Opinion
Trump, Vance and Musk are avatars of a dark and dangerous force
James Carville recently suggested that Democrats need to do more to reach out to young men, as though pandering to testosterone-fueled grievance and entitlement is the key to winning elections. Let’s be blunt: that’s a bullshit, dead-end strategy that risks ratifying the very worst elements of a crisis in masculinity that’s corroding our politics, poisoning our culture, and endangering our democracy.
And it’s coming from the top, down.
Donald Trump is an adjudicated rapist, according to the judge in his case. A New York jury found him liable for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll in a civil case, and he’s remained unapologetic. Then he moved straight to pardoning other men in his orbit, even convicted ones like Roger Stone and a rapper with a history of alleged sexual assault. And now he’s telling us to stop talking about Jeffrey Epstein.
Epstein wasn’t an outlier: he was a prototype. A predator who operated in plain sight, protected by the powerful, and normalized by the elite. His crimes weren’t hidden; they were ignored, downplayed, and rationalized until they became impossible to deny.
The recent revelations about the scope of his network, and the prominent men it touched, show how deeply entrenched rape culture is not just at the fringes of politics, but at its very core.
Trump pardoned multiple anti-abortion criminals as well as Ross Ulbricht, who ran the world’s most notorious market for illicit drugs (that some allege could also have been used for human trafficking); Trump's administration apparently helped free Andrew and Tristan Tate, rightwing influencers accused of rape in Romania, from prison in that country, so they could return to America to help promote the GOP to their young male followers.
Rape culture isn’t just at the top; it’s everywhere, especially in the digital spaces young men inhabit. Pornography has become the de facto sex education for millions of boys. A ten‑year‑old with a smartphone has unfettered access to violent, misogynistic content that normalizes coercion and degradation.
This isn’t just a parental issue, it’s a cultural emergency. This content is shaping how an entire generation understands sex, power, and consent.
And Trump’s “best friend” Epstein was an avatar of that twisted worldview.
Trump and Epstein were reportedly best buds for years, partying together, traveling together on Epstein’s private jet, enjoying the same grotesque perks of unchecked wealth.
Both political parties have brushed shoulders with predators, but only one is building a platform that protects them by law. Virtually every Republican in the House of Representatives just voted to conceal the information about Epstein our government currently has.
And now, Elon Musk echoes that same ideology with a techno-eugenic twist, building a brood while normalizing control over women’s bodies in the name of “saving civilization.”
Musk is openly using white women as baby incubators. Musk has fathered at least 14 children with four different women. He’s talked openly about a global “underpopulation crisis” and described his mission to produce a “legion-level” brood of children before the apocalypse. He’s recruited mothers via X, and allegedly dangled millions in hush-money deals. This isn’t family values: it’s eugenic breeding with a Big Daddy tint.
That’s also largely what the so‑called “Tradwife” movement is selling. On social media and in right-wing circles, we’re seeing a resurgence of the Traditional Wife persona; it’s not really about choice or liberty as they try to sell it, but hierarchy. White women are expected to go “back to the kitchen and bedroom,” producing more white babies in a panic about the “browning” of America.
This fixation on race and reproduction mirrors the same “Great Replacement Theory” rhetoric promoted on Fox “News” and other rightwing outlets that fed the Charlottesville rally and inspired mass murderers in Las Vegas, Buffalo, and El Paso.
From Trump saying, “If Hillary Clinton can’t satisfy her husband what makes her think she can satisfy America?” to telling Esquire Magazine that “arm candy” is essential for a successful businessman (“You know, it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass”) to sarcastically calling Kamala Harris “a beautiful woman,” our president has long made clear his thoughts on the role of women.
JD Vance has similarly pushed the tradwife meme, arguing that:
“I think that we should fight for the right of every American to live a good life in the country they call their own, to raise a family and dignity on a single middle-class job.”
That “single” job is the key; he’s not talking about economic advancement in the middle class but, rather, pitching the idea that dad should work and mom should stay home to cook, clean, and attend to the kids.
And, like in the 1950s and before, it’s all undergirded by state violence. Jessica Valenti writes with clarity and horror at her Abortion Every Day Substack, documenting how Red states are now arresting women for miscarriages and far, far worse is on the horizon.
Law enforcement officers in Red states are now interrogating women who seek care for pregnancy complications, Republican Attorneys General are demanding records of miscarriages and abortions even from Blue states, and doctors are afraid to treat women in crisis, leading to a doubling in the use of blood transfusions (women almost bleeding to death) in Texas since they passed their draconian abortion ban. It’s deliberate, and it’s escalating.
And now Republicans in Congress and the states are openly talking about bringing back enforcement of the Comstock Act of 1873, the Victorian-era law banning not just abortion but contraception and obscene materials, as I wrote about in The Cold Dead Hand of Anthony Comstock.
Meanwhile, the fetal personhood movement backed by Trump and Vance is becoming mainstream. As vice president, J.D. Vance spoke at the 2025 March for Life rally, declaring “I want more babies in the United States of America” and aligned himself with the GOP’s agenda of fetal personhood, a policy that could make IVF, contraception, and even most miscarriage treatment illegal.
This is a deliberate, systemic reinforcement of toxic masculinity, an ideology of power, control, and domination.
It shows up in incel forums, Proud Boys gatherings, Andrew Tate videos, and in the halls of Congress. It’s being sold to young men as an antidote to their anxieties, be they economic, social, or existential.
From Mar-a-Lago to Manhattan’s Upper East Side, rape culture isn’t fringe: it’s the foundation. And it’s a lie.
Some Republicans will pretend to claim that they just want to return America to the Leave It To Beaver world of June Cleaver, the happy homemaker of 1960s TV. What they don’t like to point out, though, is that in the 1960s most women didn’t have much of a choice.
When Republicans say that your grandmother stayed with your grandfather and should be your role model, they fail to point out that women three generations ago really had few choices unless they were independently wealthy.
Employers could refuse to hire women because of their gender as recently as 1964; home sellers and real estate agents could refuse to sell a house to women up until 1974; it wasn’t until 1988 that the law said landlords could no longer refuse to rent to women. Spousal rape wasn’t criminalized until 1993.
When Louise and I got married in 1972, she couldn’t get a credit card or sign a mortgage without the signature of me, her brother, or her father. She couldn’t serve on a jury, get a no-fault divorce, or enroll in an Ivy League college. And if she’d had an unwanted pregnancy, she’d be out of luck until 1973’s Roe v Wade decision.
In 20 states, Republicans have succeeded in removing from women one of the most important options that allow them to stay in the workplace: abortion of an accidental or unwanted pregnancy. Now they’re going after birth control. And their war on DEI is just another aspect of their war on their own women, as white women are the main beneficiaries of the DEI programs Republicans are demanding corporations and government agencies end.
Republicans are even working hard on ending no-fault divorce: as Vance said, women should stay home and serve their husbands even when those men are physically or emotionally abusive.
They ignore the reality of an 8 to 16 percent decrease in female suicides after states enacted no-fault divorce laws, a roughly 30 percent decrease in intimate partner violence, and a 10 percent drop in women murdered by their partners. Or maybe they just don’t care.
Republican legislators are also pushing back hard against equal-pay-for-equal-work laws, calling such efforts DEI, again arguing that women shouldn’t be on the job in the first place.
These are all aspects of a crisis of masculinity and rape culture that Republicans are exploiting to the detriment of both women and the men who’re buying their perverted siren song.
Thus, Democratic consultants’ calls to “reach out” to young men without challenging these ideas are dangerous. They can be interpreted as code for validation, not transformation.
What we need instead is a redefinition of masculinity: strength defined by compassion, power defined by service, leadership defined by respect.
And there are real exemplars out there.
Look at former Sen. Jon Tester, Montana farmer and Marine vet, who fights for working families without preening bravado. Look at former President Joe Biden — yes, him — who has comforted grieving mothers and lent moral clarity and empathy where so many others have failed. Look at single fathers, teachers, firefighters, nurses, community organizers: men who show up because they care, not to conquer.
True masculinity uplifts. It nurtures. It protects without demeaning. It leads with humility. It affirms the full humanity of women.
That’s the kind of man worth celebrating and inviting young men to be. Not the guy who calls himself a “legion” builder, or hustles violent porn on the internet and brags of his conquests on YouTube, or thinks women exclusively belong at home to “raise the babies.”
Democrats shouldn’t pander to wounded pride. They shouldn’t validate grievance or reinforce entitlement. They should, instead, challenge men to grow up; to become allies in a fight for justice, equality, and democracy.
Redefining masculinity isn’t a side project: it’s central to reclaiming our national soul.
Let Republicans hold up Trump, Musk, and Tate as their sick, twisted role models. Democrats should amplify the real men: the compassionate, the just, the fierce protectors of freedom and equality.
Let’s reject the calls coming from multiple corners to “reach out” to codes of rape culture. Instead, let’s lead the way to a future where strength means service, power means accountability, and freedom means equality for everyone.
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Here's why Republicans hate public broadcasting so much
Our public radio and TV stations are in grave peril, and with them the unique services they perform for our communities.
By the end of day Friday July 18, we’ll know if Congress has clawed back the money it already gave to public broadcasting, through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, or CPB. (The House will decide; this is your moment to call your representatives to ask them to support their public radio and TV stations, and to join — for free — Protectmypublicmedia.org.) Even if that money stays protected, though, public radio and TV will continue to be attacked.
I’ve studied public broadcasting here and around the world for 40 years. And I serve on the board of directors of the taxpayer-funded Independent Television Service, which coproduces a lot of the documentaries you might see on public TV. So, of course, I think it’s an important part of our media in America. But I think you probably do, too.
You might know public broadcasting through your local TV or radio station, both private nonprofits. Or you might know it through the services many such stations depend on for daily, high-quality, award-winning programs: National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). Both of them are private nonprofits that make, select, and bundle programs for public stations.
Either way, you’re in good company. PBS and NPR are the most trusted media brands in the United States. Half of PBS viewers depend on PBS for news and information, including more than half of people who identify as “extreme conservatives” or “extreme liberals.” NPR’s news is trusted by more than half of those who have heard of it. Americans trust public media news and public affairs much more (by half) than they do commercial mainstream media.
Public stations, like those in Oklahoma, are the ones to issue emergency warnings in time of crisis. Kids learn about job opportunities from CPB’s American Graduate: Jobs Explained series — supported among others by Iowa, Tennessee, and Arizona public broadcasters. In rural Eureka, California, the public station carries program for the local indigenous communities. In south Texas, KDET provides distance learning for kids whose first language is Spanish. ITVS documentaries have brought you inside stories from small towns like Medora, Indiana; Taft, Oklahoma; Norco, Louisiana; and Huslia, Alaska.
American taxpayers contribute, overall, about 15% of the budgets of public radio and TV stations — a percentage that’s usually lower for the bigger, more urban stations, and higher for smaller, rural stations. Alleghany Mountain Radio and KTNA in Talkeetna, Alaska for instance depend on federal funds for about two-third of their budgets. Last year CPB’s budget was $535 million. (For comparison, military marching bands cost the American taxpayers more than $300 million a year.) The rest comes from us as individual donors, from private and corporate foundations, and from local and state taxes.
So it’s not big funding and cutting it would make no dent in the deficit. But it’s critical funding; it’s the money that leverages all the rest of it, and that provides the stability to be able to do the work year after year.
The people who designed public broadcasting — and that included a lot of people, from the late Bill Moyers as an aide to President Lyndon Johnson, to military experts and educators — were worried about how government funding could become censorship. So they created CPB as a private nonprofit, not as a government agency. That is why the Trump administration cannot fire its staff or its board.
CPB and local stations all have First Amendment protection against government interference. And that is why the Trump administration cannot tell them what to program or which services, like NPR and PBS, to use. The designers required Congress to give CPB its budget two years in advance, to protect against political shenanigans. That is why Congress has to vote to claw that money back.
What public broadcasting’s designers created is unique in the world — most countries’ public broadcasting is just a mouthpiece for government. In the U.S., public broadcasting plays a unique role in our media diets as free, reliable, and trusted information, a connection to local communities, and a daily example of the essential role of shared public knowledge in democratic life.
If it goes, we won’t get it back.
So far, public broadcasting has weathered political attacks, which didn’t begin with this administration but have reached a new high with it. But it has only done so by depending on its users—you and me—to come out and show their support. Right now is the time to call your representatives, and to join Protectmypublicmedia.org. (Protect My Public Media makes it super-easy to connect with your reps.) We all have something to lose.
- Patricia Aufderheide is professor in the School of Communication at American University. She is a board member of the Independent Television Service.
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A taste for gold isn't the only thing Trump shares with Louis XIV
I’m old enough to remember when corporate lobbyists swarmed Capitol Hill. I also remember when half the members of Congress who retired got lucrative lobbying jobs taking their old chums out for meals or drinks and selling them on whatever the corporate backers wanted.
No longer. Now, the lobbying business is all about sucking up to Trump.
Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol calls it “competitive sycophancy,” in which…
“… competing sets of people [vie] to flatter him and manipulate resources and rules to his personal and family advantage. They do one extreme thing after another, try to outdo each other, and he chooses who to back, with shifts and chaos and unpredictability week after week.”
In a new story for New York magazine, Washington correspondent Ben Terris reports on how Washington’s lobbying class has been reshaped in Trump’s second term.
“Lobbying used to be Congress-focused, but they’re not driving the show anymore,” said one Republican lobbyist. “They are all now taking orders from the administration. Trump is outsize now, even compared to his last term.”
The old lobby firms’ relationships with Congress don’t work anymore. Former members of Congress aren’t making hay. Top lawyers don’t have any lobbying value.
Now, it’s all about toadying up to Trump.
The reason for the transformation of Washington is simple. Congress is no longer much of a player in official Washington. Trump has usurped its role. Republicans control Congress and Trump controls the Republicans.
So if you’re a big corporation and you want something — say, a government contract or an exemption from a pending tariff or a regulatory rollback, or you just don’t want Trump to hammer you — you’ve got to make a deal with Trump. (Short of that, you’ve got to make a deal with Trump’s inner circle.)
The art of the deal requires stroking his ego. One lobbyist told the Danish ambassador that the best way to talk Trump out of taking over Greenland would be to build a “Fort Trump” on the island in his honor.
A lobbyist encouraged Pakistani clients to recommend Trump for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize — which they did, and which the White House tweeted out with a graphic. (But Netanyahu’s offer to recommend Trump for the prize got even more press, and more “appreciation” from the White House).
Beyond flattery, the art of the deal with Trump often entails payoffs — investments in his meme coins and tokens, in Trump family crypto and real estate ventures, in branding opportunities.
To make these deals, corporations are depending on bottom-feeders trusted by Trump — whom he considers utterly loyal.
In Trump’s Washington, all sorts of nefarious people — convicted tax frauds, bribers, and crypto swindlers — have been paying well-connected Trump insiders as much as $10 million to help them get a pardon.
Roger Ver, known as “Bitcoin Jesus” and charged with evading more than $48 million in taxes, spent $600,000 between February and April of this year enlisting the services of Roger Stone. (Stone received a pardon from Trump in 2020; Ver is still hoping for his.)
Trevor Milton, a former billionaire who donated nearly $2 million to Trump’s reelection efforts, hired Attorney General Pam Bondi’s brother, Brad Bondi, to advocate on his behalf and was pardoned, sparing him prison time as well as having to pay $165 million to the investors he defrauded with his electric-truck company.
The closest historic analogy to what’s happening in Trump’s Washington is the court of Louis XIV, which brimmed with competitive sycophancy and insider deals. As the Duke de Saint Simon noted in his memoir, written in the 1730s:
“His Ministers, generals, mistresses, and courtiers soon found out his weak point, namely, his love of hearing his own praises. There was nothing he liked so much as flattery, or, to put it more plainly, adulation; the coarser and clumsier it was, the more he relished it. That was the only way to approach him; if he ever took a liking to a man it was invariably due to some lucky stroke of flattery in the first instance, and to indefatigable perseverance in the same line afterwards.”
But flattery could go only so far. During the French Revolution, Louis XIV’s tomb was desecrated and his remains scattered.
- Robert Reich is a professor emeritus of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com
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MAGA is depraved as Trump but it's right about one thing
The grotesque, America-attacking Donald Trump oversees a multi-million person cult called, “MAGA.” He has relentlessly exploited this group of suckers and losers for his personal and political gain, and has pocketed hundreds of millions of their hard-earned dollars to ensure that their lives will be made worse, just as long as everybody else is getting hurt more.
MAGA is a unified group predominated by dissatisfied, angry white people, who see a better way ahead for America by traveling backwards in time when white men controlled everything by stepping on the necks of anybody who dared challenge them.
They controlled our wealth, our courts, our vote, our congress, and our presidencies.
Say what you want about MAGA, and please don’t stop, but with the help of a pathetic American electorate filled with tens of millions of non-voters, they have been very successful in their quest to take us back to the point of no return.
And if you are wondering why so many Americans will eagerly vote against their interests and for the elimination of their health insurance, clean air and water, women’s rights, vaccines, human rights, voting rights, workers’ rights, education, protections from natural disasters, fluoride in our drinking water, and a tax system that demands billionaires pay their fair share, President Lyndon Johnson has your answer:
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
That quote is more than 60 years old and is still the truest thing ever said by anybody in Washington.
Trump’s power over his cult is absolute, and all of them have a crystal-clear understanding that when he shoots one of them on some corner to prove a point, another MAGA is to jump up and land on that corner to proudly take his place.
I’ve written many times that I have given up trying to reason with MAGA or spending even three seconds of my precious time with them.
Well, in the past couple of weeks the monster, Jeffrey Epstein, is back in the news, and wouldn't you know it, I finally agree with the MAGA cult on something: Raping children and covering it up is a monstrous offense.
Epstein, of course, was an accused child trafficker, and ran his operation for the benefit of the rich, and politically powerful white men in America, who have been proving for centuries they can get away with literally anything, thanks to a privilege they swear doesn’t exist.
The list of those who have been associated with Epstein includes Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump; Prince Andrew; Vice President Al Gore; Prime Minister Ehud Barak of Israel; Billionaire Bill Gates; Actor Kevin Spacey; Lawyer Alan Dershowitz; Governor Bill Richardson; JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank; and hundreds and hundreds more.
Many of these men and their businesses have denied any wrongdoing, despite the fact there has been hundreds of millions of dollars of settlements paid to Epstein’s survivors. Then there are the disgusting men like Clinton and Trump who took dozens of trips to be with Epstein. Trump went so far as to puff his blubbery chest out and brag of Epstein, "It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side …"
In July 2019, Epstein was finally jailed for sex trafficking of minors and was being held without bail. One month later, he allegedly committed suicide in his jail cell. I type “allegedly” because come on … There was too much to lose by too many if Epstein ever testified in open court about the horror show he conducted.
Even MAGA agreed with that.
They were, however, stupid enough to forget that Epstein's original sweetheart plea deal was negotiated by a future member of the Trump administration, and that the alleged suicide happened under Trump's watch, because by last year, they were screaming about the “deep state” coverup of the case.
Well, Trump did what any savvy cult leader would do, and feeling his vulnerability on the issue, quieted everything down by promising (lying) he would release all the government’s files on the case were he to be elected.
As we now painfully know, he was elected and has refused to release the files. His base is good with the former and furious about the latter, and haven’t been shy about letting their cult leader know it.
This is called, “a first” and it has clearly rattled Trump, who might soon be reaching for Jim Jones’ Kool-Aid recipe if this kind of disloyalty from his cult continues.
Which is exactly why all of us must make sure it does.
Trump is nothing but a lying thug, who has gotten away with everything in his miserable life except abusing women. He is positively terrified that a skeleton he thought was tucked away safely in one of those closets with all the classified documents is going to come crashing down on him.
Here is what the convicted felon slobbered out in panic on Wednesday:
Yes, it is absolutely incredible that the thing that wrote whatever that is really exists, and worse — much worse — is the President of the United States of America.
As I put this column to bed, Trump turned his ugly attention on Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, to take attention off his Epstein coverup.
And as is the norm these days, the cult leader has only made things worse for himself, because after telling Republicans that Powell should be fired, he said this:
“He’s a terrible Fed chair. I was surprised he was appointed.”
I hope to be among the first to remind you that it was Trump himself who appointed Powell.
That deed done, let’s get back back to fanning the flames of the fire that has fully engulfed the dirty, old man, Trump.
For that, I’ll let his revolting eldest son have the last word:
It sure does, sonny.
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There's only one way to save Social Security from Elon Musk's clutches
The Trump administration is lying about Social Security. Elon Musk’s DOGE has infiltrated the Social Security Administration (SSA). The agency’s new commissioner, Wall Street billionaire Frank Bisignano, calls himself “a DOGE person.” His top lieutenants include long-time Musk associates Antonio Gracias and Aram Moghaddassi.
After infiltrating Social Security, the DOGE crew forced out thousands of civil servants, including top leaders with decades of institutional knowledge. No problem, they thought. We’ll replace them with 19-year-old Edward “Big Balls” Coristine and an AI chatbot.
That plan is going exactly as expected. Mistakes are being made, checks are being delayed, lines are hours long, and field offices are being run by skeleton crews. The 1-800 number has record wait times — if people can get past the chatbot and speak to a human at all.
In the face of an outcry from the press and the public about wait times on the phone, SSA is shifting 1,000 people from the field offices to the phone lines. These people haven’t been trained to work the phone lines, which use a different software. And of course, taking them out of field offices will only make the delays there worse.
Thanks to Trump and the Republicans, Social Security’s customer service is headed for a total collapse. Bisignano is responding by shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic — and telling the passengers not to believe their lying eyes. Except instead of an iceberg, Social Security is collapsing due to a torpedo launched by a Republican U-boat that has blown a hole in it.
SSA recently sent out a press release touting improved customer service. Anyone who has recently been to a Social Security field office, or tried calling the 1-800 number, can tell you that every word in that release is a lie. Bisignano knows it, too. That’s why he pulled down data from SSA’s website tracking wait times.
For people who rely on Social Security benefits, these delays are life and death. Republican DOGE operatives have accidentally declared living people dead, meaning that their benefits stop, and they can lose access to their health insurance and bank account. These people are then stuck in a bureaucratic nightmare, frantically trying to get overwhelmed field office workers to “revive” them.
The delays are also a disaster for people who apply for Social Security’s disability benefits. And everything is getting worse, not better.
That is because a collapse is the goal. The Republicans have wrecked the system so they can rob it. They cause the crisis with cuts and then hope to force a fire sale to private equity, the robber barons of the modern era.
The King of the robber barons is Musk himself. The Department of Defense recently signed a $200 million contract to use Musk’s AI, Grok (or as it calls itself, MechaHitler). With Bisignano constantly talking up the “benefits” of AI, we can guess that Social Security is not far behind. If Musk and Trump get their way, a racist chatbot may soon decide who is eligible to get their earned benefits.
To see what that collapse could look like, we need only look at a different part of the federal government — the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Two days after the disastrous Texas floods, Kristi Noem fired thousands of the workers who answer the agency’s disaster assistance line. As a result, nearly two-thirds of calls went unanswered, leaving people who had just lost everything without the help they desperately needed.
Republican politicians hate effective government programs, because they don’t make any money for their paymasters on Wall Street. Since Social Security is the most popular and effective government program, they hate it most of all — and are doing everything they can to destroy it.
The only way to save Social Security is to make as much noise as possible. Call your members of Congress at 202-224-3121 and demand they protect Social Security from DOGE destruction. And tell all your family and friends to do the same.
Alex Lawson is the Executive Director of Social Security Works, the convening organization of the Strengthen Social Security Coalition -- a coalition made up of over 340 national and state organizations representing over 50 million Americans
Watch the video here.
There's only one way to save Social Security from Elon Musk's clutches | Opinion
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Don't blame liberals — or reporters — for politicizing the court
By Joshua Boston, Associate Professor of Political Science, Bowling Green State University, and Christopher Krewson, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Brigham Young University.
The U.S. Supreme Court has always ruled on politically controversial issues. From elections to civil rights, from abortion to free speech, the justices frequently weigh in on the country’s most debated problems.
And because of the court’s influence over national policy, political parties and interest groups battle fiercely over who gets appointed to the high court.
The public typically finds out about the court — including its significant decisions and the politics surrounding appointments — from the news media. While elected officeholders and candidates make direct appeals to their voters, the justices and Supreme Court nominees are different — they largely rely on the news to disseminate information about the court, giving the public at least a cursory understanding.
Recently, something has changed in newspaper coverage of the Supreme Court. As scholars of judicial politics, political institutions and political behavior, we set out to understand precisely how media coverage of the court has changed over the past 40 years. Specifically, we analyzed the content of every article referencing the Supreme Court in five major newspapers from 1980 to 2023.
Of course, people get their news from a variety of sources, but we have no reason to believe the trends we uncovered in our research of traditional newspapers do not apply broadly. Research indicates that alternative media sources largely follow the lead of traditional beat reporters.
What we found: Politics has a much stronger presence in articles today than in years past, with a notable increase beginning in 2016.
When public goodwill prevailed
Not many cases have been more important in the past quarter-century or, from a partisan perspective, more contentious than Bush v. Gore — the December 2000 ruling that stopped a ballot recount, resulting in then-Texas Governor George W. Bush defeating Democratic candidate Al Gore and winning the presidential election.
Bush v. Gore is particularly interesting to us because nine unelected, life-tenured justices functionally decided an election.
Surprisingly, the court’s public support didn’t suffer, ostensibly because the court had built up a sufficient store of public goodwill.
One reason public support remained steady following Bush v. Gore might be newspaper coverage. Although the court’s decision reflected the justices’ ideologies, with the more conservative members effectively voting to end the recount and its more liberal members voting in favor of the recount, newspapers largely ignored the role of politics in the decision.
For example, the New York Times case coverage indicated the justices’ names and their votes but mentioned neither the party of the president who appointed them nor their ideological leanings. The words “Democrat,” “Republican,” “liberal” and “conservative” — what we call political frames — do not appear in the Dec. 13, 2000, story about the decision.
This epitomizes court-related newspaper articles from the 1980s to the early 2000s, when reporters treated the court as a nonpolitical institution. According to our research, court-related news articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal hardly used political frames during that time.
Instead, newspapers perpetuated a dominant belief among the public that Supreme Court decisions were based almost completely on legal principles rather than political preferences. This belief, in turn, bolstered support for the court.
Recent newspaper coverage reveals a starkly different pattern.
A contemporary political court
It would be nearly impossible to read contemporary articles about the Supreme Court without getting the impression that it is just as political as Congress and the presidency.
Analyzing our data from 1980 to 2023, the average number of political frames per article tripled. To be sure, politics has always played a role in the court’s decisions. Now, newspapers are making that clear. The question is when this change occurred.
Across the five major newspapers, reporting about the court has gradually become more political over time. That isn’t surprising: America has been gradually polarizing since the 1980s as well, and the changes in news media coverage reflect that polarization.
Take February of 2016, when Justice Antonin Scalia unexpectedly died. Of course, justices have died while serving on the court before. But Scalia was a conservative icon, and his death could have swung the court to the center or the left.
How the politics of naming his successor played out after Scalia’s death was unprecedented.
President Barack Obama’s nomination effort to put Merrick Garland on the court were stonewalled. The Senate majority leader, Republican Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said the Senate would not consider any nomination until after the presidential election, nine months from Scalia’s death.
Republican candidate Donald Trump, seeing an opening, promised to fill the vacancy with a conservative justice who would overturn Roe v. Wade. The court and the 2016 election became inseparable.
Scalia vacancy changed everything
February 2016 brought about an abrupt and lasting change in newspaper coverage. The day before Scalia’s death, a typical article referencing the court used 3.22 political frames.
The day after, 10.48.
We see an uptick in political frames if we consider annual changes as well. In 2015, newspapers averaged 3.50 political frames per article about the Supreme Court. Then, in 2016, 5.30.
Using a variety of statistical methods to identify enduring framing shifts, we consistently find February 2016 as the moment newspapers shifted to higher levels of political framing of the court. We find the number of political frames in newspapers remained elevated through 2023.
How stories frame something shapes how people think about it.
If an article frames a court decision as “originalist” — an analytical approach that says constitutional texts should be interpreted as they were understood at the time they became law — then readers might think of the court as legalistic.
But if the newspaper were to frame the decision as “conservative,” then readers might think of the court as ideological.
We found in our study that when people read an article about a court decision using political frames, court approval declines. That’s because most people desire a legal court rather than a political one. No wonder polls today find the court with precariously low public support.
We do not necessarily hold journalists responsible for the court’s dramatic decline in public support. The bigger issue may be the court rather than reporters. If the court acts politically, and the justices behave ideologically, then reporters are doing their job: writing accurate stories.
That poses yet another problem. Before Trump’s three court appointments, the bench was known for its relative balance. Sometimes decisions were liberal; other times, conservative.
In June 2013, the court provided protections to same-sex marriages. Two days earlier, the court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act. A liberal win, a conservative win — that’s what we might expect from a legal institution.
Today the court is different. For most salient issues, the court supports conservative policies.
Given, first, the media’s willingness to emphasize the court’s politics, and second, the justices’ ideologically consistent decisions across critical issues, it is unlikely that the news media retreats from political framing anytime soon.
If that’s the case, the court may need to adjust to its low public approval.
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The Texas floods were no 'natural' disaster
Growing up in Texas, many of my summers were spent at summer church camps just like Camp Mystic, where 27 girls died in the recent flash floods. Over 130 people in central Texas have been confirmed dead overall.
Had I been just a few years younger, it’s hard not to feel like I could’ve been one of those girls tragically lost.
But this tragedy was no “natural” disaster — it was political.
Texans have gotten used to “unprecedented” natural disasters. When I was growing up, we practically never got snow; now winter storms have become the norm. Hurricanes and extreme heat have become more frequent and more dangerous. And intense rain, which causes flash floods, is worsening.
The evidence is overwhelming: These trends are all happening because of climate change, caused by human pollution. And to stay safe, we need to constantly study the climate to predict these disasters and prevent the worst from happening.
Better warning systems may or may not have been effective for such an unexpected flood. Yet it seems unthinkable that better funding could not have helped prevent this tragedy.
For one, the Guadalupe River is prone to flooding, but state officials have blocked efforts for years to use Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds to install early warning systems along it.
Unfortunately, many of our politicians are outright hostile to funding the agencies that do this vital work — or any kind of public service. Just a few months ago, the Trump administration made sweeping cuts to both the National Weather Service (NWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
As I write, six out of 27 positions at the NWS Austin-San Antonio office, which covers the affected Kerr County, are listed as vacant, including the position for warning coordination meteorologist. (The previous coordinator took the Department of Government Efficiency’s offer of early retirement.)
At NOAA, the cuts have affected hundreds of scientists and reduced the agency’s ability to launch weather balloons to more accurately analyze weather patterns.
Texas Republicans are still defending these cuts.
Before all the bodies had even been discovered, state Rep. Briscoe Cain (R-128) tweeted, “We must not allow this great tragedy to be used to grow government.” And Sen. Ted Cruz personally eliminated $150 million for NOAA’s climate change research in the GOP budget (the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill”).
Part of the problem is that public goods like the NWS are “invisible” — that is, you don’t notice them when they’re working well. This makes them uniquely vulnerable to calls for budget cuts, because who’s going to notice understaffing at the NWS?
But when these cuts go through — and understaffed agencies fail to serve their purpose — people say the services don’t work. And there are calls for more budget cuts.
The Trump administration’s proposed 2026 budget for NOAA, for example, cuts the agency’s budget by 26%. And despite widespread complaints that FEMA wasn’t answering calls from Texans during the disaster, the administration has proposed eliminating the agency or devolving it to the states.
Public services are caught in a lose-lose situation: Regardless of their performance, they face calls for budget cuts.
But the politicians that spew this rhetoric often aren’t interested in having efficient public services or reducing the federal debt. While they cry that there’s no money to fully fund and staff environmental agencies, they don’t think twice about passing a Pentagon budget that’s now over $1 trillion a year, or extending trillions of dollars worth of tax cuts for the wealthy.
Attending summer camps are some of my fondest memories from growing up. But for hundreds of families in Texas, that experience has become a nightmare.
It didn’t have to be this way — and we can still change course.
Public services can prevent and mitigate disasters, but they’re being prevented from doing so by politicians like President Donald Trump and Sen. Cruz, who’d rather fund tax breaks for the wealthy and the war machine.
We need to change the rhetoric around public services in this country, and shine a light on all the good “invisible” services do.
- Chisom Okorafor is a Henry A. Wallace Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies
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ICE: Trump's original mission creeps
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
I'm not a mother but I know Pam Bondi's view of motherhood is truly disturbing
I have yet to be a mother, but I froze my eggs a few years ago, and am thankful to have that choice to have a family of my own one day — a choice that was taken away from a woman in Georgia who was declared brain dead in February, yet kept on life support and forced to carry her fetus until she gave birth this June.
This harrowing situation unfolded because hospital officials feared they'd violate Georgia's law banning most abortions after fetal cardiac activity.
A few years ago, after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, some anti-abortion advocates were taking issue with IVF procedures, citing that destroying unused embryos is equivalent to taking a life.
In May 2025, a car bomb exploded in the parking lot at a fertility clinic in Palm Springs. Upon hearing the news, I immediately felt concern for the individuals who kept their eggs and embryos at this clinic. While no individuals or reproductive materials were harmed, the fear was palpable for me, having stored my own eggs in a Massachusetts clinic. This incident was deemed an act of terrorism, carried out by the perpetrator because of his anti-natalist views — his belief that it is wrong to have children.
What all these stories have in common is the insidious attempt to control women — control our reproductive health, our bodies, whether we live or die. They are only the most recent examples of how women's choices are being systematically stripped away.
Even the way those in power respond shows a disturbing and deeply ingrained narrow view of women and their choices. In response to the Palm Springs incident, Attorney General Pam Bondi stated in a post on X, "Let me be clear: The Trump administration understands that women and mothers are the heartbeat of America. Violence against a fertility clinic is unforgivable."
That sentence, though seemingly innocuous, reveals a troubling worldview. It implies that women are primarily valued as mothers, that our worth as women is intimately connected to our reproductive lives, and our health choices are directly tied to our ability to fulfill this singular role.
Yet there are myriad valid reasons why a woman may never have children: health issues, infertility, personal choice, not finding a suitable partner, or socioeconomic instability, to name a few.
Despite this, the current Trump administration and the conservative faction in our country seem fixated on justifying womanhood solely through the lens of motherhood. This reductive stance is evidenced by Vice President JD Vance's dismissive "childless cat lady" comment, where he questioned the stake of childless individuals in the nation's future, and further underscored by the Trump administration's proposals for “baby bonuses'” and tax-deferred investment accounts designed to incentivize childbirth.
Consider the ripple effects of this narrow perspective.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade has paved the way for states to make abortion illegal or incredibly restrictive, fundamentally stripping women of their agency and bodily autonomy. Once pregnant, in 41 states, a woman's body is now no longer entirely her own, but rather a vessel subject to state control.
The very act of bombing a fertility clinic, while deplorable, was deemed so primarily because a fertility clinic is associated with the creation of babies. The outrage stemmed from the perceived threat to potential motherhood, not necessarily the broader violation of individual liberty or the act of terrorism itself.
This singular focus extends to how women are perceived even in death. The Georgia case forces us to confront a horrifying reality: Even when a woman is brain dead, her bodily autonomy can be overridden in favor of a fetus. Her existence, in this context, is reduced to her reproductive capacity, even in her final moments.
This legal and ethical quagmire highlights how deeply ingrained the concept of women as mere incubators has become in some interpretations of the law.
Individuals should be valued for more than their potential or actual role as mothers.
I do not disagree that motherhood can be a profoundly important and vital aspect of life, and for many, it is. As someone who still hopes to be a mother, it is for me. Yet I do not know the future, and there is a real possibility that I may never have children. Therefore, to define a woman's entire identity and worth by her reproductive capacity is a dangerous reduction, not to mention emotionally charged for individuals such as myself.
Like any human, women are multifaceted beings with diverse aspirations, careers, contributions to society, and personal lives that extend far beyond the biological function of childbearing.
This societal obsession with motherhood as the pinnacle of female existence not only devalues women who choose not to have children or are unable to, but it also places undue pressure on those who do. It limits our collective imagination of what a woman can be and achieve.
We must challenge this pervasive narrative and advocate for a society where women's autonomy, choices, and identities are respected and celebrated in all their diverse forms, irrespective of their maternal status. It is time to assert that a woman's life, and her death, should be her own.
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This gangster move is just Trump's latest disgrace
At least no one can accuse Donald Trump of hiding his agenda.
When Mike Huckabee, his ambassador to Israel, showed up Wednesday at Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu’s corruption trial in Tel Aviv, he hadn’t come to schmooze or testify. He wasn’t distributing evangelical offers of salvation to Jews.
Huckabee came to glower.
And, with his very presence, to deliver a stark reminder to Israelis, and in particular the three judges who would decide Bibi’s fate: The Boss says this whole trial is a witch hunt. You know how much the Boss hates witch hunts, don’t you?
Netanyahu faces charges of “bribery, fraud and breach of trust” for, allegedly, trading regulatory favors to a telecom giant in exchange for good media coverage and receiving as much as $210,000 in gifts after providing favors to well-heeled businessmen, among other counts. Netanyahu denies all the charges.
So does his ally in authoritarianism, Donald Trump.
Among what Trump spewed in a social-media post — repulsive even by his subterranean standards — was this warning:
“The United States of America spends Billions of Dollar a year, far more than on any other Nation, protecting and supporting Israel. We are not going to stand for this.”
And, of course, the obligatory all-caps closer: “LET BIBI GO, HE’S GOT A BIG JOB TO DO!”
“Nice little security package you’ve got there. Shame if something happened to it.”
Now, the phrase “Let my Bibi go” might somehow get set to Jewish music were it not for the fact that the guy who coined it also famously said, “the only kind of people I want counting my money are little short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
And who is a human trope machine when it comes to lecturing American Jews about “disloyalty” if they don’t vote Republican to protect “your country,” Israel. Hearing about dual loyalty brings back such great memories to us Jews.
But to be fair, Trump hasn’t launched a public anti-Semitic slur in a full two weeks, dating all the way back to July 3 — when he mused about some bankers being “shylocks.”
Trump, who grew up in Queens, claimed with a reportedly straight face that he’d never hear the “word” shylock for Jews. Now, we can all agree that Trump probably didn’t first learn the term from reading William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.
But, Mr. President, you don’t remember hearing “shylock” as an antisemitic thing? We’ll take that as a “cognitive decline” defense.
The art of the extortion is where Trump is very much on his game. Dispatching Huckabee bared brazen disrespect for the Israeli judicial system — a passion of Bibi’s, too — and the message wasn’t lost on Haaretz, my choice as Israel’s most reliable source of news pertaining to the U.S.
Under the headline, “Mike Huckabee's Mafioso Move at Netanyahu's Trial Has Trump's Fingerprints All Over It,” Haaretz reported this:
“Huckabee's visit to the Tel Aviv District Court during Netanyahu's ongoing corruption trial was an American, Mafioso-like intimidation tactic on a democratic ally's independent justice system for the sake of protecting its political partner…
Beyond the hypocrisy, Trump and Huckabee's advocacy for Netanyahu to be freed from his legal burdens is not driven by a pursuit of justice. Rather, the trial strictly represents a nuisance to broader American policy initiatives: (that they) supposedly rely on Netanyahu's availability as prime minister.”
Trump’s insistence on propping up Netanyahu is hardly novel in the annals of dictator-propping by the U.S., but traditionally that nefarious pastime didn’t involve our allies with democratic forms of government. This situation strikes a personal nerve with Trump. And the convicted felon let the world know:
"Netanyahu is right now in the process of negotiating a deal with Hamas, which will include getting the hostages back. How is it possible that the prime minister of Israel can be forced to sit in a courtroom all day over nothing?"
So it came to pass that Trump dispatched Huckabee much the way that, in The Godfather, Vito Corleone sent his consigliere, Tom Hagen, to Hollywood to persuade studio head Jack Woltz to cast Johnny Fontane in a film. At first, Woltz said no. He would go on to change his mind.
I believe the Israelis watched that movie and surely they remember that scene depicting what happens when at first you don’t do what the boss says.
Something about waking up to your horse’s head.
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I'm no conspiracy theorist but the Supreme Court and Epstein got me thinking
Anyone wanting to understand the brouhaha over Pam Bondi’s refusal to turnover (or even acknowledge) the Epstein files need look no further than what the Supreme Court just did.
In McMahon v. New York, the Supremes gave Trump a simple way to revoke federal spending authorized by Congress: just fire everyone responsible for implementing that spending.
The high court is allowing Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon to fire over half the people who work for the Department of Education until there’s a full hearing on the constitutionality of their action. But by then it will be too late to save much of the department.
Note that the Supreme Court made this astounding decision on its so-called “shadow docket” where it doesn’t even have to explain itself (the only record we have is Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent).
No matter that Congress created the Department of Education; apparently, Trump can effectively end it. No matter that Congress in the 1974 Impoundment Control Act prohibits a president from unilaterally refusing to spend money that has been authorized by Congress; apparently, Trump can disregard the Act.
Trump now has unbridled power to repeal federal laws by the simple expedient of firing federal employees who implement them.
Why? How? On what basis? Who’s behind this? We don’t know. We may never know.
Which gets us to the brouhaha over Jeffrey Epstein.
For years, Trump has talked darkly of a “deep state” — a secret cabal intent on destroying America by harming the nation’s children.
Such as, perhaps, six justices who let him shut down the Education Department without even setting out their reasons?
Recall “Pizzagate,” the QAnon conspiracy theory that in 2016 allegedly linked Democrats to a ring of child sex-traffickers. It’s still around but has morphed into a less partisan conspiracy theory involving an alleged worldwide elite of child sex-traffickers.
Jeffrey Epstein and his death fit perfectly. Many right-wing media personalities have posited that the billionaire convict was murdered in prison as part of a cover-up of a sprawling sex-trafficking conspiracy.
Senior Trump administration officials built up great fanfare around the release of the supposed Epstein “client list.”
Even JD Vance accused the government of hiding the list. “If you’re a journalist and you’re not asking questions about this case,” Vance said, “you should be ashamed of yourself.”
But that was back in 2021, before Vance became part of the, um, conspiracy.
In February of this year, Attorney General Pam Bondi acknowledged the existence of Epstein’s client list. She said the client list is “sitting on my desk right now.”
Now the Trump-Vance administration says Epstein’s client list doesn’t exist.
The Epstein case illustrates Trump’s “deep state” no less than does an unsigned “shadow docket” Supreme Court decision allowing Trump to wipe out the Department of Education.
The phrase “Epstein didn’t kill himself” — a rebuttal to the official explanation of Epstein’s death — has taken on a cultural meaning way beyond the facts of the case. It means an unaccountable elite doing evil things in secret.
Trump built his political base on that premise. Once in office, he said time and again, he would expose that unaccountable, secret, evil elite.
No wonder 70 percent of voters believe “law enforcement is withholding information about powerful people connected to Epstein,” including 61 percent of Trump voters. And 58 percent of voters said Trump “maybe was or definitely was” involved in a cover-up.
Conspiracy theories thrive when elites act in secret. I have no idea whether Epstein killed himself or was murdered. But Wired Magazine’s metadata — showing that the FBI’s “raw” surveillance video from the night Epstein killed himself is seemingly missing 2 minutes and 53 seconds — got my attention.
As did the Supremes' bonkers secret decision in McMahon.
And I’m no conspiracy theorist.
After hyping the promised release, a joint FBI and Department of Justice report last week said they had found no evidence of a list — or that Epstein had been murdered — prompting outcry from within MAGA circles.
As Bondi faces heightened scrutiny for her repeated attempts to dodge questions about the Epstein files, Laura Loomer also teased that “there are people in the White House who agree with me that Pam [Bondi] spent too much time on Fox News and her statements were inconsistent and undermined what messaging is today about the Epstein files.”
Other prominent MAGA-aligned supporters of the president have also warned that Trump could see significant damage to his standing among his base if he does not change course.
Sixty-three percent of voters in a Quinnipiac University national poll released Wednesday said that they disapproved of Trump’s handling of the files. Republicans were also nearly split. Just 40 percent said they support how he’s handled the files, with 36 percent disapproving and another 20 percent not offering an opinion.
Mike Flynn — who briefly served as Trump’s national security adviser in his first term — wrote in a lengthy X post on Wednesday that Trump needed to “gather your team and figure out a way to move past this.”
“The roll out of this was terrible, no way around that,” Flynn wrote. “Americans want America to be successful, therefore, WE NEED YOU TO BE SUCCESSFUL.”
Elon Musk — with whom Trump had a blowup fight last month in which Musk accused Trump of being named in the Epstein files — criticized his former boss for trying to paint the whole situation as a hoax.
“He should just release the files and point out which part is the hoax,” Musk wrote on X Wednesday.
The MAGA meltdown over Epstein “could be his Afghanistan going into the fall,” Mark Mitchell, head of polling and operations at Rasmussen Reports, told Steve Bannon Tuesday on his “War Room” podcast
“People are trying to say this isn’t a big deal,” Mitchell said. “People are trying to say nobody wants this Epstein information out. It’s an absolute misdirection. This is horrifying. And if it isn’t corrected, it threatens derailing Trump’s agenda, getting rid of his political capital.”
“This is not about a guy who died in 2019, this is about a representation of two-tier justice and about unaccountable government,” Mitchell told Bannon.
On Wednesday, conservative political commentator John Solomon told Bannon that he had interviewed the president, and that Trump supported the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate elements of the Epstein case as part of a broader look into a supposed deep state conspiracy to punish the Republican Party.
“I think he’s frustrated by all the social media chatter by people who don’t really know what’s in the Epstein files,” Solomon said. “He was very pointed about that, let’s stay focused on the things that matter to the American people. ‘I want the answers to Epstein like everyone’, he said, so let the prosecutor do that.”
The Epstein fiasco also prompted Speaker Mike Johnson to split with Trump on Tuesday, calling for the Department of Justice to release all the information it has on the sex offender in the name of “transparency.”
“It’s a very delicate subject, but you should put everything out there, let the people decide it,” Johnson told conservative commentator Benny Johnson, adding that Bondi should explain her previous claims of having the elusive Epstein “client list.”
Just a day prior, the Louisiana Republican had defended Bondi, choosing to defer to the Trump administration instead of criticizing the attorney general.
But Trump appears to remain unmoved despite growing rebellion within his MAGA cohort.
In the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump repeated his claims that the whole ordeal was a “hoax” peddled by Democrats and once again defended Bondi’s handling of the case.
“She’s done very good. She says ‘I gave you all the credible information,’ and if she finds any more credible information, she'll give that too. What more can she do than that?” Trump said, adding that he had “lost a lot of faith in certain people” over their outcry on the administration’s approach to the issue.
- Robert Reich is a professor emeritus of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com
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Supreme Court's democracy hijack is one step closer to complete
Earlier this month, Louise and I vacationed across several different cities and rural areas in Norway, the country from which my grandfather emigrated to the United States in 1917. The place was immaculate, modern, and, astonishingly, seemed entirely free of homelessness. Official stats say around 3,000 people lack housing across the entire country. That’s about the number you’ll see sleeping on sidewalks in a single Los Angeles neighborhood.
Depending on the city, it looked like half or more of the cars on the road were electric. Norway has mandated that, starting this coming January, all new cars sold in that nation must be zero-emission. Charging stations are everywhere. Already, 89 percent of all new cars sold there last year were fully electric.
But the real eye-opener wasn’t the electric cars or tidy sidewalks; it was the democracy. Norway is a functioning democratic republic, but not in the American sense where billionaires run the show to their own benefit.
It’s a country that practices democratic socialism, a term that causes conniptions among Fox “News” anchors and libertarian think tanks but simply means this: The people vote for leaders who actually implement policies the majority wants.
Sadly, that’s not the case here pretty much at all, at least since the Reagan Revolution. Back here in the United States, six billionaire-corrupted Supreme Court justices just told us that democracy doesn’t matter anymore. That the desires of millions of Americans can be rendered meaningless, especially if billionaires and their puppets want it that way.
Yesterday, this Trump-packed Supreme Court quietly — in an unsigned ruling on their badly-abused so-called “shadow docket” with no public debate and no explanation — handed down one of the most destructive rulings in modern history.
In a 6–3 decision, the justices green-lit Trump’s plan to gut the Department of Education, firing 1,400 people, freezing $6.8 billion in funding, and throwing the constitutional guarantee of equal access to education under the proverbial bus. It also flies in the face of the constitutional requirement that the president “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” by spending money Congress appropriates and keeping open agencies Congress created.
Justice Sotomayor’s dissent was scathing, calling the ruling “indefensible” and warning it would “cripple the federal government’s ability to ensure civil rights are enforced in education.”
The highest court in our land just sided with a twice-impeached, sexual-assaulting, insurrection-inciting president to dismantle the very agency responsible for making sure children with disabilities get accommodations. That Black and Brown, Jewish and Muslim students aren’t systematically discriminated against. That poor children in poor neighborhoods can still get a good education. That people with massive student debt can get some small breaks. That schools have at least some federal oversight.
Compare that to Norway.
While American billionaires are buying legislators and court decisions to keep their taxes low, their subsidies for the fossil fuel industry flowing, and to crush unions, Norwegians are investing in their people.
Nobody in Norway ever goes bankrupt from medical bills. College and trade schools are free. Unions are everywhere, wages are high, and stiff taxes on the morbidly rich ensure that public services like education and healthcare are publicly funded rather than run by greedy corporations and billionaire CEOs.
How do they do it? Why is it so different there compared to here?
Because in Norway, and across most of Europe, democracy is real. Citizens are automatically registered to vote. Elections are free of voter suppression, and dark money is illegal. Politicians are answerable to the people, not to fossil fuel barons or Wall Street banksters.
And so, people can vote for legislators who can actually give them what they want:
- Universal healthcare
- Free higher education
- Robust public transit
- Workers’ rights and living wages
- Climate action, not climate denial
Meanwhile, in America, six corrupt Republicans on our Supreme Court have become an unelected, billionaire-funded wrecking crew that’s gleefully tearing down every public institution that threatens plutocratic rule.
This disparity, this tragedy, is no accident here in our country.
As I’ve written about for years and most recently detailed in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America, it began in the modern era with Lewis Powell’s 1971 Memo, a blueprint for corporate America to seize the courts, media, education, and politics. Nixon rewarded Powell by putting him on the Supreme Court the following year, and the rest is tragic history.
From Buckley v. Valeo to Citizens United, this court and its billionaire benefactors have redefined bribery as “free speech” and legalized the wholesale purchase of politicians. And, of course, Supreme Court justices.
This week’s shadow docket ruling is just the latest in that decades-long march toward oligarchy and, now, dictatorship.
The irony? The majority of Americans want a Norway-style system.
- 66% support Medicare for All
- 58% support free college and student debt cancellation
- 64% support taxing the ultra-rich more heavily
- 60% of workers say they’d join a union if they could
So why don’t we have it?
Because six corrupt Republican Supreme Court justices, and the corrupt rightwing billionaires who bought them and support their lavish lifestyles, won’t let us.
They’ve legalized voter suppression, gutted campaign finance laws, blessed gerrymandering, and are now attacking public education, the very foundation of a functioning democracy.
The lesson of Norway isn’t that the people there are somehow better. It’s that they’ve built institutions that respect the will of the majority and block the power of the morbidly rich. And when their democratic institutions are under threat, they act.
In America, we must do the same.
- End lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court and put in term limits.
- Ban dark money in politics.
- Rebuild public education, not dismantle it.
- Tax the morbidly rich.
- Expand and protect voting rights.
This isn’t a left-right issue; it’s a democracy-versus-oligarchy issue. And this week’s Supreme Court ruling should be a five-alarm fire.
If we want a country that looks more like Norway and less like the feudal state Trump and his bought-off justices envision, we’ve got to fight for it.
The billionaires may have the Supreme Court, the White House, and Congress, at least for now. But we still have the numbers.
And in a democracy, that still means something, if we make it mean something.
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