With Spinal Tap II: The End Continues hitting cinemas, now is the perfect moment to revisit its precursor, one of most influential and hilarious comedy films ever made, 1984’s This Is Spinal Tap.
Opinion
Trump's depravity grimly echoes one of Rome's sickest tyrants
As more of the Epstein files are released, reminding us of President Donald Trump’s close association with Jeffrey Epstein and the young people he abused and trafficked, as well as the president’s ongoing array of misogynist insults and actions (like calling journalist Catherine Lucey “piggy” and name-calling Marjorie Taylor Greene to the point where she jumped ship), what keeps coming to my mind are the sexual exploits of authoritarians throughout history. As a scholar of the New Testament and the origins of Christianity, I have a special interest in the lives of the Roman emperors — in particular, the notorious Emperor Nero.
According to historians of antiquity (trigger warning here!), Emperor Nero was known to use and abuse many people, especially women, allegedly murdering two of his wives and his aunt while sleeping with a Vestal Virgin and — yes! — his mother before he killed her. Roman politicians and historians held back remarkably little when considering Nero’s excesses. Perhaps the most famous of those writers, Tacitus, shared how Nero “polluted himself by every lawful or lawless indulgence.” Cassius Dio, author of 80 volumes of Roman history, describes Nero skulking around Rome at night “insulting women,” “practicing lewdness on boys,” and “beating, wounding, and murdering” others. And Suetonius, the most famous biographer of the Caesars, claimed that Nero had invented a perversion all his own. At public games he was hosting, he would put on an animal skin and “assail with violence the private parts both of men and women, while they were bound to stakes.”
While such vivid horrors may be particular to Nero (and his own sense of depravity), Donald Trump’s posture on gender and sexuality does all too grimly echo that of many powerful men throughout history, including those Roman emperors. His sense of comfort in objectifying and demeaning women, whether through his “pussy” dig from the 2016 election or his comments about his friendship with Epstein, who “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side,” is definitely well-documented.
As Soraya Chemaly, feminist writer and author of All We Want Is Everything: How We Dismantle Male Supremacy, pointed out at Salon:
“Right after the grab ‘em by the pussy tape, we should have [had accountability]… and that’s not what happened. And then after the more than two dozen women came forward with detailed stories that were similar, we should have seen it grind to a halt. But the fact is we don’t care about that kind of predation… we just don’t care. And that’s a function of sexualized violence as a tool of male supremacist oppression in the home, in the street, in politics.”
Sex and authoritarianism
The behavior of Emperor Nero and President Trump may be reminiscent of each other (and, for that matter, of so many other kings and tyrants throughout history) because using and abusing sex by those in power has been a pillar of past authoritarian systems. Full stop.
Bring up the way sexual predators tend to act with impunity, and you don’t have to go far to find examples. In recent years in the US, there was the genesis of the #MeToo movement — the sexual harassment perpetrated by those in the entertainment industry, higher education, Supreme Court justices, and politicians. And such leaders have learned from the best of them. Scratch under the surface of any authoritarian ruler, in fact, and you’re likely to find cases of harassment and abuse.
For Rome, those in power dominated the people and nations they subjugated not just economically, militarily, and politically, but sexually, too. Rape and prostitution were central aspects of what it meant to be conquered by Rome. And just as that empire used sexuality (depicting in public art and monuments distinctly gendered conquered nations) to expand its control and territory, the Caesars themselves regulated the sexual behavior of those they had already conquered as a way to further consolidate power.
They passed or upheld marriage laws, naming and regulating who could (and could not) marry whom in an effort to promote what they considered proper social order. Although Nero himself broke some of those laws (especially when he castrated someone enslaved to him and proceeded to marry that person, and when he dressed as a woman and married a freedman, violating laws against men marrying men and anyone marrying someone of lower status), it was clear that such laws were easily circumventable by those in power, even while still being fiercely enforced for Roman subjects. (Doesn’t such a double standard still hold true?)
Indeed, in the ways that an emphasis on morality and family values as an ideology helped establish and maintain the social climate and political and economic order of the Roman Empire (while those in power often acted so differently), there are uncanny parallels to the United States today.
Fiddling while America burns
Sex and sexuality are important ways to understand both Nero’s and Trump’s uses and abuses of power, but the parallels (and the abuses) don’t stop there. Nero is infamous for burning Rome to make way for new building projects and blaming the fires on a marginalized population of his time (Christians) in what may be one of the earliest recorded forms of scapegoating. In Trump’s case, you hardly need look far to find poor and marginalized communities he’s scapegoating: immigrants, trans youth, the unhoused, and the list goes on (and on and on).
Back to Rome, though. Accounts tell us that, while the city burned, Nero sang. (From that, of course, came the phrase that classically describes people in power abdicating all responsibility for helping others in the midst of a crisis: “fiddling while Rome burns.”) While I haven’t heard of Trump singing or playing an instrument recently, certainly destroying the East Wing of the White House to build a “presidential ballroom” while cutting tens of millions of people from food assistance could be considered a modern equivalent.
And a charge against that particularly corrupt emperor that has stood the test of time is that the reference to 666 (sometimes known as the devil or the anti-Christ) from the Book of Revelation is actually a code for Nero, indicating that in biblical lore he was a central adversary of the Jesus movement. Therefore, when President Trump or any of the Christian nationalists in power today try to liken themselves to the protagonists in biblical stories, we should stop in our tracks and remember that, if there are such parallels, it’s certainly between the Caesars and Trump, the emperors and tyrants of thousands of years ago and today’s all too rich and ever more authoritarian ruler.
After all, rather than condoning the actions of any tyrants, including the man who today is eager to be one in Washington, D.C., the Bible talks about pulling them down from their thrones and lifting up the lowly. Have you seen the T-shirts at some of the Chicago immigrant-justice protests in recent weeks with quotes from Mary’s Magnificat, that hymn of praise from the gospel of Luke? They’re amazing! (And their quotes from sacred texts and traditions to call out the powerful and defend the immigrant, heal the sick, and feed the hungry are historically and contextually aligned with the arc of the Bible.)
What the Bible says about sexuality
Bishop William J. Barber II poses this powerful question about the use and abuse of religion in our day: “Why is it that some who call themselves Christians are so loud about things that the Bible says so little about and so quiet about the things the Bible says so much about like justice and kindness?”
Indeed, Jesus and the Bible really had very little (in some cases nothing) to say about issues like same-sex marriage and abortion. It is a fact, however, that when there is a message in the Bible’s text about sex and sexuality or gender expression and moral values, that message is always about justice, inclusion, and love.
For instance, the Apostle Paul’s letters are often used these days to prop up homophobia and misogyny — messages like good Christians aren’t LGBTQ or don’t enjoy sex or that people are all too often poor because they’ve had too many babies, or that they’re lazy or drug-addicted, and so are sinners. As it happens, though, what’s truly sinful, according to such Biblical passages, is not homosexuality, or being transgender, or having consensual sex, but greed and exploitation, the unholy alliance between the wealthy and those who make laws to deny people their rights. Yes, Paul’s letters are indeed among a few biblical texts often quoted to condemn abortion or deny the rights and bodily autonomy of people. So, consider it a distinct irony that, at the core of Paul’s writings aren’t the behaviors of the poor or women or LGBTQ people, but the vices of empire.
One Greek word the Apostle Paul is concerned with is sarkas, usually translated as “works of flesh.” Paul defines such fleshy “works,” however, as: sexual immorality, lewdness, idolatry, hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, envy, gluttony, and the like. At first, it may indeed sound like a list of personal behaviors and characteristics. But notice that idolatry, hatred, discord, and gluttony are not just individual behaviors, especially not those of the poor and powerless. Instead, they are acts of an unequal and exploitative world that actually uses and abuses the poor and marginalized.
Indeed, if there is a biblical critique of sex and sexuality, it’s one to be levied against the wealthy and powerful, the Trumps and Epsteins of this world, not teenagers and their families seeking gender-affirming care, women seeking abortions, or transgender people seeking a place in sports or the military. And it’s surely not a polemic with same-gender loving couples or poor trans love.
Trump’s distorted morality
Since taking office (and as part of what catapulted him into the White House in the first place), President Trump has been continually raising alarms about the supposed moral crises besetting this country and the need for a strong man to resolve them. In this, he’s been following in the path laid out by the Nero-like authoritarians and tyrants of history. He’s been issuing regular executive orders aimed at doing everything from banning transgender women in sports and transgender troops in the military to punishing the unhoused and immigrants, while cutting families in need off from lifesaving food.
And his executive actions are only the tip of the spear of a significantly larger legislative attempt to target and scapegoat others (while distracting attention from the Epstein files and other controversies surrounding him). This year, 1,012 anti-trans bills have been introduced in American legislative bodies at both the state and federal levels. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” cut millions of dollars in food and health care, but included $45 billion to detain adult immigrants and their families, as well as an additional $32 billion for immigration agents to pursue enforcement and deportation policies.
Trump’s attacks on abortion, same-sex marriage, and trans youth in the name of family values and “morality,” his efforts to cut welfare, healthcare, wages, and other life-sustaining programs, and his emphasis on policing and militarizing communities (allowing guns to proliferate) while talking about peace and security, may be covered by Christian nationalism but they are not in any sense biblical.
After all, the Bible’s authors, living through the world of imperial Rome, agreed that there was a moral crisis occurring. People were losing their land, had turned away from the God of liberation and justice, and were generally complying with a system of subjugation and oppression. Meanwhile, the emperors were trampling on all too many of their hopes and values, including by sexually exploiting them. And none of that was to be tolerated.
There is a similar moral crisis occurring today, and Trump is at its very heart. Jackson Katz, creator of the 2024 film The Man Card: 50 Years of Gender, Power, and the American Presidency, raises the ultimate “moral” question about Trump’s complicity in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuses and what will come of his own sexual predations, then and now. He writes, “It’s still far from clear whether Trump ultimately will be held accountable for his actions — or inactions — over the course of his long friendship with the convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, our era’s most notorious and prolific sexual abuser of girls. Will this finally be the moment when Trump pays a real price for his misogyny?”
If we are to channel the Apostle Paul and the message of Jesus, time’s up. As the gospel tradition makes all too clear for Emperor Nero (aka the anti-Christ or Satan), President Trump, “Your kingdom must come down!”
- Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis is co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign. She is the author of "Always with Us?: What Jesus Really Said about the Poor" (2017).
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This red-state GOP hatched a plot to screw over its voters — and deserves a wakeup call
Republican lawmakers are in desperate need of a civics lesson.
They need to learn — or be reminded — that as elected officials, their first obligation is to uphold the laws of the Missouri Constitution as they fight for the welfare and well-being of the citizens they represent.
For years now, Missouri’s Republican lawmakers seem perfectly comfortable ignoring that reality if it is convenient or aids in pushing a personal or party agenda.
The most recent litany of exploits involves the gerrymandered map designed to dissolve a Democratic congressional district in order to give Republicans the advantage in commandeering another seat in the 2026 midterm election — all to help the president in his efforts to maintain control of Congress.
The non-stop efforts to force the gerrymandered map down Missourians' throats continue despite:
- A federal judge refusal to rule on a case to block a statewide vote on the gerrymandered districts filed by Attorney General Catherine Hanaway on behalf of Missouri’s Republican leaders.
- The months of wrangling — which continues in the courts — over when the collection of signatures for a statewide petition can be legally started.
- The gathering and filing of over 300,000 signatures, almost three times the required minimum of 110,000, before the deadline.
Despite these actions, perhaps the most brazen of them all in efforts to show that the will of the people be damned, Secretary of State Denny Hoskins declared that the gerrymandered map will go into effect anyway.
He has claimed to have the unilateral authority to declare the referendum to put the gerrymandered map on the November 2026 ballot null and void, even if the requisite signatures to do so are deemed valid.
There are bound to be additional challenges and lawsuits, the outcome of which is anyone’s guess. It all seems so needless if only the rule of law were followed and the will of the majority were allowed to rule.
But the tug of war between lawmakers and those they should be representing is not new with the gerrymandered map issue. It is just the latest battle.
Of particular note is that 62 percent of Missourians passed a constitutional amendment in 2018 known as the Clean Missouri initiative that would have required legislative districts to be drawn to ensure partisan fairness. That sounds right and reasonable, doesn’t it?
Yet in 2021, the legislature put a deceptively worded measure on the ballot to repeal that amendment, which garnered 51 percent of the vote. The Clean Missouri initiative never went into effect.
What we have instead is the practice and pattern of lawmakers going through extraordinary measures to obfuscate, block or undue laws and measures supported and passed by the people.
In a previous column, I addressed many of those instances. Ignoring or undoing the will of Missourians has occurred in both broad sweeping and nuanced areas.
We need to keep some top of mind.
This year, we have seen sick pay leave that was overwhelmingly approved by Missouri voters and the cost-of-living minimum wage adjustments undone by the governor with the stroke of a pen.
In 2024, Missouri voters approved access to legal abortions as an option in reproductive health-care services. The Republican-controlled legislature has since passed a measure to put the issue back on the ballot in 2026, in an effort to make abortion illegal again.
Voters approved Medicaid expansion in 2020, only to see the legislature block funding. After several legal battles, the measure finally took effect in late 2021.
Other laws and measures have been pursued and passed that ignore or undo the will of Missouri citizens in recent years. A majority of Missourians are against state control of city police departments, discrimination by landlords against renters who receive public assistance, and other measures that negatively impact the daily lives of fellow Missourians.
The Trump administration has made disregarding the Constitution, the rule of law and rights of Americans normal operating procedure.
But the Republican-controlled Missouri legislature’s actions over the years show that the seeds of oligarchal or authoritarian rule have existed all along.
What does it mean?
Clearly, it means that only lip-service or a passing nod is given to the democratic rules, laws and processes that govern ballot measures, determining the will of the majority vs. the tyrannical rule of the few.
More importantly, there is a consistent message being sent that voters do not know which policy measures are in the best interests of their family, community or state.
To add insult to injury, those same legislators must believe that voters also have short memories and will continue to vote for them, or those of like minds, in election cycle after election cycle.
The questions we should ask ourselves are:
- Why do we go along with such behavior, year after year?
- Why are we comfortable with the actions of the few — would-be oligarchs, authoritarians, or their puppets — ruling the day and determining how our state will be governed?
Forcing the gerrymandered map down our throats is the latest usurpation of the laws and rights of Missourians in a line of many in recent years.
What will it take to make it the last?
- Janice Ellis lives in Missouri and has been an executive in both government and the private sector. She has written commentary for more than four decades, which has appeared on radio, in news publications across the country and online. She is an award-winning author of six books and holds a Ph.D. and two Master of Arts degrees from the University of Wisconsin.
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Christmas could be what sinks Trump
Trump gave what was billed as a “Christmas speech” in rural Pennsylvania last week that began with his “wishing each and every one of you a very merry Christmas, happy New Year, all of that stuff” and boasting that now, under his presidency, “everybody’s saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again.”
Then he claimed — contrary to the experience of nearly everyone in the crowd — that he had gotten them “lower prices” and “bigger paychecks.” And asserted that anyone having difficulty making ends meet should just cut back on buying stuff.
“You can give up certain products. You can give up pencils … Every child can get 37 pencils. They only need one or two,” he said, adding, “You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter. Two or three is nice. You don’t need 37 dolls.”
It’s rich — Trump preaching austerity while raking in billions from his crypto investments and bribes: a luxury jetliner from Qatar, a gold bar from Apple, wealth from the Saudis, a gold Rolex clock from Switzerland, and so much more.
“The only thing that is truly going up big, it’s called the stock market and your 401(k)s,” Trump continued, apparently unaware that 92 percent of the stock market is owned by the richest 10 percent of Americans while most Americans own no stock at all. (Just over a third have even a 401(k), 403(b), 503(b) or Thrift Savings Plan.)
He was supposed to talk about affordability, but Trump’s malignant narcissistic brain seemed incapable of the minimal empathy needed to understand the public’s angst over the cost of living. So he veered off affordability to attack Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MI), ridicule windmills, mock transgender people, and call Joe Biden a son of a bitch.
Small wonder that most voters have had it with Trump. Even the MAGA faithful are starting to have second thoughts.
In Miami this week, voters delivered the mayor’s office to a Democrat for the first time in nearly 30 years and rebuffed the Republican candidate, whom Trump endorsed — by a whopping 59 percent to 41 percent. Miami’s new mayor-elect, Eileen Higgins, said the city is “at the tip of the spear” of affordability concerns in America.
In Indiana, Republican senators rejected a redistricting plan that Trump had tried to bully them into accepting. He threatened to primary legislators who didn’t go along and even whipped up supporters to pressure them — including so-called swatting of their homes (hoax reports to provoke a police response) and death threats.
It didn’t work. Twenty-one senators from the Republican majority in the Indiana Senate and all 10 Senate Democrats voted it down.
Even congressional Republicans are starting to desert him as they see that the wannabe emperor has no clothes: His ability to hurt or help them in next year’s midterms is rapidly diminishing.
They’ve rejected his demand to end the filibuster, rebuked his incipient health-care plan, forced him to cave on the Epstein files, won’t approve his bonkers $2,000 tariff checks for Americans, want more say over his boat strikes off the coasts of Central and South America, and are in open rebellion against his handpicked speaker of the House.
Trump won’t steal Christmas, but it’s looking increasingly likely that Christmas will steal Trump.
- Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
- Robert Reich's new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org
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Why Rob Reiner's 'This Is Spinal Tap' remains the funniest rock satire ever made
Editor's note: This story was written before the announcement of Rob Reiner's untimely death and is presented here as a tribute to the artist.
Directed by Rob Reiner and co-written by Reiner and the stars of the film, Christopher Guest (as Nigel Tufnel), Michael McKean (David St. Hubbins) and Harry Shearer (Derek Smalls), the mockumentary film follows a fictional British heavy metal band on a disastrous tour of the United States.
As audiences dwindle, equipment fails and egos clash, the band’s decline satirizes rock’n’roll excess and the absurdities of the music industry.
Widely acknowledged as a cult classic, the film codified the “straight-faced” style of mockumentary that became central to modern comedies such as The Office and Modern Family.
Its dry and absurdist tone, handheld camerawork, faux interview format and largely improvised dialogue were inspirational for many contemporary comedy creators, including Ben Stiller, Mike Schur and Ricky Gervais. It also established a tone and style Guest would return to throughout his filmmaking career, in movies such as Waiting For Guffman (1996), Best In Show (2000) and A Mighty Wind (2003).
The band which could exist
Beyond pure nostalgia and the legacy of the mockumentary style, This Is Spinal Tap remains a cult favourite because of the clever and farcical way it skewers and satirises rock excess.
As Roger Ebert stated, although the band does not exist,
the best thing about this film is that it could. The music, the staging, the special effects, the backstage feuding and the pseudo-profound philosophizing are right out of a hundred other rock groups and a dozen other documentaries about rock.
In the early 1980s, MTV was on the rise. Rock tour documentaries from bands like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and The Band established new conventions of “rock reality” in films such as The Song Remains The Same (1976), Black and Blue (1980) and The Last Waltz (1978). The culture of excess surrounding some of these artists provided fertile ground for parody.
Ego clashes, overblown stage shows and catastrophic tours were commonplace. Spinal Tap’s deadpan mockumentary style was both a timely satire, and an authentic cultural commentary.
The brilliance of the film goes beyond its ribald satire. Of vital importance is the skilful musicianship of the cast. Even if they are a joke, Spinal Tap can play. The great rock riffs sustain the silliness of the lyrics in songs like Sex Farm and Big Bottom.
In addition, Guest and McKean slyly navigate a bromance at the heart of the film between their characters, Nigel and David.
When David’s girlfriend, Jeanine (June Chadwick) arrives to join the tour, things really go off the rails, leading to an acrimonious breakup between the bandmates.
Their reunion at the film’s conclusion reveals that the film is truly a love story between two vain yet endearing buffoons.
Going to 11
Moments such as Nigel boasting about his amplifier going “to 11”, Derek’s airport security incident, the band getting lost on the way to the stage, and the 18-inch (instead of 18-foot) Stonehenge stage prop have become iconic. But there are so many great gags on the periphery, layered through the largely improvised dialogue.
A personal favourite occurs during an early band interview. Reflecting on a series of strange deaths that have afflicted Spinal Tap’s drummers throughout the years, and acknowledging that their first drummer died in “a bizarre gardening accident”, Tufnel states “the authorities said best leave it unsolved really”.
There are also subtle visual jokes embedded through the film: the sudden emergence of cold sores for each band member in the early stages of the tour (at roughly the same time the band’s groupies enter the frame); the band being second billed behind an Amusement Park Puppet Show as the tour falls apart; Nigel needing to quickly tune the violin he’s using to augment an overblown guitar solo.
Online lists such as Cracked’s “50 funniest moments in This Is Spinal Tap” demonstrate the sheer volume of funny moments.
Modern audiences would no doubt recognise the film’s style being mimicked in contemporary works such as The Office, Parks and Recreation, Summer Heights High and What We Do in the Shadows.
Its influence has been directly acknowledged in the lead-up to the release of the sequel by creators who owe a debt to its clever format.
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues reunites Tufnel, St. Hubbins and Smalls, now estranged, 41 years after the original film.
They are reluctantly coming back together for one final concert they are legally bound to perform. Documentarian Marty Di Bergi (Reiner) returns to showcase their legacy, modern mishaps and the realities of being an ageing rocker.
It is an apt sequel in a world where legacy bands and artists such as The Rolling Stones, Springsteen and McCartney are still performing in their 70s and 80s.
The sequel is not just a reunion gig. It is a reminder of why the original remains one of the sharpest and most influential comedies ever made – and one well worth a revisit.
Adam Daniel, Associate Lecturer in Communication, Western Sydney University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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There's one voice that will finish Trump — and the GOP has no control
Donald Trump went out to give a rally for the first time in months, speaking in a swing district in Pennsylvania. The White House hyped it to be a speech on affordability, but Trump instead attacked “affordability” as a “hoax” and veered into his usual viciously racist attacks.
Democrats couldn’t wish for a better scenario.
Trump is reminding everyone, every day, that his presidency is a disaster. And Tuesday after Tuesday, in elections all across the country, people have been responding by voting against him and the GOP. This past Tuesday, Eileen Higgins became the first Democrat to win the Miami’ mayor’s race in 28 years.
She won by 19 points, while Kamala Harris won Miami only by a point in 2024, as Trump made inroad with Latinos, who make up a majority of registered voters in Miami. The Republican on the ticket was Latino, former city manager Emilio González, who was endorsed by Trump. But Trump’s support has crashed in the Latino community, driven by his economic chaos and his mass deportations.
Trump, who said in the Pennsylvania speech that “tariff” is his favorite word, just keeps giving people reasons to vote against him even if they previously supported him.
And as he stumbles, he’s bringing more attention to his mental decline and his physical health. The media haven’t nearly covered Trump’s health in the way they covered President Biden’s mental and physical competency.
But not to worry, Trump will remind you of it himself. He’s the one who blurted out on Air Force One that he’d had an MRI in his second physical in the summer, claiming it all was great. But that just raised a thousand questions, as no one gets an MRI as a routine screening. The speculation hasn’t died down, even as the White House has put out further very vague information. And it raises more questions about his swollen angles and bruised hands, which are there for all to see.
When the New York Times finally did a story on how Trump has slowed down, not doing rallies on the road and not having many events inside the White House — and raised his health — Trump went ballistic. He could have just let it be, but no, he had to write a massive Truth Social post that accused the paper of being “seditious” and “treasonous” because no one should be question Dear Leader.
Those are his favorite lines of attack, which only once again highlight his aspirations to be a dictator or a king. It’s outrageous and dangerous, but it also is yet another example of Trump bringing attention to the very thing he doesn’t want anyone paying attention to. We always hear about Trump trying to distract — and that’s true — but he also has a habit of making sure everyone’s laser-focused the thing he’s most afraid of. The rest of the media covered it for the next day, and the Times responded, getting more attention to the issue.
Trump couldn’t resist though because being seen as frail and weak is horrifying to him — and that’s because it’s true. For all the reasons I’ve written here about in recent weeks, Republicans are pushing back on him as MAGA is cracking up. So he can’t help but go on the attack, but then only brings more attention to the story rather than distracting from it.
And that’s what happened with his “affordability” speech, as he only underscored that he doesn’t understand the issue, couldn’t care less about people’s pain and has actually caused that pain with his tariffs.
Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, said in an interview a few days ago that they’d be putting Trump on the road in mega-rallies next year — though Trump, who seems exhausted, hasn’t been told yet.
“I haven’t quite broken it to him yet, but he’s going to campaign like it’s 2024 again,” Wiles told The Mom VIEW, a MAGA show produced by the group Moms for America.
Then she literally said they’re going to “put him on the ballot” in the midterm elections for Congress all across the country:
Typically, in the midterms, it’s not about who’s sitting at the White House; you localize the election. And you keep the federal officials out of it. We’re actually going to turn that on its head and put him on the ballot.
Bring it on! Again, Democrats could not ask for more.
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A chain of catastrophes reveals Trump’s true loyalties
America is in or on the verge of a seriously bad recession and the Trump regime is hiding the numbers — the signs are everywhere. His incoherent tariffs, massive tax breaks for billionaires, and gutting the Inflation Reduction Act are kneecapping our economy.
In response, Trump visited Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania and tried to pitch himself as a champion for the little guy, the middle class, small farmers, and working people.
Which raises the question: who do Trump and the GOP really work for?
— Vladimir Putin was furious that the Biden administration had been providing Ukraine with weapons systems, including air defense munitions and HIMARS rockets, so in March of this year Trump abruptly suspended delivery of most US military aid and Republicans in Congress never restarted it.
— American billionaires didn’t want to pay their damn taxes, so Trump and the GOP gave them trillions in new tax breaks with their Big Beautiful Billionaire’s Bill while increasing the taxes paid by the bottom 80 percent of Americans.
— After giving the Trump family gifts, trademarks, and patents, President Xi Jinping of China wanted Nvidia chips to help bring his military and AI capabilities up to where he could easily defeat a US effort to defend Taiwan, so Trump changed the rules, so Xi could get his chips and Republicans in Congress are refusing to stop him.
— Both Putin and Xi were constantly irritated by the Voice of America broadcasting truthful news and pro-democracy programming so Trump killed off the broadcasts, is shutting down the stations and transmitters, and Republicans in Congress are letting it happen.
— Massive airline monopolies hated the $200-$775 per incident that they had to pay passengers as compensation for being bumped or having flights cancelled, so Trump had his reality-star FAA head undo the rule.
— Putin and Xi hated the “soft power” America got by saving millions of lives around the world every year with anti-poverty, anti-AIDS, and famine relief programs across the Third World, so Trump killed off the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and Republicans in Congress didn’t object.
— Rightwing billionaires who don’t believe they should have to pay taxes to “subsidize the little people” didn’t want Trump and Republicans to extend the taxpayer-funded subsidies of the Affordable Care Act that kept insurance rates down (House Speaker Mike Johnson called them a “boondoggle” even though they keep rates low for millions of his Louisiana constituents), so Trump and the GOP obliged by refusing to continue them.
— Saudi Arabia, massive American fossil fuel corporations, and petrostates like Russia were offended by the Paris Agreement and other United Nations and Biden efforts to phase out petroleum and mitigate climate change, so Trump and the GOP pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement and refused to attend the most recent COP30 meeting in Belém, Brazil.
— The morbidly rich wanted to be able to pass their massive fortunes to their trust-fund babies without paying estate taxes, so Trump and Republicans in Congress passed a tax cut that primarily benefits the 400 richest families in America, costing our nation trillions that will be added to our debt and paid for by working-class people.
— Fossil fuel billionaires and their corporations were worried that the money Joe Biden allocated for green energy projects might cut into their future profits, so Trump and the GOP slashed trillions from them, as well as subsidies and rebates for saving energy and electric vehicles.
— Rightwing billionaire-funded media operations were offended by how NPR and PBS kept showing up their lies, so Trump and congressional Republicans cancelled federal funding for the networks. Rightwing billionaires are enthusiastically buying up as much of the American media landscape as they can.
— Billionaire Elon Musk was reportedly facing billions in regulatory costs and fines that he was able to get rid of when Trump and Republicans hired him to start and run the DOGE program that gutted our government to the benefit of Russia and China.
— Bitcoin billionaire Changpeng Zhao was serving a lengthy prison sentence for violating federal anti-money-laundering laws, but Trump pardoned him when he promoted a new stablecoin issued by a crypto firm that made billions for the Trump family.
— Giant corporations and their morbidly rich owners wanted to screw their workers so they could increase their profits, so Trump and congressional Republicans took more than 100 individual actions that cut pay, gutted union protections, and slashed benefits for workers but helped the most massive corporations.
— Big banks that make billions every year on interest from student loans hated Biden’s efforts to pay them off and reduce interest rates, so Trump and congressional Republicans rolled them back and are ending the last of the loan forgiveness programs.
Have Trump or congressional Republicans done anything of major consequence to help out average working people or small businesses in the 44 years since the beginning of the Reagan Revolution?
Nope. Instead, the neoliberal Reagan Revolution has seen the American middle class go from over two-thirds of us to around 43 percent of us today, and it takes two paychecks to have the lifestyle a single one could produce in 1981. Only the morbidly rich have benefited from every GOP action during all these years. And Trump is making it all worse.
The 2026 elections are coming sooner than most realize, which is why Republican secretaries of state are vigorously purging the voting rolls in their Blue cities. Double-check your registration every month at vote.org and make sure everybody you know is informed and ready.
It’s going to take a huge effort to defeat these monsters, so we need everybody on board. Pass it along…
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These Trump challenges to justice should alarm every American — not just former judges
The public has been hearing from a lot of federal judges over the past year, much more than normal. That’s because many of them are concerned about the Trump administration’s commitment to the rule of law.
Dickinson College President John E. Jones III was appointed as a federal judge by President George W. Bush and spent 20 years on the bench after being confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate in 2002. Jones spoke with The Conversation U.S. senior politics editor, Naomi Schalit, about America’s legal landscape after almost a year of Donald Trump’s presidency.
What does the case just argued at the Supreme Court about the president’s ability to fire leaders at independent agencies tell you about Donald Trump’s presidency?
We’ve seen a progression over time, with both Republican and Democratic presidents, where there’s been a stronger and stronger chief executive. But there’s been nothing like this administration, where the president has fired members of heretofore independent agencies. Having listened to oral arguments, which at times can be misleading, there’s very little question that the Supreme Court is going to overturn the “Humphreys Executor” precedent.
What it means is that this president will have the opportunity to utterly remake all of these independent agencies now. He’s going to take people out, root and branch, and put folks in who are either with the program or they’re not going to get appointed.
So this case is emblematic of Trump’s approach to presidential power?
He does not recognize and does not want among his appointees — certainly we see this in the Cabinet — any modicum of independence. You’re either with him 100 percent or you’re against him. Now that will extend to these independent agencies, and that means that the measured sort of regulations that have existed for a long time are going to be disrupted and maybe even eliminated.
This year has seen unusual amounts of activity in the Supreme Court’s shadow docket. What is the significance of that?
This is the court’s emergency docket. If the court takes these cases, they order a very abbreviated briefing and they decide the matter very quickly. Typically, this is a problem for lower court judges, as the cases are decided with very little explanation.
Sometimes months and months intervene before the court gets back to that case and renders a full and complete determination. One example would be the birthright citizenship case that came up to the court on the shadow docket. The court rendered an interim decision about whether U.S. District Court judges could issue orders stopping nationwide enforcement of Trump policies. They didn’t rule on the merits of the birthright citizenship case.
Since then, there have been conflicting decisions across the country. You have circuits that have ruled on the question and other circuits that haven’t ruled on it at all. So depending on where you live in the United States, you may or may not be subject to what heretofore has been the accepted interpretation of the 14th Amendment.
This administration’s clear strategy — to flood the zone by simply challenging every adverse decision against it in the lower courts — means there are an unprecedented number of cases coming up to the Supreme Court. It just means that there’s utter confusion in the lower courts, and it’s been the subject of a lot of dissatisfaction among lower court judges. It really puts the federal court system into a state of uncertainty and chaos, and obviously it’s not good for the public.
U.S. attorneys are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Congress limits how long interim U.S. attorneys can serve in these positions. But the Trump administration has circumvented those limits, keeping a number of interim U.S. attorneys on the job past the 120-day limit. These cases have been challenged in court. Why is this conflict notable?
What the president has attempted to do flies in the face of legislation that says that these interim appointments are limited to 120 days. Every court has found that the president’s appointment or attempted appointment beyond the first 120 days is unlawful and unconstitutional. It is a limitation on the president’s power.
If the president’s version were correct, you could just have endless interim appointments without any involvement by the Senate. This is a place where the courts have, in effect, upheld the integrity of the advice-and-consent system and the constitutional role of the Senate.
Trump ordered the Department of Justice to prosecute James Comey and Letitia James, among others. He has also granted massive numbers of pardons and commutations. What are your thoughts on these?
My takeaway as an American citizen and as a former judge is that at bottom, President Trump simply lacks respect for our system of justice.
I don’t think you can find otherwise when on your first day in office you issue over 1,000 pardons for people who were justifiably convicted or pled guilty to what was, by any account, an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. He has pardoned countless people since then, including a former president of Honduras who his own administration prosecuted and for which there was abundant evidence that he was a drug trafficker. He’s blowing up boats in the Caribbean without, in my view, any rationale that’s grounded in law. The president believes the law is whatever he says it is at any given moment.
As to the Department of Justice, I think that’s one of the most worrisome things about this administration. There is a seamless interface between the White House and the Department of Justice that is problematic, and it is quite clear that the Department of Justice will do anything that the president wants.
I think we’re in a very, very difficult and dark place when the president by fiat can simply order his attorney general to prosecute a person. And I think every American should worry about a world where that takes place without any buffer.
The administration has a documented pattern of disobeying or sidestepping court orders. Your thoughts?
The way our system is supposed to work is that people can disagree with lower court decisions, but they have to obey them, unless they’re stayed by application to a higher court. The administration seems to have decided that they’re going to write U.S. district judges out of the picture and simply disregard their orders.
When I served as a U.S. District Court judge, I always understood that I had pretty awesome power to do things. That power was to be used sparingly and carefully, but when I ordered something, I expected that that order would be followed.
That is the nature of the rule of law and our system of justice that now has been turned on its head by this administration.
The second point is that I would wish that our Supreme Court would take a stronger stand against this kind of gamesmanship in the lower courts. Those who serve in the third branch — the nation’s courts — are all in this together. There has to be more attention given to an administration that has really gone rogue in terms of how they treat the orders of U.S. District Court judges.
I don’t think the public has ever heard more from judges or former judges or retired judges than they are hearing right now. That includes you, president of a university, former federal judge, saying things that I think the public isn’t accustomed to hearing from either current or former judges. What’s going on?
What’s happening is that judges who come from all stripes, philosophically and party affiliations, are deeply concerned and offended about the tenor of the times, and they feel the need, as I do, to become active and to rally to the support of our system of justice. Imperfect though it may be, I’ve always regarded it as the fairest and best system in the world.
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These alarming changes show how Trump is wrecking public health
As a family physician, I work every day to earn the trust of my patients. I see lines being blurred between politics and medicine and, despite the high trust the public has in their own physician, it is becoming harder to separate medical and scientific information from misinformation.
I hear this concern from my patients, particularly when trusted resources, like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), make drastic policy shifts: Is this science based decision-making or politics?
Who do you trust?
With every new patient I see, I share my approach to care by saying, “I work for you. In many ways, you are my boss. My job is the make assessments and recommendations, yours is to make decisions, and I’m here to help you with that. How does that sound to you?”
People universally embrace this approach. It promotes individual autonomy and shifts the power to the patient — where it belongs. National surveys reveal that trust in government agencies such as the CDC is at an all time low, on par with approval ratings for Congress. However, trust in one’s own personal physician remains very high, with nearly eight in 10 people rating their personal doctors as “very good” or “excellent,” according to a recent People’s Voices Survey.
Despite this relatively high trust the public has in their own doctors, the insertion of politics into the exam room has made it harder for people to make the right decisions for themselves by infecting the relationship between people and their doctors with misinformation, causing people to second guess recommendations they are receiving.
Pull back the curtain
The public has good reason to be suspicious of the CDC right now. The changes approved last week by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, are arbitrary, not science-based, and go against decades of safety and efficacy data. Their vote to remove hepatitis B vaccination from the recommended infant and child schedule will lead to a resurgence of hepatitis B.
Prior to recommending newborn vaccination in 1991, 18,000 children were diagnosed annually with hep B, a chronic illness that leads to liver failure and liver cancer.
Half of these children were infected through mother-to-child transmission, and giving the shot at birth prevents the virus from taking hold.
The other half occurred through contact with saliva or blood exposure to someone else who is infected. The virus can stay active for up to a week on surfaces and is known to have been transmitted during sports and in child care settings, through coming in contact with the virus by touching a contaminated surface, or exposure to scrapes or bites. (Up to half of the children in child care are bitten by another child each year.)
Since vaccination was universally recommended, infection rates have dropped by nearly 99 percent, and today we see much less liver failure and cancer resulting from hepatitis B infection. No one wants to see those numbers increase again.
What are physicians saying?
Making ACIP a political committee rather than one based on science means that recommendations are subject to bias and can no longer be trusted. This breach of trust by our government results in lack of confidence in vaccine recommendations across the board, including those by the public’s trusted health care professionals who they continue to see as excellent.
Because politics and politicians are interfering with the patient-doctor relationships and undermining trust in public health measures like vaccines, we will likely see infections rise as we have seen with measles this past year.
While the federal government is spreading misinformation through ACIP and the CDC, the state of New Hampshire is showing that it still trusts doctors over politics with regard to childhood vaccines, directing New Hampshire doctors to adhere to vaccine recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians.
As I stated earlier, I work every day to earn the trust of my patients and to share the best medical information and highest-quality patient care available. I keep politics out of the exam room, and we need the politicians to stay out of our exam rooms and our relationships with our patients.
When going to see your doctor, remember that we work for you and our recommendations are based on years of training, a dedication to science, and, most importantly, a commitment to partnering with you to make the best decisions for your health.
- P. Travis Harker, MD, MPH is a family physician in Portsmouth and a past president of the New Hampshire Medical Society.
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Only one person is waging a war on Christmas
Previous presidents traditionally spent Thanksgiving serving a meal to our deployed troops who are away from their loved ones during the holidays. This year, Mr. Trump was at his palatial Mar-a-Lardo resort, playing golf, hobnobbing with the elite, and spewing hatred on social media.
His unhinged diatribe read in part:
“A very Happy Thanksgiving salutation to all of our Great American Citizens and Patriots who have been so nice in allowing our Country to be divided, disrupted, carved up, murdered, beaten, mugged, and laughed at, along with certain other foolish countries throughout the World, for being ‘Politically Correct,’ and just plain STUPID, when it comes to Immigration.”
Mr. Trump concluded his warm and fuzzy Thanksgiving message to the nation by referring to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as “seriously retarded” and belittling Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) for her gender and religious attire.
For the record, the 45th and 47th president has never issued a holiday message aimed at unity or even remotely befitting of the season. The man is utterly incapable of speaking kind words, performing selfless acts, or composing a tweet that doesn’t read like it was written by a fifth grader.
Meanwhile, MAGA’s latest boogeyman, mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, was at a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving, serving hungry New Yorkers.
Given the cult’s complete lack of self-awareness, I doubt they will pick up on the irony of the two conflicting scenarios. Considering the recent shooting of two members of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., I suspect that over the next few weeks we will witness an escalation in xenophobic battle cries similar to those heard in the days following September 11th.
For his part, Mr. Trump will likely spend the holiday season claiming he “saved Christmas,” a regurgitation of the same nonsense he peddled during his first term of office.
For years, the President has alleged there is a war on Christmas. He also claims that while no other president has ended a war, he has ended "six or seven" of them.
In fact, he has not, and there is no war on Christmas — not in the United States, at least. But that won’t preclude Mr. Trump from claiming it as another bogus battle victory.
During the holidays at Rockefeller Center in New York City, you’ll find a larger-than-life Christmas tree. On Capitol Hill in Washington, you’ll see a similar tree. There's even an impressive nativity scene right across from the South Lawn of the White House. It’s been displayed during both Democratic and Republican presidencies, including that of Barack Obama. The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Crèche is a nationally known life-sized nativity scene in the heart of the Steel City. There’s a large Christkindlmarket held every year in Chicago and a smaller one in my hometown of Ellinwood, Kansas.
Throughout the season, public celebrations are held in virtually every city, hamlet, and crossroads in the United States. Those gathered for yuletide festivities exclaim, “Merry Christmas,” and sing carols extolling the birth of the Christ Child. Contrary to the narrative of right-wing fear mongers, there has not been a single instance in which those celebrations have been restricted – not even in blue cities that petrify conservatives.
This year, however, ICE — not frozen precipitation, but rather MAGA’s Gestapo — is prompting some communities to rethink public holiday gatherings. Taking this into consideration, one might conclude that it’s Mr. Trump who is declaring a war on Christmas — not the “radical left,” not pagans, and certainly not the Muslim community.
The non-existent war on Christmas is yet another distraction of the President’s own making. His fearful, gullible base gobbles it up like Christmas ham.
Though I suspect he would love for statues of his likeness to be added to the crèche — and many American Christians would happily oblige — Mr. Trump represents the antithesis of Christmas. He stands out in a motley crew of familiar, albeit comical, holiday villains that includes the likes of Burgermeister Meisterburger, Ebenezer Scrooge, and the Grinch.
Unlike the President, the fictional holiday villains ended up changing their ways, having been overcome by the Christmas spirit. Burgermeister Meisterburger was touched by the generosity of a stranger. Paranormal visions pushed Ebenezer Scrooge to reform. The Grinch’s heart “grew three sizes” as the result of the unconditional love of a child.
The only thing that's grown for Donald Trump is his insatiable appetite for division, vengeance, and corruption.
There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that you’ll find any holiday cheer, much less goodwill toward humanity, from the President. Like Krampus, Mr. Trump is perpetually on the naughty list. He’s an angry elf.
- J. Basil Dannebohm is a writer, speaker, consultant, and former legislator. His website is www.dannebohm.com. He is a registered Independent.
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We are in this nightmare for one reason — and it's our own leaders' fault
The Supreme Court says it will determine whether the Trump regime can “end birthright citizenship.” That’s the name given to the clause in the 14th Amendment that says that if you’re born on US soil, you’re a US citizen entitled to the “privileges and immunities” of citizenship.
Many roads were traveled to get here, the main one being Donald Trump’s decade-long campaign of hatred against immigrants.
But a road that gets less attention is just as important: Trump’s hate-mongering never saw an equal, opposite and liberal reaction.
Instead, over those years, the Democrats accepted as true the lies told by Trump and Republican allies about immigrants and immigration law.
For instance, the southern border is not open. It has never been open in our lifetimes. But Trump says it is. The Republicans say it is. Their rightwing allies say it is. And the Democrats rarely challenge them.
Over time, the result has been a kind of conventional wisdom about the southern border that is so deeply established that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) avoided facing it head-on in a recent interview with CNN. Instead, the New Yorker gave Trump credit for securing the border.
“The border is secure,” he said. “That's a good thing. It happened on his watch.”
Fact is, nothing about the southern border has changed. It wasn’t open last year, under Joe Biden’s watch. It wasn’t secured this year under Trump’s. That there are fewer migrants coming across is the result of other factors, mainly Trump’s criminal treatment of immigrants. (In practice, they now have few legal protections. Everyone knows it.)
By giving Trump credit for something he did not do, Jeffries validates the lie — that under a Democratic president, the southern border was open. In doing so, he undermines his own party’s position, allowing the GOP to define the terms. That makes it untenable to stand up for immigrants and their constitutional rights. Ultimately, Jeffries cedes ground in a much bigger debate over who counts as an American.
Repeat this pattern long enough, in the absence of an equal, opposite and liberal reaction to Trump’s hate-mongering, and you get what we now have: a high court that will decide whether a president can break the law and ignore the unambiguous wording of the 14th Amendment.
For too long, the Democrats have treated the southern border as a distraction. The Republicans have not, because it represents the highest stakes — the power to decide who America is for. Is it for the rich white men who have historically controlled it or for everyone?
I don’t know what the Supreme Court is going to decide, but I do know the mainstream position of the Democratic Party can no longer hold. The Democratic Party needs to be reminded of its values, the liberal principles that have animated reformers since the founding.
For that task, the republic is fortunate to have visionaries like Adam Gurri. He’s the editor of Liberal Currents, a publication dedicated to the revival of American liberalism after a long period of complacency. Adam is currently in the middle of a big fundraising push to expand the magazine’s reach and influence. I think he’s doing so just in time.
In this interview, Adam tells me about an ambitious project coming up, something he calls The Reconstruction Papers, an effort to lay down the intellectual basis for the restructuring of the constitutional order.
Above and beyond that, Adam told me, “we will stand for and promote a set of principles and won't be cowed either by political expediency or institutional force. And we will continue to cultivate a community alongside the publication that people can feel safe inside of.”
JS: American liberalism has needed a refresher for a long time. I think Liberal Currents is that refresher. Its focus, above all, is liberty and justice for all. How did you get started and why?
AG: We started out as a response to Trump the first time around. More to what he represented than the man himself. It seemed to us that liberalism had grown complacent. Its values had become assumptions held by a lot of people, and those assumptions had gone more or less unquestioned for a generation.
We got started because we believed those assumptions were by and large good, actually, but that people had been left unable to articulate why they were good. There was an intellectual vulnerability in this regard, because our enemies had spent decades aware of what our assumptions were and positioning themselves to attack them, whereas we liberals spent that time feeling as though we had already won.
Good times make weak liberals? Hard times make strong liberals?
I don't like to put it that way just because it sounds like we need some kind of existential battle in order to make progress, and I just don't believe that's the case.
What I would say is that things were becoming untenable already. A lot of our best institutions were designed under economic and social conditions that no longer apply. A lot of our oldest institutions were first drafts of democracy that sorely needed updating and we just sort of knuckled down and kept going.
A lot of work needed to be done, I suppose is my point. And a lack of truly understanding the heart of it, the why, the rationale behind these choices made in the past made it harder to to get that work done. The open conflict of the Trump era has certainly brought things into sharper focus for a lot of people. I'd like to think that wasn't the only path we could have taken, and I certainly believe we needn't hope for some future conflict to help us advance yet further some day.
Where do you see the place of Liberal Currents among other liberal publications, the few there are, and where do you want it to be?
If I were to draw a parallel, I would say Liberal Currents seeks to be The Atlantic, if The Atlantic were run by people truly committed to liberalism and to opposing the consolidation of dictatorship here.
We are a place where liberals can have internal debates about how to orient ourselves to events, as well as for ideas and principles. But we are also a place that won't blow with the political winds, but instead continue to fight for liberal principles, on behalf of everyone, even when trans rights or immigration does not poll well, say.
We are also a place that seeks to give positive answers and provide an actual vision of a liberal future. A lot of people have been caught flatfooted by the crisis. Many genuinely just don't know what to do, even if they understand the danger. We want to be a place that provides at least the beginnings of answers, starting points and ways of thinking about the problem.
You're in the middle of a big fundraising push. What do you envision for Liberal Currents?
We're going to grow the voice of genuine liberals who hate fascism in our media system. One concrete thing we're going to do is invest in a project we're calling The Reconstruction Papers, a printed essay collection where we will draw on a wide variety of subject matter experts in political science, higher education, media studies and more.
These experts will write about how to not only repair the damage that has been done in their area of focus, but how to rebuild and reform into something better than we started with. In general our pitch to people is that we will aim to grow ourselves into a version of The Atlantic that will never abandon trans people or immigrants or people of color to fascists.
We will stand for and promote a set of principles and won't be cowed either by political expediency or institutional force. And we will continue to cultivate a community alongside the publication that people can feel safe inside of.
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This massive disaster laid bare a dire danger under Trump
On Nov. 26, 2025, in a quiet northern suburb of Hong Kong, an aggressive fire broke out in the middle of the day. The fire was unusual in its intensity and duration, consuming seven of eight high-rise towers in a residential complex. Despite the quick response of well-equipped fire trucks, the blaze spread quickly and burned for more than 43 hours.
Although the death toll is not final, at least 160 people suffered the most horrific deaths imaginable, with dozens so charred they may never be identified.
The ferocity of the fire has been blamed on a private contractor’s use of highly flammable materials including polystyrene foam boards placed over windows, along with substandard scaffolding netting that failed to meet fire-retardant codes. The buildings were undergoing renovations when the fire hit, and numerous fire alarms also failed to warn.
A tragedy like this gives pause, in part because it should have been prevented. Fire analysts say that more rigorous inspections, including thorough sample testing of materials used on higher floors, not just of easily accessible ground level floors, would have identified the use of non-compliant, cheaper materials before the blaze started.
Although the Chinese government will never admit any fault for the inadequate inspections and has instead jailed people for asking, it’s already clear that standard building inspections would have prevented the loss of life. Lapsed and loose inspections, and possible corruption, meant officials did not detect that flammable materials were used where they should not have been, or that fire safety systems were not functioning, despite residents alerting officials of these problems a year prior to the fire.
It’s also the kind of tragedy lying in wait in the US, ready to strike after Donald Trump's all-out war on safety standards and regulations meant to protect the public.
Americans in danger
Since his re-election, Trump has rewarded corporate donors by dismantling costly regulations they dislike. In the process, time-honored regulations and safety standards that quietly protected life have been gutted, setting us up for a Hong Kong-esque tragedy of our own.
Federal government regulations designed to protect health and lives include, in the broadest sense, workplace safety, transportation safety, food and drug safety, and environmental protection. Under Trump 2.0, each of these categories of protection have either been gutted outright, or are now so attenuated due to funding cuts they barely function.
Each federal agency with regulatory authority, including OSHA, the FDA, the EPA, and DOT, among others, has been significantly weakened with reduced investigations into wrongdoing and corruption, and fewer cases for failing to comply with safety and environmental standards. Trump has also imposed across the board budget cuts for regulatory enforcement, including inspector staffing across a wide spectrum of industries.
None of these changes will continue in a vacuum; other than ignoring climate change which is already wreaking havoc, we won’t know what other unenforced regulation will lead to tragedy until it strikes.
Under Trump’s profits-first-people-last strategy, the EPA has launched the largest deregulatory action in U.S. history. Trump dismantled EPA regulations protecting air, water, and soil, relaxed emissions standards for power plants, increased toxic vehicle emissions, weakened water protections, limited scientific research into the risks, and rolled back greenhouse gas reporting and soot standards, all to boost industry profits at the expense of citizens who live and work in those communities.
Trump also shuttered 11 OSHA offices in states reporting unusually high workplace fatalities, most of them Republican-controlled. Louisiana, for example, ranks the sixth-most dangerous state for workers in the U.S. It is also home to more than 200 chemical plants and refineries dotting an 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River dubbed “Cancer Alley,” because of the high rates of cancer and birth defects linked to petrochemicals.
Former OSHA Director David Michaels said that with these closures, “enormous oil and petrochemical facilities with significant safety and health hazards will be inspected even less frequently than they are now.”
According to DOGE, the government will save $109,346 from the closures.
Blame game
If Hong Kong-type tragedy strikes, Trump will first block information about it, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt will call it fake news, and Fox won’t report it. Then, after the tragedy dominates mainstream media headlines, the whole administration will pivot to blaming Joe Biden.
But the danger is real, it is now, and it is not about politics.
Americans have lived for generations with barely-there inspections, leading to Cancer Alleys, occupational disease, dangerous products, collapsing infrastructure, etc. But now Trump has expelled almost all regulatory watchdogs in service to his corporate donors. Because less regulation means higher profits, corporate America is rewarding Trump handsomely in what amounts to quid pro quo.
In a functioning democracy, this would amount to criminal recklessness. In a rule-of-law republic, the resulting tragedies, when they strike, would lead to charges of foreseeable homicide.
- Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
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Trump's lurch into naked piracy shows the danger of oil but we still have a way to beat it
I don’t know enough maritime law to tell you exactly why it’s wrong for America to be dropping troops onto tankers to seize them — just to say that, no matter what legalistic excuse the administration cooks up, it looks exactly like being a pirate. (It’s worth remembering that the US Navy was founded largely to take on piracy, and thanks to the Barbary corsairs, the early Americans had a lot to say about the subject. George Washington, for instance: Pirates are “enemies to mankind.”)
But I can tell you this. In the ever-shrinking mind of our current president, the reason why it’s good to seize a tanker is because it carries oil, and oil is the source of all strength, his contemporary equivalent to pieces of his eight. It’s “a large tanker, very large,” Mr. Trump explained, continuing (inevitably) to describe it as “the largest one ever seized actually.” When asked what would happen to the cargo, he said, “I assume we’re going to keep the oil.”
Oil is, and always has been, at the center of our concerns with Venezuela, which has the world’s largest proven reserves (though much of it is in the incredibly dirty and hard-to-recover form of tarsands). At the moment it’s a major supplier to China, and it claims sovereignty over a major oil field in Guyana which has attracted big investment from Exxon and Chevron.
So if you wonder why we’ve been attacking “drug boats” from Venezuela on the grounds that they’re carrying fentanyl, which Venezuela does not produce, that may give you some sense. Indeed the pressure has been so intense that the Maduro government in Caracas apparently offered to essentially turn over its oil and mineral resources to America in October negotiations. We’ve apparently decided we’d rather just take them.
This kind of coercion on behalf of the hydrocarbon industry is becoming old hat for the Trump administration. It’s used tariff policy, for instance, to force country after country to agree to buy huge quantities of American liquefied natural gas. As CNBC reported last spring regarding one deal with the EU:
“They’re going to have to buy our energy from us, because they need it,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We can knock off $350 billion in one week,” the president said. The European Union faces a 20 percent tariff rate if it does not reach a deal with Trump.
(Justin Mikulka has a pointed take on why this strategy won’t work for the LNG industry, and new data emerged this week showing just how badly it is going to penalize Americans who depend on propane for heating, since they’re now competing with so many other places for our supply of natural gas).
And of course in another sense we’ve been pirating the atmosphere for more than a century, filling up what is a common property with our emissions — America got rich burning fossil fuels, and the main result for other countries will be an ever higher temperature.
But for the moment let’s just think about the flow of oil, because it’s been behind, in large part, so much of the geopolitical tension of the last hundred years. Japan’s quest for oil played some real role in the attacks on Pearl Harbor; Germany invaded the USSR in no small part to secure the oil fields of the Caucasus. The Suez crisis hinged on the transport of oil to Europe. OPEC seized on our thirst for oil as a powerful weapon in the 1980s, and America’s determination to keep oil flowing has determined much of our global stance in the postwar years — I’ll never forget a sign I saw at an early demonstration against the war in Iraq: “How did our oil end up under their sand?”
The point here is that conflict like this is probably inevitable as long as the world depends on an energy source that is available only in a few places. Control of those places becomes too important — you end up with oligarchs, and with people who want to topple them.
So how nice to imagine a world where location doesn’t matter — where instead we depend on energy from the sun and the wind, available everywhere. In the crudest terms, it’s going to be difficult to fight a war over sunshine. No one will ever seize a tanker to get at its supply of solar energy. Which is good news for everyone except those profiting from the current paradigm — Trumpism represents its dying twitches, but obviously those twitches can do great damage.
Yes, we need sun and wind power to take a bite out of the climate crisis. But we also need it to take a bite out of the authoritarianism crisis. Our job is to make this transition happen faster; every new solar panel erodes just a little bit the logic of oil imperialism. The push for clean energy is the push for peace.
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