'Stable genius' takes on disaster response
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
This farmer is just a speck in the universe — and he can end the Trump nightmare
Kansans now confront a “big, beautiful bill” approved by 218 Republican puppets in the U.S. House, and then signed into law by a convicted felon who was found guilty of sexual abuse, and who has faced multiple criminal cases over the past few years. Many of his indictments went to the core principles of our democracy. Unlike the average American, he has been given free pass after free pass by a Supreme Court that exists primarily to do his bidding — never mind right and wrong.
Is all of this part of a bad dream? If only that were the case.
We are bombarded by distortions perpetuated by hundreds of millions of dollars of “dark money” used via social media. Our reliance on that device in the palm of our hands has become a seductive tool to manipulate the masses. It’s how our president was bought and sold. Those devices supposedly foster connections, but the reality seems to be that they fuel isolation, especially at a time when we need to talk to each other.
How to make sense of the absurd? How to square any of this with the founding principles of this country, or with the role that the United States has come to play in an increasingly troubled world? I am not certain that Camus and Kafka, working in collaboration, could put all of this madness into words.
We now confront darkness.
For those of us old enough to remember, words from one of the most memorable Simon and Garfunkel songs come to mind: “Hello, darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk to you again.” Darkness leads to isolation, and that leads to lack of communication, along with feelings of hopelessness. There is much darkness now among a large segment of the population as we see actions, and hear words, that we know reveal a lack of morality, of decency, among many of our elected officials.
How to cope with these feelings? How to figure out how to make a difference?
For me, strength comes from being in a place that brings good memories, comfort and perspective. That place is in the midst of an ocean of wheat on one of our farms. I stand alone with my thoughts, in the presence of earth and sky as far as my eyes can see. I realize that I am but a speck in the universe, but I gain strength in knowing that, by my actions, I can make a difference.
Darkness is countered by light. By speaking out, and speaking the truth, we can begin to bring about change. There is fear among the populace about speaking out, because we have already seen some actions from this administration that are eerily reminiscent of tactics used by prior and current fascist regimes.
A student whom I am mentoring asked me about taking a summer job with a law firm that had caved into demands from the Trump administration.
She asked: “How do I decide?”
I said the answer is simple — look in the mirror and ask yourself if you are doing the right thing. Your conscience will be your guide. That basic idea applies here, too. My mirror is my wheat field. For others, it may be an actual mirror, or it could be some other place, another person or a certain event in your life.
Just remember that, in these dark times, silence in the midst of what you know is wrong will lead only to more darkness. Remember that we have a limited number of days. Why speak out? Because it matters.
Ben Palen is a Kansas native and a fifth-generation farmer and agriculture consultant in Colorado and Kansas.
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This McDonald's line proves why Republicans are wrong on health care
Imagine walking into a McDonald’s with two service lines.
Above one cashier reads a sign: “This employee has healthcare coverage.”
Above the other cashier reads a different sign: “This employee does not have healthcare coverage.”
Which line are you getting in?
Our collective public health is the one thing that binds us all together. Whether we like it or not. Regardless of economic status, race, creed or religion. Even across the vast political divide.
Anyone who thinks that someone else’s healthiness is someone else’s problem might want to consider this: It’s your problem too — and that of your family, friends and associates — should any of you come into contact with any of them if they’re unwell.
And those who lack preventive care — or who can’t afford treatment when they become ill — are far more likely to carry infectious germs, from the common cold to brain-eating amoebas (so as not to leave the nation’s leading health official out of this).
Consider it the Boomerang Doctrine. Whatever negatively impacts the health of one group comes flying back on all other groups. With no exemptions or opt-outs.
You might enjoy the most platinum, premier, crème de la crème healthcare coverage money can buy, but if you or yours encounter the wrong restaurant server, childcare provider, retail clerk or delivery person, you get whatever they have. Medically speaking, of course.
For my readers of more substantial means, think butler, chauffeur, concierge or country club attendant. (And see my Founder’s level here.)
But here’s the reality: No white-glove medical attention can compensate for someone else’s black hole where healthcare should have been.
It’s long troubled me that my side of the healthcare debate has refrained from framing the case through the prism of self-interest. I suppose it’s the nature of discord today that we default to our differences rather than seek common cause.
Self-interest is hardly the most noble motivation. In a better world, care and compassion for the less fortunate would be enough—so too would the principle that healthcare and insurance coverage should rank among the most fundamental rights of a civilized society.
But we don’t live in one of those at the moment. Instead, we’ve become ever more angry and tribal and inconsiderate. “Blessed is he that considereth the poor” worked fine as a psalm, but wouldn’t pass as a referendum in lots of states.
Yes, it is a searing moral indictment of our times that our federal government just enacted one of the most heartless measures imaginable to rip basic health coverage from as many as 12 million Americans who need it most.
But the larger that number grows, the more Americans find themselves numbed by the numbers. I’d rather focus on the opposite — on the far more minuscule total that one can count in their own family.
The underlying rationale for Medicaid “work requirements” — truly a fig leaf — is that vast numbers of Medicaid recipients somehow are too lazy to work or otherwise delight themselves in gaming the system. As that smear goes, the poor enjoy lives of leisure at the expense of hardworking Americans like you and me.
It’s a lie rooted in the racist — and utterly discredited — tropes that animated resistance to social change dating back to the Great Society of the 1960s. And now, arguably, even to FDR’s New Deal.
But if the argument is litigated on that ground, it’s just another in the interminable litany of issues and grievances that tear us apart. So I say everyone dismount their high horses and lay down their political arms.
Just come together to ask one question:
Which line are you getting in?
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Texas tragedy makes it crystal clear — the GOP is wrong
Since Friday, more than 80 people, including dozens of young summer camp attendees, have died in Central Texas from flooding intensified by the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis. With search-and-rescue operations ongoing and active flash flood warnings in the region, the death toll is expected to continue climbing.
Over the weekend, Texas officials quickly tried to blame the carnage on inadequate warnings from the National Weather Service (NWS), which has been gutted by the Trump administration. President Donald Trump himself lied about this, too. When asked if he thinks the federal government should rehire recently fired meteorologists, he erroneously claimed that “nobody expected” this flooding and that NWS staff “didn’t see it.”
However, NWS provided accurate forecasts and warnings despite everything that Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE wrecking crew have been doing to impair the agency.
That’s not to suggest that the Trump administration’s ill-advised cuts to the federal forecasting apparatus couldn’t have contributed to lethal havoc on the ground. Local NWS offices were missing key officials, which may have undermined swift and cohesive coordination between forecasters and local emergency managers.
Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization (the union representing NWS workers), told The New York Times that the agency’s San Angelo office, which covers many of the hardest-hit areas, was missing a senior hydrologist, staff forecaster, and a meteorologist-in-charge.
The nearby NWS office in San Antonio “also had significant vacancies, including a warning coordination meteorologist and science officer,” the Times reported. “Staff members in those positions are meant to work with local emergency managers to plan for floods, including when and how to warn local residents and help them evacuate.” The warning coordination meteorologist reportedly left on April 30, accepting the Trump administration’s early retirement offer. This runs counter to Trump’s weekend claim that his policies didn’t lead to vacancies.
In early May, CNN reported that 30 of NWS’ 122 weather forecast offices around the country were missing a meteorologist-in-charge. Former and current agency personnel made clear that the absence of chief meteorologists and other leaders could jeopardize timely communications between forecasters, the media, and local emergency managers.
Texas Officials Compounded Trump’s Recklessness
Making matters worse, Texas lawmakers earlier this year refused to pass a bill that would have improved local disaster warning systems. Rob Kelly, the top elected official in Kerr County, the flood-prone jurisdiction where most of the deaths have occurred, said that officials considered installing a warning system years ago but declined due to the purportedly high cost.
In the aftermath of increasingly common climate disasters, it becomes clear why, when someone asserts that investments in risk reduction are “expensive,” the response should be, “Compared with what?”
According to The Guardian, “Questions are also being asked” about whether Kerr County officials “had approved development along the river bank that may have skirted rules issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that control where homes may be built in areas vulnerable to flooding.”
It should be noted here that advocates of the so-called abundance agenda, which we have warned is an attempt to launder unpopular neoliberal policies, have repeatedly held up Texas as a model to be emulated, implying that circumventing environmental regulations to build more housing is sound policy.
Similar Disasters Are Coming. Trump Must Be Held Accountable
Amid the flooding on July 4, Trump signed into law the GOP’s budget reconciliation bill, which will curtail clean energy and expand the fossil fuel combustion that supercharges extreme weather. A few days earlier, the Trump administration submitted a budget request to Congress that would eliminate all climate research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the parent agency of NWS.
On July 5, Trump approved Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) request for a major disaster declaration. While it remains to be seen, the federal response could be hobbled due to Trump and Musk’s ongoing war on FEMA.
In short, the Trump administration is simultaneously exacerbating climate change and eroding society’s ability to understand, prepare for, and respond to it. This is precisely the opposite of what should be happening right now.
The deadly Texas floods will not be the last manifestation of extreme weather turbocharged by fossil fuel pollution. In an era of escalating climate threats, we need a stronger public sector with more resources to mitigate risks, help people weather storms, and adapt for the future.
For too long, neoliberal Democrats have joined Republicans in bashing the government and calling for deregulation, austerity, and privatization. In February, Matthew Yglesias went so far as to encourage Democrats to “channel their inner DOGE,” portraying party elites’ abandonment of FDR’s New Deal politics—from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton to Barack Obama—as a step in the right direction.
In fact, we sorely need a return to the Rooseveltian ideal of big government that works for working people, including by phasing out the fossil fuel industry and protecting us from increasingly frequent and severe storms, heatwaves, and wildfires.
In the meantime, congressional Democrats must not neglect their oversight duties. They ought to launch investigations and ruthlessly question the Trump administration’s culpability in the Texas flooding disaster.
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Trump outrage is hiding the real danger to America
Americans are waking up to President Donald Trump’s assaults on our democracy. In just four years, his documented lies have topped 30,000. He has also broken laws, including his attempts to dismantle government agencies, his blatant conflicts of interest with Elon Musk, and his disregarding courts on a number of fronts. We honor those courageously stepping up to hold Trump accountable—from Indivisible to Common Cause to Democracy Forward, and many more citizen-organizing efforts.
But our appropriate outrage might hide a danger—that in focusing on Trump’s shocking amorality we could slide over a painful truth we must embrace to create the democracy we need and want: His rise is a symptom. Donald Trump was able to triumph because of deep dysfunction long built into our governing structures. While we must resist his actions and work to limit the immediate damage, we must also commit to fighting for an even more democratic future, free of our current limitations.
Simply put, some features of our democracy are baked-in barriers to one-person-one-vote. The Senate, to name one. Wyoming, with a population of just over half a million has the same number of Senate seats as California, home to nearly 40 million. In other words, a voter in Wyoming has almost 68 times greater representation than a voter in much more densely populated California.
Our fight can’t merely be against Trump but in pursuit of a positive vision of an America where each of us counts, and we work together building the world we want.
And the challenges don’t stop there. Gerrymandering of electoral districts—the redrawing of district lines to favor the party in power—creates unrepresentative legislatures. As a result, one report found Republicans had an advantage of about 16 House seats in 2024’s congressional election. And then, there’s voter suppression as well as the hugely corrupting role of money in politics and the limits of our two-party system.
Despite being unfit, Trump rose to power in large measure because our antidemocratic rules have led to deep dissatisfaction with government that he was able to tap. Indeed, it’s been nearly four decades since 60% of us expressed satisfaction with “the way democracy was working.”
Since then, approval has tumbled steeply. By early 2023, just 28% of U.S. adults expressed satisfaction with how our democracy is working. And by early 2025 well more than half of Americans—61 percent—remained dissatisfied.
And Americans’ view of our standing in the world?
Despite deep doubts about our democracy, interestingly, over half of us still see our country as one of the world’s greatest. One in five even place the us at the top, and only 27% acknowledge there are better democracies.
Hmm. Self-perception can be self-deception: In global comparisons we rate shockingly low. Each year, Freedom House, founded by Eleanor Roosevelt, ranks nations by the quality of their political rights and civil liberties—a reasonable measure of democracy.
Sadly, the U.S. ranks 57th worldwide, and not even in the ballpark of nations we imagine to be our peers. Almost all European Union nations rank in the top 25.
Really? That bad?
Yes. So, how do we explain the disconnect? And how might we use this bad news for good?
Domestically, we know that there are deep roots to dissatisfaction with our democracy. But it’s not just the structural features named above: At the same time, our extreme economic inequality—deeper than more than 100 nations—means economic stress for most Americans, even as we hold onto the myth that we’re a middle-class country.
Still, the myth of American exceptionalism blinds us.
Instead, let us heed this truth: Be it a rocky marriage or a sprained ankle, healing starts when we get honest with ourselves—when we stop averting our eyes, making excuses, or just hoping one day it will all go away.
Today, as our democracy is diminishing before our eyes; let’s drop these dangerous escapes and choose constructive action. The good news in our sad scores is proof of possibility—hard evidence that we can do better as we learn lessons from the leading democracies.
So, let our dissatisfaction fuel determination and bold action. Our fight can’t merely be against Trump but in pursuit of a positive vision of an America where each of us counts, and we work together building the world we want.
Democracy is not a dull duty but a thrilling vision and empowering action.
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You're damn right I'm going to politicize this appalling catastrophe
More than 60 people, including two dozen children at a summer camp, are dead in Texas because of yet another tragedy that might have been prevented if one of the two major parties in this failing country would come to its warped senses and take the deadly heating of our planet seriously.
You are goddamned right I am going to politicize this gruesome event.
I am absolutely furious and will call this what it is, with the hope that everybody who has a brain in their head will join me. Are you listening, corporate media?
The Republican Party has had it out for America and Americans for decades.
They are a collection of stone-cold killers, who have never seen a single life worth saving just as long as there is enough money involved to allow them to cock their fat heads and look the other way.
Whether it’s climate change, guns, healthcare, a woman’s right over her body, poisoning our air and water, or rounding up hardworking landscapers and shoving them in alligator-protected detention camps, these bloodthirsty ghouls have proven to the world time and time again they aren’t interested in preventing catastrophes, they are interested in causing them.
Vaccines are being wiped away, measles are making a comeback, and more children will die needlessly because the sickly orange ghoul inside in the White House intentionally appointed a complete madman to incinerate our Department of Health and Human Services.
My God, even tooth decay is making a comeback in America because Republicans throughout the country, starting in Utah and Florida (it’s ALWAYS Florida), are removing fluoride from our drinking water.
Here’s a quote from the aforementioned madman, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on his attack on clean teeth:
''The more (fluoride) you get, the stupider you are, and we need smart kids in this country, and we need healthy kids.”
Are you reading this?
People who wear masks to suppress the spread of deadly disease are the enemy in Trump’s America, and people like Trump who attack our country are praised by the monster as “great people.”
What the hell are we supposed to do with this?
These Republicans aren’t interested in alleviating pain and suffering, they are interested in bringing it.
This heinous disaster along the Guadalupe River this weekend might have never happened if Republicans weren't certifiable monsters.
Flash-flooding due to astronomical bursts of rain are happening with increasing frequency across the globe, and most certainly Texas, where they have become a regular deadly occurrence. In fact, it is the No. 1 storm-related killer across America. This is due to a fast-heating planet caused by burning fossil fuels.
There’s no dispute here. There’s no question.
So what do Republicans do?
They call it all “a hoax.”
THAT’S what they do.
Oh, and they also do whatever is inhumanly possible to make it worse. Because they ALWAYS make things worse. They attack science, and places like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is working tirelessly to study our warming planet and sound the alarms to millions of people who refuse to listen.
So what do Republicans do?
They devote pages and pages to it in their roadmap toward the end, Project 2025, where they describe NOAA as the “climate change alarm industry” adding “it should be broken up and downsized.”
Which, of course, is exactly what they are doing.
Public servants are treated as public enemies, and heinous Republicans treat themselves to the spoils by moving money from these vital programs into the bank accounts of the bloated billionaires who then move them around the halls of Congress to do their ghastly bidding.
So, tell me again how the tragedy in Texas and thousands of other places aren’t a byproduct of this sickening, soulless political game.
And when things get bad, I mean REAL bad like they are this weekend, here’s what else Republicans do every single time:
They pray.
Here’s House Speaker Mike Johnson, out Mike-Johnsoning himself in response to the senseless deaths of our children:
"In a moment like this, we feel just as helpless as everyone else does ... all we know to do at this moment is pray."
All the man who laid the groundwork for this massive loss of life knows to do is pray. All the man who degrades science and the people whose groundbreaking work can save lives knows to do is pray.
Johnson is a gruesome, pointy-nosed little man, who has never grown out of his oily smugness. Whenever he has nowhere to go, which is often, the man who would sooner burn a book than read one, leans on his two-ton Bible to keep him in the neighborhood of straight.
Lately he’s been seen on his knees of OUR House floor praying for the passage of a bill that will mean unmitigated holy hell for millions of Americans, who will no longer have healthcare or protections from killer storms like the one we are dealing with in Texas.
His orange idol uses him as a Christian circus prop while he fills his bottomless pockets with money that should be going to hardworking Americans who so desperately need it.
How long will we continue to let them get away with this?
How long will we put up with devils like this who make things easier for killer diseases, killer storms, and outright killers in Minnesota to wipe us out?
When the next ghastly shooting happens in one of our schools, and Republicans hit their knees to pray, we better be crystal-clear that the blood will already be on their clasped hands.
Among scores of poisonous ingredients that are stuffed into their big, brutal bill that are too awful to imagine was the provision that Senate Republicans have eliminated the $200 tax stamp for firearm silencers and scrapped a similar tax for short-barrel rifles.
I guess killing quietly is more palatable to these sickos.
And who was behind this push?
Why TEXAS Senator John Cornyn, of course.
Republicans are killing millions of us out loud, and it is a national emergency.
(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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Trump's 'occupying force' is here — and the courts just pried open the door
“I must say,” Donald Trump commented, “I wish we had an occupying force.” It was June 1, 2020. The president, then in his first term in office, was having a phone call with the nation’s governors to discuss the ongoing Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests taking place nationwide in response to the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis policeman. He was urging the governors to call in the National Guard in response to BLM protests in their states. Otherwise, he threatened he would do so himself. “You have to dominate,” he told them, while labeling the protesters “terrorists.” Otherwise, he claimed, “they are going to run over you.”
Later that morning, Trump left the White House and took his infamous walk through Lafayette Park, where members of the Washington National Guard, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and several other agencies, joined by guard units from a number of states, confronted protesters. As I recounted in my book Subtle Tools, “Protesters threw eggs, candy bars, and water bottles, while law enforcement shot rubber bullets, launched pepper balls, and fired tear gas into the crowd.”
Several weeks later, protests in Portland, Oregon, tested the president’s resolve to send in an “occupying force.” Although he didn’t then go as far as to send in the National Guard, as he had threatened in that phone meeting, he did deploy federal agents to counter the protesters without consulting the governor of that state. Seven hundred and seventy-five Department of Homeland Security agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and elsewhere appeared on the streets of Portland, authorized by a presidential edict to protect federal buildings. As if to intentionally blur the borderline between military and civilian authorities, the federal agents arrived dressed in black military-looking uniforms without identifying insignia and drove unmarked vehicles. The administration justified the deployment by arguing that local law enforcement was unable to effectively control the protests.
Not surprisingly, Oregon Governor Kate Brown and Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler protested, claiming that local law enforcement was perfectly capable of handling the protests without federal aid, and that the presence of federal agents, with their aggressive tactics, including the use of tear gas and rubber bullets, had only provoked the protesters, making the situation much worse.
Sound familiar? Fast forward to today in Los Angeles.
Donald Trump is once again president, and immigration raids across the country are hurrying to meet the White House target of 3,000 arrests per day. This time around, Los Angeles has become the focal point of the resulting battle over federal versus state authority. In early June, responding to an outbreak of protests challenging the administration’s brutal immigration raids, Trump sent 700 active-duty Marines and 4,100 National Guard into that city to counter the protesters. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and California Attorney General Bonta have protested resoundingly, claiming, like their Portland counterparts, that the deployment was unnecessary and counterproductive. Mayor Bass has maintained that the local authorities “had the situation under control,” concluding that “there was no need for the National Guard.” Summing up the consequences of the deployment, Governor Newsom considered them to be “intentionally causing chaos, terrorizing communities, and endangering the principles of our great democracy. It is an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism.” Attorney General Bonta echoed Newsom by insisting that the troops were instigating violence, not defusing it, and suing the Trump administration (unsuccessfully so far) for illegally taking over a state National Guard.
Where all of this may be headed is anyone’s guess, but Portland’s attempts in 2020 to fight back against the deployment of federal agents, despite the wishes of local authorities, provide some guidance about what to expect, as well as lessons learned when it comes to the role of the courts, of dissent by local and state leaders, and of the path down which American law may be headed in relation to the president’s ability to usurp the power of local authorities.
The Law
The battle over federal versus state authority is rooted in laws pertaining to presidential powers. The Posse Comitatus Act, as former United States Attorney Joyce Vance explains, “prohibits the federal government from using the military inside of the domestic United States for law enforcement, absent truly compelling circumstances.” But there are exceptions. Title 10 of the U.S. Code fleshes them out, authorizing the president to federalize the National Guard and deploy it to a state in rare instances of invasion, rebellion, or the need to “execute [federal] laws.”
In Portland in 2020, President Trump labeled the protesters “terrorists” and threatened to bring in the National Guard if the protests didn’t stop. Yet days later, he pulled back from that threat, telling George Stephanopoulos on ABC News that such a move would have violated the law. “We have to go by the laws,” he said then. “We can’t move in the National Guard. I can call insurrection but there’s no reason to ever do that, even in a Portland case.” He further concluded that “we can’t call in the National Guard unless we’re requested by a governor.”
My, how things have changed!
On June 7th, Trump issued a memorandum declaring his authority to deploy both the National Guard and the armed services. “In light of these incidents and credible threats of continued violence,” the memo authorized the secretary of defense to coordinate with governors to deploy both the National Guard and “any other members of the regular Armed Forces as necessary to augment and support the protection of Federal functions and property in any number determined appropriate in his discretion.” In other words, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was given unprecedented authority to direct events on the home front, challenging the Posse Comitatus Act’s prohibitions.
Since then, 4,100 National Guardsmen and 700 Marines have arrived in Los Angeles. Their presence has been notably aggressive. Meanwhile, Department of Homeland Security agents have swarmed the streets, local employment places, and immigration offices, not wearing identifying insignia (as occurred in Portland). As Nick Turse reported at The Intercept, “Since June 8, there have been 561 arrests related to protests across Los Angeles; 203, for failure to disperse, were made on the night of June 10, after Trump ordered in the National Guard and Marines.” Meanwhile, Trump used the growing conflict to threaten Governor Newsom with arrest.
Justifying his deployments, the president labeled the protesters “insurrectionists,” laying the groundwork for invoking the Insurrection Act, which, as Joyce Vance explains, “allows the military to be used for domestic law enforcement, but — and it’s an important caveat — only to restore order.”
For help in pushing back against the deployments, California officials, like their Portland predecessors, have turned to the courts. This time around, however, the Trump administration has revised its reading of what is lawful and, so far, the judiciary seems to be bending the president’s way.
The Courts
On June 9th, Governor Newsom filed suit in federal court, claiming that the deployment of the Guard and the Marines violated the Constitution and exceeded the president’s Title 10 authority. The suit argued that the deployments were unwarranted and the administration had failed to try to coordinate with the governor. California Attorney General Rob Bonta elaborated on the limitations of the law: “Let me be clear: There is no invasion. There is no rebellion. The President is trying to manufacture chaos and crisis on the ground for his own political ends. Federalizing the California National Guard is an abuse of the President’s authority under the law — and not one we take lightly. We’re asking a court to put a stop to the unlawful, unprecedented order.”
In 2020, the Oregon attorney general had filed suit in federal court in response to the actions of the federal agents. As the New York Times reported, “The lawsuit said federal agents were violating the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution by denying the right to peacefully protest, failing to provide due process and conducting unreasonable searches and seizures.” Ultimately, the federal judge dismissed the case, claiming that “the attorney general’s office did not have standing to bring the case because it had not shown that the issue was ‘an interest that is specific to the state itself.’” The Oregon court also shied away from tackling the larger question of what powers the federal government actually had in such situations.
Suits brought by private parties, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of individuals (journalists in particular), who were injured, harassed, or “abducted” by federal agents were more successful. Initially, a judge expanded a temporary restraining order (TRO) from local law enforcement to federal agents, blocking the use of tear gas and projectiles against journalists. As the suit progressed, more weapons in the federal agents’ arsenal, including rubber bullets, were prohibited.
When the president asked for the TRO to be removed, the judge not only refused, but levied a requirement that government agents wear identifying insignia — an effort to introduce a measure of accountability into the conflict on the ground.
On appeal, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals raised the larger issue of federal versus local authority, resoundingly rejecting the legality of the presence of federal agents in Portland, while agreeing with the lower court’s finding of “a disturbing pattern of unwarranted force by federal agents.” That court not only reinstated the TRO against federal agents attacking journalists but underscored the fact that federal agents had gone beyond protecting federal buildings to actively confronting protesters, while widening the “perimeter” in which they could act outside those buildings and so wrongfully overstepping the authorities expressly reserved for local law enforcement.
And at that time, there was also help from within Trump’s circle. In a settlement arranged between Oregon Governor Kate Brown and Vice President Mike Pence’s staff, federal law enforcement officers were indeed replaced with members of the Oregon state police. As Nik Blosser, Brown’s chief of staff and one of the negotiators, pointed out recently, referring to Vice President Pence, “There was at least someone in the administration that knew that this violence needed to come to an end. I’m not sure who is there to negotiate with now.”
Today, in Los Angeles, the courts are similarly engaged in a suit over the administration’s deployment of federal agents to counter protests. So far, however, the outcome is trending very differently. Earlier in the month, a federal judge issued a TRO against the National Guard in that city. In a 46-page ruling, Judge Charles Breyer, the brother of retired Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer, rejected the government’s characterization of the protests as “a rebellion” and excoriated the president for assuming powers beyond his constitutional and statutory authority. “That’s the difference between a constitutional government and King George” was the way he put it. In addition, Judge Breyer returned the authority to deploy the National Guard to California rather than the federal government.
The administration immediately appealed. As in the Portland case, the appellate court is once again the Ninth Circuit. On June 18th, there was a hearing before a panel of three judges, two of them Trump appointees and one a Biden appointee. Repeatedly, the judges seemed to reject the notion that the law requires the active involvement of the governor in the decision to deploy such troops, appearing to side with the federal government lawyer, who told the judge again and again, “Our position is this is not subject to judicial review.” In other words, the president should have free rein to do as he pleases.
In their ruling, the appellate judges agreed with Trump and not with the state of California, overruling the district court judge and unanimously agreeing that the president had acted lawfully and that his failure to notify the governor before deploying those troops was not grounds for obstructing the president’s order. In other words, he could indeed keep control of the troops in L.A.
In short, the case has taken us another step down the road to the “maximalist” view of executive power. The ruling suggests that last year’s Supreme Court immunity decision, allowing a president to do more or less whatever he wants while in office without fear of retribution, was indeed a game changer. As a reminder, in July 2024, while Trump was running for office a third time, the court ruled that, “under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts.” The court then added, “There is no immunity for unofficial acts.”
In the context of recent events in Los Angeles, rather than immunity for criminal activity, it suggests that the Supreme Court might indeed support immunity from legal pushback for acts committed at the state level. And that would, of course, remove yet another of the checks and balances that once underlay the protections against untethered presidential power in the American system of government.
A Genuinely Frightening Moment
How this will play out at the Supreme Court the next time around is anyone’s guess and may turn on the issue of whether that court assesses that there really was a rebellion in Los Angeles — the government’s premise for bringing in federal troops. Nonetheless, this should certainly be considered a frightening moment. After all, that presidential memorandum authorizing the federal deployments to L.A. was in no way limited to California. In fact, there was no geographical specificity to it at all and no specific type of protest named in the memo. It was a blanket authorization for deploying federal troops, based on unspecified acts of violence, disorder, and protests. If California is a sign of the future, it seems ever clearer that the courts have little appetite for standing in the way of this president. In addition, as loyalty to him is the first requisite of government officials, any pushback from within the ranks of his administration seems essentially inconceivable.
So here we are, once again learning that the restraints Americans could rely upon in the past are fast disappearing. And while protests from democratic leaders abound, it’s the courts that, at this moment, hold the power.
It’s tempting to point to the moments in recent times when we should have seen this coming — the growing powers granted to the president in the name of the Global War on Terror, the unchecked ability of the president to repeatedly make acting appointments and fire those in his cabinet who oppose his will, the coopting of members of Congress through threats of primarying them out of office or grants of vast amounts of money should they demonstrate sufficient loyalty to the president.
But as it stands, this is probably not the time to focus on who’s to blame in the past. Instead, it’s time to consider the future and our power to strengthen the fundamentals of our democracy before all is lost. Only if our trust in the law and the courts is restored will we truly be able to turn our thoughts to the mistakes and missed opportunities of what by then would be the painful past.
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Trump is doing 'everything possible' to show his contempt for his voters
Donald Trump seems to be doing everything possible to show his contempt for ordinary working people, many of whom voted for him last fall. Just after signing his big bill, which gave massive tax breaks to the rich while taking away health care insurance for 12 to 17 million people, Trump announced that he will hit workers with one of the largest tax increases ever.
The tax increases take the form of the import taxes, or tariffs, that Trump plans to impose on the goods that we import from the rest of the world. While we won’t know the actual size of these taxes until Trump sends us his letters, based on what he has said to date, it will almost certainly be several trillion dollars if they are left in place over a decade. Taking a low-end figure of $2 trillion, that would come to $16,000 per household over the next decade.
Whatever Trump may say or think, people in the United States will be paying his tariffs.
To be clear, Trump insists that other countries will pay the tariff, but there is no reason for anyone to care about whatever idiocy comes out of Trump’s mouth. Trump said that there are 20 million people, with reported birthdays putting them over 115, getting Social Security (The number of dead people getting checks is in the low thousands.).
He said China doesn’t have any wind power; it leads the world in wind power. And Trump said global warming isn’t happening and slashed the budget for monitoring weather. Now 70 people are dead in Texas from floods for which they and state officials were not adequately warned.
The dead people in Texas, their families, and the rest of the country don’t have time for Donald Trump’s make-believe world. It doesn’t matter that Trump says other countries will pay the tariffs. Who knows what Trump actually believes, but in reality-land we pay the tariffs.
This is not hard to demonstrate. We have data on import prices through May of this year. This is before many of Trump’s tariffs hit, but items for most countries already faced a Trump tax of at least 10 percent, with much higher taxes on goods from China, as well as aluminum and cars and parts.
If other countries were paying the tariffs, then the prices of the goods we import, which do not include the tariff, would be falling. They aren’t.
To start with the big picture, the price of all non-fuel imports was 1.7 percent higher in May of 2025 than it had been in May of 2024. That doesn’t look like exporters are eating the tariffs. If we want a base of comparison, non-fuel import prices rose by just 0.5 percent from May of 2023 to May of 2024. If we want to tell a story of exporters eating the tariffs, we’re going in the wrong direction.
If we look to motor vehicles and parts, the numbers again go in the wrong direction. Import prices are 0.7 percent higher than they were in May of 2024. If we turn to aluminum the story is even worse. The price of aluminum imports was 5.4 percent higher in May of this year than a year ago.
There is a small bit of good news on apparel prices. This index for import prices was 2.9 percent lower in May of 2025 than the prior. But before celebrating too much, it’s worth noting that the price of imported apparel goods had already been dropping before Trump’s tariffs. It fell 0.3 percent from May of 2023 to May of 2024.
It’s also worth noting that much of this apparel comes from China, where items now face a 54 percent tariff. Insofar as our imported apparel comes from China, this 2.9 percent price decline would mean exporters are eating just over 5 percent of the tariff. That would mean that if Trump imposed import taxes of $2 trillion over the next decade, we will pay $1.9 trillion of these tariffs.
In short, whatever Trump may say or think, people in the United States will be paying his tariffs. They amount to a very big and not beautiful tax increase on ordinary workers.
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When did hope become something that will kill us?
I dropped out of high school. Got my GED. Worked as a general contractor in East Tennessee. Built things with my hands. Fixed busted systems. Lived paycheck to paycheck. That was my life, and for most of it, hope meant something real. Hope that a decent day's work would pay the bills. That a roof over your head and a future for your kids wasn't too much to ask.
But somewhere along the way, hope got hijacked.
Now hope looks like scratching off lottery tickets. Buying crypto hoping to get rich quick. Praying your side hustle turns into the next big thing. We don't hope to fix the system anymore.
We hope to escape it. And that kind of hope will kill us.
You see it everywhere. People identify with billionaires instead of their neighbors. They defend the rich because maybe someday they'll be rich too. They talk about taxes like they're one lucky break away from needing a tax shelter. The Hunger Games tried to warn us, and instead we started dressing like the Capitol.
I don't want to kill hope. I want to reclaim it.
Look at the numbers. The average person has a better chance of getting struck by lightning than becoming a billionaire. The odds of winning the lottery? About 1 in 292 million. Meanwhile, the odds of having medical debt? Nearly 1 in 3 Americans. The odds of being laid off or priced out or wiped out by rent? Closer to 1 in 2.
So why do we still believe? Because facing the truth is harder. The truth that the game is rigged. That the rungs of the ladder we were promised have been sawed off; the American Dream got replaced by American Denial.
Hope used to mean something different. It used to mean collective progress. Solidarity. We marched for better wages. We fought for civil rights. We built schools and unions and co-ops. We didn't dream of becoming the landlord. We fought to make rent fair for everyone. But now even our dreams are privatized. We traded shared ambition for selfish aspiration. And we're losing the plot.
I grew up hearing stories from my grandfather, who was one of 13 kids in a sharecropping family. One generation later, he owned 40 acres, grew tobacco, raised cattle, had houses to rent out to his kids. That wasn't just personal grit. That happened because America was actually building things back then. The TVA brought electricity to our region. The interstate highways connected us to the world. There were pathways to a better life that didn't require winning the lottery.
The pathways to prosperity were dismantled. I know because I watched it happen. My woodworking company made furniture components for Lazy Boy, Berkline, Universal, and Vaughn Furniture before NAFTA and CAFTA gutted us. It wasn't just my business. Our whole region got hollowed out while corporate America chased cheap labor overseas.
The pathways to prosperity were dismantled... Our whole region got hollowed out while corporate America chased cheap labor overseas.
The knowledge walked out the door with the last shift supervisor. Towns that had built middle-class prosperity around making things became ghost towns. Skills that took generations to develop got thrown away because some MBA in New York decided labor was cheaper in Mexico. We went from a country that made things to a country that made money off money. From building wealth to extracting it.
Now what do we have? The gig economy. Work three jobs and still can't afford rent. Get told to hustle harder while billionaires build rocket ships. We're supposed to be grateful for the privilege of driving for Uber while the guy who owns Uber buys his fourth mansion.
The whole system is designed to keep us hoping for individual escape instead of collective change. Keep buying those scratch-offs. Keep believing that if you just work hard enough, grind long enough, maybe you'll hit it big. Meanwhile, the people who rigged the game are laughing all the way to the bank.
They want us to think like temporary embarrassed millionaires instead of permanent working people. They want us to defend their tax cuts because someday we might need them too. They want us to vote against our own interests because we've been sold a dream that we're all just one good idea away from joining the club.
The whole system is designed to keep us hoping for individual escape instead of collective change.
But here's what they don't want us to figure out—we're stronger together than any of us could ever be alone. The TVA didn't happen because one guy got lucky. The interstate highways didn't get built because somebody won the lottery. Social Security didn't happen because workers hoped to get rich. These things happened because people organized, fought, and built something together.
I don't want to kill hope. I want to reclaim it. I want a hope that says we can fix this country, not just get rich enough to escape its problems. I want a hope that builds instead of bets. That organizes instead of idolizes. That sees neighbors instead of competitors.
These things happened because people organized, fought, and built something together.
I want hope that understands we don't need to wait for permission from billionaires to make things better. We don't need to hope they'll trickle some wealth down to us. We can build our own wealth by building things that matter. We can create our own prosperity by investing in each other.
What we need is a movement that's ready to do the big things, the hard things. A movement that understands you have to impeach Supreme Court justices who violate constitutional norms or are corrupt. That you have to take a DOGE-like approach to removing revolving door lobbyists from corrupted institutions like the FDA and the SEC. That you have to go hard against the very people who will stand in your way—the same people we're going to see standing in the way of Zohran Mamdani in New York if he's elected mayor. And too often those folks have a D by their name.
We need a movement ready to restore America to the path of becoming the country we've dreamed of being for centuries. Not the fantasy of individual escape, but the reality of collective power. Not lottery tickets and crypto dreams, but the hard work of building something that actually serves the people who live here.
That's the kind of hope worth having. That's the kind of hope that actually works. And that's the kind of hope that scares the hell out of the people running things now.
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This much protest will put Trump in mortal peril — we're halfway there
The Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision on June 27, 2025, created in President Donald Trump an American fascist dictator.
The decision in the case Trump v. CASA, Inc. did not seem momentous. It declared only that Federal District judges could no longer issue “universal” injunctions to foreclose nationwide harm; they could now grant relief only to a plaintiff in a specific lawsuit. But the decision was far from trivial: Trump v. CASA, Inc. was the coup de grace, capping six earlier and toxic SCOTUS decisions which, scattered over two centuries, collectively enabled fascism.
In deciding Trump v. CASA Inc., the six conservative justices of the Roberts Court agreed with the Republican Party’s inane claim: The injunctions of Federal District judges across the country were impeding President Trump’s ability to govern.
A president who can break laws at will is a dictator. The political system creating and accommodating this condition is fascism. Donald Trump is a dictator heading a fascist regime.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller: “Our objective, one way or another, is to make clear that the district courts of this country do not have the authority to direct the functions of the executive branch.”
Attorney-General Pam Bondi: “Active liberal… judges have used these injunctions to block virtually all of President Trump’s policies.”
The argument is laughingly specious, plausible but dead wrong in describing what is actually transpiring. It is no more than misleading spin, resting on two audacious assumptions: (1) The “functions of the executive branch” never violate the law, and “President Trump’s policies” certainly have not. (2) The “active liberal judges” who think otherwise are knee-jerk partisans with not a shred of professional integrity.
Injunctions in lawsuits are issued to block the defendant’s illegal action from continuing to harm the plaintiff, when the judge determines the lawsuit is warranted and the harm is serious. Federal District judges deal with issues nationwide in scope—their purview is every bit as wide as the Supreme Court’s—and if they believe the harm from the defendant’s action poses a threat to the nation at large, the injunction is applied “universally” across the country. We have followed this protocol since it was established by the Judiciary Act of 1789.
Federal District judges do not engage in blocking actions they know to be legal. The injunction in the case at hand and some 40 others against Trump were issued by judges who thought his actions were not, and were harmful nationwide.
Did they make judgment calls? Yes, Federal District judges don’t do anything else. Do they ever make bad ones? Certainly, but they err on the side of caution. If they’ve misjudged, and the enjoined action turns out to be legal, its interruption does no serious social harm. If they’ve judged correctly, and the action is in fact illegal, its interruption prevents serious social harm.
Here, then, is what Mr. Miller, Ms. Bondi, et al., are truly seeking: No Federal District judge should be empowered to protect the nation’s well-being from President Trump’s illegal actions.
And that’s what the Supreme Court’s decision has now codified.
Trump v. CASA is truly cataclysmic. After 236 years of upholding the rule of law, the Supreme Court has now offered Trump an off-ramp. He can violate any law he pleases and not be enjoined from jeopardizing the American people.
A president who can break laws at will is a dictator. The political system creating and accommodating this condition is fascism. Donald Trump is a dictator heading a fascist regime.
Fascism is defined in scholarly literature as far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist governance, characterized by a dictatorial leader, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, frequently a fusion with corporate power, and often a cult of personality.
Here we are.
The Supreme Court’s first toxic decision occurred in 1803, in the case of Marbury v. Madison. With no constitutional authority to do so, Chief Justice John Marshall’s Court overturned a law passed by an elected Congress and signed by an elected president. How democratic was that? SCOTUS has exercised the power of judicial review ever since, throwing out both federal and state laws.
Corporate oligarchy was the intermediate step between government by the people and fascism.
The next devastating decision was Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 83 years later. In this case the court upgraded the status of U.S. corporations from artificial persons created by state charters, to that of legal persons, with constitutionally protected rights of free speech, peaceful assembly, petition for redress of grievances, and freedom from unlawful search and seizure. Corporate personhood is prima facie preposterous—in fact its granting was technically illegal—but today it is “settled law.”
The misfortunes of judicial review and corporate personhood joined forces in two more SCOTUS decisions, in 1976 and 1978. Buckley v. Valeo found unconstitutional the Corrupt Practices Act of 1910, and declared spending money in political campaigns is an exercise of free speech. Two years later, in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a state law prohibiting corporations from spending money in political campaigns. The court concluded, citing Buckley, spending money in political campaigns is free speech and corporations have that right, protected by the Constitution.
But money doesn’t utter sounds or leave marks, and corporations don’t walk, eat, breathe, make love, or succumb to disease. Money is speech and corporations are people? How can that be? These two absurd concepts set the nation on the path to fascism.
Both Buckley and Bellotti, however, retained some minor restrictions on corporate spending: “Some conditions apply.” But spend the corporations could, and savagely they did. Over the rest of the 20th century, American corporations exercised their rights of free speech to dominate campaign finance, and their rights of petition to dominate congressional and executive branch lobbying. When the constant stream of corporate money became more influential in Washington than citizens’ episodic votes, democracy was displaced. Corporations succeeded in tilting the crafting of public policy to favor corporate interests over the American people’s well-being. (The nation’s physical infrastructure decayed, for example, while the defense corporations prospered.) Corporate oligarchy was the intermediate step between government by the people and fascism.
The minor restrictions on corporate spending were lifted by the next toxic decision, Citizens United v. FEC in 2010. The court declared corporate political spending could not be constitutionally constrained. “Some conditions [no longer] apply.”
The grip of corporate oligarchy tightened, expressed vividly in the first Trump administration’s slashing of corporate taxes. But at the end of those four years the transition to fascism appeared in dramatic fashion, when Trump refused to leave office, and his cult of personality stormed the Capitol.
Trump was subsequently indicted in two federal cases involving his presidency, for a total of 48 felonies. He denied everything and fought back, claiming his prosecution would handicap future presidents’ freedom of choice, especially in national security issues, if they feared prosecution when out of office. He took his case to SCOTUS.
The Roberts Court showed its propensity for accepting inane arguments. In Trump v. United States, July 1, 2024, the court declared immunity from prosecution for former presidents, if their violations of law were incidental to “official acts.”
No one is above the law, the Roberts Court proclaimed, except presidents.
Then a year later Trump v. CASA Inc. was the straw that broke democracy’s back.
SCOTUS v. DEMOCRACY brought us fascism and fashioned a dictator. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority continues as Trump’s compliant servant. Pam Bondi is his defense attorney. The sycophantic Republican Congress passed a law massively enriching the corporate and the wealthy at the direct expense of everyone else. No democracy on Earth would do that, ever.
And no country is a democracy if commanded by a single unaccountable man.
Trump can violate, has violated, is violating, will violate any law he chooses and face no universal injunctive interdiction. If he is sued for violating federal statutes and Pam Bondi fails with demonstrated vigor to dismiss the charges, his prosecution is postponed by Department of Justice policy until he is out of office. And while in office Trump is immune.
Once out of office? Maybe—probably—not. If Trump can ignore the 14th Amendment in voiding birthright citizenship, he can ignore the 22nd and run for a third term. Or he might declare martial law and suspend elections altogether.
What will stop him? He’s 79. Maybe death. Anything else?
Angry, well-informed, organized, and committed people are already protesting in the streets. That could stop him, but only if the movement grows larger.
Toppling Trump is by no means out of reach. Scholars Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan tell why in their book, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. Based on their rigorous research into historic conflicts, they offer a “rule of thumb.” An autocratic regime is in mortal peril when 3.5% of the people register civil resistance.
Doing the math we need a bit more than 12 million Americans to do this, and we may be about halfway home. An estimated 4-7 million individuals have joined in thousands of protests multiple times since Trump was inaugurated.
So, people, we have to get that many more into the streets. Full stop.
This article is drawn from a book the author is completing, The Triumph of Corporate Oligarchy: How It Defeated Democracy, Savaged a Thriving Nation, Normalized Fraudulent War, and Brought Forth Donald Trump.
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This $50M fawn fest makes me sick
With all the fawning coverage of Jeff Bezos’ storybook $50 million Venetian wedding, the news media lost sight of fact that Bezos—the third-richest person in the world—is hardly worthy of veneration. He’s been exploiting Amazon workers for years.
Historians have drawn parallels between the Gilded Age of the late 19th century and what we are experiencing today. Like the first Gilded Age, Gilded Age 2.0 is marked by increasing economic inequality, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, and a rise in populism and social unrest.
Jeff Bezos fits the profile of a latter-day robber baron to a T. Like the ruthless tycoons of yore, his business practices are unethical, he has amassed a vast fortune on the backs of his workers, and he has brutally stifled competition and controlled markets.
Amazon terrorizes its workers
With their manifestly unsafe working conditions, Amazon warehouses are a 21st-century version of a Gilded Age sweatshop. Despite the company’s claims that it protects its workforce, an 18-month investigation released last December by a Senate committee led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) found that the nation’s second-largest private-sector employer risks its workers’ health and safety by prioritizing speed and profit, and it is doing quite well on that score. Last year, the company outpaced Walmart, the largest private-sector employer, by netting $59.2 billion—a 95 percent increase from 2023.
“Amazon forces workers to operate in a system that demands impossible rates and treats them as disposable when they are injured,” Sanders said in a statement. “It accepts worker injuries and their long-term pain and disabilities as the cost of doing business.”
Based on Amazon’s own data, the Senate committee found its warehouses recorded 30 percent more injuries in 2023 than the warehousing industry average and that the company systematically underreported injuries to hide the fact that its facilities are significantly more dangerous than that of other companies. It also found that Amazon workers, who represent about 29 percent of the U.S. warehousing industry workforce, were nearly twice as likely to be injured as other company warehouse workers in each of the previous seven years.
The committee, which contacted nearly 500 former and current Amazon employees, also uncovered evidence that Amazon is aware that its oppressive productivity demands are causing frequent injuries. The company drafted plans to lower injury rates but never implemented them because it feared they would undercut profits.
Amazon pays its workers peanuts
Bezos, who stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021 but remains the company’s executive chairman and biggest shareholder, paid himself a salary of $81,840 in 2020 and earned $1.6 million in compensation. That may not seem so excessive, but he makes the bulk of his money from stock. All told, between 2023 and this year, he made about $8 million an hour.
By contrast, Amazon’s 1.2 million warehouse workers are just scraping by. They make anywhere from $8.41 to $20.19 an hour, according to data compiled by Zip Recruiter. Their average hourly rate—$16.35—amounts to only $34,000 a year.
Roughly half of nearly 1,500 Amazon warehouse workers surveyed in the spring of 2024 by the Center for Urban Economic Development (CUED) at the University of Illinois Chicago reported that they struggle to afford enough food or a place to live. A third of them had to rely on public assistance, mainly in the form of SNAP benefits.
“Many Amazon associates cannot pay their bills, they can’t afford proper housing,” one survey respondent told CUED researchers. “Some of my coworkers have been forced out of their homes. We are stuck in a nightmare, living in an economy that puts no cap on worker exploitation, while our wages can’t keep up with the increase in our cost of living. This cycle has to stop.”
Most of the Amazon warehouse workers’ attempts to unionize have been squelched by the company, which spent more than $17 million on anti-union consultants from 2022 through 2023. In 2021, a labor activist group, the Congress of Essential Workers, founded the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), which successfully organized an 8,300-person warehouse on Staten Island in March 2022. ALU affiliated with the Teamsters Union in June 2024, but to date, no other warehouses have been unionized.
Amazon slapped with tens of millions in fines
Since 2000, lawsuits by government authorities and private parties have cost Amazon (including Whole Foods) more than $283 million for a range of violations, notably consumer protection, employment, environment, government contracting, and workplace safety offenses, according to data compiled by Good Jobs First, a nonprofit group that promotes government and corporate accountability. Nearly 60 percent (101) of the 173 violations in those five categories involved workplace safety.
Amazon warehouse and delivery operation violations since 2020 are staggering.
- The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fined Amazon more than $1.35 million for 23 workplace violations. Three state agencies collectively fined the company nearly $600,000 for similar health and safety offenses.
- Federal and state authorities fined the company nearly $74.2 million for five wage and hour violations, while private lawsuits forced the company to pay $26.45 million in restitution.
- The Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice fined the company $25 million for privacy law violations, including illegal surveillance and unauthorized medical inquiries. A similar privately brought case in federal court forced Amazon to pay $95 million.
Less enforcement under the Trump administration?
Will the Trump regime be as aggressive as previous administrations in prosecuting Amazon for its labor infractions? Given the efforts by Bezos and Amazon to curry favor with Donald Trump, probably not.
Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund, and in January, it was widely reported that the company will pay a whopping $40 million to license an upcoming documentary about Melania Trump to be released in theaters and streamed on Prime Video. The first lady will serve as executive producer.
In February, Trump nominated Amazon’s former senior safety executive, David Keeling, to head OSHA. During Keeling’s tenure at Amazon, the company was cited numerous times for failing to meet the OSHA requirement “to furnish a place of employment which was free from recognized hazards that were causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm to employees,” according to the Department of Justice. (The Senate has yet to confirm his nomination.)
Since then, Bezos has gone even further to placate Trump. In late April, Punchbowl News reported that Amazon planned to display on its website how much Trump’s tariffs are inflating the price of each product. In response, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called it “a hostile and political act” and Trump phoned Bezos to complain. Bezos backed down immediately.
Then there’s what Bezos has been doing to wreck one of the top newspapers in the country—The Washington Post—which he bought in 2013. But that’s a column for another day.
Suffice it to say, the rap sheet on Bezos is long—and damning. Like his fellow robber barons of the day, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, he is not a man who deserves our reverence. Uncritical worship of billionaires like Bezos just may exacerbate an already dangerous level of social inequality. So let’s not go gaga over Bezos’ grandiosity.
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There's a reason Trump and Vance hate education so much
Under pressure from the Trump administration, the University of Virginia’s president of nearly seven years, James Ryan, stepped down last week, declaring that while he was committed to the university and inclined to fight, he could not in good conscience push back just to save his job.
The Department of Justice demanded that Ryan resign in order to resolve an investigation into whether UVA sufficiently complied with Trump’s orders banning diversity, equity, and inclusion.
UVA dissolved its DEI office in March, though Trump’s lackeys claim the university didn’t go far enough in rooting out DEI.
This is the first time the Trump regime has explicitly tied grant dollars to the resignation of a university official. It’s unlikely to be the last.
On Monday, the Trump regime said Harvard University violated federal civil rights law by failing to address the harassment of Jewish students on campus.
On Tuesday, the regime released $175 million in previously frozen federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania, but only after the school agreed to block transgender women athletes from female sports teams and erase the records set by swimmer Lia Thomas.
Let’s be clear: DEI, antisemitism, and transgender athletics are not the real reasons for these attacks on higher education. They’re excuses to give the Trump regime power over America’s colleges and universities.
Why do Trump and his lackeys want this power?
They’re following Hungarian President Viktor Orban’s playbook for creating an “illiberal democracy” — an authoritarian state masquerading as a democracy. The playbook goes like this:
- First, take over military and intelligence operations by purging career officers and substituting ones personally loyal to you. Check.
- Next, intimidate legislators by warning that if they don’t bend to your wishes, you’ll run loyalists against them. (Make sure they also worry about what your violent supporters could do to them and their families.) Check.
- Next, subdue the courts by ignoring or threatening to ignore court rulings you disagree with. Check or in process.
- Then focus on independent sources of information. Sue media that publish critical stories and block their access to news conferences and interviews. Check.
- Then go after the universities.
Crapping on higher education is also good politics, as demonstrated by former Rep. Elise Stefanik (Harvard ‘06) who browbeat the presidents of Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and MIT over their responses to student protests against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, leading to several being fired.
It’s good politics because most of the 60 percent of adult Americans who lack college degrees are stuck in lousy jobs. Many resent the college-educated, who lord it over them economically and culturally.
Behind this cultural populism lies a deeper anti-intellectual, anti-Enlightenment ideology closer to fascism than authoritarianism.
JD Vance (Yale Law ‘13), has called university professors “the enemy” and suggested using Orban’s method for ending “left-wing domination” of universities. Vance laid it all out on CBS’s Face the Nation on May 19, 2024:
“Universities are controlled by left-wing foundations. They’re not controlled by the American taxpayer, and yet the American taxpayer is sending hundreds of billions of dollars to these universities every single year.
I’m not endorsing every single thing that Viktor Orban has ever done [but] I do think that he’s made some smart decisions there that we could learn from.
His way has to be the model for us: not to eliminate universities, but to give them a choice between survival or taking a much less biased approach to teaching. [The government should be] aggressively reforming institutions … in a way to where they’re much more open to conservative ideas.”
Yet what, exactly, constitutes a “conservative idea?” That dictatorship is preferable to democracy? That white Christian nationalism is better than tolerance and openness? That social Darwinism is superior to human decency?
The claim that higher education must be more open to such “conservative ideas” is dangerous drivel.
So what’s the real, underlying reason for the Trump regime’s attack on education?
Not incidentally, that attack extends to K-12. Trump’s education department announced Tuesday it’s withholding $6.8 billion in funding for K–12 schools, and Trump has promised to eliminate the entire department.
Why? Because the greatest obstacle to dictatorship is an educated populace. Ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny.
That’s why slave owners prohibited enslaved people from learning to read, fascists burn books, and tyrants close universities.
In their quest to destroy democracy, Trump, Vance, and their cronies are intent on shutting the American mind.
- Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
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This exceptionally stupid award says everything about the mess Florida's in
If you’re wondering what happens when history is bowdlerized or suppressed, lies are enshrined, free enquiry stifled, empathy ridiculed, education crippled, and hatred valorized, take a look at Preston Damsky, racist, antisemite, and top law student at the University of Florida.
Damsky’s now notorious for receiving a “book award” as the best student in his “Originalism” seminar. Seems the professors were dazzled by his capstone essay arguing the Constitution’s “We the People” means white people.
Only white people.
Non-whites should have their voting rights protections removed. What he calls “criminal infiltrators at the border” should be shot on sight.
Amendments 13, 14, and 15, the ones abolishing slavery and enshrining citizenship, equal treatment under the law, and the right to vote are illegitimate.
According to Damsky, “The United States was founded as a race-based nation-state for the preservation and betterment of White Americans (the People), as clearly laid out in the Preamble and revealed by our history, it is difficult to see how these amendments (or at least the way they have been interpreted in the post-World War II era) do not amount to unconstitutional, revolutionary usurpations by the constituted government power.”
There’s a touch of truth in this: The 18th-century iteration of our Constitution was indeed written by white men for white men.
But much as he’d love for American society to look like it did in 1788, when the Federalist Papers were published, times have changed. We fought a bitter war over slavery, marched against segregation, demanded rights for the disenfranchised, and eventually legislated our way — slowly and partially — to a more equitable nation.
The post-Civil War amendments are just as valid, just as much a part of the Constitution of the United States, as the earlier ones.
For now, at least: it’s unclear whether this will continue to be the case.
Most Americans once celebrated our heterogeneity, our pluralism, and our tendency to expand freedoms. We valued knowledge and tried to foster understanding; we welcomed the new.
Not so much these days, not here in Florida. Trump and DeSantis have made ignorance great again.
This state now has statutes forbidding teaching the truth about slavery and Jim Crow, threatening educators who discuss gender, sexuality, systemic racism, and other disfavored topics.
Universities are scrubbing their websites of words that might upset the governor and his goons: “women,” “Black,” “colonialism,” and “diversity” — even if it’s “biodiversity” — anything seen as threatening to white, male Christian hegemony.
No wonder Preston Damsky, who was raised in the alarmingly multicultural world of Southern California, feels at home in here in Florida.
Florida is also alarmingly multicultural, of course, but our governor — while not an avowed white supremacist — is nonetheless an anti-immigrant, anti-civil rights, Viktor Orban-wannabe whose definition of “American” leaves out an awful lot of people.
DeSantis’ Florida is big on book bans, removing from schools books with LGBTQ characters, books about civil rights, books questioning American exceptionalism, books that tell painful truths about the world.
Toni Morrison’s “Bluest Eye,” Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse Five,” William Styron’s “Sophie’s Choice,” Khaled Hosseini’s “Kite Runner,” Margaret Atwood’s “Handmaid’s Tale,” Judy Blume’s “Forever,” and Anne Frank’s “Diary” have all been challenged or deep-sixed by parents and school boards who want to suppress stories that might deepen and complicate students’ knowledge of the country they live in or expand their understanding of ways to be human.
In Escambia County, they’ve yanked the dictionary off the shelf.
Seems Merriam-Webster might harbor smut and subversion.
But nobody’s censoring Preston Damsky’s weird, warped take on who counts as a real American, and nobody is punishing him for being a white supremacist.
When asked why Damsky’s paper was not only acceptable but worthy of an award, the interim dean of UF’s law school cited “institutional neutrality” and said professors must not practice “viewpoint discrimination.”
This is actually as it should be: Contrary to right-wing talking points accusing the academy of “canceling” the insufficiently “woke,” universities are places where you can express unpopular, even vile, racist, exceptionally stupid opinions.
But “institutional neutrality” doesn’t seem to apply to all exceptionally stupid opinions — as Preston Damsky has now discovered.
Virulent racism is OK: The Trump regime is not yanking funding from universities for anti-Black discrimination.
Antisemitism, however, unleashes a firestorm.
The Trump-DeSantis axis has ginned up such hysteria over perceived antisemitism (which the rational among us can see is often principled support for the Palestinian people and horror at the murderous Netanyahu government), that anyone who criticizes Israel is treated like Heinrich Himmler, architect of the “Final Solution.”
Mohsen Madawi, Rumeysa Ozturk, Mahmoud Khalil and other student protesters detained for exercising their First Amendment rights are not Nazis. Preston Damsky, on the other hand … well, he has said calling him a Nazi “would not be manifestly wrong.”
His social media posts call Jews “parasites” and declare they must be “abolished by any means necessary.”
In a neat triangulation of white nationalism, antisemitic paranoia, and (somewhat understandable) disdain for the whole U.S. government, one of Damsky’s X posts castigates Donald Trump for inviting rapper (and Florida native) Kodak Black to the White House.
This, Damsky said, serves to “normalize and glorify the mongrelized stupidity that is modern Jewish-produced ‘popular’ ‘culture.’”
You’d think the guy would notice Trump is not exactly devoid of his own antisemitism, accusing Jews of being money-grubbing and “disloyal” to America. In Iowa the other day, he invoked one of the oldest and nastiest Jewish stereotypes, calling bankers “shylocks.”
And surely Damsky would give the Trumpists credit for their own racist projects, restoring Confederate names to military facilities and starting the process to take Harriet Tubman’s name off a Navy ship.
Defense Secretary “Good Hair” Hegseth bleats about restoring a “warrior culture” to the military, obviously unaware that Harriet Tubman spied for the Union Army and led the 1863 Combahee Ferry Raid into Confederate territory.
Look it up, Pete. She was a warrior.
UF hasn’t expelled Damsky, but the university has made clear he’s not welcome on campus. If he trespasses, he could be charged with a second-degree misdemeanor.
It’s not the racism, it’s the antisemitism.
While Damsky shares many of the sentiments of Trump’s team of white nationalists, especially Stephen Miller, who wants to deport anybody with brown skin, Damsky despises Trump for being a tool of our old friend, the International Jewish Conspiracy.
Damsky’s X account is a crazy salad of the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend pro-Iranian screeds, demands for a Palestinian state (has he noticed that Persians and Arabs are not, according to his definition, white?), attacks on conservatives deemed insufficiently pro-Caucasian, and ranting about “Black criminality.”
He’s a Florida man, all right — an antebellum Florida man.
His law school papers echo Confederate Ordinances of Secession: “The negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.”
At times he sounds like South Carolina’s Jim Crow Sen. Ben Tillman, who thundered in 1900 that Black people had no rights: “We of the South have never recognized the right of the negro to govern white men, and we never will.”
Census projections show the U.S. will be a majority minority nation in about 2045. Appalled at the thought, Damsky calls this “an illegitimate revolution” and says white folks “cannot be expected to meekly swallow this demographic assault on their sovereignty.”
The 14th and 15th Amendments must be repealed; non-whites, who cannot be citizens, should be given 10 years to leave the country; political violence on behalf of white hegemony is not only acceptable, it’s desirable.
Preston Damsky is not a cause, he’s a symptom, yet another white man terrified of losing the power he assumes is his God-given right.
He and the white nationalist Trump regime are unable to accept that the indigenous peoples our European ancestors displaced, killed, or locked up on reservations; the Africans kidnapped and forced into slavery to enrich the likes of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, author of the Dred Scott decision (and apparently one of Damsky’s heroes); and the immigrants from all over the world who risked everything to get here, are what make America great.
These scared people should get out more — and read more, say, W.E.B. Du Bois’ “Black Reconstruction” or Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” or Percival Everett’s “James” or Marie Arana’s “Latinoland.”
Education is the enemy of hatred.
Most of the time.
Nevertheless, those of us who teach must keep trying to blast the Preston Damskys out of their sad, cramped little worlds by showing them the many and wonderful ways to be an American.
Damsky’s probably enjoying all this attention. That’s fine. He will no doubt go on to become an intellectual star in the white supremacist world.
He may even get an invitation to dinner at Mar-a-Lago.
But he won’t get what he wants. America never was, and never will be, a “white man’s country.”
And thank God for that.
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