The GOP's Christmas gift to the middle class
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
What do you get the dictator who has everything?
Despite this being a year when everything about the executive branch has been so horrible and destructive, Christmastime instills a vibe of generosity that can’t be ignored. Even those idiots in or adjacent to the Trump administration deserve something besides our contempt. It is in this spirit of giving that I present below my own list of holiday gifts for those who have been running things — at least in theory.
Donald Trump — President
A laminated list of grudges ranked by intensity of hatred.
(Color-coded for donors, prosecutors, and cable news hosts who didn’t clap hard enough or with the proper zeal.)
Melania Trump — First Lady
An illustrated coffee table collection, “Beautiful Stone Garden Forests of North America.”
(Features a foreword by Tucker Carlson praising the beauty of the freshly pavedWhite House “Roads Garden.”)
JD Vance — Vice President
A fully reversible ideology jacket.
(Populist on the outside, venture capitalist lining on the inside. Machine-washable morals. Ethical stain resistant.)
Susie Wiles — Chief of Staff
A fire extinguisher labeled, “In Case of Vanity Fire, er, Fair, Deny, Deny, Deny.”
(Rated for journalistic/social media emergencies and sudden vendettas.)
Stephen Miller — Deputy Chief of Staff
A red pen that edits in only one direction.
(Deletes words like “asylum,” “context,” “compassionate,” and “human.”)
Karoline Leavitt — Press Secretary
A spin-doctor’s medical supply bag for holding a Make America Gucci Again hat, Trump 2028 pin, a punching bag emblazoned with “Don’t Even Go There,” a deck of liar’s poker cards, and a Trump language decoder ring.
(In camouflage colors, the outside is stitched with, “A Bag for the Scumbags.“)
Pete Hegseth — 'Secretary of War'
A giant foam finger that points to his right and reads, “It’s His Fault.”
(Also, a bonus flask engraved with, “I Need Proof – 80 Proof.”)
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — Secretary of Health
An anti-vax bingo set with squares including “DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH,” “THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW,” “NATURAL IMMUNITY,” “CENSORED FOR SPEAKING TRUTH,” “THE SCIENCE ISN’T SETTLED,” “MY COUSIN HAD A BAD REACTION,” “ONE DOCTOR IN A LAB COAT SAID,” and “MAINSTREAM MEDIA WON’T COVER THIS.”
(Also, the center square is a free space that reads, “I’M JUST ASKING QUESTIONS.”)
Pam Bondi — Attorney General
A Department of Justice mission statement written in invisible ink.
(Technically, it’s still there. Practically, it’s gone.)
Todd Blanche — Deputy Attorney General
A personalized gold desk nameplate that reads, “Whatever Happens Here is Obviously Joe Biden’s Fault.”
(Also a fog machine that deploys mid-sentence.)
Kash Patel — FBI Director
A poster-size enemies list with dry-erase capability
(For updating threats in real time, contingent on cable news bookings.)
All Trump’s Friends in the Epstein Files
A customized collection that includes T-shirts reading, “I Was Just Networking,” “No Comment,” “(Redacted),” and “I Don’t Recall”; a travel neck pillow that says, “I Deny the Premise of the Question”; a monogrammed private jet logbook designed for shredding; and a 900-page hardcover memoir entitled I Barely Knew Him, explaining how you repeatedly crossed paths with the same man on multiple continents entirely by accident.
Jared Kushner — Son-In-Law/Unofficial Advisor
A giant “I (Heart) Saudi Arabia” money clip.
(Must be large enough to hold $2 billion in cash.)
Elon Musk — Former Head of DOGE
A new federal agency to destroy.
(It will be frequently renamed and woefully understaffed, and its failure will be blamed on “woke bureaucrats” within weeks.)
Mike Johnson — Speaker of the House
A pocket Bible with footnotes written by Fox News producers.
(Features selective verses highlighted for those moments when he’s briefly cornered by harassing journalists.)
Kristi Noem — Secretary of Homeland Security
A cosplay badge labeled, “Tough on Crime.”
(Pairs nicely with a press conference backdrop of razor wire.)
Tom Homan — Border Czar
A wall calendar that’s just one never-ending emergency.
(Every day is labeled “NATIONAL CRISIS!” CAVA bag full of cash optional.)
Russell Vought — Budget Director
A do-it-yourself government shutdown kit.
(Includes talking points, blame assignments, and a prewritten op-ed about “discipline.”)
Steve Bannon — Ideological Influencer
A podcast microphone that only records grievances.
(Background noise is permanently set to “apocalypse.”)
Alina Habba — Attack Lawyer
A courtroom microphone with a mute button she can’t find.
(She still insists the trial is going extremely well.)
Rudy Giuliani — Disgraced Personal Lawyer
A new purpose, campaigning in support of renaming the country, “The Donald J. Trump United States.”
(The first press conference is set for Four Seasons Total Landscaping, naturally.)
And a few administration-themed stocking stuffers for the entire group …
- Burner Phones
- Do-It-Yourself Non-Disclosure Agreements
- Alternative Facts Notepads
- Fake Nobel Peace Prize Medallions
- Gold-Plated Phone Chargers
- Fact-Checker Evader Glasses
- Nuclear Button Belt Buckles
- Matching Loyalty Oaths Written on Dissolving Paper
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
- Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.
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There's one job nobody wants — no wonder this nonentity loves it
As we count our blessings this week, we can exult in the undisputed fact that JD Vance is vice president of the United States. And if, over the last 11 months, this has slipped your mind, no need to worry, because JD will consistently remind you that he is — little drummer boy roll please — vice president of the United States.
“Angels we have heard on high, sweetly singing o’er the plains, JD Vance is our vice president…Gloria, in excelsis Deo! Gloria, in excelsis Deo!”
Let us rejoice and be glad for all the ways JD Vance reminds us he is vice president of the United States.
In late October, Vance, who apparently has nothing better to do, trained with the Navy SEALs (the vice president is also a warrior), and he was the only one pictured with a beard, which is very much a no-no in Pete Hegseth’s “War” Department.
“When I was a young United States Marine, I did not have a beard. I am now the vice president. So I get to do what I want to do,” Vance boasted.
Earlier this year, like a giddy little tike who just got a gold star on his forehead, Vance gushed, “I’m the vice president of the United States, I’m a very blessed man, but we have three little kids who eat a lot of eggs…”
This came during rising egg prices, which coincided perfectly with Vance’s rising VP vanity.
Then came this reminder, lest you forget over the holiday break.
“Let me be clear,” Vance declared. “Anyone who attacks my wife … can eat s–t. That’s my official policy as vice president of the United States.”
Granted, attacks on Vance’s wife are unacceptable, so his response was partly justified. That said, Vance didn’t need to add the self-important flourish. It’s a ridiculous add-on, because vice presidents do not have “official policies.”
Yes, he meant it facetiously, but with Vance it lands as smug. It’s as if his brain sends narcissistic words to his tongue, which protests, “Do we have to say this?” Then Vance’s larynx coughs up the conceit anyway.
Egos come and go in Washington like messengers dropping off gifts of gold at the White House, but in an administration chock-full of fools, Vance’s haughty head would barely squeeze into Trump’s new ballroom.
For most of American history, the vice presidency has been understood for what it is: a political dead zone. Ego is to the vice presidency what Santa is to an elf. As John Nance Garner famously said, the job wasn’t worth “a bucket of warm p—.” History later tried to dilute the metaphor by substituting “spit.”
Thomas Marshall, Woodrow Wilson’s vice president, once joked, “Once there were two brothers. One ran away to sea; the other was elected vice president of the United States. And nothing was heard of either of them again"
The patrician George H.W. Bush was always deferential to Ronald Reagan. Dan Quayle, less than bright, was taken less seriously than Mr. Potato(e) Head. Al Gore was naggingly self-assured. President Dick Cheney — enough said. Uncle Joe Biden was a “big f—--- deal” for Barack Obama. Mike Pence was Mother’s deferential husband, and Kamala Harris’ sensibility didn’t fall out of a coconut tree.
Vance appears poised to follow Richard Mentor Johnson, Martin Van Buren’s vice president, whose legacy rests more on oddities — such as his belief that drilling to the Earth’s core might reveal a habitable interior. That certainly sounds like the conspiratorial Vance, who fits right in with that Little House on the Prairie era.
Vance demeaned postmenopausal women and “childless cat ladies” long before he became vice president. He still thinks women should stay home, presumably listening to bro podcasts. Earlier this year, alluding to his wife, he said, “Here’s the thing. The cameras are all on, anything I say, no matter how crazy, she has to smile, laugh, and celebrate it.”
Yes, because he’s vice president, the second lady must obey in her secondary role.
Now he’s ascended to the lower seat on Trump’s golden, plaque-filled throne, he hasn’t stopped uttering defenseless nutty witticisms in his condescending, patronizing, manner.
Vance loves to throw around his title and lap up his VP-ness, but he surely knows vice presidents have no independent executive authority. They don’t issue doctrine. They don’t set national rules. They don’t decree. They wait. Or they play war games with Navy SEALs.
And when you serve only two years in the Senate before becoming vice president, you have less credibility and stature than Quayle.
The job’s emptiness isn’t a flaw unless the person occupying it is. Vice presidents endure it because they are supposed to want something else. Most have been unknown, many have been disliked, perhaps all didn’t want to be there in the first place.
But not Vance. He loves being vice president of the United States.
The reason isn’t hard to discern. Outside conservative media bubbles and choreographed appearances, Vance is not liked. More Americans view him unfavorably than favorably.
Even among Republicans, enthusiasm is shallow. Private descriptions leak out: awkward, smug, preachy, trying too hard. A man desperate to be taken seriously, reminding everyone he’s an empty barrel making a lot of noise. Many are turned off by his holier-than-thou attitude.
That was plainly evident when he spoke to Turning Point USA last weekend and declared that America “is and always will be a Christian nation.” The founders barred religion precisely to prevent it from being used as a tool of power. But who cares about the Constitution when, as vice president, JD Vance can apparently do anything he wants?
For now, we can be grateful Vance isn’t governing. He doesn’t have to fix anything. He doesn’t have to make decisions that can be measured, judged, or blamed. He can declare “policy” that binds no one. He can posture as a national authority while remaining insulated from consequences.
Those same rules generally apply to Donald Trump, too.
If something were to happen to Trump in 2026, Vance would assume the office. But there’s little evidence he wants that day to come. One suspects he’d greet it with panic. He’d be a man forced out of a ceremonial role and handed real authority before an audience predisposed to dislike him.
Because right now, he has exactly what he wants. Vance has a title that sounds formidable, an office that demands very little, and a ready-made explanation for why nothing ever quite rests on his shoulders. Oh, and he has a beard!
The last president with a beard (if you don’t count Harry Truman, who briefly grew a goatee) was Benjamin Harrison — widely considered mediocre at best. So Vance has a mentor.
For generations, vice presidents resented how little the job mattered. JD Vance may be the first to love it precisely because it doesn’t. For him, the bucket isn’t an insult. It’s a refuge.
All this may be for naught, since Trump is doing everything possible to be king forever. So this Christmas, Vance will no doubt caterwaul, “Born a King on Bethlehem’s plain, gold I bring to crown Him again. King forever, ceasing never, over us all to reign.”
- John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”
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This Christmas, this GOP state is facing disaster — thanks to the GOP
On Christmas Day, West Virginians should be focused on family, faith and the small joys that carry us through the coldest months of the year. Instead, far too many families across our state are staring down something that should never be part of the holiday season: the real possibility of losing their health care on Jan. 1.
With Congress leaving Washington for the holidays without extending the Affordable Care Act’s enhanced subsidies, the reality is now set. These critical affordability measures — lifelines for roughly 67,000 West Virginians — are slated to expire. And paired with the looming threat of Capito Care — or the “Big Beautiful Bill” — which makes the largest cuts to Medicaid in history and destabilizes our coverage system even further, West Virginia families are heading into the new year with more uncertainty than comfort.
The timing could not be more painful. Marketplace premiums are already rising sharply for many families in our state. Parents who found coverage they could finally afford last year are opening renewal notices that show premiums doubling or tripling. Older adults who rely on ACA plans until they reach Medicare age are being told their new premiums will rival a mortgage payment. Families who were budgeting for Christmas have been forced to pull from those same savings to keep their children insured.
And because Congress adjourned without renewing these subsidies, there is no longer time to prevent the immediate impact. The choices households are now facing are brutally simple: pay more than they can afford or go without coverage altogether.
This isn’t how a society should care for its people — especially not during the season that most deeply reflects compassion, generosity, and community.
Here in West Virginia, the consequences land harder than almost anywhere else. Our state has one of the highest percentages of residents relying on Medicaid. We have a large number of older adults, rural families, and workers in physically demanding jobs who depend on reliable, affordable health care to stay healthy and stay employed. Losing subsidies doesn’t just threaten individual families — it strains rural hospitals, weakens local economies and pulls stability out from under entire communities.
And yet, this moment also reflects something deeply true about our state: West Virginians know how to endure hardship, and they know how to fight for what’s right. In every major health care battle of the past decade, our neighbors — patients, caregivers, nurses, faith leaders and advocates — have stepped up to share their stories and stand together. That civic strength didn’t prevent this particular setback, but it will be essential in the weeks and months ahead.
The truth is that while Congress missed the window to prevent the immediate premium spikes, nothing about this outcome is inevitable going forward. Policy choices created this situation, and policy choices in the new year can fix it. There is still time — and still a responsibility — for federal leaders to restore the subsidies, protect Medicaid, and reject proposals like the “Big, Beautiful Bill” that would push even more West Virginians into crisis.
As we head into Christmas, my hope is that lawmakers remember the human impact behind every line of a bill or budget. Health care isn’t a partisan talking point. It’s the insulin a grandmother needs to survive. It’s the cancer screening that catches a problem early. It’s the coverage that lets parents take their child to the doctor without fear of bankruptcy.
At West Virginians for Affordable Health Care, we remain committed to lifting those stories and pushing for solutions that protect every family in our state. This season may bring anxiety for many, but it also brings clarity: West Virginians deserve better. They deserve health care that is reliable, affordable, and treated as the essential foundation it is.
Christmas reminds us to care for our neighbors. As we move into the new year, we must make sure our policies do the same.
- Ellen Allen is the executive director at West Virginians for Affordable Health Care, an organization that brings a consumer voice to public policy so that every West Virginian has quality, affordable health care.
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Another red-state invertebrate just sold out his people to Trump
What a cop out. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said he didn’t want to sign another voter suppression bill into law before he signed a sweeping anti-voting measure into law last Friday.
Spoken like a true invertebrate.
Despite an outpouring of opposition from voting rights advocates, DeWine codified Ohio Senate Bill 293, a measure rushed through the legislature with only one hearing in the Ohio House that will change nearly every aspect of voting by mail, voter registration, and provisional ballot processing.
Why? Coercion from Trump World and litigation threats from its personal law firm, aka the U.S. Justice Department, unless its voter restriction demands were met.
Never mind that states, not the president or his heavy-handed lobbyists, run elections in America. But the cowardly governor clutched his pearls and caved.
Then he came up with a pretext about a possible ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court on mail ballot deadlines that could decide whether states can count postmarked absentee ballots that arrive after Election Day.
DeWine weighed the legally dubious arm-twisting of a historically corrupt regime and what-if judicial scenarios against the rights of tens of thousands of voters being disenfranchised to appease Donald Trump — and chose excuse over principle. Again.
Ohio Senate Bill 293 was fast-tracked (to dodge public scrutiny and input) from introduction to passage and the governor’s desk for one purpose: control.
It was designed and padded with last-minute provisions to confuse and curb voter turnout, especially among Democratic-leaning demographics, in time to affect the 2026 midterms.
The trumped-up voting barriers DeWine “reluctantly” imposed on statewide voters, unsupported by objective data from Ohio’s own “gold standard” election administration, are a significant step backward for that system and voter rights.
Yet, next year, thanks to Trump toadying opportunists in the Statehouse and an excuse-making governor, Ohio will needlessly take away the already whittled down four-day grace period it gave to voters whose absentee ballots were properly completed, postmarked on time, and mailed before the legal deadline.
That post-election window offered 803,253 Ohioans, who voted by mail in the 2024 election, trust that their ballots would be counted if they arrived in the post-election window allotted — as some 9,500 ballots did last year.
But next year, under Ohio Senate Bill 293, those same U.S. citizens who were eligible to vote in Ohio and did so before the last presidential election could have their otherwise valid ballots tossed if they arrive after Election Day.
The law DeWine enacted effectively penalizes voters for postal deliveries that fail to meet sensible expectations.
The flimsy rationale for eliminating what was once uncontroversial — extra time to accommodate absentee voters for mail delays beyond their control — was “Election Day is Election Day for a reason” and “Allowing ballots to be delivered days after the election does nothing but hurt the integrity and credibility of our elections.”
Such well-articulated profundities are standard fare from state Sen. Theresa Gavarone, the go-to fabulist committed to making voting as difficult as possible for Ohioans with baseless nonsense that defies logic and discards facts.
The Bowling Green Republican’s thin reasoning masks a sinister mission to diminish voter power and citizen challenges to non-responsive government.
During the deliberately short-circuited legislative process to hurry Ohio Senate Bill 293 through the Ohio House and enactment in 2025, Gavarone folded in core components of another anti-voter bill of hers that had not passed the Senate.
It was a devious back-door move to jam through key parts of S.B. 153 (Ohio’s copycat version of the federal SAVE Act stalled in Congress) that will make it harder for eligible Ohioans to vote, harder to collect petition signatures, and create huge bureaucratic and financial burdens on county boards of elections.
What sailed out of the legislature in the waning hours of the lame duck session is worse than you think.
The bill that is now law also requires “documentary proof of citizenship” to register to vote or update your voter registrations (with birth certificates or passports that millions of voters don’t have), shuts down online registration and voter registration drives, increases provisional voting exponentially, and creates potential invalidations for minor clerical errors (which risks large-scale disenfranchisement of voters), bans drop boxes, makes citizen initiatives much harder and more expensive to conduct (to undermine direct democracy rights in the state), and expands mass voter purges.
This is not about election security. This is about erecting obstacles to suppress participation. To disenfranchise countless eligible Ohio voters, particularly married women, young people, the poor, people of color, foreign-born Ohioans. Many in these groups already face disproportionate barriers to voting.
The additional roadblocks Gavarone copy-and-pasted into Ohio Senate Bill 293 could prevent some from exercising their fundamental right to cast a ballot entirely.
This is democracy under aggressive assault in the state.
Mike DeWine could have vetoed S.B. 293 but said he didn’t to avoid potential chaos in future elections that might happen with a possible Supreme Court ruling that could affect the state or not.
Instead of making it easier for eligible Ohio voters to freely and fairly participate in our democratic process with expanded access and accommodations, DeWine copped for excuses that allowed more hurdles to be erected for Ohioans who just want to cast a ballot, have it count and not lose their birthright to petition for government change under punitive rules drafted to derail grassroots campaigns.
More legacy rot for the go-along governor.
- Marilou Johanek is a veteran Ohio print and broadcast journalist who has covered state and national politics as a longtime newspaper editorial writer and columnist.
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Republicans in this purple state are fighting a losing battle
In politics, as in war, victory often depends on your choice of battlefield.
Here in Georgia, U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff has chosen health care and the economy as the grounds on which he will defend his Senate seat in next year’s election. His Republican opponents have chosen loyalty to Donald Trump and, I guess, “wokeness.”
Good luck with that.
So far, an estimated 190,000 Georgians have been forced to drop their health insurance for next year because Republicans in Washington refused to extend subsidies to make the insurance affordable. That’s just the first wave. Overall, experts predict more than 400,000 Georgians will be forced to go uninsured under the ACA next year because they just can’t afford a doubling or tripling of their premiums.
(That’s not counting the hundreds of thousands of additional Georgians who will lose coverage due to cutbacks in Medicaid approved by Republicans in Congress, including two GOP congressmen who are running to oppose Ossoff.)
The political impact of all that will likely be significant, but as Ossoff points out, so will the impact on human beings.
“I heard just a few days ago from one of my constituents, a single mother with four children who gets her insurance through the Affordable Care Act exchange, and her medication costs $20,000 per dose,” he said on the Senate floor earlier this month. “She needs four doses per year. Her premiums are about to go up by 500 percent.
“I heard from another constituent a few days ago, a woman in her early 60s who waits tables for a living, who’s fighting breast cancer. She needs chemo monthly. Her premiums are now going to be $500 per month. She can’t afford it. She’s going to have to give up her insurance in the middle of chemotherapy while she’s fighting breast cancer.
“What are people supposed to do when they lose health insurance in the middle of a cancer battle?”
Theoretically, you could make an argument that a country with an exploding deficit can’t afford to keep funding Medicaid and ObamaCare subsidies. In the coming campaign, Republicans will no doubt try to do so. But if we, the richest nation in the world with an economy that Trump describes as the best ever, can’t afford to help a working mom and her four kids buy health insurance, if we can’t cover a cancer patient who would die without treatment, then surely we also can’t afford trillion-dollar tax cuts for the very wealthy, right?
Wrong, according to Republicans, because that’s exactly what they’ve done in their “big, beautiful bill,” the legislation that they tout as their crowning achievement of the past year. Budgets reflect priorities, and based on their actions the priority for national Republicans is to further enrich the already rich, while pushing sick Americans onto ice floes and wishing them well.
The political problem for Republicans runs even deeper than that: Because they have never accepted the argument that Americans have a right to health care, they have never shown interest in how that right might best be protected. Trump, for example, has been promising to offer a better, cheaper version of Obamacare since 2015, but in the decade since has failed to produce anything akin to an actual proposal.
And if the GOP can’t accept that health care is now viewed as a right, they have isolated themselves from the American mainstream on a critically important issue. According to a Pew poll released last month, 66 percent of Americans now agree that health care should be treated as a human right.
Those Americans don’t agree on how best to do it — roughly half believe that health insurance should be purely a governmental responsibility, while others believe that government and private industry together can best provide coverage — but the political question of whether such coverage should be provided has been settled emphatically.
I don’t want to pretend that Obamacare is perfect, because it’s far from it. Like the rest of our health-care delivery system, it’s cobbled together from whatever seemed politically plausible at the time, and in the 15 years since its passage some of its frailties have become obvious. Reform is badly needed.
And if the Republican Party could finally accept that health care is a human right, if it could accept that the debate is no longer whether to provide universal health care but how to provide it most effectively and efficiently, maybe, together, we could get somewhere.
And the best way to convince them is through the voting booth.
- Jay Bookman covered Georgia and national politics for nearly 30 years for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, earning numerous national, regional and state journalism awards. He has been awarded the National Headliner Award and the Walker Stone Award for outstanding editorial writing, and is the only two-time winner of the Pulliam Fellowship granted by the Society of Professional Journalists. He is also the author of "Caught in the Current," published by St. Martin's Press.
- Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
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This courageous woman risked it all to shame Trump's minions
Once you begin surrendering to Trump, he always wants more. You can’t appease a tyrant.
David Ellison’s CBS — after gutting DEI policies, appointing right-wing hack Kenneth R. Weinstein to a new “ombudsman” role, and making anti-“woke” opinion journalist Bari Weiss editor-in-chief of CBS News (despite her lack of experience in either broadcasting or newsrooms) — on Sunday removed a segment from 60 Minutes featuring stories of Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration to what the program called a “brutal” prison in El Salvador. Weiss had demanded changes to the segment.
The Ellisons — fils et père — have been seeking Trump’s support for their hostile bid to acquire Warner Bros Discovery, but Trump has been unhappy with recent episodes of 60 Minutes, even under its new management. Hence, the segment’s removal.
Sharyn Alfonsi, a long-standing 60 Minutes correspondent who reported the segment that was removed, accused CBS News of pulling it for “political” reasons.
“Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices,” she wrote in a note to the CBS News Team. “It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now, after every rigorous internal check has been met, is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.”
Here’s Alfonsi’s note in full:
News Team,
Thank you for the notes and texts. I apologize for not reaching out earlier.
I learned on Saturday that Bari Weiss spiked our story, INSIDE CECOT, which was supposed to air tonight. We (Ori and I) asked for a call to discuss her decision. She did not afford us that courtesy/opportunity.
Our story was screened five times and cleared by both CBS attorneys and Standards and Practices. It is factually correct. In my view, pulling it now-after every rigorous internal check has been met is not an editorial decision, it is a political one.
We requested responses to questions and/or interviews with DHS, the White House, and the State Department.
Government silence is a statement, not a VETO. Their refusal to be interviewed is a tactical maneuver designed to kill the story.
If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a “kill switch” for any reporting they find inconvenient.
If the standard for airing a story becomes “the government must agree to be interviewed,” then the government effectively gains control over the 60 Minutes broadcast. We go from an investigative powerhouse to a stenographer for the state.
These men risked their lives to speak with us. We have a moral and professional obligation to the sources who entrusted us with their stories. Abandoning them now is a betrayal of the most basic tenet of journalism: giving voice to the voiceless.
CBS spiked the Jeffrey Wigand interview due to legal concerns, nearly destroying the credibility of this broadcast. It took years to recover from that “low point.” By pulling this story to shield an administration, we are repeating that history, but for political optics rather than legal ones.
We have been promoting this story on social media for days. Our viewers are expecting it. When it fails to air without a credible explanation, the public will correctly identify this as corporate censorship. We are trading 50 years of “Gold Standard” reputation for a single week of political quiet.
I care too much about this broadcast to watch it be dismantled without a fight.
Sharyn
Alfonsi wins this week’s Joseph N. Welch Award for courage in the face of tyranny (named for the chief counsel for the U.S. Army who confronted Senator Joe McCarthy with the iconic question, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" which led to McCarthy’s demise).
I’m old enough to remember when CBS News would never have surrendered to a demagogic president. But that was when CBS News — the home of Edward R. Murrow (who also revealed to America the danger of Joe McCarthy) and Walter Cronkite — was independent of the rest of CBS. And when the top management of CBS felt they had independent responsibilities to the American public.
America can survive without a 60 Minutes it can trust, just as we can survive without trustworthy editorial pages of the Washington Post. But at some point, as Trump continues to repress criticism of him and his regime, American democracy is compromised beyond repair.
We are coming to the end of only the first year of Trump II. He and the lapdogs and sycophants around him have done more damage to this nation in less than a year than I thought possible.
They have not been alone in their destruction. They’ve had enablers in the form of billionaires such as Larry and David Ellison, along with quisling managers such as Bari Weiss, who confuse having money and power with possessing integrity and fostering the common good.
- 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/.
- 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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Trump redacts to 'protect the victims'
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
These ludicrous exchanges show how Trump lies infect voters' minds
On my Sirius XM program, I discussed the almost comical hearing this month in which a top FBI official, flanked by dog-killing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, claimed antifa — short for anti-fascist — was the “number one terrorist” threat in the United States. Yet he couldn’t answer repeated questions from Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) about where the group’s headquarters are, or how many people are actually in the group:
Michael Glasheen, operations director of the FBI’s National Security Branch, said antifa was the agency’s “primary concern” and “the most immediate violent threat that we’re facing.”
Glasheen did not answer a question from the top Democrat at the hearing, U.S. Representative Bennie Thompson, about the group’s location. When asked about the number of members, Glasheen said it was “very fluid” and that “investigations are active.”
“Sir, you wouldn’t come to this committee to say something that you can’t prove,” Thompson said to Glasheen. “I know you wouldn’t do that. But you did.”
Later, Glasheen was asked if the Proud Boys were still on the FBI’s list of domestic extremist organizations — after they were added in 2018, under Trump’s first term — but he didn’t answer, just saying, “We’re in the process right now of changing our categories for domestic terrorism.”
After I played the clips of the exchanges and commented on the ludicrousness of this — and the dangers — Steven from Los Angeles, clearly a MAGA supporter, called the program to disagree with me, claiming antifa is a terror threat he has witnessed firsthand.
Antifa of course doesn’t exist as any organized nationwide group. Some people engaging in protest call themselves ant-fascist, and often take on the name antifa — even carrying banners and other identifiers — but they mostly act independently of others who might use the term to to identify themselves.
The majority of those who call themselves antifa are opposed to violence, per the Department of Homeland Security under the Biden administration. Even if some people have called themselves antifa and have engaged in or inspired violent actions in one place or another during protests (which has happened), that doesn’t mean there’s an organized group engaged in actual organized terror plots.
But Steven didn’t get that, claiming vandalism in LA and elsewhere was “terrorism” which was coordinated by “Antifa”.
Steven: Okay, so I, um, I disagree with you, uh, living on the West Coast. Whether it’s antifa, whether you want to call it, whatever organization it is. But, I mean, they’ve ruined the streets of Los Angeles. San Francisco is a dump. Um, uh, Oregon is a dump. Uh, Seattle, Washington.
MS: Who who did this? Who ruined the streets? What did they do?
Steven: It was. Well, whatever organization you want to call it. Uh, the people that were protesting on the streets.
MS: You said antifa.
Steven: Well, that's who they're supposed to be, right?
After I pressed him on what they’re doing he said that in Portland and other places, “These people are on the streets every day. They're yelling at cars. The traffic is stopped.”
Yelling at cars? Yes, that’s what he said.
MS: Okay, Steven, that's not terrorism.
Steven: What is that? Terrorism. The stores are all closed.
MS: No, Stephen, that's not terrorism. You could tell me about vandalism. You could tell me about protests. You could even tell me about rioting, if you want, which we haven't seen.
But a terrorist and a terrorist organization are highly coordinated groups of people with plots and plans to take down the government or send a message to a group of people, and they engage in mass violence, bombings, mass shootings, kidnappings.
Why is our government spending all this money on this? You're telling me about what? Graffiti in Los Angeles?
He went on about how yelling at protests and throwing things — not explaining more — was terrorism.
But then when I brought up actual terrorism — January 6, police officers bludgeoned, the Proud Boys making threats, and the Oath Keepers, per law enforcement, stockpiling weapons at a hotel in Virginia, with a plan to bring them up the Potomac to take the Capitol — he had a very different answer.
Steven: You know what? I don't think we'll ever know the truth of that whole situation.
Oh yeah, it got a little hot from there before I ended the call! Listen in and let me know your thoughts!
- Michelangelo Signorile writes The Signorile Report, a free and reader-supported Substack. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism.
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These signs show a new force is coming to clean out the White House
The media is freaking out over a new Rasmussen poll that found:
“A majority of voters under 40 want a democratic socialist to win the White House in the next presidential election.
“… 51 percent of Likely U.S. Voters ages 18 to 39 would like to see a democratic socialist candidate win the 2028 presidential election. Thirty-six percent (36 percent) don’t want a democratic socialist to win in 2028, while 17 percent are not sure…
“Among the youngest cohort (ages 18-24) of voters, 57 percent want a democratic socialist to win the next presidential election…
“Among those who voted for Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election, 78 percent would like to see a democratic socialist candidate win the 2028 presidential election…” (emphasis added).
I was on Ali Velshi’s MSNOW show discussing this, along with Michael Green who recently wrote a thought-provoking article about how the official poverty line in America is completely out-of-date and out of touch with the needs of most Americans. I shared a few statistics from my recent book The Hidden History of the American Dream: the Demise of the Middle Class and How to Rescue Our Future:
- When, in 1957, my dad bought the house I grew up in, the average cost of a single-family home in America was about 2.2 times the average annual wage. Today it’s more than ten times the average wage.
- When my Boomer generation was the same age as today’s Millennials, we owned a bit over 22 percent of the nation’s wealth; Millennials today control only about 4 percent of the country’s wealth (and it’s the same for Zoomers).
- From the 1930s right up until the Reagan Revolution, it was possible for seniors to live comfortably on Social Security alone; Reagan undid that with his “reforms” so today that’s nearly impossible.
- When I ran my first seriously successful business in the early 1970s, it cost me around $35/month for comprehensive health insurance for each of my 18 employees; at that time hospitals and health insurance companies were required by Michigan law (where I lived; most other states were identical) to be run as non-profits. Today, health insurance can be as much as one-fifth of a company’s payroll expense.
- When Reagan came into office in 1981, a single wage earner could support a family with a middle-class lifestyle, and fully 65 percent of us were in the middle class (up from around 20 percent in the 1930s). Today, after 44 years of Reaganomics, it takes two full-time people to achieve the same status, which triggers huge childcare expenses, which is part of why only 43 percent of us are middle class .
FDR’s great — and successful — Democratic Socialist experiment following the Republican Great Depression was to drive the economy from the bottom up, reversing the “Horse and Sparrow” trickle-down economics and deregulation of the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover administrations that provoked the Great Crash.
He did that by:
- Expanding the notion of the commons — the stuff we all collectively own and is administered or funded and regulated by government — to include free public education nationwide (and cheap college), old-age retirement (Social Security), and public power and transportation systems (Tennessee Valley Authority, federal support for local transit, roads and highways).
- Legalizing unions, an effort that was so successful that when Reagan came into office fully a third of us had good union jobs and, because they set the local wage floors, two-thirds of Americans had the equivalent of a union wage and benefit package.
- Establishing a minimum wage on which a single worker could raise a family of three and still stay above the federal poverty level (today’s federal minimum wage is $7.25: adjusted with the Consumer Price Index, that $1.60 minimum wage in 1968 is equivalent to about $14.90 an hour in 2025 dollars).
In the years since, we’ve continued to expand the commons by establishing national single-payer healthcare systems for low-income people (Medicaid) and retired people (Medicare), both of which came out of LBJ’s Democratic Socialist program that he called The Great Society.
Meanwhile, Republicans and a few neoliberal Democrats have pushed back against these Democratic Socialist programs that made the American middle class the first in the history of the world to exceed more than half the population.
- Reagan’s war on unions has cut our union membership down to well under 10 percent in the private sector.
- His gutting federal funding for education has exploded college costs to the point where three generations are saddled with over $2 trillion in debt that can’t be discharged by bankruptcy.
- Reagan’s tax cuts for the rich (from 74 percent down to 27 percent) and corporations tripled the national debt (from $800 billion to $2.4 trillion) just in his eight years; since then the four GW Bush and Trump tax cuts have, when combined with Reagan’s, produced a $38 trillion national debt so big that we now spend more on servicing their debt than we do on our defense budget or would on administering a national healthcare system.
Back in the 1940s, after the incredible success of the New Deal, President Roosevelt wanted to further expand the commons by expanding the scope of his Democratic Socialist programs. Just before he died, he proposed a “Second Bill of Rights” that included:
- “The right to a useful and remunerative job in the nation’s industries, shops, farms, or mines. (Unionization and an above-poverty-level minimum wage.)
- “The right to earn enough to provide adequate food, clothing, and recreation. (Ditto and government as the employer of last resort.)
- “The right of every farmer to raise and sell products at a return that gives his family a decent living. (Don’t manipulate farm prices with stupid tariff wars, etc., and make the government the purchaser of last resort.)
- “The right of every businessperson, large and small, to trade free from unfair competition and domination by monopolies. (Break up the giant corporations and encourage average people to start small businesses, including with loan supports.)
- “The right of every family to a decent home. (Today this would mean no more corporations, hedge funds, and foreign billionaires owning single-family homes to squeeze us dry by jacking up rents.)
- “The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to enjoy good health. (FDR favored a single-payer healthcare system like Medicare for All.)
- “The right to protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment (i.e., robust Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance).
- “The right to a good education.” (Free or inexpensive college, quality public schools in every community.)
Much to the chagrin of my Republican-activist father, my grandfather (a 1917 Norwegian immigrant) frequently and proudly described himself as a socialist. When I asked him what he meant, he always pointed me to FDR, the New Deal, and his proposed Second Bill of Rights.
And here we are again.
My grandfather’s generation saw up-close and firsthand the tax-cutting and deregulation binge of the Roaring 20s (which were only “roaring” for the morbidly rich), and then had the lived experience of watching FDR put the country back together and create the world’s first widespread middle class.
Millennials and Zoomers today are seeing the same thing, between the Bush Housing Crash of 2008, the botched Covid Crash of 2020, and the GOP’s relentless program to drive the wealth of the nation into the money bins of the billionaires who own that party.
They see the example of most European countries, where the commons includes college (many will actually pay you a stipend to attend), healthcare, and daycare/preschool, and union density is often well above 80%. Housing is subsidized or heavily regulated, leading several to have essentially ended homelessness. Giant corporate monopolies are prohibited and local small businesses are encouraged.
Europeans call these programs Democratic Socialism or social democracy, and young Americans clearly are enthusiastic about bringing the “European Dream” to this country.
My sense is that — much like in the 1930s — a significant majority of Americans are sick of the neoliberal “let the rich run things because they know best” bullshit that Republicans, “Tech Bros,” and a shrinking minority of on-the-take Democratic politicians embrace.
Meanwhile, nobody’s sure why the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is refusing to release the autopsy they did of the 2024 election, producing speculation it may have uncovered examples of Russian and Republican manipulation of both voters and the vote, but I’m guessing the real reason is that the neoliberals who largely run the DNC saw feedback that reflected the Rasmussen poll I opened this article with.
The exploding popularity of progressive politicians from Zohran Mamdani to Bernie Sanders, Jasmine Crockett, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez aren’t an anomaly; they’re a signpost to both electoral and governing success for the next generation of genuinely progressive Democratic politicians.
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Question for Governor DeSantis: what have all these foreigners ever done for us?
Foreigners! What have they ever done for us?
I grant you there was that 18th-century guy, that Marquis de Lafayette, who convinced the French government to back us against the British and used his own money to help fund the War of Independence.
You could argue the Chinese who came over in the 19th century to build the railroad also had their uses.
They worked for practically nothing, rarely whined about getting dynamited on the regular or not being eligible for citizenship.
But the foreigners clogging up our colleges don’t help make America great again.
While some would say Albert Einstein was the kind of foreigner you want hanging around, what with him being smart at science and all, he took a job at Princeton that could have gone to a real American.
Why couldn’t one of us have come up with theories about the universe that were just as good or better than his?
We’re the ones who invented the quarter-pound hamburger, the microwave oven, the credit card, and Spanx.
To be fair, immigrants obtain patents at about twice the rate of regular Americans, and OK, gave us video games and doughnut machines.
Plus, I guess we have to mention that foreign-born researchers represent 25 percent of America’s Nobel Prize winners.
But so what? Is any of this really great?
‘Pull the plug’
Not according to our fearless governor, who vows to rid us of annoying people with their strange accents and peculiar habits, especially in Florida’s institutions of higher education
Ron DeSantis demands the state Board of Governors “pull the plug” on those H-1B visas that allow practically any Tomás, Didier, or Haoran with a fancy degree and a slew of top-drawer publications to get a gig in our colleges.
“Universities across the country are importing foreign workers on H-1B visas instead of hiring Americans who are qualified and available to do the job,” said DeSantis. “We will not tolerate H-1B abuse in Florida institutions.”
Colleges are, as the governor says, “doing social justice.”
We don’t do social justice in Florida.
DeSantis’ Exhibit A: “A clinical assistant professor from Supposed Palestine,” the West Bank, now teaching at the University of Florida.
Of course you realize “Supposed Palestine” is one of the most feared places on earth, full of teenagers armed with slingshots, so vicious that Israeli settlers are forced to burn mosques, villages, and olive trees just to keep them in line.
The university would probably argue that professor is a super-brain and the most qualified for the job, but do we really want young Floridians exposed to ideas that could confuse them about who they’re supposed to hate in the Middle East?
Diversity gone wild, clearly.
UF’s got too many foreigners; FSU has a long history of coddling them, too.
In 1949, Florida State’s School of Music hired a Hungarian named Ernst von Dohnanyi.
He was renowned as a brilliant composer and pianist, called a “Romantic master,” and had been a courageous anti-Nazi fighter who also hated the Soviet regime.
But come on: Wasn’t there an American who had more or less the same resumé?
‘Ignorant, naive, blindsided’
In the 1980s, FSU brought in one Paul Dirac, a former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University
That’s a supposedly big-deal position once held by Isaac Newton, the one who got the idea about gravity by watching apples fall out of trees.
Science nerds call Dirac, a Nobel Prize-winner, the Father of Quantum Mechanics, which is all very well, but I’ll bet FSU could have got a Ph.D. from, say, the University of Alabama to do the same thing, and cheaper, too.
Take a look at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory there in Tallahassee.
It’s like the UN.
Take Dr. Likai Song: an M.D. and Ph.D. who works on cancer and HIV vaccines.
He went to Harvard and got his doctorate in Biophysics at FSU.
He’s won a bunch of NIH and NSF grants and fancy research awards, but he was born in China.
China, people.
Or what about Peter Gor’kov, a native of Russia, who makes magnetic resonance probes, instruments that tell you what’s going on inside magnets (or something like that)?
Who understands that stuff? Not red-blooded Americans!
Now I don’t know if any of these folks became citizens, but the point is there must be gazillions of native-born people with normal-sounding names like “Smith” and “Henderson” who could do those jobs.
If you listen to the professors and the students, you’d think the governor is a nasty, angry fellow who wants to destroy academic freedom and deny students perspectives from across the world while telling Floridians this will make us great again.
One uppity prof said, “I think people are ignorant, naive, blindsided or just generally racist to accept that perspective.”
He claimed international educators “add so much value, provide so much to citizens, whether it be health care, education, engineering,”
Oh contrarywise!
Picky, picky, picky
More than 60,000 egghead types work for Florida’s colleges and universities, and of those a full 1.7 percent are foreign.
That’s about 1,020 jobs stolen from Americans!
How hard can it be to become qualified in, say, immunology and microbiology like USF’s Hossam Ashour, born in Egypt and ranked among the top 2 percent of researchers worldwide?
There’s probably a TikTok video you can watch.
But the lefty-wokey academics claim there aren’t enough qualified American scientists around.
At the University of Miami, a big chunk of the biochemists, biophysicists, medical researchers, and molecular and cellular biologists are on H1-B visas.
According to the Miami Hurricane newspaper, some of UM’s obviously spoiled students aren’t happy about removing the foreigners. One said, “The STEM departments at UM could definitely struggle from a loss of international professors.”
A sophomore studying microbiology and immunology (aren’t we getting rid of those stupid vaccines?) seems to think the H1-Bs are a good thing: “It was interesting to experience [international professors’] teaching styles because they’re different from professors I’ve had before.”
American STEM not good enough for these kids?
Anti-American Americans like to bring up “the law” and “the Constitution,” pointing out that H1-B visas actually fall under the control of the federal government and Ron DeSantis can’t just wave them away.
Picky, picky.
Doesn’t matter: President Trump will help by charging $100 grand per new H-1B visa.
That ought to slow them down.
Of course the “that’s illegal” crowd, fringe types such as unions, 20 state attorneys general, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are pitching a fit over our great America First Forever A+++++ policies and suing the government.
‘Filthy countries’
Nevertheless, Trump will not waver from his determination to rid America of foreigners — unless they’re incredibly sexy or incredibly rich.
Take our well-dressed First Lady. She was a model who arrived in New York on an EB-1, often called the “Genius Visa.”
How about Elon Musk, one-time student visa holder? Sure, he dropped out of Stanford and probably worked illegally, but so what?
Without him, Mars will always be a cold, obscure planet with an unbreathable atmosphere instead of a potential vacation spot.
We need him, just like we need those oppressed white South Africans whose only crime was appropriating land belonging to the people who may have lived there for millennia but were failing to monetize it properly.
What we don’t need is so-called “experts” from countries with names we can’t spell.
No worries: Like DeSantis, the president is on the case.
He’s going big, too, planning to strip an untold number of so-called “naturalized” Americans of their citizenship.
The Justice Department says it’ll go after people who may be criminals, misrepresented themselves on their applications, or sneakily obtained citizenship during the Biden administration.
Just last year, 800,000 people, mostly from India, Mexico, the Philippines, Vietnam, and the Dominican Republic, took the oath.
Come on: Where are the Norwegians?
As for all these students pouring into our country and our state, many from “filthy” countries, Trump wants their social media inspected for any sign of terrorist tendencies such as making fun of him and deny their visas.
DeSantis says Florida’s public schools shouldn’t educate kids here without legal status, nor admit any undocumented student to one of our universities.
He will make sure the Sunshine State, home of the Cuban sandwich, is free of foreign influence.
It’s the patriotic thing to do.
- Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee, which probably explains her unhealthy fascination with Florida politics. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo.
- Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
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This GOP candidate offers nothing but rage — even his deep-red state should reject him
Tommy Tuberville’s escalating attacks on Muslim Americans culminated last week in a demand for their mass deportation.
We’ve seen this from Alabama’s senior U.S. senator before.
Tuberville once said that Black Americans “do the crime.” He called most immigrants “garbage.” He compared residents of inner cities to rats.
The former Auburn coach has made it clear over his term in the U.S. Senate that he works for a very white, very Christian and very wealthy sliver of the population of Alabama — this is a man who recently called for federal aid for forest owners — while viewing the rest of us with contempt.
A contempt so profound that he would violently remove some Alabamians from their homes and communities for the way they worship God.
I know the tendency in this state to wave away the bile that comes out of our politicians’ mouths. Pretending it’s performative. Or even grimly funny. Maybe that’s a coping mechanism for living under a decidedly undemocratic government.
But no one should treat this as one of Tuberville’s many stupid, provocative statements with no follow-through. This man, running to lead 5 million Alabamians, considers large numbers of people who live here aliens or threats to public safety. If he is elected governor, he will have access to law enforcement resources and the ability to act on his paranoia.
Just the threat of that should give you pause.
It won’t matter if our already-compromised federal courts try to stop him. The damage done to innocent people — financial, psychological, maybe even physical — will have been done.
Tuberville is pursuing the standard online strategy of pretending his critics are overreacting. “Pearl-clutching,” as he tells it. If so, he can clear that up with a straightforward, unambiguous statement that he has a responsibility to serve all Alabamians. And that he will not prosecute the people who live in this state for their faith.
I’m not holding my breath. This is a man who took many months to issue a grudging acknowledgment that white nationalism is racism.
What does that say about us?
The first vote for Tuberville in 2020 didn’t pay Alabama any compliments. Here was a political neophyte who may not have lived in Alabama, who ducked all but the softest questions and interviews, and had no agenda beyond nodding vigorously at everything Donald Trump said.
But then, lots of Alabama Republicans in 2020 ran on a platform of “I am Trump as Trump is me and we are all together.” Perhaps — perhaps — one could have voted for him without anticipating what was in store.
That’s no longer the case. You know what this man is about.
And you know what he does with one of the most important jobs in the country. He chases clout with some of the most pathetic, obnoxious people around. He’s using the public trust to become an influencer.
As for his actual duties, he barely promotes infrastructure and has embraced trade policies that ruin business here. Tuberville’s apparent hatred of immigrants is a serious roadblock to what (so far) appear to be sincere efforts by Republicans in the state to boost Alabama’s low workforce participation rate.
But he’s the favorite. Because he will be at the top of a ballot most people won’t study past the “Democratic/Republican” box on the top.
Tuberville is counting on Alabamians not caring. He wants the voters of this state to check the box and tune out every promise he makes to terrorize your neighbors and waste law enforcement resources on right-wing hallucinations.
Many, many people who live here will embrace a man who wants to hurt the people who live here.
And they will do it claiming that they are upholding some vague set of values.
But deeply-held principles don’t put a person like Tommy Tuberville in a position of power. He gets to the top because of a deep cynicism about government and power.
Alabamians have good reason to feel their state government fails them. But all too often, that feeling curdles into a belief that government always fails. No matter where it is, what it does or who runs it.
It’s understandable. But if citizens believe politics can never deliver adequate schools, opportunity or health care, every vote becomes a protest vote. Every election becomes a search for blame.
That’s perfect for someone who has nothing to offer but targets. No plan, no hope, no way forward. Just a vent for pointless rage that leaves us worse than before. And wounding many innocent people in the process.
- Brian Lyman is the editor of Alabama Reflector. He has covered Alabama politics since 2006, and worked at the Montgomery Advertiser, the Press-Register and The Anniston Star. A 2024 Pulitzer finalist for Commentary, his work has also won awards from the Associated Press Managing Editors, the Alabama Press Association and Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights. He lives in Auburn with his wife, Julie, and their three children.
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The shattering sadness of 2025 is over — as this slumbering anti-Trump giant awakes
Trump calls it “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” I have a more accurate description: our political trauma.
After almost a year of Trump’s second term, I and many other people — including, very likely, you — are feeling exhausted, distraught, and sickened by what’s happened to our country and the world.
As Times columnist Bret Stephens puts it, we are being led by the most loathsome human being ever to occupy the White House — a petty, hollow, squalid, ogre-in-chief.
Every day that goes by seems to bring uglier vindictiveness, bigger lies, wilder boasts, and worse policies.
The cruelty is almost unbearable — the destruction of USAID, the pursuit of undocumented immigrants, the breakup of families, the arrests and detentions without due process, the bombing of small boats in the Caribbean and killing of more than 100 people, and so on.
The fact it’s being done in our name, by the United States of America, is heartbreaking.
I try to be optimistic. I tell myself — as I’ve told you — that we will be all the stronger for having gone through this dark time. Most of us now have a new and deeper appreciation for democracy, the rule of law, and social justice.
I also tell myself that we couldn’t have remained on the road we were on — with its widening inequalities and worsening political corruption.
I believe all this, but it doesn’t always subdue for me the sting and the stink of Trump — the shattering, dispiriting sadness of it all. That we’ve barely completed the first year of his likely four-year regime is terrifying.
We are not powerless, of course. Together we are making significant progress against this scourge. The ogre is not able to do as much damage now as he did initially. The slumbering good giant of America is awakening.
But the vile man in the Oval Office continues to say and do horrible things.
My early New Year’s resolution is to accept this for what it is — a terrible blight on America and the world — but not allow it to discourage me or dim my determination to fight it.
I hope your determination remains strong, too.
I’ve found that the best antidote to political trauma is political activism. We shall overcome. We shall overcome.
May you find joy and rest in this holiday season. May you recharge your batteries for the struggle ahead.
Thank you for all you do.
- 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/.
- 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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