader Alex Bastani and career federal prosecutor Victor Salgado — vying for lieutenant governor. None are known statewide and it’s anyone’s guess where that roulette ball lands. The victor will take on Republican John Reid, Virginia’s first openly gay statewide nominee who survived a homophobic attempt to blackmail him off the ticket that backfired spectacularly on the top echelon of Virginia’s GOP.
The GOP’s disgraceful bid to sandbag its openly gay lieutenant governor nominee
In the Democrats’ attorney general sweepstakes, Jay Jones, a former assistant attorney general in the District of Columbia and former House of Delegates member from Norfolk, is battling Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor. The winner will oppose Republican Jason Miyares, who is running for reelection.
The GOP nominees have the luxury of sniping at these down-ticket Democrats as they go after one another hammer and tongs until the June 17 primary. But the Democrats share a unifying theme. Each promises to shield Virginia from the varied predations of the Trump White House, whether it be reproductive or LGBTQ rights, mass layoffs of Virginia’s large federal workforce or protecting Medicaid, the federal-state program that provides health care for the poor.
Va. GOP congressman’s scrutiny on federal cuts, job losses needs company from other Republicans
That messaging is unlikely to change much after the primary, with good reason: Trump is historically toxic in Virginia. Every time he has either been in office or on the ballot, Republicans have paid the price in Virginia elections.
Trump himself is 0-3 in the commonwealth, losing to Hillary Clinton by 5 percentage points in 2016, Joe Biden by 10 in 2020, and Kamala Harris last November by 6.
Beginning in 2015 — when he descended the golden escalator into the lobby of his eponymous Manhattan skyscraper to announce his first presidential bid — and for the next five years, Virginia Republicans lost. They lost majorities in the state’s U.S. House delegation. They lost every election for statewide office. They lost control of the House of Delegates and the Virginia Senate.
By 2020, Democrats owned every statewide lever of elective political power in Virginia for the first time since 1968.
As soon as Trump was gone, GOP fortunes improved. In 2021, Republicans swept all three statewide executive offices and retook the House of Delegates majority. The ticket was led by Glenn Youngkin, a wealthy former hedge fund executive running for governor in the first election of his life as a fresh-faced, kinder, gentler Republican who judiciously distanced himself from Trump but is now a reliable Trump lieutenant.
Now, Trump is back, and if you thought the first term gave Virginia Democrats plenty to chew on, version 2.0 — supercharged by modern-day Croesus and chainsaw-wielding grim reaper of livelihoods Elon Musk — serves up a banquet.
And that puts this year’s GOP slate in a pickle.
Sure, they’re free to make Democrats account for years of out-of-control federal spending, and a border and immigration policy that the party couldn’t or wouldn’t address when it had the chance. Yes, the GOP is advancing the attack — as it has done for years, and with considerable success last year — that violent crime is on the rise ( it’s not) and that “illegals” are driving it (they’re certainly not).
But what they’ve been unwilling to do so far, even though there are no nomination battles to wage, is put distance between themselves and Trump.
Republican candidates who were once stalwart globalist free-traders now sit either in meek acquiescence or voice throaty support for daunting tariffs the president has imposed unilaterally without the concurrence of Congress.
Not one has registered a notable protest over Trump unleashing Musk to eviscerate the federal workforce and curb federal government contracts, even though Northern Virginia has the richest concentration of them in the world with the possible exception of its nextdoor neighbor, the District of Columbia.
These candidates sit mute as the president openly defies the 14th Amendment to the Constitution which guarantees citizenship to all persons born on U.S. soil. They turn blind eyes when masked, unbadged federal agents, without warrants, arrest foreigners — both those here legally and illegally — and try to hustle them outside our borders, often without the due process of law.
Those aren’t conservative vs. liberal issues. Those have been foundational principles of our republic for nearly 250 years! They’re as elemental as our right to face our accusers in court, the right to be free from unwarranted government intrusion into our homes, the right to free speech and religion and the right to keep and bear arms.
But they dare not dispute their president who holds a death grip on what was once the Republican Party and now presumes a measure of almost imperial authority, unbounded by the courts, the Constitution, Congress — and certainly not centuries-old norms of decency and civility. They need look no farther into history than former Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., for a sobering lesson on the consequences of displeasing Trump.
Good, however, was felled in last year’s 5th Congressional District primary by Trump acolyte John McGuire. As Reid convincingly proved, the 2025 GOP statewide ticket is locked in, there are no primaries, and it’s time to move on.
Knowing that, let’s see if Republicans Earle-Sears, Reid and Miyares can reconnect with their party’s longtime creed and muster the character it takes to speak frankly about what Virginia voters — including persuadable moderates and more than a few Republicans — already recognize as the Trump administration’s gross abuses.
That would be so refreshing. It’s also the only hope the GOP has for avoiding a Virginia wipeout this November.
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Even Trump's sycophantic lapdog is quivering now
Spring is in the air … robins are bouncing around the backyard, yanking up worms, flowers sporting all colors of the rainbow are stretching hard for the sky, and former Vice President Mike Pence is tiptoeing onto the Sunday morning news shows and delicately trying to detach himself from America’s angry, orange 300-lb cyst.
For 1,461 days, the one-time Indiana governor was literally a heartbeat, or a lack of one, away from ascending to the most powerful office in the world.
Pence, of course, was No. 2 to the No. 1 most corrupt, morally busted president in U.S. history from 2017 to 2021. He was unflinchingly loyal to the racist, America- and woman-abusing Donald Trump, and often at an embarrassing level.
He had the singular talent of melting away into the background and making himself completely invisible, while his grotesque boss harrumphed his way around the world making our country look small, while becoming more bloated and full of himself by the day.
Pence knew his proper place in the administration was as far away from the limelight as possible. He was nothing but an expensive blue suit who hung himself neatly in the closet at the end of each lonely day spent in the shadows.
He was the perfect submissive sidekick for the sick, malignant narcissist, who has never been able to see anything past the end of those signature red ties that slop across his fat belly and hang down over his chubby, little feet. Everything was about this wreck of a man, and if Pence wasn’t good with that, nobody, with the possible exception of his wife, “Mother,” would have known it.
Cabinet members came and went during those chaotic four years, some exiting Trump’s wobbly orbit loudly calling him “a moron,” while others slithered away more quietly, out of the line of fire with hopes of landing a book deal and well-paid gigs on Rupert Murdoch’s noxious, right-wing propaganda channel.
But Pence stayed put, staring straight ahead and far off into the distance, literally thinking God knows what, while his racist boss defended Nazis, Putin, and the greedy billionaires, who attacked our environment, human rights, and democracy.
Well, we all know how it ended for Pence and the first iteration of the Greatest Woe on Earth.
Trump almost died from the pandemic he refused to take seriously, and then Pence almost died certifying our vote when his dark lord let loose his orcs in the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to overthrow the government.
It would be the last anybody heard from Pence until three years later, when he ran one of the most inconsequential presidential campaigns in history, branding himself as a real conservative Republican.
Trouble was, there was already something far more shiny, and a woman no less, occupying that shrinking lane in their eroding party. Nikki Haley, not Pence, would end up being the weak GOP alternative to the ghastly Trump.
Defeated, left by his old boss as fresh roadkill, Pence was free to finally fade away into the farmlands of Indiana, to join his buddy, Dan Quayle. The two former Hoosier VPs could trade stories as two of the most notable footnotes in American history — both second fiddles to failed, off-key, one-term Republican presidents.
That’s when Pence sprung his first spring surprise. Instead of fading into the Indiana countryside, he took to the Fox propaganda airways in March of 2024, and decided to let everybody know he’d changed his tune. Though to hear him tell it, he was still singing from the same sheet of music he always had.
“It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year,” he said matter-of-factly.
He was right. It wasn’t surprising, it was completely shocking. After all, this was the same guy who raised his hand like a rocket during a GOP debate in the fall of 2023 when the group of presidential wannabes on the stage were asked if they would support Trump as the party's nominee even if he were convicted of a crime.
It was around the time Trump was calling the lowlifes who attacked our country and also wanted Pence dead, “hostages.”
Turned out, even Mike Pence was capable of sharpening a hickory stick and drawing a line in the sand, for all the good it did him — and us.
I wrote at the time that:
“Mike Pence didn’t need to say anything. Something or someone changed his mind. And if something or someone was capable of changing Pence’s mind, then Pence and his actions, however late, were capable of changing the minds of others who are still on the fence about supporting the gruesome Trump. In an election that could be close, these are the things that can make a real difference.”
I feel almost wistful re-reading those words, because they seemed to have some heft and consequence at the time. Unfortunately, looking back a long year later they can best be viewed as nothing but wishful thinking on my part.
We know how the damn election in 2024 turned out. We know too many Americans have a death wish, and zero respect for themselves or our country. We are ALL in a terrible, terrible spot because of it …
So on Sunday, with America’s reputation once again in a free-fall thanks to his repulsive former boss, the invisible Mike Pence sauntered onto the studio of Meet the Press, sat down with host Kristen Welker, and in his Mike Pence way very stoically and politely said what so-called conservatives like Haley haven’t the guts to say.
He took on Trump’s tariffs:
“The initial reciprocal tariffs that he unveiled would be the largest peacetime tax hike on the American people in the history of this country. What I see in this administration is a steady drive toward a baseline of maybe even 10 percent tariffs that I think would be harmful to jobs in America. It would be harmful to consumers in America. As the president has said to me many times, he has a sense that other countries pay tariffs, when the reality is, when Americans buy goods overseas, the company that imports those goods in this country pays the tariff and more often than not passes that along in higher prices to consumers.”
Trump’s anti-American rhetoric:
"I've never been a fan of American presidents criticizing America on foreign soil. To have POTUS in Saudi Arabia questioning America's global war on terror and describing it as nation building and interventionism I thought was a disservice to generations of Americans who wore the uniform — particularly given that speech in Saudi Arabia where 15 of the (9/11) 19 hijackers hailed from."
"It's been roughly three years since Russia launched its unprovoked, brutal invasion in the Ukraine ... Putin only understands strength ... I honestly think the time has come for President Trump to impose a harsh sanctions on Russia and also increase military support for Ukraine."
Bribery:
“Well, I think first we've got to remember who Qatar is. We've got a military base there. I have members of our immediate family that have deployed to the region. But Qatar has a long history of playing both sides. They support Hamas. They supported Al Qaeda. Qatar has actually financed pro-Hamas protests on American campuses across the United States. So, the very idea that we would accept an Air Force One from Qatar I think is inconsistent with our security, and with our intelligence needs. And my hope is the president reconsiders it. I think if Qatar wants to make a gift to the United States, they ought to take that $400 million and plow it into infrastructure on our military base.”
Pardoning insurrectionists:
“Individuals who broke into the Capitol, who assaulted police officers, I said that day and I believe to this moment should have been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But the people that engaged in violence — you know, we're at the end here of Police Week in Washington, D.C. That's where the families of fallen officers come to our nation's capital every year to remember those who died in the line of duty. And the heroes on January 6 were all wearing uniforms. I mean, they held the line. They made it possible for us to secure the Capitol, reconvene the Congress, and complete our work under the Constitution the very same day. And for my part, I will always believe to have pardoned the people that assaulted police officers that day was wrong.”
Yes, he said all that, while also delicately sprinkling in praise for Trump, because even though he wouldn’t admit it, he somehow sees a future in the party, and doesn’t have a death wish.
So I’ll respond by reiterating what I typed last year after his first surprising spring appearance:
“I disagree with Pence on almost everything on the political spectrum. His ugly, white 1950s take on America is gross and insulting to everybody who has fought for their rightful place to be stitched into America’s colorful fabric. The guy doesn't deserve a Profile in Courage Award, but he did think it was important enough to put his life on the line once again, this time by saying publicly that he doesn’t think Trump, the guy he faithfully served for four years, should ever be our president again.”
Now that Trump is back, I still feel this bleeding country would be undeniably safer, healthier, and better-served if more conservatives like Pence had just a shred of honor, decency, and self-respect, and said what the hell so desperately needs saying, and what so many of these cowards are thinking.
I’d even argue that unless they do — unless there are cooler heads on the other side of spectrum who at least say out loud that pardoning people who attacked us is wrong, for instance — we are not going to make it.
We need to hear far more from people like Mike Pence, not less.
Of course, I’ve been wrong before …
(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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Billionaire tax cuts are gutting America
Last Friday, the credit rating of the United States was downgraded. Moody’s, the ratings firm, announced that the U.S. government’s rising debt levels will grow further if the Trump Republican package of new tax cuts is enacted. This makes lending to the United States riskier.
(Moody’s is the third of three major credit-rating agencies to downgrade the credit rating of the United States.)
So-called “bond vigilantes” are being blamed. They’ve already been selling the U.S. government’s debt, as the Republican tax package moves through Congress. They’re expected to sell even more, driving long-term interest rates even higher to make up for the growing risk of holding U.S. debt.
Some right-wing Republicans in Congress have already used the Moody’s downgrade to justify deeper spending cuts in Medicaid, food stamps, and other social programs that lower-income Americans depend on.
But, hello? There’s a far easier way to reduce the federal debt. Just end the Trump tax cuts that mainly benefit the wealthy and big corporations — and instead raise taxes on them.
I’m old enough to remember when America’s super-rich financed the government with their tax payments. Under President Dwight Eisenhower — hardly a left-wing radical — the highest marginal tax rate was 91 percent. (Even after all tax credits and deductions were figured in, the super-rich paid way over half their top marginal incomes in taxes.)
But increasingly — since the Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump 1 tax cuts — tax rates on the super-rich have plummeted.
So instead of financing the government with their taxes, the super-rich have been financing the U.S. government by lending it money.
(You may have heard that America’s debt is held mainly by foreigners. Wrong. Over 70 percent of it is held by Americans — and most of them are wealthy.)
So, an ever-increasing portion of the taxes from the rest of us are dedicated to paying ever-increasing interest payments on the debt — going largely to the super-rich.
This means that when the debt of the United States is downgraded because Trump Republicans are planning another big tax cut mainly benefiting the rich and big corporations, most Americans could end up paying in three different ways:
(1) They’ll pay even more interest on the growing debt — to the super-rich.
(2) They’ll pay higher interest rates on all other long-term debt (as higher rates on Treasury bonds waft through the economy, they raise borrowing costs on everything from mortgages to auto loans).
(3) The debt crisis will give Republicans even more excuse to do what they’re always wanting to do: slash safety nets. So many Americans could lose benefits they rely on, such as Medicaid and food stamps.
The so-called “bond vigilantes” are easy scapegoats. They’re not the cause of this absurdity. Nor is the growing national debt. Just follow the money. The real cause is the growing political power of the super-rich and big corporations to lower their taxes at the expense of most Americans.
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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More than revenge: Here's why Trump is really targeting his own former officials
During President Donald Trump’s first three months in office, his administration has targeted dozens of former officials who criticized him or opposed his agenda.
In April 2025, Trump directed the Department of Justice to investigate two men who served in his first administration, Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs, because they spoke out against his policies and corrected his false claims about the 2020 election that he lost.
Further, Trump revoked the security clearances for advisers and retired generals who publicly criticized him during the 2024 election campaign.
On their face, such moves appear to be a coordinated campaign of personal retribution. But as political science scholars who study the origins of elected strongmen, we believe Trump’s use of the Justice Department to attack former officials who stood up to him isn’t just about revenge. It also deters current officials from defying Trump.
More than revenge
Like all presidents, Trump needs allies who will faithfully implement his policy agenda. For most presidents, this means surrounding themselves with longtime friends.
For example, Don Evans, George W. Bush’s commerce secretary and close confidant, worked with Bush for decades before becoming a fixture in his White House.
But to carry out a power grab, incumbent leaders also need allies who will stay silent or, better yet, endorse their attempts to consolidate control.
In El Salvador, for example, President Nayib Bukele’s legislative allies gave him free rein in 2023 to run for president a second time despite constitutional provisions banning reelection.
Recall that Trump only left office in January 2021 because key Republican officials defied his attempts to overturn an election he lost.
Former Vice President Mike Pence, facing violent threats from a Trump-fueled mob, refused Trump’s request to overturn the election he lost. And Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger refused Trump’s entreaties to stuff the ballot boxes in Georgia with another 11,000 votes for Trump. Images
Notably, both men first won political office on their own, without an endorsement from Trump. This means they were less reliant on Trump for access to political power. Therefore, they were more likely to prioritize their loyalty to the Constitution over their loyalty to Trump.
Attacks enforce loyalty
In authoritarian contexts, loyalty is not an intrinsic quality. Authoritarian leaders do not necessarily select those with whom they have long work experience that leads to mutual trust.
For instance, during Rafael Trujillo’s dictatorship in the Dominican Republic from 1930 to 1961, the head of intelligence, Johnny Abbes, was plucked from obscurity in Mexico and in 1958 began to lead the dictator’s repression machine.
Instead, the challenge for authoritarian leaders is finding people to do their bidding. And the best people for this job are those who never would have earned their position in politics without the leader’s influence.
Unqualified appointees who can’t ascend to political power based on their merits have little choice but to stick with the leader. These people appear loyal, but only because their careers are tied to the leader staying in power.
A litany of failed politicians
This logic, where people with few career prospects outside of the leader express the most loyalty, explains why Trump has appointed a number of political candidates who have lost elections.
The head of the Small Business Administration, Kelly Loeffler, though briefly appointed as a U.S. senator from Georgia, lost her first Senate election to Raphael Warnock in 2021.
Doug Collins, Trump’s secretary of Veterans Affairs, lost to Loeffler in a Georgia Senate primary during the same election cycle.
Dan Bongino, the deputy director of the FBI, lost a 2016 primary contest for a congressional seat in a heavily Republican district in Florida.
And don’t forget Jeanine Pirro, Trump’s nominee to head a politically crucial federal judicial office. Her political career derailed 20 years ago when she came under federal investigation for “scheming to catch a cheating spouse in the act.” She lost an attorney general race in New York in 2006 to Andrew Cuomo.
Trump also picked two politicians who had failed presidential runs as Democrats – Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – to act as director of national intelligence and secretary of Health and Human Services.
For appointees who can’t win elections, the only shot at power is steadfast alignment with the leader. This dynamic, in turn, provides a strong incentive for these officials to remain loyal, even when the leader breaks the law or orders them to do the same.
When leaders place loyalists in charge of federal law enforcement, attempts to conjure votes for the president out of thin air or to seize ballot boxes in opposition districts are more likely to succeed.
The Trump administration’s attacks on former Republican officials who criticized him, such as Taylor and Krebs, reinforces this dynamic. It sends a signal of future punishment to current Justice Department officials should they speak out against Trump or refuse to carry out illegal orders.
Attacks also target opposition power
Of course, the Trump administration’s political attacks haven’t stopped with officials in his previous administration who have fallen out of favor.
They have expanded to include independent institutions such as universities, not-for-profit media and law firms.
As research on authoritarian regimes shows, the goal of attacking independent institutions this way is to sap their capacity to resist the incumbent government’s attempts to cheat in future elections.
After Hungary’s leader, Viktor Orban, had rewritten his country’s Constitution and reined in the courts, he changed the electoral rules to ensure he won reelection in 2022. Along the way, Orban forced an entire university into exile after failing to subdue it.
In these ways, incumbents’ acts of retribution toward people and organizations that oppose their agenda reinforce loyalty among their allies. They also undermine and weaken their opponents and ultimately facilitate incumbents’ efforts to consolidate power.
Joe Wright, Professor of Political Science, Penn State and Erica Frantz, Associate Professor of Political Science, Michigan State University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Trump's secret belief would leave true Republicans aghast
The Republicans have been using the term “communist” or “Marxist” to describe their opponents for as long as I can remember. Since at least the time of Ronald Reagan, they have accused liberals of using the power of the state to infringe individual rights and liberties, and to violate the promise of capitalism and the principles of free enterprise.
What they really mean, however, has nothing to do with Karl Marx. A government of, by and for the people would by necessity have to tax people of means and property in order to treat and serve everyone equally. From the Republican point of view, that’s the problem. Government shouldn’t do that. Political equality is communism.
As a consequence of the GOP’s monopoly of the word, it’s probably not surprising, though still maddening, that no one seems to have noticed that Donald Trump’s economic policies are downright communist.
Well, not quite nobody.
The famed economist was on MSNBC recently to comment on the destructive impact of the president’s tariff policies. Professor Wolfers read a passage from a recent interview Trump gave to Time magazine, in which he said: “We are a department store, and we set the price. I meet with the companies, and then I set a fair price, what I consider to be a fair price, and they can pay it, or they don’t have to pay it.”
“Milton Friedman is rolling in his grave,” Professor Wolfers said in response. “This is central planning, not even by a central planning committee. A central planning committee would have expertise. This is a bloke in a room who thinks the country is a department store.”
Wolfers isn’t the only one to notice. So has Patrick W. Watson, a senior economic analyst for Mauldin Economics. In this interview with me, he explains why the policies we are now seeing are more reminiscent of those in “command economies,” and how one consequence of tariffs is the government effectively taking control of the means of production.
“Pure Marxism there,” Patrick said.
JS: The president told Time magazine that he’s the one to establish a fair price for things, as if he were the owner of a department store. This would seem to run against the grain of 40 years of economic thinking in which the markets, and markets alone, set prices. What’s going on?
PW: Think about who this is. Trump was born to great wealth. To the degree he has ever actually shopped in a store, he has no idea what it’s like to be price-constrained. He’s talking about a part of everyday life he’s never experienced, so I’m not sure we can impute any logic to it.
But the comment betrays a mostly unnoticed political split. This statement would have once sent Reagan Republicans into orbit. The government should have no role in setting prices, in their view, even metaphorically. Maga is something else. It is aggressively interventionist. In some ways, Trumpism resembles socialism.
JS: I’m very glad you brought up socialism. I’ve been banging that drum. What are the top three signs Trump is bringing a backdoor version?
PW: First, the whole tariff-reindustrialization idea is more normally seen in command economies. As I said in 2020, it’s the government trying to dictate its preferred outcomes, instead of letting market forces decide. Their base assumption is that “laissez faire” failed.
Second, the way business leaders are frantically begging Trump for favors and the almost openly corrupt way in which he is granting them is, in effect, government taking control of the means of production.
Pure Marxism there.
Third, his immigration policies are reshaping the labor market by deporting peaceful people who are simply doing the manual labor our economy needs, while attacks on education seem directed at producing a class of lower-skilled white people to replace them.
JS: I can’t help thinking that if a Democratic president were doing this, there would be howls of socialism from all corners of the business press. I don’t see anyone making connections you’ve made. Why is that?
PW: A really good question. Maybe because for decades “socialism!” has been an attack from right to left. Seeing it go the other direction just doesn’t compute. And maybe also it’s a failure to accept that Reagan-style conservatism is dead. The Republican Party whose corpse maga now inhabits is long gone, but still being used as a shield for economic ideas the old right would not have recognized.
JS: Related to your first answer, Trump does seem to have a weird relationship with money, as in: he doesn’t seem to know what $20 would buy, as he’s never been constrained by price, as you say. I may be going out on a limb here, but that seems to have something to do with his, I dunno, “misunderstanding” of what tariffs can and can’t do.
PW: I think so. It seems to spring from a childlike view of winning and losing. I’m not sure he really understands what a trade deficit is beyond, “Their number is bigger than mine. Bad!” I’m not a psychologist, but I think we underestimate how Trump’s personality drives his policy decisions. There’s a kind of hyper-selfishness there. On any given question, ask yourself “which choice will make Trump feel good” and that’s probably the one he will make. What would be good for the country isn’t part of it. Hence, we get things like tariffs.
JS: The last time we chatted, you said Bidenomics was working. Is it still working? Will it be a mitigating factor in the coming recession?
PW: Biden left a good economy, though it had problems. Remember last September the Fed cut rates because unemployment was creeping up, then paused in December because inflation was coming back.
I think Biden and Trump weren’t far apart in wanting to reindustrialize and address China’s national security issues. The difference is Biden knew it would be a long-term job and did the hard legislative work of setting up structures to get us there. Trump wants instant glory.
He once tweeted something like “trade wars are easy to win” and I think he really believes it. So he tossed aside everything Biden accomplished and is doing it his way. We’re seeing the results.
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