Trump: Maybe 'Sleepy Joe' was onto something
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
This Republican may blow up her life's work — just to please Trump
As many of you know, I ran last year for Congress against Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO), and lost. I have no plans to run again.
As regular readers know, I’ve hardly mentioned her since starting this Soapbox almost four months ago. She’s largely irrelevant.
But the upcoming bombshell decision facing the U.S. House of Representatives about whether to release the Jeffrey Epstein files is a test of Wagner’s fundamental integrity unlike any other she has faced in her years in Congress. And it is upon us.
Wagner has had one signature issue in her career — standing up, she claims, for the plight of women who are victims of sex trafficking. When I say it’s her one signature issue, let me add: whatever comes in second place isn’t even close.
The issue didn’t come up when I ran against her, because there was nothing to argue about. For years, she has spoken loudly and repeatedly and elegantly on behalf of the need to have better protection for sex-abuse victims, and particularly for those who have been trafficked.
Good for her. I never questioned her righteousness nor her sincerity on this point and there were plenty of other issues for me to campaign on, none of which needs to be rehashed here.
But the Jeffrey Epstein scandal is the definitive sex-trafficking story of our time, and maybe of all time. What this pervert did, who he did it with, how, when and why — and the ongoing coverup of his trail of evidence by Donald Trump — is about as major as news stories get.
As best as I can tell, Wagner, the self-proclaimed champion of trafficked women, has never once spoken Epstein’s name publicly — despite the fact that he used his power and privilege to traffic and abuse hundreds, if not thousands, of young girls.
Wagner faces a vote that is tough for her fellow Republicans — but should be a slam-dunk for her — which is whether to require the Justice Department “to release all the files related to Epstein’s case, including information related to his clients and close circle,” as reported today at The Hill.
The Trump White House, dropping any pretense of true innocence, has gone full-authoritarian with its own Republican Party on this one.
“A White House official commented on the discharge petition Tuesday night, saying that supporting it would be viewed as ‘a hostile act,’” NBC News reported.
Really? Releasing all the Epstein files — in accordance with Trump’s repeated pledges on the campaign trail to do just that — is now a hostile act. Those are pretty strong words.
Wagner’s vote, whenever it happens, will present a rare binary choice. So would her refusal to follow the leads of fellow Republican Reps. Thomas Massie (the disclosure bill’s co-sponsor), Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert in the event Trump’s lapdog House Speaker Mike Johnson manages to kill it.
Here’s the choice:
- Wagner votes “yes” for full disclosure of the Epstein files, proving she is a woman of integrity and cares about sex-trafficking victims, as she has claimed for at least a decade
- Wagner votes “no” or even fails to vote “yes” as a participant in Trump’s coverup, in which “integrity” and “Ann Wagner” should never be mentioned in the same sentence again.
You didn’t hear me talk like that during the campaign, because nothing had occurred in her record for me to question her personal character. This would be it.
If Wagner fails to stand with Epstein’s sex-trafficking victims — and with the basic principle of accountability for sex traffickers — then she at least should do the world a favor and renounce the following that she either sponsored or cosponsored:
- FOSTA – Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act
Bill: H.R. 1865 (115th Congress)
Role: Primary sponsor (authored)
Summary: Amended Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to remove immunity protections for websites that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking, enabling civil and criminal liability. Passed the House 388–25 (Feb 2018), Senate 97–2 (Mar 2018), and signed into law April 11, 2018 as part of the broader FOSTA‑SESTA package.
- SAVE Act – Stop Advertising Victims of Exploitation Act
Bill: H.R. 4225 (113th Congress, 2014) & H.R. 285 (114th Congress, 2015)
Role: Primary sponsor
Summary: Made it a federal crime to knowingly advertise commercial sex acts involving trafficking victims, particularly minors or coerced adults. Passed the House 392–19; ultimately incorporated into the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act (JVTA) of 2015. - Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act (JVTA)
Bill: S. 178 (114th Congress, 2015)
Role: Key House co-sponsor and advocate; included Wagner’s SAVE Act provisions
Summary: A wide-ranging bipartisan anti-trafficking law that enhanced law enforcement tools, increased restitution, funded services for survivors, and strengthened training across federal agencies. Incorporates multiple bills, including the SAVE Act, and was signed into law on May 29, 2015. - Trafficking Survivors Relief Act
Bills: Multiple versions — H.R. 6292 (114th), H.R. 459 (115th), H.R. 3627 (116th), H.R. 8672 (117th), H.R. 7137 (118th Congress, 2024), and reintroduced in H.R. 1379 (119th Congress, 2025)
Role: Original sponsor or cosponsor in multiple sessions
Summary: Provides post-conviction relief—such as vacating convictions, expunging arrests, sentencing mitigation, and affirmative defenses—for survivors of human trafficking who committed non-violent crimes as a direct result of their victimization. Versions reported in the House and supported across party lines.
For cynics who might think Wagner believes Trump is entitled to some special exemption on the subject of sexual exploitation of women, I would direct them to her public comments on October 9, 2016 — in the wake of the release of the infamous Access Hollywood Tapes — in which she most clearly stated he was not. In fact, she felt so passionately about sexual exploitation of women, that she made this public statement:
"I have committed my short time in Congress to fighting for the most vulnerable in our society. As a strong and vocal advocate for victims of sex trafficking and assault, I must be true to those survivors and myself and condemn the predatory and reprehensible comments of Donald Trump. I withdraw my endorsement and call for Governor [Mike] Pence to take the lead so we can defeat Hillary Clinton."
It took Wagner less than three weeks in 2016 to decide that Trump wasn’t such a bad predator, after all. Or maybe that she didn’t need to be that true to victims of sex trafficking and assault.
Today, the “strong and vocal advocate for victims of sex trafficking and assault” has another opportunity to show that she means what she has been saying all these years.
What’s it going to be, Ann Wagner, when it comes to your chance to stand up and make a politically difficult statement on behalf of those victims? Even at the risk of seeming “very hostile” to Trump?
It is her moment of truth.
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How Trump's long con shatters your American dream
The president of the United States is cheating.
His tariffs are pushing up the price of everything, which means inflation remains high, which means interest rates remain high.
But instead of rethinking the wisdom of a ruinous national sales tax, which is what tariffs are, he’s bullying those who set interest rates.
Last night, Donald Trump claimed to have fired one of them. It was his first real attempt at taking control of the independent Federal Reserve.
He doesn’t have the authority to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook. (She says she won’t resign. Her attorney says she will sue.) But the US Supreme Court could give it to him.
Then what? Trump will set interest rates more or less at random. The last time a strongman did that was in Turkey. Inflation soared. This time next year, you could be remembering $7 eggs with nostalgia.
And then, after it’s clear that Donald Trump is the cause of the biggest inflationary spike in American history, wiping out entire sectors of the economy, what will he do? Find someone else to blame for his terrible, stupid, malicious decisions. As he did with Lisa Cook, he’ll make up out of whole cloth the flimsiest of pretexts for doing what he wants to do.
He will cheat again to cover up his cheating.
And when I say “malicious,” I mean it. In Trump’s hands, tariffs were never a tool for achieving a policy goal, like bringing manufacturing back to America. They were and are tools for committing high crimes.
Everyone gets taxed, but there are exceptions – paid for by very obscenely rich corporate leaders who do not see the bribery of a president as treasonous but merely the cost of doing business.
The malice goes deeper. It’s not enough to make himself richer than he is. He has to take something away from you. With the national sales tax, cuts to government services, his toxic legislative agenda and more, he’s taking your money, your health care, your security and your hope. They must complement their wealth with a dollop of suffering, which is to say, yours. Watching you struggle is fun! The only thing better is watching their own supporters volunteer to struggle. Funner!
Feeling resentful yet?
You were told all your life that if you educate yourself, work hard and act honorably, you can succeed. That was the deal. You understood and accepted the terms. So you planned, you organized and you invested, accordingly, with the reasonable expectation of living up to your end of the bargain, thus making the American dream come true.
Trump, however, never met a bargaining partner he did not betray in the end. In his eyes, square deals are for suckers. There are winners. There are losers. And he’s always the winner, because he always cheats. The trick is hiding his intentions, getting you to buy into the idea and committing yourself. Then he’s got you. You have to live by the terms of his contract on you. But Trump?
Cheat, cheat ,cheat.
A normal president would see falling poll numbers and change course quick to get right with the American people. Not Trump. He sees falling poll numbers as reason to cheat harder. He’s squeezing more Republicans out of red states (gerrymandering) and creating conditions to scare voters away from voting next year with armed military personnel patrolling the streets of major American cities.
First, he picks our pockets. Then, he obstructs justice.
The perfect crime.
Here’s what I want you to do: Think about what it means for a criminal president to be the primary source of economic instability, disorder and chaos while, at the same time you, a normal law-abiding person, are doing everything you possibly can to get ahead or just get by.
Think about the fact that you’re falling farther behind, despite working hard and despite obeying the rules. Think about the feeling you have when you hear Trump say, as he did today, that he has “the right to do anything I want to do. I'm the president of the United States."
Is that feeling resentment? It should be.
Liberals don’t usually talk about resentment. We think that’s what Trump and his people do. We think nothing good can come of it.
But there’s resentment based on bigotry and prejudice, and there’s resentment based on actual material harms done to you and your family by a president who breaks the terms of the social contract, with impunity, all while falsely claiming that the dream is coming true.
Liberals tend to think resentment is irrational. But there’s nothing irrational about getting angry at the sight of a president who cheats to cover up his cheating, and who could, in the coming months, take over the Federal Reserve, spike inflation, and vaporize lives and fortunes.
It would be irrational if you didn’t feel resentment.
In the years ahead, resentment is almost certainly going to be a major feature of American politics, if not the feature, as it will drive the resistance against Trump while forcing him to crack down on that opposition by whatever means are befitting of a criminal president.
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Trump’s dark vision has a weak spot. Here’s how to hit it
The nightmare is already upon us, but too many are simply sleepwalking through their days, leaning on carefully crafted and long assumed structures of normalcy, where you go to the office, pay the phone bill, check your feed, take the kids to swim lessons, go to a game — activities that reaffirm that everything is as it should be, it's okay, life today entails all that was thought guaranteed just last year, last decade, last generation.
It is the dream, the one you were taught to expect in school, promised by parents, told by leaders.
But that framework of normalcy is the battered social infrastructure of the past. Because life in America right now is not okay. Slowly, at a varying pace, Americans are opening their eyes to the fact that the expectations of an American life, the birthright to freedom and opportunity, an absolute right to our own thoughts, the ongoing expansion of civil rights, advances in science, creative new arts — all no longer a given, indeed are slipping away.
We awaken to the nightmare of the new reality, where nothing is as it was, no right is irrevocable, facts no longer unassailable, no conventional wisdom predominates, national unity is no longer even desired, national sanity now a punchline. That is our waking reality.
Those with open eyes see a pale truth, one exposed without pancaked bronzer.
In the summer of 2025, the GOP and Donald Trump are in control of a post-Constitution America, a post-fact culture, a post-science society, a post-"United" States, a neo-theocratic nation in which Trump stands as the Republican God on Earth. Trump and the GOP have laid the marble foundation for one-party rule into the foreseeable future, building a ballroom in which they can drink in power and dance for decades, encamped in a newly hardened White House, a perimeter patrolled by troops and light armor.
Between now and the certification of the 2026 elections, Americans writ large, regardless of party, must both wake up to this new reality and decide if it is worth the fight to get that birthright back: fight for a normal life in an enlightened democracy, a middle class existence with vacations and savings, a citizens' republic where votes matter, one in which facts exist as reported, alternative views are expected and respected, where certain cherished values override day trading in political transactions.
We will be challenged to fight for all of it by fighting for real elections that really matter. As things are now, we cannot count on that right. Many fight hard. Too many lean on vapid "normalcy."
Let's set out reality as it is, wide awake.
Trump is already altering perfectly accurate elections. He demanded and received five more seats out of Texas. He wants control of the vote, writing an unconstitutional executive order outlawing mail-in voting and requiring paper ballots. He has specifically said that ridding this country of the normal right to vote would "get rid of politics" forever. Meaning one-party rule, and in this party, that means all power, post-Constitutional, flows from one unstable man.
The Founders' nightmare, our waking reality.
In so doing, Trump is already posturing for a win in 2026 or the basis on which to fight a possible loss. He is setting up the framework needed to contest seating a Democratic-run House of Representatives. He declared real crime statistics "fake," to create a false emergency to call in troops. The result is a military occupation of our capital, answering only to the president.
Breathe that naked fact in. That's what dictators do: use troops, guns, and armor to secure the seat of government. He has already said he will do it in other Democratic cities … Now consider what he is willing to do next November. Is there any reason to believe he will accept the reality of an election? Or create his own if needed, leading to "one-party rule."
One also has to awaken to the propaganda. Please remember that propaganda is not used to convince anyone to believe any one story or explanation. No, propaganda is infused into every statement, interview, press conference, meme, whatever, so overwhelmingly that citizens give up on even the very idea of truth, that select facts exist as knowable and pertinent.
In the post-Constitution propaganda state, every report on every subject, even prices or unemployment numbers, all are said to come with a political angle and are thus rendered debatable and deniable. Every announcement implies an agenda. If a news outlet cites rising costs or job losses, the response will be that it is a fake story by the "liberal media" that hates America and is out to get Trump.
This administration tosses aside bad news like a bone of fried chicken. It could be someone citing crime statistics in D.C., a mediocre Bureau of Labor report, a military bomb damage assessment, rising prices, a jury finding regarding rape in a civil case, Epstein victims, or even the undeniable need for vaccinations — they can all be scoffed at and rage tweeted as just the product of someone wanting to stop America from being great. In a propaganda-infused fascist state, plain and obvious facts no longer exist, never mind matter. The post-truth administration no longer seeks reality.
Only the message matters. And the message is that America is the "hottest" country in the world. In the post-truth existence, Trump has ended six wars and deserves a Nobel Prize. He has record-high approval ratings, higher than any president ever. The administration has done more than any in history.
It is all branding, it is all propaganda. Try finding the "truth" in any of it.
More Americans are awakening to at least that truth. But too few are fighting. California Governor Gavin Newsom has become an overnight hero by finding a foothold for real resistance.
A genius within Newsom's organization decided to hold a mirror up to the outrageously ridiculous behavior that we're now conditioned to see as "normal," only to show how freaking bizarre this shit looks when coming from anyone else. Its brilliance flows from the fact that it's based on what people see and feel, not so much a fight for truth. In a post-truth, "branded" society, this mirror is the leading Democratic message: be the anti-matter in all Trump matters, drain the message's power with a reverse image.
Newsom isn't wasting a lot of time arguing principles or what is right or best. That is implied. He is fighting for the sake of a fight. The fight itself becomes sufficient truth. If utter insanity is the coin of the realm, then invest billions in crypto-crazy cash and bank it right back at them. In this post-normal context, Newsom has landed a blow.
There are many other ways to resist and fight back. There are, in fact, truths that are felt rather than messaged. You feel it when you go to get groceries, and a frozen pizza is $10. The pizza went up $3 in two years, while your paycheck stayed the same. This is a hard truth that Trump cannot circumvent: the "feel."
People wanting democracy and normalcy must act. Democrats must invest in outreach to that feeling: you feel you are falling behind, and we know it. No matter how "hot" the country may be, you feel increasingly left in the cold. To fight back in the propaganda dictatorial state, movements must be based on the mood, not necessarily facts, and then message the ever-living hell out of it on every screen in existence.
All government legitimacy comes from some level of consent. We consented to Trump's election because he won, and that's what Constitution-based Americans do. But as he grabs for post-Constitutional power, consent must be withdrawn.
It can be done with movements and protests. But ultimately, it will likely take turning the tables and shaking the administration's waking assumption, the one in which Americans acquiesce to increasing dictatorial power by continuing to go about their normal everyday lives, working, consuming, and sleepwalking. Crash that dreamy predicate.
It will take economic boycotts of certain companies, even sectors, perhaps a national "savings" movement where people forego discretionary spending to slow the economy, perhaps even general strikes, protests that fly above facts and arguments but go right to messaging and what people feel. The republic needs a shakeup that alters presidential assumptions about normal Americans.
But no plan or movement can work until enough citizens awaken to the post-truth world and see that nothing is normal, no matter how many PTA events or farmers' markets they attend. For now, at least, Newsom's message is the true north for those not so much "woke" as "awoken."
From Newsom's foothold, outreach should not focus on Americans' heads, but their gut, the only truth available. Home in on that vast majority that knows it's left behind and share the message that they're valued and matter because they are and do. Provide reasons to feel included, involved, even optimistic, thereby empowered. And then act together in any way but "normal."
For now, Newsom is pointing the way. In a post-fact, post-Constitution, propagandized America, perhaps the only reliable counterpoints lie in mirror images, the lenses by which it's easiest to see that things are not okay. Forget normal messaging. Go for the "feeling" that this abnormal situation requires a gut reaction, something unexpected, something that awakens them to a new reality. The slumbering giant pushes back. It is now okay to do just that.
- Jason Miciak is a columnist for Rawstory, former Assoc. Editor at Occupy Democrats, an American Attorney and Author. He can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com and is available for speaking or consulting engagements.
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This sick Trump doctrine would horrify even its creator
Former Republican strategist and operative Rick Wilson called out Robert F Kennedy Jr. as a “heroin addict, sex addict, anti-vaccination lunatic and aspiring architect of millions of deaths” who’s dedicated to replacing real scientists with “radical eugenicists.”
And why would Kennedy be doing this?
Dr. Demetre Daskalakis — one of the top scientists and physicians who quit the CDC in protest over the anticipated replacement of Dr. Susan Monarez with an anti-vax crank — was unambiguous:
“I really hear the echoes of the word, ‘superior genetics.’ He referred to very high members of this administration and their improving health status. And said, well, that person has superior genetics… That is eugenics. Wake up. This is a red flag.”
And Daskalakis wasn’t condemning Kennedy for some obscure rant or policy about cub bears, sawed-off whale heads, or research animals. He was, instead, horrified that the senior-most Trump administration health official is again paraphrasing Hitler, this time in the Fūrher’s insistence that Germany could only become strong if the state employed eugenics to prevent the weak and hereditarily ill from reproducing.
Kennedy — the guy in charge of our entire nation’s health policies and their implementation — was, the CDC doc told MSNBC — explicitly boosting the idea of “weaker” Americans dying so those left will create a genetically superior America. As Dr. Daskalakis said:
“So, fast forward to West Texas and measles, where he [Kennedy] says, you know, getting the infection is fine, really, because only the strong will survive.”
And it was all wrapped in a level of weird that left doctors around the world aghast. At a marathon press event last Wednesday in Austin, Bob Kennedy, standing beside Texas Governor Greg Abbott as MAHA‑inspired laws were signed, claimed that he could detect serious illnesses in kids just by glancing at them:
“I’m looking at kids as I walk through the airports today, as I walk down the street and I see these kids that are just overburdened with mitochondrial challenges, with inflammation, you can tell from their faces, from their body movements, and from their lack of social connection, and I know that that’s not how our children are supposed to look.”
Kennedy — an attorney with no formal medical training — is dressing up an old poison in new clothes and calling it the MAHA movement. It’s not about health, though, not really. It’s about resurrecting the old, toxic doctrine of social Darwinism and giving it a fresh coat of populist paint.
The message, stripped down, is the same one plutocrats have always used to justify their privilege: if you’re rich, powerful, and healthy, it’s because you’re “fit.” If you’re poor, struggling, sick, or broken, well, that’s just nature’s way of weeding out the weak.
It’s a twenty-first-century neo-eugenics scheme, a moral excuse for selfishness, and Kennedy and Trump have found a way to wrap it in the language of health freedom and liberty. But it’s the oldest con in the book.
My old friend, the late David Loye (and his wife, Riane Eisler), spent decades trying to undo this exact lie. Loye pointed out that Charles Darwin himself never reduced human progress to “survival of the fittest.” That phrase wasn’t even Darwin’s; it was Herbert Spencer’s. Darwin did pick it up later, but by then industrialists were running wild with it, twisting his science into an ideology to prop up inequality.
Darwin himself, in The Descent of Man, was explicit: it’s not just competition that defines humanity, it’s compassion, cooperation, and the moral sense. He worried that “survival of the fittest” was being misunderstood, that it would be used to excuse cruelty. And Loye was right: Darwin would have rejected men like Kennedy out of hand, because they’re not standing up for science or truth but for a brutal pseudo-economic philosophy that elevates greed above care for others.
This worldview is nothing more than a justification for screwing the average and the needy while cutting government spending so morbidly rich people like Trump and Kennedy can get more tax breaks. It’s Ronald Reagan’s ghost rising again, whispering Ayn Rand’s catechism of selfishness, telling us that “greed is good” and compassion is weakness.
And just like Reagan, Kennedy is trying to pass this off as the “American way.” But it’s not.
The real “American way” has always been rooted in looking out for one another. Even the first president of our republic, George Washington, was personally involved in caring for the poor: he gave funds to the Alexandria Poor Relief Committee. That sense of noblesse oblige, that duty to help those in need, was fundamental to the American experiment from the start.
That’s not socialism; it’s basic decency. It’s also Christianity. The Sermon on the Mount doesn’t say “blessed are the billionaires.” Jesus didn’t say, “render unto those with the best lawyers.” He didn’t say, “let the strong crush the weak.” He said, “whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” The gospel couldn’t be clearer: our moral worth is measured not by how much we hoard for ourselves, but by how we treat the poor, the sick, and the stranger.
Kennedy’s MAHA movement and the post-Reagan Revolution GOP spit in the face of that teaching. As John Kenneth Galbraith once put it:
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
That’s exactly what’s happening here. RFK Jr. and his billionaire allies are recycling the same fraudulent morality used by the robber barons of the Gilded Age, the same poisonous reasoning that told factory owners it was fine to work men and women to death because if they couldn’t hack it, they weren’t “fit.” The same warped logic that defended child labor, starvation wages, and opposition to Social Security and Medicare.
And it’s been accelerating since the Reagan Revolution. Reagan idolized Ayn Rand’s brand of ruthless individualism, elevating selfishness as a civic virtue. He gutted government programs for working people while slashing taxes for the rich, and in the process rewrote the American social contract.
Ever since, Republicans and their wealthy patrons have been trying to drag us back into a society where only the wealthy thrive while the rest are left to rot. Reagan sneered at government itself, calling it the problem. But what he really meant was that government that works for the people is a problem for the morbidly rich who don’t want to pay for it.
Kennedy and the people he’s installing at the CDC and throughout our public health system are now running the same scam, draping their project in the rhetoric of “health” while selling the same poisonous brew of deregulation, disinvestment, “individual responsibility,” and cruelty.
Just look at the results. The United States today has the worst life expectancy in the developed world. Our people die younger, sicker, and with more preventable disease than citizens of countries that see healthcare as a right rather than a privilege. In Japan, in Canada, in most of Europe, people live longer and healthier lives because their governments take seriously the responsibility to ensure access to healthcare, clean food, and safe living conditions.
Here in the U.S., the rich buy themselves concierge doctors and organic diets while millions of working families can’t even afford insulin. That’s not “fitness.” That’s systemic cruelty.
Darwin understood that our species didn’t survive and flourish because the strong crushed the weak, but because we cared for each other, because we developed the instincts of sympathy and cooperation. David Loye called it “Darwin’s Theory of Love,” and Rianne Eisler documented across her many books how societies across history embraced egalitarian principles and so often rejected the kind of brutal patriarchy that Trump and his followers celebrate.
Anthropologists tell us that when early humans tended to the sick, shared food with the injured, and supported the elderly, that was when civilization began to take root. Dr. Margaret Mead told us she saw the beginning of civilization in a healed human femur from hundreds of thousands of years ago, something that only could have happened if the entire tribe had cared for its wounded member.
That’s the evolutionary advantage that made us who we are. Strip that away, and you don’t have a healthy society: you have a jungle ruled by predators.
And that’s what Kennedy and his MAHA movement — and the entire GOP for the past 44 years — appear to want: a jungle where the predators can get tax cuts while the rest of us lose healthcare, pensions, clean air, and safe food. They want to call it “natural” when kids get asthma from polluted air or cancer from toxic pesticides. They want to say it’s “survival of the fittest” when working people die ten years earlier than their wealthy peers because they spent their lives exposed to poisons in the workplace or because they couldn’t afford a doctor’s visit.
That’s not natural law. That’s man-made cruelty funded by the morbidly rich and justified by pseudoscience.
We can’t let them get away with it. We can’t let this neo-eugenics movement masquerade as patriotism or health reform. America was built on the promise that “We, the People” look out for each other, that we form a government to promote what the Constitution calls “the general Welfare,” not to serve as a handmaiden for the rich.
Washington knew it. Lincoln knew it. FDR knew it. Every generation that has bent the arc of history toward justice has known it. The question today is whether we’ll remember it in time.
Because this is not just about RFK Jr., or Trump, or Reagan’s long shadow. It’s about what kind of country we want to be. Do we want to embrace the morality of Jesus, of Washington, of Lincoln, of Roosevelt and LBJ, who all understood that caring for the vulnerable is the essence of civilization? Or do we want to embrace the morality of the jungle, where selfishness is recast as virtue and cruelty is excused as “fitness”?
Should America continue to be the only developed country in the world where healthcare is a privilege instead of a right? Or are we truly called — both by our Founders and our religious leaders — to be our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers?
David Loye dedicated his life to rescuing Darwin from the distortions of men like Kennedy, and to reminding us that our evolutionary destiny is not competition to the death but moral progress. We ignore his warning at our peril. If we let Bob Kennedy, MAHA madness, and his billionaire patrons redefine America as a place where only the strong survive, we will lose not just our health but our souls.
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Only one top Dem knows how to turn the tables on Trump and his sniveling minions
The president has been working hard trying to convince Americans that crime is so bad right now that he has no choice but to send armed military to patrol major cities to restore law and order, in the process stripping citizens of rights and liberties in the name of public safety.
Unfortunately, the reaction among Democratic leaders has been mixed, to put it mildly, but I think California Governor Gavin Newsom has shown a way forward. He said that if Donald Trump truly cared about crime, he would “invest in crime suppression” in states like “Speaker Johnson’s state and district.”
Look at the murder rate in Louisiana, he said. It’s “nearly four times higher than California’s.”
The implication, of course, is that neither Trump nor the Republicans in the Congress actually care about crime. They only say they do as a smokescreen for trying to subdue, control and “own” their perceived liberal enemies residing in cities and states governed by Democrats.
And because Newsom’s allegation — that Trump and the Republicans care less about crime than they do political oppression —rang so loudly and clearly, the House speaker was asked on Fox to respond. What I want to tell you is that it was a sight to behold!
“We have crime in cities all across America and we are against that everywhere,” Johnson said. “My hometown of Shreveport has done a great job of reducing crime gradually. We’ve got to address it everywhere that it rears its ugly head, and I think every major city in the country, the residents of those cities are open to that, and anxious to have it, and we’re … the party that’s going to bring that forward.”
Amazing! Why? Because in that brief moment, the Republican leader of the United States Congress sounded just like a Democrat would sound after being attacked by a Republican.
Johnson does not counterattack. He did not say Newsom was lying (Newsom was not lying). Instead, Johnson did what his counterpart Hakeem Jeffries often does after a Republican lays into him. He retreated to a “reasonable man’s” position to show that his party is the party that really cares about crime.
How did this happen?
First, Newsom told the truth. Red-state crime surpasses blue-state crime.
Second, by telling the truth, he questioned Trump’s intentions. If crime is such an emergency in Washington and Chicago that he has to send in the military to restore public safety, why isn’t he doing that in Louisiana? Why isn’t the House speaker demanding law and order? The implied answer is they don’t really care about law and order, only whether what they say about it leads to the subjugation they desire.
But importantly, Newsom did not accept as true anything Trump and the Republicans say about crime and public safety. He did not validate any of their lies. He did not concede any ground to them. He did not say to himself, “Well, Americans really are concerned about crime and Democrats shouldn’t ignore that.” He knows Trump does not care, and did not cover up bad faith with good faith. Most of all, he did not, as historian Timothy Snyder often warns, surrender in advance.
The result?
Johnson retreated. In the face of attack, he tried making himself seem like “the adult in the room.”
“We’ve got to address [crime] everywhere that it rears its ugly head.” He did what Democrats do. That’s amazing.
Most Democrats do not have the megaphone that Newsom has. Most are not going to force Fox to ask high-level Republicans to respond to them. Even so, what Newsom is doing is replicable. Do not accept in any way the lies told by Trump and the GOP, even when, or especially when, those lies come out of the mouths of independent voters. The Republicans do not mean what they say. They do not act in good faith. Overlooking this fundamental truth inevitably makes things worse.
This is why I see potential disaster in efforts by a “new coalition” of more than 100 “new Dems” in the House to show voters they really care about immigration reform. The Washington Post reported on the group’s “bipartisan” proposal, a mix of increased “border security” and more ways for immigrants to reside legally. And while that may sound reasonable, it’s not, because it accepts as true the allegations against undocumented immigrants: that they are committing serious crimes.
They are not. Entering the US without authorization is a misdemeanor on par with reckless driving and breaching the peace. Because it’s also a civil offense, judges hear cases in immigration court, not criminal court. “Unlawful entry” doesn’t rise to a felony unless it’s been done many times over, and most immigrants, once they come, they stay.
This is not news to the Democrats, but they have ceded this ground over and over for decades in the mistaken belief that it was better to compromise with the Republicans than to fight them head on, even though the Republicans, especially after 2016, did not act in good faith.
They said the immigration issue was about “law and order.” They said it was about “border integrity.” They said it was about an important thing that mattered to everyone. It was never so. The immigration issue was always about maintaining the dominance of white people in America.
But by accepting the Republicans’ lies in “the spirit of bipartisanship,” the Democrats made the lies real. They also made themselves complicit in turning immigrants into threats so monstrous that the president was justified in creating a secret police force (ICE) that is now breaking the law and profaning the Constitution to expel “the criminal aliens.”
Worst of all perhaps is that while finding “common ground” with liars and bigots, the Democrats have not mounted an unadulterated defense of immigration. It is good, in and of itself – for our economy, our communities and our culture. We should want more immigrants to become Americans. We should make it easier for them, not harder. And we can do that by upholding the true meaning of law and order.
That immigration is an essential good is implicit in recent polling that shows the uglier Trump gets with immigrants, the less popular he gets. To me, that suggests an opportunity for the Democrats. But before they move ahead, they should follow Gavin Newsom’s example in believing bipartisanship does not require surrendering in advance.
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Trump accidentally revealed a dirty secret — and it has America's CEOs panicking
Socialism is alive and well, and it is growing, though maybe not in the way you expect.
The federal government provides more than $700 billion in contracts to private sector corporations. It also forgoes approximately $1.5 trillion in tax receipts to provide tax breaks for corporations to encourage job-creating investments, or so we are told. The net result is that corporations avoid paying their fair share while we, the taxpaying public, make up the difference.
As if that public support for private enterprise isn’t enough, now President Trump is taking it to the next level by acquiring 10 percent of Intel’s stock in exchange for the $8.9 billion the government is providing the company via the Chips and Science Act.
From one angle, this certainly is an improvement over the big bank bailouts, where the taxpayer took all the risk but received none of the upside once the banks became solvent again. But it also marks a new version of "too big to fail." After all, when Socialist Trump takes a stake in a corporation, he certainly can’t allow that corporation to fail and wipe out all that equity.
This transaction has sent alarm bells ringing in the executive suites of hundreds of corporations on the government dole. As one corporate lawyer put it, “Virtually every company I’ve talked to which is a regular recipient of subsidies or grants from the government is concerned right now.”
What are they so worried about? They are concerned that they will have to give something back to the taxpayer in exchange for our largess. But the frank admission of their fears also tells us quite a bit about how the corporate economy is actually structured. What Trump is laying bare are decades of corporate socialism—the use of taxpayer money to support and enrich private corporations and their stockholders (including the elected officials who continue to trade shares and profit while making laws and regulations that impact the companies in which they hold shares).
This is the real swamp that is siphoning wealth and stable jobs away from working people. This is the swamp that has caused so many voters to give up on government. This is the swamp full of quicksand, sucking politicians into the suffocating cycle of endless corporate donations. Draining the swamp means ending corporate socialism, dismantling the apparatus that rewards big corporate contributions and empowers lobbyists arguing for big business over the interests of working people, and neither of our two political parties is willing to do that.
By accident, Trump’s overt support for Intel creates an opportunity for the Democrats to help working people secure their jobs from corporate greed. If the Democrats had any guts—granted that’s a big “if”—they would offer legislation prohibiting any corporation receiving taxpayer funding or subsidies from implementing compulsory layoffs. Instead, all layoffs would be voluntary based on financial buyout packages, the kind that are often offered to upper-level white-collar employees. If you take taxpayer money, you can’t force taxpayers out of their jobs. That would certainly seem fair and just to working people, who are too often simply told to take a hike just to further enrich executives and Wall Street investors.
After all, what was the Chips and Science Act for? One big reason for this big investment, supposedly, was to bring thousands of new jobs to America. The Biden administration awarded Intel an $8.5 billion grant, plus $11 billion in favorable loans, based on Intel’s claim that it would create 20,000 temporary construction jobs and 10,000 more permanent manufacturing positions.
Meanwhile, since 1990, Intel has spent $152 billion on stock buybacks. It has chosen to use its revenues to buy up its own shares, rather than investing in the company’s future. Stock buybacks boost the prices of a company’s shares and enrich its top executives and major Wall Street investors. They do not increase the worth of the company. Hey, why not grab more taxpayer money, buy back more shares, and shove the gains in your pocket as fast as possible? Isn’t that what all those corporate donations are for?
And the jobs? Nothing is guaranteed. In fact, as the Chips Act was moving through Congress, Intel laid off 2,000 workers!
So, instead of giving 24-hour speeches that no one can remember, why don’t a few Democrats get up on the Senate floor and say something like this:
“Now that the United States taxpayers own 10 percent of Intel, let’s make our investment contingent on protecting the livelihoods of working people. Mr. President, tell Intel that during the life of our investment, the company will not be permitted to conduct compulsory layoffs. Only voluntary buyouts will be permitted. Join us in a bill that puts the protection of jobs of working people front and center.”
Shouldn’t all the Democrats and even the Josh Hawley Republicans get behind such job-protecting legislation?
But here’s what comes to mind after writing that sentence: Not a chance! Get real! What are you smoking? I can’t imagine the Democratic leadership embracing such a proposal. Their knees knock at any mention of policies that offend corporations and Wall Street.
That’s why we need a new party of working people. Not a third party, but a true alternative to the corporate-dominated Republicans and Democrats. That’s what 57 percent of the voters of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin really want. They want a party that is willing to put working people at the center of economic policy, rather than provide corporations with more taxpayer dollars.
Corporate sycophants will call that socialistic, as if enhancing the jobs and income of working people is a slur. Meanwhile, the super-rich have no problem building gold-plated castles of corporate socialism... to enrich themselves.
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This Trump assault is against more than just so-called 'woke' ideas
“The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE,’” Donald Trump wrote recently on his Truth Social.
“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”
So, Trump has ordered that the Smithsonian replace “divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate and constructive descriptions.”
JD Vance calls American universities “fundamentally corrupt” and has referred to them as “the enemy.”
In his 2021 speech at the National Conservatism Conference, Vance stated that universities “control the knowledge in our society” and promote “deceit and lies” rather than truth, and he pledged to “aggressively attack” these institutions to reform what he sees as their left-wing ideological domination.
So, the Trump regime has attacked Harvard, Columbia, and many other institutions of higher learning and is withholding government funds until they agree to the Trump regime’s terms for deciding what they teach.
Trump has for years condemned what he terms the “liberal bias” in the the media, calling journalists the “enemy within.”
So, he has defunded PBS, NPR, the Voice of America, and Radio Free Europe. He has sued ABC and CBS. His Federal Communications Commission refused to allow CBS’s parent company, Paramount, to be sold until CBS purged itself of commentary and programming critical of Trump, including Stephen Colbert’s late-night comedy show.
Are Trump and Vance correct that museums, universities, and the media have a left-wing “woke” bias?
It’s the wrong question. It’s the question Trump would like everyone to be asking, but it obscures the more important question: Should government be determining the content of museums, universities, and the media? Or should the responsibility rest with these institutions?
Logically, someone has to decide what a museum will display. Usually this is left to people known as “curators.”
Someone has to decide what courses universities will offer. Usually this is left to university professors and professional staff.
Someone in media corporations has to decide what stories they’re going to report and which news items they’ll feature as important. Usually these decisions are left to managing editors and senior producers.
We’d be concerned if wealthy donors or advertisers played roles in these choices, because their economic interests may conflict with our interests as members of the public in learning the truth.
We’d also be concerned if politicians played roles in such choices, because their interests in remaining in power may conflict with our interests in learning the truth.
Better that professional museum curators, university faculties, and managing editors and producers make those choices because they’re “unbiased” in the sense that they don’t have ulterior motives.
The issue isn’t any mythological left-wing “woke.” It’s trust that potential conflicts of interest don’t determine content.
We wouldn’t and shouldn’t trust what we learn from a museum curated by Trump and his lapdogs, or a university whose curriculum and faculty were influenced by them, or a media corporation under their patronage. Why? Because Trump and his lapdogs would want to promote themselves and their views and censor anything critical of them.
Just as many readers are now suspicious of the editorial page of The Washington Post because the paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, has censored pieces critical of Trump — and many worry about CBS News because the network’s new owner, David Ellison, has promised Trump’s FCC that its news coverage will reflect “varied ideological perspectives” — we have reason to worry that the museums, universities, and media with which Trump is “negotiating” will censor themselves from writing anything critical of Trump for fear of offending him.
We don’t trust Trump because he has shown a brazen disregard for the truth.
But we shouldn’t trust any administration to decide what museums, universities, or the media tell us. It’s not a matter of right or left or “woke.” It’s about the political independence of truth-tellers.
A free people needs to know things that an administration may not want them to know and must be able to trust that the agents of truth — museums, universities, the media — are not compromised.
- Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/
- Robert Reich's new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org.
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The GOP has a death wish — we have a golden chance to fulfill it
I’ll start by asking a question:
Why do Republicans want so many of us to die?
If I’m a Democratic politician, or voter, or even a loudmouth columnist, this is the only question I am asking repeatedly until the polls open in every election in America, before our sickly dictator uses our military in an attempt to end voting for good.
We are in a life-or-death situation in America right now, and if you don’t believe me, why not let Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst tell it. In May, Ernst defended Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Death Bill and his elimination of life-saving Medicaid at a town hall meeting by belittling her constituents and telling them: “WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE.”
It is actually the most honest thing Ernst has ever said during her appalling reign of terror, which makes it a real irony that it also ushered in the death of her political career.
Ernst made it clear on Friday she will not seek a third term, because running on the campaign slogan, “We are all going to die,” might even be a bridge too far for some of the Trump cultists in the state, who somehow still believe they are immune to things like measles, and the truth.
I will touch on this in a minute when I’m officially done with Iowa — er, like Ernst apparently is.
The death of Ernst’s political career means another crucial U.S. Senate seat is in play, which suddenly gives life to the possibility that Democrats could pull an inside straight and gain control of the Senate next year.
It’s a long shot, sure, but already, Maine and North Carolina look ripe for the flipping, and if Democrats can get out of their own way, and demand answers to crucial questions like, why Republicans want so many of us dead, they could swipe the Senate from Trump’s rotting hands.
November 2026, is a long way off, but Democrats continued to prove they are capable of moving the political needle in Red States like Iowa Tuesday night when Catelin Drey handily defeated Republican Christopher Prosch in a district Trump won big last year.
Drey’s loud win in that state senate race smashed Republicans’ supermajority, which means their Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, will no longer be able to simply wave her magic wand to crush the hopes and dreams of Iowans. She will now actually have to legislate in something resembling a bipartisan environment.
And Drey’s win wasn’t a one-off, because Democrats in the Hawkeye State also picked off another state Senate seat in a January special election, as well as a House seat in an April special.
That’s a lot of winning in a state that’s all but been lost to Democrats since Barack Obama won it for a second time in 2012, and their Legislative Campaign Committee President Heather Williams was only too happy to spike the football Tuesday night:
“As Trump and Republicans wreck the economy and erode democracy with power-grabbing schemes, Democrats’ special election wins should send a flashing warning to the GOP: voters are rejecting the failing MAGA agenda and leaving Republican candidates in the dust.”
The good times kept rolling in the Upper Midwest when word came out Friday that Conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley would not seek reelection next April, citing "conservative failures" for her decision.
Now “conservative failures” takes in a lot of territory, so I’ll surmise in this instance she’s talking about liberals’ convincing victories in four of past five Supreme Court races in the Cheese State, dating to 2018.
This has been an incredible run, especially when you consider that liberals had not controlled that crucial chamber for decades, and now will lead it through at least 2028.
If they can pick off Bradley’s open seat next April, they will own a stunning a 5-2 advantage on that court. Judge Chris Taylor’s the liberal running for that slot, and it can never be too early to support her.
Which takes us to Iowa’s rooftop of Minnesota, where the news went from good on Tuesday night to horrific on Wednesday morning, and gets me back to wondering why despite Ernst’s prediction that “we are all going to die,” Republicans are so damn eager to make that happen.
On Wednesday, another man with another gun slaughtered two children and wounded 17 people, mostly children, in a church attended by Catholic school children in Minneapolis.
The party of death actually outdid themselves with their response to this sickening tragedy by once again asking America to pray for these children, who were shot in a church while doing just that.
Haven’t we finally had enough this Republican carnage?
Are we finally done listening to a party that is now telling us out loud that “we are all going to die” and then doing whatever they can to make that happen?
Are we finally done with people like Captain Death himself, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is currently doing more to intentionally wipe out people than any man since Adolph Hitler?
As I type this, Kennedy is continuing his gruesome crusade to end our vaccine program in America as we know it, which, according to The World Health Organization, has saved more than 150 million lives and reduced infant deaths by 40 percent.
Can you read that again? Are we really trying to make sense of this, as if it’s in the vicinity of anything resembling normal?
While Captain Death, and his brain worms, and his drug addictions, and woman-abusing and dead animal fetishes, was in his laboratory scheming to kill millions this week, he was also eliminating key public servants who have given their professional lives to protect us.
Just this week, Susan Monarez, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was forced out of her job by Captain Death less than one month into her job for refusing to go along with this maniac’s plans to end us.
Monarez, who is still fighting the dismissal, while she fights for our lives, had her lawyers release this statement:
"When she (Monarez) refused to rubber-stamp unscientific reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. For that, she's been targeted."
Four other leading officials at the CDC resigned this week because they, too, had come under extreme pressure from the sickening, Kennedy. One of those officials said Kennedy’s team asked him to “change studies that have been settled in the past” to fit Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views.
Yep, “change studies.” Just make stuff it. I mean, it’s only people’s lives we are talking about …
And here’s where I remind you that the only reason the grotesque Kennedy is even in this job in the first place is … you guessed it … Republicans.
Republicans confirmed this ghoul, despite the fact he claimed COVID-19 vaccines are “the deadliest ever,” when the facts are they saved tens of millions of lives.
So I’ll ask one more time: Why do Republicans want so many of us to die?
I suggest we all keep asking this crucial question, and demanding answers while we are still around to do it.
- (D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)
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Be assured, Trump is doomed — and here's how
The neofascist takeover of America — of our cities, universities, media, law firms, museums, civil service, and public prosecutors who tried to hold Trump and Trump’s vigilantes accountable to the law — worsens by the day.
As I’ve traveled across the country peddling my book, trying to explain how this catastrophe happened and what we can do about it, I’ve found many Americans in shock and outrage.
“How could it have happened so fast?” they ask. I explain that it actually occurred slowly and incrementally over many years until our entire political-economic system became so fragile that a sociopathic demagogue could bring much of it down.
Some people I speak with are still in denial and disbelief. “It’s not as bad as the press makes it out to be,” they say. I tell them that it is — even worse.
Others are in despair — heartbroken and immobilized. “Nothing can be done,” they say. I tell them that hopelessness plays into the hands of Trump and his lackeys who want us to think that the game is over and they’ve won. But we can’t let them. The stakes are too high. Hopelessness is a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Rest assured. The seeds of Trump’s destruction have already been sown. He will overreach. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of birthright citizenship, for example, and Trump announces he’s not bound by the Supreme Court, the uproar will be deafening.
Or the economy will bite him in the butt. As prices continue to rise and job growth continues to slow — due to Trump’s bonkers import taxes (tariffs), his attempt to take over the Fed, and his attacks on immigrants — America will fall into the dread trap of “stagflation”: stagnation and inflation. After months of this, his base is likely to turn on him — remember, many voted for him because he promised to bring prices down — and he and his Republican lackeys in Congress will be toast in the 2026 midterms.
Or his brazen corruption will do him in (he’s personally raking in hundreds of millions from crypto, for example). Or Putin will do him in (if Ukraine falls to Russia or an emboldened Russia strikes Lithuania). Or the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
He no longer has any truth-tellers to advise him — he has purged all of them. And a president who’s flying blind, without anyone around him to tell him he’s about to crash, will inevitably crash. Many innocent people will likely suffer “collateral” damage. But at least the nation will see him for who he is and consign him to the dustbin of history.
None of this argues for complacency. We must continue to fight — demonstrate, phone your representatives and senators, boycott corporations and organizations that are caving in to tyranny, protect the vulnerable, make good trouble.
But please do not fall into denial or despair, and don’t let anyone else.
- Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/
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At last, a Trump outrage to tear even MAGA SCOTUS from his side
Donald Trump thinks he can control all aspects of American life, including free market interest rates. The Fed chair, and the global economy, disagree.
If the Fed were to fall under the influence of an elected official seeking to tie interest rates to his political agenda, economic consequences would be dire: Investors would face heightened market volatility due to uncertainty and artificially manipulated interest rates, causing confidence in US assets to drop.
In his second term, Trump has made repeated threats to remove officials from the Federal Reserve, including Fed chair Jerome Powell and governor Lisa Cook. Trump is unhappy that the Fed has not yet lowered interest rates to mask economic fallout from his ill-conceived tariffs, which have caused unprecedented levels of volatility and uncertainty.
Trump’s threats have already jeopardized the Fed’s goals, destabilized global markets and eroded trust in US fiscal autonomy. AInvest reports early market responses to his threats and stresses in sum that “the Fed’s independence remains critical to global stability, as political interference risks undermining dollar dominance and triggering cascading effects on bond yields and equity valuations.”
Usurping the Fed’s role
In his latest attempt to pressure the Fed to lower interest rates, Trump seeks to fire Cook, whose appointment can only be terminated for cause under Section 10 of the Federal Reserve Act, in effect since 1913.
“For cause” in this legal context does not mean whatever Trump wants it to mean. It is statutorily defined as “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
Trump, no surprise, is trying to remove Cook for allegations falling outside that statutory definition. In response to unsubstantiated allegations from a Trump ally that Cook made false statements on a mortgage application in 2021, before she joined the Federal Reserve, Trump purported to fire her on Aug. 25.
In a letter addressed to Cook, Trump wrote, “In light of your deceitful and potentially criminal conduct in a financial matter … I do not have confidence in your integrity.”
Trump, convicted of 34 felonies for falsifying business records, whose organization was found guilty on 17 counts of criminal tax fraud, whose “Trump University” defrauded students to the tune of 25 million dollars, and who is illegally enriching himself from the presidency in unprecedented ways, appears blind to irony.
If he succeeds in removing and replacing Cook, Trump will have appointed the majority of the seven-member Board of Governors, giving him direct, improvident, and economically catastrophic influence over their decisions.
Cook says not so fast
Cook is fighting back. In a civil suit filed on Aug. 28, Cook avers that the attempted firing violates her due process rights as well as the Federal Reserve Act. Seeking an emergency injunction to block her firing and confirm her status as a member of the Fed’s governing board, Cook’s attorneys pled that, “The President’s effort to terminate a Senate-confirmed Federal Reserve Board member is a broadside attack on the century-old independence of the Federal Reserve System.”
The Supreme Court, despite having granted nearly all of the Trump administration’s 19 emergency appeals on its shadow docket, may finally be poised to tell Trump ‘No’ on this one.
In May, SCOTUS reiterated the Fed’s independence in Wilcox v. Trump, ruling that, “the Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States,” distinguishing the operational independence of the Fed from that of the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit Systems Protection Board, and other quasi-independent agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission.
Although the Roberts court often limited the powers of the executive under the Biden administration, it has done a 180 for Trump. The Republican majority now embraces the unitary executive theory on steroids, vesting an unstable president with broad Article II authority over the entire executive branch. They have let Trump ignore agency expertise, eliminate agencies altogether, and remove agency staff and directors without cause.
But in Wilcox, they bent over backward to protect the independence of the Fed, distinguishing it from other federal agencies now subject to Trump’s ruinous fiat and whim.
The law is not what Trump says it is
If Trump is allowed to go on a fishing expedition to discover infractions in personal life that he can then use to terminate employees whose terms are statutorily protected, regardless of whether those infractions have any bearing on their performance, then there is no such thing as “for cause” termination restrictions. This would suit delusional Trump, who claims Americans yearn for a dictator, just fine. But it would not serve Americans or the economy.
It is fairly obvious that short-term political interests of a president often diverge from sound long-term fiscal policy. It is also fairly obvious that Trump, who still doesn’t understand how tariffs work, is economically illiterate. Trump favors lower interest rates today to support the appearance of economic strength, because he doesn’t understand the long term economic implications.
Only an independent Fed can prevent administrations from using monetary policy for self-serving political ends in other ways, like simply printing more money to finance debt. If left unchecked, like his tariffs, Trump’s short-sighted and self-serving economic impulses could lead to total economic collapse. They could also lead to the collapse of the US dollar, which may explain Trump’s bitcoin obsession.
Even for a Trump-stacked MAGA court willing to let a criminal president run roughshod over civil liberties, the environment, education, science, and healthcare, letting him kill the US dollar may be a bridge too far.
- Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
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Trump's lickspittle-in-chief just made a very dumb move indeed
Donald Trump’s narcissistic personality disorder took quite a jolt last week.
Here’s what some are saying happened: Vice President JD Vance somehow short‑circuited his electric fence and gave an interview to USA Today where he spoke openly — and maybe a little too eagerly — about that moment in the future when he might have to replace Trump as president.
“I've gotten a lot of good on‑the‑job training over the last 200 days," Vance said in an exclusive interview published Aug. 27, when asked if he was ready to assume the role of commander‑in‑chief.
"Yes, terrible tragedies happen,” he added. “But I feel very confident the president of the United States is in good shape, is going to serve out the remainder of his term, and do great things for the American people.”
Oh no you didn’t, JD.
By the time he started flipping around like a vice‑presidential seal, blathering about Trump’s supposed super‑stamina, it had to be too late.
Did Vance really not get the memo that Trump leaves office when Trump decides to leave office? That’s the last we all heard.
He might want to revisit the North Korean manual on speculating about the Leader’s health. We know he owns a copy — the whole Cabinet just performed it in unison in meeting with Trump last week.
We don’t have details as to how Trump exploded upon learning of the blasphemy from Vance, but it’s safe to assume he wasn’t swelling with pride. So, he thought he’d teach Vance a little lesson.
“Trump Removes Secret Service Protection for Harris.”
Oops. Wrong vice president.
Where can we go to get a president with cognitive acuity?
There’s nothing funny about the story that Trump revoked Secret Service protection for former Vice President Kamala Harris — as he’s done with other political targets. In fact, it’s disgusting that the topic is even being debated.
But liberals might not want to seize the bait too quickly on this one. As the New York Times reported, vice presidents typically receive six months of protection after leaving office as a matter of standard procedure.
President Joe Biden had extended that period by a year through executive order, given the unusually high threat level faced by Harris, the Times reported. Biden had done the right thing in the right way, which is to say quietly.
But it wasn’t a permanent step because the nation does not give lifetime Secret Service protections to former vice presidents and their families (unlike presidents). Maybe it should, but it does not.
I didn’t know that, and I’m guessing neither did you. But its important context because Trump and his right-wing state media wants our heads to explode on this one. Or any outrage that doesn’t involve mention of “Epstein.”
This doesn’t excuse the stench of Trump gleefully promoting diminished safety for his political opponents. It’s just the public version of how he privately chokes loyalty out of Republicans, in this view.
As a mobster, Trump has reveled in each opportunity to proclaim the withdrawal of Secret Service details from individuals — which would have taken place quietly under a decent president. He gets to thrill his bloodthirsty followers with the closest thing to “lock them up” presently at hand.
Best of all, Trump gets to bask in dishing out the one thing he’s never had to fake: brazen cruelty. Just another ugly trademark.
Meanwhile, the person who ought to be swallowing hardest is JD Vance.
After all, Trump tried to have his last vice president killed by a mob.
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Why we’re gaslit on guns and don’t know It
“Not again,” countless Americans have said for decades after another mass shooting like the one on Wednesday during a mass in church at a Catholic school in Minneapolis.
Some experts say we should focus more on the “red flags” that potential shooters may give off so authorities could have a better chance of stopping them. Others say we need to fortify schools and deploy more armed guards to deter them.
Hardly anyone has said, however, what would work, and has been proven to reduce gun violence in every other advanced nation: to license new gun buyers and require both criminal and mental health background checks, and a permit each time they want to purchase either a semiautomatic weapon or handgun. A handful of states like New Jersey have required all these measures for decades every time to buy a handgun, and no court has ruled these regulations violate the Second Amendment.
Back in 1959, the organization that became Gallup reported 75 percent of Americans would not oppose requiring a permit to buy a gun. Today, few Americans including even gun reform advocates talk about gun permits.
The reason is that Americans on both sides of our ongoing debate over guns have been gaslit and don’t know it.
The National Rifle Association (NRA), whose leadership has since been ousted over their embezzlements, and the gun industry, represented by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, have wielded tens of millions of dollars in election campaigns. But their donations explain only part of their influence. What has shaped how most Americans see guns is less their money than the ideology that they’ve been spreading for years.
“They call it the slippery slope, and all of a sudden everything gets taken away,” President Donald Trump told reporters during his first term, after a weekend of deadly shootings in a Walmart parking lot in El Paso and on a bar-lined street in Dayton, Ohio.
He said it after a phone conversation with the NRA’s now-disgraced leader, Wayne LaPierre. The phrase is based on the idea that gun control is just a step or two away from gun confiscation and then tyranny.
This view is taken like gospel truth among the ranks and leadership of today’s Republican Party, even though it’s a myth.
Gun control has never led to gun confiscation. Communist nations like the Soviet Union and Cuba declared firearms illegal under the threat of imprisonment to compel people to turn them in. Nazi Germany seized few usable firearms from Jews, as one NRA-funded author, Stephen P. Halbrook, admitted, but only in the back pages of his book, Gun Control in the Third Reich, published by a small California think tank.
Democratic countries like the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand have used buyback campaigns to voluntarily compel people to turn in semiautomatic weapons.
Democratic Party leaders and gun reform advocates are partly to blame. Despite their good intentions, they both chose to play it safe, while sidestepping the disinformation long peddled by the gun lobby. Reformers built the strongest movement for “gun sense” that this nation had ever seen after the 2018 Parkland high school shooting, which incorporated surviving students and parents from prior school shootings in Newtown (2012) and Columbine (1999). But what its advocates failed to realize is that the movement for gun rights was even stronger.
Money on its own rarely moves people for very long. But what people may believe tends to resonate more, whether even one word of it is true. There are few more powerful emotions to move groups of people at once like fear. This is where the movement for gun rights and the movement “to make America great again” meet.
Trump has flip-flopped over guns throughout his life, the last time in 2019 over better background checks after the El Paso and Dayton shootings. One doesn’t have to look back very far to find posters in online gun forums doubting his loyalty. But he seems to have proven himself to most pro-gun people today.
Trump along with allies and followers continue to claim that he is the only one keeping tyranny in America at bay — even as his followers, including paramilitaries like the Proud Boys and the National Front and the expanding ranks of federal immigration enforcement agents, gradually impose an armed presence loyal to the president across the land.
This is the kind of outcome that many gun rights activists have long said they feared. Considering how their alleged evidence has always been nothing more than a fairy tale may help explain why Trump and his armed allies and troops are the ones imposing what looks like an emerging tyranny today, while our daily violence from guns goes on.
- Frank Smyth is the author of the book The NRA: The Unauthorized History (Flatiron Books).
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