Trump redacts to 'protect the victims'
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
These ludicrous exchanges show how Trump lies infect voters' minds
On my Sirius XM program, I discussed the almost comical hearing this month in which a top FBI official, flanked by dog-killing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, claimed antifa — short for anti-fascist — was the “number one terrorist” threat in the United States. Yet he couldn’t answer repeated questions from Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) about where the group’s headquarters are, or how many people are actually in the group:
Michael Glasheen, operations director of the FBI’s National Security Branch, said antifa was the agency’s “primary concern” and “the most immediate violent threat that we’re facing.”
Glasheen did not answer a question from the top Democrat at the hearing, U.S. Representative Bennie Thompson, about the group’s location. When asked about the number of members, Glasheen said it was “very fluid” and that “investigations are active.”
“Sir, you wouldn’t come to this committee to say something that you can’t prove,” Thompson said to Glasheen. “I know you wouldn’t do that. But you did.”
Later, Glasheen was asked if the Proud Boys were still on the FBI’s list of domestic extremist organizations — after they were added in 2018, under Trump’s first term — but he didn’t answer, just saying, “We’re in the process right now of changing our categories for domestic terrorism.”
After I played the clips of the exchanges and commented on the ludicrousness of this — and the dangers — Steven from Los Angeles, clearly a MAGA supporter, called the program to disagree with me, claiming antifa is a terror threat he has witnessed firsthand.
Antifa of course doesn’t exist as any organized nationwide group. Some people engaging in protest call themselves ant-fascist, and often take on the name antifa — even carrying banners and other identifiers — but they mostly act independently of others who might use the term to to identify themselves.
The majority of those who call themselves antifa are opposed to violence, per the Department of Homeland Security under the Biden administration. Even if some people have called themselves antifa and have engaged in or inspired violent actions in one place or another during protests (which has happened), that doesn’t mean there’s an organized group engaged in actual organized terror plots.
But Steven didn’t get that, claiming vandalism in LA and elsewhere was “terrorism” which was coordinated by “Antifa”.
Steven: Okay, so I, um, I disagree with you, uh, living on the West Coast. Whether it’s antifa, whether you want to call it, whatever organization it is. But, I mean, they’ve ruined the streets of Los Angeles. San Francisco is a dump. Um, uh, Oregon is a dump. Uh, Seattle, Washington.
MS: Who who did this? Who ruined the streets? What did they do?
Steven: It was. Well, whatever organization you want to call it. Uh, the people that were protesting on the streets.
MS: You said antifa.
Steven: Well, that's who they're supposed to be, right?
After I pressed him on what they’re doing he said that in Portland and other places, “These people are on the streets every day. They're yelling at cars. The traffic is stopped.”
Yelling at cars? Yes, that’s what he said.
MS: Okay, Steven, that's not terrorism.
Steven: What is that? Terrorism. The stores are all closed.
MS: No, Stephen, that's not terrorism. You could tell me about vandalism. You could tell me about protests. You could even tell me about rioting, if you want, which we haven't seen.
But a terrorist and a terrorist organization are highly coordinated groups of people with plots and plans to take down the government or send a message to a group of people, and they engage in mass violence, bombings, mass shootings, kidnappings.
Why is our government spending all this money on this? You're telling me about what? Graffiti in Los Angeles?
He went on about how yelling at protests and throwing things — not explaining more — was terrorism.
But then when I brought up actual terrorism — January 6, police officers bludgeoned, the Proud Boys making threats, and the Oath Keepers, per law enforcement, stockpiling weapons at a hotel in Virginia, with a plan to bring them up the Potomac to take the Capitol — he had a very different answer.
Steven: You know what? I don't think we'll ever know the truth of that whole situation.
Oh yeah, it got a little hot from there before I ended the call! Listen in and let me know your thoughts!
- Michelangelo Signorile writes The Signorile Report, a free and reader-supported Substack. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism.
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These signs show a new force is coming to clean out the White House
The media is freaking out over a new Rasmussen poll that found:
“A majority of voters under 40 want a democratic socialist to win the White House in the next presidential election.
“… 51 percent of Likely U.S. Voters ages 18 to 39 would like to see a democratic socialist candidate win the 2028 presidential election. Thirty-six percent (36 percent) don’t want a democratic socialist to win in 2028, while 17 percent are not sure…
“Among the youngest cohort (ages 18-24) of voters, 57 percent want a democratic socialist to win the next presidential election…
“Among those who voted for Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election, 78 percent would like to see a democratic socialist candidate win the 2028 presidential election…” (emphasis added).
I was on Ali Velshi’s MSNOW show discussing this, along with Michael Green who recently wrote a thought-provoking article about how the official poverty line in America is completely out-of-date and out of touch with the needs of most Americans. I shared a few statistics from my recent book The Hidden History of the American Dream: the Demise of the Middle Class and How to Rescue Our Future:
- When, in 1957, my dad bought the house I grew up in, the average cost of a single-family home in America was about 2.2 times the average annual wage. Today it’s more than ten times the average wage.
- When my Boomer generation was the same age as today’s Millennials, we owned a bit over 22 percent of the nation’s wealth; Millennials today control only about 4 percent of the country’s wealth (and it’s the same for Zoomers).
- From the 1930s right up until the Reagan Revolution, it was possible for seniors to live comfortably on Social Security alone; Reagan undid that with his “reforms” so today that’s nearly impossible.
- When I ran my first seriously successful business in the early 1970s, it cost me around $35/month for comprehensive health insurance for each of my 18 employees; at that time hospitals and health insurance companies were required by Michigan law (where I lived; most other states were identical) to be run as non-profits. Today, health insurance can be as much as one-fifth of a company’s payroll expense.
- When Reagan came into office in 1981, a single wage earner could support a family with a middle-class lifestyle, and fully 65 percent of us were in the middle class (up from around 20 percent in the 1930s). Today, after 44 years of Reaganomics, it takes two full-time people to achieve the same status, which triggers huge childcare expenses, which is part of why only 43 percent of us are middle class .
FDR’s great — and successful — Democratic Socialist experiment following the Republican Great Depression was to drive the economy from the bottom up, reversing the “Horse and Sparrow” trickle-down economics and deregulation of the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover administrations that provoked the Great Crash.
He did that by:
- Expanding the notion of the commons — the stuff we all collectively own and is administered or funded and regulated by government — to include free public education nationwide (and cheap college), old-age retirement (Social Security), and public power and transportation systems (Tennessee Valley Authority, federal support for local transit, roads and highways).
- Legalizing unions, an effort that was so successful that when Reagan came into office fully a third of us had good union jobs and, because they set the local wage floors, two-thirds of Americans had the equivalent of a union wage and benefit package.
- Establishing a minimum wage on which a single worker could raise a family of three and still stay above the federal poverty level (today’s federal minimum wage is $7.25: adjusted with the Consumer Price Index, that $1.60 minimum wage in 1968 is equivalent to about $14.90 an hour in 2025 dollars).
In the years since, we’ve continued to expand the commons by establishing national single-payer healthcare systems for low-income people (Medicaid) and retired people (Medicare), both of which came out of LBJ’s Democratic Socialist program that he called The Great Society.
Meanwhile, Republicans and a few neoliberal Democrats have pushed back against these Democratic Socialist programs that made the American middle class the first in the history of the world to exceed more than half the population.
- Reagan’s war on unions has cut our union membership down to well under 10 percent in the private sector.
- His gutting federal funding for education has exploded college costs to the point where three generations are saddled with over $2 trillion in debt that can’t be discharged by bankruptcy.
- Reagan’s tax cuts for the rich (from 74 percent down to 27 percent) and corporations tripled the national debt (from $800 billion to $2.4 trillion) just in his eight years; since then the four GW Bush and Trump tax cuts have, when combined with Reagan’s, produced a $38 trillion national debt so big that we now spend more on servicing their debt than we do on our defense budget or would on administering a national healthcare system.
Back in the 1940s, after the incredible success of the New Deal, President Roosevelt wanted to further expand the commons by expanding the scope of his Democratic Socialist programs. Just before he died, he proposed a “Second Bill of Rights” that included:
- “The right to a useful and remunerative job in the nation’s industries, shops, farms, or mines. (Unionization and an above-poverty-level minimum wage.)
- “The right to earn enough to provide adequate food, clothing, and recreation. (Ditto and government as the employer of last resort.)
- “The right of every farmer to raise and sell products at a return that gives his family a decent living. (Don’t manipulate farm prices with stupid tariff wars, etc., and make the government the purchaser of last resort.)
- “The right of every businessperson, large and small, to trade free from unfair competition and domination by monopolies. (Break up the giant corporations and encourage average people to start small businesses, including with loan supports.)
- “The right of every family to a decent home. (Today this would mean no more corporations, hedge funds, and foreign billionaires owning single-family homes to squeeze us dry by jacking up rents.)
- “The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to enjoy good health. (FDR favored a single-payer healthcare system like Medicare for All.)
- “The right to protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment (i.e., robust Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance).
- “The right to a good education.” (Free or inexpensive college, quality public schools in every community.)
Much to the chagrin of my Republican-activist father, my grandfather (a 1917 Norwegian immigrant) frequently and proudly described himself as a socialist. When I asked him what he meant, he always pointed me to FDR, the New Deal, and his proposed Second Bill of Rights.
And here we are again.
My grandfather’s generation saw up-close and firsthand the tax-cutting and deregulation binge of the Roaring 20s (which were only “roaring” for the morbidly rich), and then had the lived experience of watching FDR put the country back together and create the world’s first widespread middle class.
Millennials and Zoomers today are seeing the same thing, between the Bush Housing Crash of 2008, the botched Covid Crash of 2020, and the GOP’s relentless program to drive the wealth of the nation into the money bins of the billionaires who own that party.
They see the example of most European countries, where the commons includes college (many will actually pay you a stipend to attend), healthcare, and daycare/preschool, and union density is often well above 80%. Housing is subsidized or heavily regulated, leading several to have essentially ended homelessness. Giant corporate monopolies are prohibited and local small businesses are encouraged.
Europeans call these programs Democratic Socialism or social democracy, and young Americans clearly are enthusiastic about bringing the “European Dream” to this country.
My sense is that — much like in the 1930s — a significant majority of Americans are sick of the neoliberal “let the rich run things because they know best” bullshit that Republicans, “Tech Bros,” and a shrinking minority of on-the-take Democratic politicians embrace.
Meanwhile, nobody’s sure why the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is refusing to release the autopsy they did of the 2024 election, producing speculation it may have uncovered examples of Russian and Republican manipulation of both voters and the vote, but I’m guessing the real reason is that the neoliberals who largely run the DNC saw feedback that reflected the Rasmussen poll I opened this article with.
The exploding popularity of progressive politicians from Zohran Mamdani to Bernie Sanders, Jasmine Crockett, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez aren’t an anomaly; they’re a signpost to both electoral and governing success for the next generation of genuinely progressive Democratic politicians.
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Question for Governor DeSantis: what have all these foreigners ever done for us?
Foreigners! What have they ever done for us?
I grant you there was that 18th-century guy, that Marquis de Lafayette, who convinced the French government to back us against the British and used his own money to help fund the War of Independence.
You could argue the Chinese who came over in the 19th century to build the railroad also had their uses.
They worked for practically nothing, rarely whined about getting dynamited on the regular or not being eligible for citizenship.
But the foreigners clogging up our colleges don’t help make America great again.
While some would say Albert Einstein was the kind of foreigner you want hanging around, what with him being smart at science and all, he took a job at Princeton that could have gone to a real American.
Why couldn’t one of us have come up with theories about the universe that were just as good or better than his?
We’re the ones who invented the quarter-pound hamburger, the microwave oven, the credit card, and Spanx.
To be fair, immigrants obtain patents at about twice the rate of regular Americans, and OK, gave us video games and doughnut machines.
Plus, I guess we have to mention that foreign-born researchers represent 25 percent of America’s Nobel Prize winners.
But so what? Is any of this really great?
‘Pull the plug’
Not according to our fearless governor, who vows to rid us of annoying people with their strange accents and peculiar habits, especially in Florida’s institutions of higher education
Ron DeSantis demands the state Board of Governors “pull the plug” on those H-1B visas that allow practically any Tomás, Didier, or Haoran with a fancy degree and a slew of top-drawer publications to get a gig in our colleges.
“Universities across the country are importing foreign workers on H-1B visas instead of hiring Americans who are qualified and available to do the job,” said DeSantis. “We will not tolerate H-1B abuse in Florida institutions.”
Colleges are, as the governor says, “doing social justice.”
We don’t do social justice in Florida.
DeSantis’ Exhibit A: “A clinical assistant professor from Supposed Palestine,” the West Bank, now teaching at the University of Florida.
Of course you realize “Supposed Palestine” is one of the most feared places on earth, full of teenagers armed with slingshots, so vicious that Israeli settlers are forced to burn mosques, villages, and olive trees just to keep them in line.
The university would probably argue that professor is a super-brain and the most qualified for the job, but do we really want young Floridians exposed to ideas that could confuse them about who they’re supposed to hate in the Middle East?
Diversity gone wild, clearly.
UF’s got too many foreigners; FSU has a long history of coddling them, too.
In 1949, Florida State’s School of Music hired a Hungarian named Ernst von Dohnanyi.
He was renowned as a brilliant composer and pianist, called a “Romantic master,” and had been a courageous anti-Nazi fighter who also hated the Soviet regime.
But come on: Wasn’t there an American who had more or less the same resumé?
‘Ignorant, naive, blindsided’
In the 1980s, FSU brought in one Paul Dirac, a former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University
That’s a supposedly big-deal position once held by Isaac Newton, the one who got the idea about gravity by watching apples fall out of trees.
Science nerds call Dirac, a Nobel Prize-winner, the Father of Quantum Mechanics, which is all very well, but I’ll bet FSU could have got a Ph.D. from, say, the University of Alabama to do the same thing, and cheaper, too.
Take a look at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory there in Tallahassee.
It’s like the UN.
Take Dr. Likai Song: an M.D. and Ph.D. who works on cancer and HIV vaccines.
He went to Harvard and got his doctorate in Biophysics at FSU.
He’s won a bunch of NIH and NSF grants and fancy research awards, but he was born in China.
China, people.
Or what about Peter Gor’kov, a native of Russia, who makes magnetic resonance probes, instruments that tell you what’s going on inside magnets (or something like that)?
Who understands that stuff? Not red-blooded Americans!
Now I don’t know if any of these folks became citizens, but the point is there must be gazillions of native-born people with normal-sounding names like “Smith” and “Henderson” who could do those jobs.
If you listen to the professors and the students, you’d think the governor is a nasty, angry fellow who wants to destroy academic freedom and deny students perspectives from across the world while telling Floridians this will make us great again.
One uppity prof said, “I think people are ignorant, naive, blindsided or just generally racist to accept that perspective.”
He claimed international educators “add so much value, provide so much to citizens, whether it be health care, education, engineering,”
Oh contrarywise!
Picky, picky, picky
More than 60,000 egghead types work for Florida’s colleges and universities, and of those a full 1.7 percent are foreign.
That’s about 1,020 jobs stolen from Americans!
How hard can it be to become qualified in, say, immunology and microbiology like USF’s Hossam Ashour, born in Egypt and ranked among the top 2 percent of researchers worldwide?
There’s probably a TikTok video you can watch.
But the lefty-wokey academics claim there aren’t enough qualified American scientists around.
At the University of Miami, a big chunk of the biochemists, biophysicists, medical researchers, and molecular and cellular biologists are on H1-B visas.
According to the Miami Hurricane newspaper, some of UM’s obviously spoiled students aren’t happy about removing the foreigners. One said, “The STEM departments at UM could definitely struggle from a loss of international professors.”
A sophomore studying microbiology and immunology (aren’t we getting rid of those stupid vaccines?) seems to think the H1-Bs are a good thing: “It was interesting to experience [international professors’] teaching styles because they’re different from professors I’ve had before.”
American STEM not good enough for these kids?
Anti-American Americans like to bring up “the law” and “the Constitution,” pointing out that H1-B visas actually fall under the control of the federal government and Ron DeSantis can’t just wave them away.
Picky, picky.
Doesn’t matter: President Trump will help by charging $100 grand per new H-1B visa.
That ought to slow them down.
Of course the “that’s illegal” crowd, fringe types such as unions, 20 state attorneys general, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are pitching a fit over our great America First Forever A+++++ policies and suing the government.
‘Filthy countries’
Nevertheless, Trump will not waver from his determination to rid America of foreigners — unless they’re incredibly sexy or incredibly rich.
Take our well-dressed First Lady. She was a model who arrived in New York on an EB-1, often called the “Genius Visa.”
How about Elon Musk, one-time student visa holder? Sure, he dropped out of Stanford and probably worked illegally, but so what?
Without him, Mars will always be a cold, obscure planet with an unbreathable atmosphere instead of a potential vacation spot.
We need him, just like we need those oppressed white South Africans whose only crime was appropriating land belonging to the people who may have lived there for millennia but were failing to monetize it properly.
What we don’t need is so-called “experts” from countries with names we can’t spell.
No worries: Like DeSantis, the president is on the case.
He’s going big, too, planning to strip an untold number of so-called “naturalized” Americans of their citizenship.
The Justice Department says it’ll go after people who may be criminals, misrepresented themselves on their applications, or sneakily obtained citizenship during the Biden administration.
Just last year, 800,000 people, mostly from India, Mexico, the Philippines, Vietnam, and the Dominican Republic, took the oath.
Come on: Where are the Norwegians?
As for all these students pouring into our country and our state, many from “filthy” countries, Trump wants their social media inspected for any sign of terrorist tendencies such as making fun of him and deny their visas.
DeSantis says Florida’s public schools shouldn’t educate kids here without legal status, nor admit any undocumented student to one of our universities.
He will make sure the Sunshine State, home of the Cuban sandwich, is free of foreign influence.
It’s the patriotic thing to do.
- Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee, which probably explains her unhealthy fascination with Florida politics. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo.
- Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
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This GOP candidate offers nothing but rage — even his deep-red state should reject him
Tommy Tuberville’s escalating attacks on Muslim Americans culminated last week in a demand for their mass deportation.
We’ve seen this from Alabama’s senior U.S. senator before.
Tuberville once said that Black Americans “do the crime.” He called most immigrants “garbage.” He compared residents of inner cities to rats.
The former Auburn coach has made it clear over his term in the U.S. Senate that he works for a very white, very Christian and very wealthy sliver of the population of Alabama — this is a man who recently called for federal aid for forest owners — while viewing the rest of us with contempt.
A contempt so profound that he would violently remove some Alabamians from their homes and communities for the way they worship God.
I know the tendency in this state to wave away the bile that comes out of our politicians’ mouths. Pretending it’s performative. Or even grimly funny. Maybe that’s a coping mechanism for living under a decidedly undemocratic government.
But no one should treat this as one of Tuberville’s many stupid, provocative statements with no follow-through. This man, running to lead 5 million Alabamians, considers large numbers of people who live here aliens or threats to public safety. If he is elected governor, he will have access to law enforcement resources and the ability to act on his paranoia.
Just the threat of that should give you pause.
It won’t matter if our already-compromised federal courts try to stop him. The damage done to innocent people — financial, psychological, maybe even physical — will have been done.
Tuberville is pursuing the standard online strategy of pretending his critics are overreacting. “Pearl-clutching,” as he tells it. If so, he can clear that up with a straightforward, unambiguous statement that he has a responsibility to serve all Alabamians. And that he will not prosecute the people who live in this state for their faith.
I’m not holding my breath. This is a man who took many months to issue a grudging acknowledgment that white nationalism is racism.
What does that say about us?
The first vote for Tuberville in 2020 didn’t pay Alabama any compliments. Here was a political neophyte who may not have lived in Alabama, who ducked all but the softest questions and interviews, and had no agenda beyond nodding vigorously at everything Donald Trump said.
But then, lots of Alabama Republicans in 2020 ran on a platform of “I am Trump as Trump is me and we are all together.” Perhaps — perhaps — one could have voted for him without anticipating what was in store.
That’s no longer the case. You know what this man is about.
And you know what he does with one of the most important jobs in the country. He chases clout with some of the most pathetic, obnoxious people around. He’s using the public trust to become an influencer.
As for his actual duties, he barely promotes infrastructure and has embraced trade policies that ruin business here. Tuberville’s apparent hatred of immigrants is a serious roadblock to what (so far) appear to be sincere efforts by Republicans in the state to boost Alabama’s low workforce participation rate.
But he’s the favorite. Because he will be at the top of a ballot most people won’t study past the “Democratic/Republican” box on the top.
Tuberville is counting on Alabamians not caring. He wants the voters of this state to check the box and tune out every promise he makes to terrorize your neighbors and waste law enforcement resources on right-wing hallucinations.
Many, many people who live here will embrace a man who wants to hurt the people who live here.
And they will do it claiming that they are upholding some vague set of values.
But deeply-held principles don’t put a person like Tommy Tuberville in a position of power. He gets to the top because of a deep cynicism about government and power.
Alabamians have good reason to feel their state government fails them. But all too often, that feeling curdles into a belief that government always fails. No matter where it is, what it does or who runs it.
It’s understandable. But if citizens believe politics can never deliver adequate schools, opportunity or health care, every vote becomes a protest vote. Every election becomes a search for blame.
That’s perfect for someone who has nothing to offer but targets. No plan, no hope, no way forward. Just a vent for pointless rage that leaves us worse than before. And wounding many innocent people in the process.
- Brian Lyman is the editor of Alabama Reflector. He has covered Alabama politics since 2006, and worked at the Montgomery Advertiser, the Press-Register and The Anniston Star. A 2024 Pulitzer finalist for Commentary, his work has also won awards from the Associated Press Managing Editors, the Alabama Press Association and Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights. He lives in Auburn with his wife, Julie, and their three children.
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The shattering sadness of 2025 is over — as this slumbering anti-Trump giant awakes
Trump calls it “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” I have a more accurate description: our political trauma.
After almost a year of Trump’s second term, I and many other people — including, very likely, you — are feeling exhausted, distraught, and sickened by what’s happened to our country and the world.
As Times columnist Bret Stephens puts it, we are being led by the most loathsome human being ever to occupy the White House — a petty, hollow, squalid, ogre-in-chief.
Every day that goes by seems to bring uglier vindictiveness, bigger lies, wilder boasts, and worse policies.
The cruelty is almost unbearable — the destruction of USAID, the pursuit of undocumented immigrants, the breakup of families, the arrests and detentions without due process, the bombing of small boats in the Caribbean and killing of more than 100 people, and so on.
The fact it’s being done in our name, by the United States of America, is heartbreaking.
I try to be optimistic. I tell myself — as I’ve told you — that we will be all the stronger for having gone through this dark time. Most of us now have a new and deeper appreciation for democracy, the rule of law, and social justice.
I also tell myself that we couldn’t have remained on the road we were on — with its widening inequalities and worsening political corruption.
I believe all this, but it doesn’t always subdue for me the sting and the stink of Trump — the shattering, dispiriting sadness of it all. That we’ve barely completed the first year of his likely four-year regime is terrifying.
We are not powerless, of course. Together we are making significant progress against this scourge. The ogre is not able to do as much damage now as he did initially. The slumbering good giant of America is awakening.
But the vile man in the Oval Office continues to say and do horrible things.
My early New Year’s resolution is to accept this for what it is — a terrible blight on America and the world — but not allow it to discourage me or dim my determination to fight it.
I hope your determination remains strong, too.
I’ve found that the best antidote to political trauma is political activism. We shall overcome. We shall overcome.
May you find joy and rest in this holiday season. May you recharge your batteries for the struggle ahead.
Thank you for all you do.
- Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
- Robert Reich's new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org
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Trump's contempt is confirmed by this rising obscenity
The White House has always mattered because of what it represents. It was never supposed to be a palace; it was meant to be the people’s house, a physical reminder that power in America is borrowed, temporary, and accountable.
That’s why the news that Donald Trump is turning it into a $400 million monument to himself should stop every American cold.
This isn’t a routine renovation. What Trump first floated as a ballroom has ballooned into a massive two-story complex with sweeping staircases, private residential quarters, and a secure bridge connecting it directly to the presidential residence.
Streets around the White House will be shut down for years. Historic gardens are being ripped out. A magnolia planted by Franklin Roosevelt in 1942 is gone. Jackie Kennedy’s legacy is treated like landscaping debris.
And this thing won’t just sit on the White House grounds: according to the National Park Service, it will dominate them. It visually overwhelms the West Wing and the Executive Mansion.
That detail matters. Symbols matter. And this symbol screams something Trump has been telling us for years. In his mind, this country isn’t about shared sacrifice or common good, it’s about power, spectacle, and who gets to live above the law and above the rest of us.
While Trump is building himself a palace, millions of Americans are deciding whether they can afford to see a doctor. Parents are cutting pills in half. Seniors are rationing insulin.
Working people are drowning under rent, groceries, student loans, and insurance premiums that climb every year. We’re told health care just wasn’t meant to be, that there’s no money for universal care, no money to make life affordable, no money to help people survive.
Funny how there’s always money for marble, steel, and ego when Trump (or any other dictator, anywhere in the world) is running the show. This is how authoritarianism announces itself, and he’s not even trying to be subtle about it.
Strongmen don’t just seize power, they remake the landscape to reflect it. They build grand halls and private corridors, while separating themselves physically and psychologically from the public. They hang huge banners with their faces on them from public buildings.
And now he’s even slapping his name on the Kennedy Center. It’s obscene.
Look around the world and you’ll see the pattern repeated again and again of civic spaces turn into monuments and humble government buildings becoming fortresses. Leaders of this type — if you could call them “leaders” instead of “tinpot dictators” — stop walking among the people and start hovering above them.
Trump isn’t inventing anything new. He’s following a playbook as old as the Egyptian pharaohs and the Roman emperors.
The “secure bridge” to gain access to the building from the White House residence alone tells you everything you need to know. This is about insulation, about never having to mix with the public, about power flowing smoothly behind locked doors and away from protest, dissent, and accountability.
A president who believes in democracy doesn’t need that, but a president who fears or even hates the people — but craves the wealth and power a corrupt Supreme Court has said he can grab at will — does.
The White House was intentionally modest by design: it was a rebuke to kings and emperors. The White House’s first residents — John Adams and Thomas Jefferson — refused to live like royalty because they understood that democracy depends on restraint. Jefferson used to answer the front door in his pajamas.
Trump understands the opposite. He believes any symbol of his own personal power should look expensive, imposing, and permanent, like Trump Tower and his gaudy golf motels. That’s why this project matters far beyond architecture: it’s a declaration of values.
And notice what had to be erased to make room for it. Historic gardens. Living symbols of past presidents who believed in stewardship rather than self-glorification.
Authoritarian types like Trump and Putin don’t preserve history, they overwrite it. They don’t see themselves as part of a long democratic story, but instead put themselves at the center of it.
There’s a lawsuit now from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, pointing out the obvious, that no president gets to tear apart the White House without review. Not Trump. Not anyone.
Yet a federal judge appears ready to let it move forward, asking only that designs be submitted after the fact. That’s how democratic guardrails weaken. Excess becomes normalized, deference replaces oversight, and power gets a pass because Trump insists he’s a special boy.
This is what Americans are reacting to, even if they don’t always have the language for it. People feel the imbalance in their bones.
They hear Republicans telling them to tighten their belts while loosening their own and those of the morbidly rich who own them. They see suffering framed as unavoidable while luxury is treated as destiny. They understand, instinctively, that something is deeply wrong when a president builds himself a palace while calling unrealistic things like feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, and providing healthcare to the people.
This moment matters because of what it reveals about the direction Republicans and the morbidly rich are taking our country. A democracy is supposed to make power feel smaller than the people, as the old quote usually misattributed to Jefferson notes:
“When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”
Trump wants to make power seem untouchable and the people to fear him and his masked goons.
This isn’t about taste or aesthetics. It’s about whether America remains a republic or slides toward something darker. When leaders wall themselves off, elevate themselves physically above the public, and replace shared civic symbols with personal monuments, history warns us where that road leads.
The White House belongs to We, the People.
Every garden, every hallway, every inch of it exists because this country has repeatedly, for over 250 years, rejected kings. Turning it into a private palace while Americans are told to accept illness, debt, and precarity as fate isn’t just obscene, it’s a warning.
Democracies don’t collapse in a single moment. They erode as excess is excused and power forgets who it serves. This project is Trump saying the quiet part out loud: He’s not here to govern with us, he’s here to rule above us.
And Americans are right to reject that.
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The Trump name will be trash after this bizarre gamble
Nov. 22, 1963 was an unusually warm day in Pittsburgh. My mother, who had just learned she was pregnant with me, took advantage of the weather to wash the windows of our house. She leaned out of one just as our neighbor Peg burst out her front door screaming, “The president has been shot.”
They huddled together and watched the day unfold. I heard that story countless times growing up, because that day is etched permanently into the memory of anyone who was alive when it happened.
Like most people my age, I grew up with President Kennedy as a mystical figure. By the age of six, I was obsessed. I could name every president in order, including their middle initials. My first book was called Meet John F. Kennedy, part of a series about famous presidents. I carried it everywhere. My second-grade teacher took me to the corner drugstore to buy presidential “baseball” cards. Once I got President Kennedy’s card, I didn’t need her to take me anymore.
My grandfather kept busts of President Kennedy and his brother Robert on a shelf in his home. I was in awe of them. One Christmas, he gave me my own, of President Kennedy. I treasured it.
Serendipity continued to follow me. My first job out of college was working on Capitol Hill as a press secretary for my congressman from Pittsburgh. My roommate worked for Sen. Ted Kennedy. My congressman partnered with Sen. Kennedy to get the minimum wage bill through Congress in 1989, which President George H. W. Bush signed into law in the Oval Office.
I was there, along with my boss, Sen. Kennedy, House and Senate leadership, and Labor Secretary Elizabeth Dole. I was there to write the press release that would accompany the photograph I took. I remember thinking, “This is where President Kennedy sat.”
After moving to New York City, I was walking through Central Park when I saw John F. Kennedy Jr. I ran over to meet him. His good looks were distracting. I’ve interviewed Shirley MacLaine a couple of times. She knew President Kennedy well, and she told me his good looks were distracting too.
After JFK Jr. was tragically killed, I was standing at the Estée Lauder counter at Bloomingdale’s, one morning before Christmas. Caroline Kennedy was beside me. I told her how sorry I was about her brother.
Every time I return to Washington, D.C., I take long runs through the city. I always, always do a lap around the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Every time, the building rekindles my memories and my love for President Kennedy.
I have always considered myself extraordinarily lucky to have had so many brushes with the Kennedy legacy.
So I think I speak for many who idolize the slain president when I say how heartbroken I was to see Donald Trump’s insidious name placed above — above, no less — President Kennedy’s name on a building, a monument, that exists solely to honor him.
There is no end to the anger I feel when Trump does something obnoxious, revolting, unconstitutional, dangerous, or stupid. But seeing those letters, spelling the most corrosive name in American history, appear next to one of the most revered names made me profoundly sad. A tear comes to my eye even writing this, thinking of President Kennedy, how much he meant to me, to all of us, and how Trump has the gall to besmirch his name.
President Kennedy will always be more magical, more important, more revered, and more loved than Donald Trump could ever hope to be.
Kennedy represented hope, equality, courage, empathy, and the future.
“For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.”
There is no retribution in Kennedy’s soaring prose like that.
“Children are the world’s most valuable resource and its best hope for the future.”
Trump treats children as disposable inconveniences.
“Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”
Trump habitually flips Kennedy’s most famous line.
And most applicable of all, especially to why the Kennedy Center bears his name:
“If more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live.”
The world was an infinitely better place when John Fitzgerald Kennedy represented America.
“Ich bin ein Berliner,” he told half a million Germans.
“Céad Míle Fáilte,” he said in Ireland to hundreds of thousands.
“Viva Costa Rica, arriba Costa Rica, y muchas gracias,” he told students in Costa Rica.
At home and abroad, Kennedy was monumental, and there are monuments to him around the world. At Runnymede in England, a JFK memorial stands as a symbol of Anglo-American democracy. In Jerusalem, Yad Kennedy rises from a forested hill. In Galway, Ireland, a statue honors his ancestral roots and the speech he gave there. From London to Montreal to Central America, Kennedy’s legacy is etched into the landscape.
I live in New York City. I fly out of Kennedy Airport. In New Jersey, I run along John F. Kennedy Boulevard, with its breathtaking view of Manhattan. And I still have my John F. Kennedy bust.
Kennedy still lives within us. He surrounds us globally. He is permanent.
Donald Trump is temporary.
His name will end up in the trash bin of history. And the letters spelling his name on John F. Kennedy’s memorial will come down, and they, too, will end up where they belong.
- John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”
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Millions of ordinary Americans are about to be pushed off a very familiar cliff
By Robert Applebaum, Senior Research Scholar in Gerontology, Miami University
Dec. 15, 2025 — the deadline for enrolling in a marketplace plan through the Affordable Care Act for 2026 — came and went without an agreement on the federal subsidies that kept ACA plans more affordable for many Americans. Despite a last-ditch attempt in the House to extend ACA subsidies, with Congress adjourning for the year on Dec. 19, it’s looking almost certain that Americans relying on ACA subsidies will face a steep increase in health care costs in 2026.
As a gerontologist who studies the U.S. health care system, I’m aware that disagreements about health care in America have a long history. The main bone of contention is whether providing health care is the responsibility of the government, or of individuals or their employers.
The ACA, passed in 2010 as the country’s first major piece of health legislation since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, represents one more chapter in that long-standing debate. That debate explains why the health law has fueled so much political divisiveness — including a standoff that spurred a record-breaking 43-day-long government shutdown, which began on Oct. 1, 2025.
In my view, regardless of how Congress resolves, or doesn’t resolve, the current dispute over ACA subsidies, a durable U.S. health care policy will remain out of reach until lawmakers address the core question of who should shoulder the cost of health care.
The ACA’s roots
In the years before the ACA’s passage, some 49 million Americans — 15 percent of the population — lacked health insurance. This number had been rising in the wake of the 2008 recession. That’s because the majority of Americans ages 18 to 64 with health insurance receive their health benefits through their employer. In the 2008 downturn, people who lost their jobs basically lost their health care coverage.
For those who believed government had a primary role in providing health insurance for its citizens, the growing number of people lacking coverage hit a crisis point that required an intervention. Those who place responsibility on individuals and employers saw the ACA as perversion of the government’s purpose. The political parties could find no common ground — and this challenge continues.
The major goal of the ACA was to reduce the number of uninsured Americans by about 30 million people, or to about 3 percent of the U.S. population. It got about halfway there: Today, about 26 million Americans, or 8 percent, are uninsured, though this number fluctuates based on changes in the economy and federal and state policy.
Health insurance for all?
The ACA implemented an array of strategies to accomplish this goal. Some were popular, such as allowing parents to keep their kids on their family insurance until age 26. Some were unpopular, such as the mandate that everyone must have insurance.
But two strategies in particular had the biggest impact on the number of uninsured. One was expanding the Medicaid program to include workers whose income was below 138 percent of the poverty line. The other was providing subsidies to people with low and moderate incomes that could help them buy health insurance through the ACA marketplace, a state or federal health exchange through which consumers could choose health insurance plans.
Medicaid expansion was controversial from the start. Originally, the ACA mandated it for all states, but the Supreme Court eventually ruled that it was up to each state, not the federal government, to decide whether to do so. As of December 2025, 40 states and the District of Columbia have implemented Medicaid expansion, insuring about 20 million Americans.
Meanwhile, the marketplace subsidies, which were designed to help people who were working but could not access an employer-based health plan, were not especially contentious early on. Everyone receiving a subsidy was required to contribute to their insurance plan’s monthly premium. People earning US$18,000 or less annually, which in 2010 was 115 percent of the income threshold set by the federal government as poverty level, contributed 2.1 percent of their plan’s cost, and those earning $60,240, which was 400 percent of the federal poverty level, contributed 10 percent. People making more than that were not eligible for subsidies at all.
In 2021, legislation passed by the Biden administration to stave off the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic increased the subsidy that people could receive. The law eliminated premiums entirely for the lowest income people and reduced the cost for those earning more. And, unlike before, people making more than 400 percent of the federal poverty level — about 10 percent of marketplace enrollees — could also get a subsidy.
These pandemic-era subsidies are set to expire at the end of 2025.
Cost versus coverage
If the COVID-19-era subsidies expire, health care costs would increase substantially for most consumers, as ACA subsidies return to their original levels. So someone making $45,000 annually will now need to pay $360 a month for health insurance, increasing their payment by 74 percent, or $153 monthly. What’s more, these changes come on top of price hikes to insurance plans themselves, which are estimated to increase by about 18 percent in 2026.
With these two factors combined, many ACA marketplace users could see their health insurance cost rise more than 100 percent. Some proponents of extending COVID-19-era subsidies contend that the rollback will result in an estimated 6 million to 7 million people leaving the ACA marketplace and that some 5 million of these Americans could become uninsured in 2026.
Policies in the tax and spending package signed into law by President Donald Trump in July 2025 are amplifying the challenge of keeping Americans insured. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the Medicaid cuts alone, stipulated in the package, may result in more than 7 million people becoming uninsured. Combined with other policy changes outlined in the law and the rollback of the ACA subsidies, that number could hit 16 million by 2034 — essentially wiping out the majority of gains in health insurance coverage that the ACA achieved since 2010.
Subsidy downsides
These enhanced ACA subsidies are so divisive now in part because they have dramatically driven up the federal government’s health care bill. Between 2021 and 2024, the number of people receiving subsidies doubled — resulting in many more people having health insurance, but also increasing federal ACA expenditures.
In 2025, almost 22 million Americans who purchased a marketplace plan received a federal subsidy to help with the costs, up from 9.2 million in 2020 — a 137 percent increase.
Those who oppose the extension counter that the subsidies cost the government too much and fund high earners who don’t need government support – and that temporary emergencies, even ones as serious as a pandemic, should not result in permanent changes.
Another critique is that employers are using the ACA to reduce their responsibility for employee coverage. Under the ACA, employers with more than 50 employees must provide health insurance, but for companies with fewer employers, that requirement is optional.
In 2010, 92 percent of employers with 25 to 49 workers offered health insurance, but by 2025, that proportion had dropped to 64 percent, suggesting that companies of this size are allowing the ACA to cover their employees.
Diverging solutions
The U.S. has the most expensive health care system in the world by far. The projected increase in the number of uninsured people over the next 10 years could result in even higher costs, as fewer people get preventive care and delayed health care interventions, ultimately leading to more complex medical care
Federal policy clearly shapes health insurance coverage, but state-level policies play a role too. Nationally, about 8 percent of people under age 65 were uninsured in 2023, yet that rate varied widely — from 3 percent in Massachusetts to 18.6 percent in Texas. States under Republican leadership on average have a higher percentage of uninsured people than do those under Democratic leadership, mirroring the political differences driving the national debate over who is responsible for shouldering the costs of health care.
With dueling ideologies come dueling solutions. For those who believe that the government is responsible for the health of its citizens, expanding health insurance coverage and financing this expansion through taxes presents a clear approach. For those who say the burden should fall on individuals, reliance on the free market drives the fix — on the premise that competition between health insurers and providers offers a more effective way to solve the cost challenges than a government intervention.
Without finding resolution on this core issue, the U.S. will likely still be embroiled in this same debate for years, if not decades, to come.
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Making sense of the trial and conviction of a judge who stood up to Trump
According to the Eastern District of Wisconsin’s Interim U.S. Attorney Brad Schimel, freshly appointed to his position by President Donald Trump, the federal trial of Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan had nothing to do with politics. “There’s not a political aspect to it,” Schimel told reporters after Dugan’s felony conviction on charges she obstructed U.S. immigration agents as they tried to make an arrest inside the Milwaukee courthouse. “We weren’t trying to make an example out of anyone,” Schimel said. “This was necessary to hold Judge Dugan accountable because of the actions she took.”
Schimel didn’t say whether Dugan’s very public arrest and perp walk through the courthouse was also necessary, along with the social media posts by Trump’s FBI director Kash Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi, crowing about the arrest and sharing photos of Dugan in handcuffs.
There is no doubt that the Dugan case was highly political from the start.
As a coalition of democracy and civic organizations in Wisconsin declared in a statement after the verdict, Dugan’s prosecution threatens the integrity of our justice system and “sends a troubling message about the consequences faced by judges who act to protect due process in their courtrooms.”
But Schimel is right about one thing: Dugan’s trial this week was mainly about “a single day — a single bad day — in a public courthouse.”
That narrow focus helped the prosecution win a conviction in a confusing mixed verdict. The jury found Dugan not guilty of a misdemeanor offense for concealing Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, the defendant she led out a side door while immigration agents waited near the main door of her courtroom to arrest him. At the same time, the jury found Dugan guilty of the more serious charge of obstructing the agents in their effort to make the arrest. The two charges are based on some of the same elements, and Dugan’s defense attorneys are now asking that her conviction be overturned on that basis.
An observer watching the trial from afar with no inside knowledge of the defense strategy might wonder why Dugan’s defense team didn’t enter a guilty plea on the misdemeanor charge and then strongly contest the felony obstruction charge as an outrageous overreach in a heavily politicized prosecution. That might have led to a more favorable mixed verdict, in which the jury found that Dugan was probably guilty of something, but that it did not rise to the level of a felony with a potential penalty of five years in prison.
I’m no expert, but daily reports from the trial this week gave me the strong impression that things weren’t going well for Dugan as long as witnesses and lawyers focused on a blow-by-blow account of the events of April 18. Witness testimony described an agitated Dugan, whose colleague, Judge Kristela Cervera, testified — damagingly — that she was uncomfortable with how Dugan managed the federal agents she was outraged to find hanging around outside her courtroom.
It’s not surprising that the jury agreed with the prosecution that Dugan was not cooperative and that she wanted to get Flores-Ruiz out of her courtroom in a way that made an end-run around the unprecedented meddling of federal immigration enforcement inside the courthouse. Like other judges and courthouse staff, she was upset about the disruption caused by ICE agents stalking people who showed up to court.
But, as Dean Strang, a law professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and a long-time Wisconsin criminal defense lawyer, told me in April just before he joined the defense team and stopped talking about the case to the press, “Whatever you think of the actual conduct the complaint alleges, there is a real question about whether there’s even arguably any federal crime here.”
The government’s behavior was “extraordinarily atypical” for a nonviolent, non-drug charge involving someone who is not a flight risk, Strang added.
The handcuffs, the public arrest at Dugan’s workplace, the media circus — none of it was normal, or justified. When Bondi and Patel began posting pictures of Dugan in handcuffs on social media to brag about it, “what is it they are trying to do?” Strang asked. His conclusion: “Humiliate and terrify, not just her but every other judge in the country.”
The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, Voces de la Frontera, and Common Cause-Wisconsin agree with that assessment, writing in their statement reacting to the conviction that Dugan’s felony conviction threatens the integrity of our justice system as a whole, and undermines the functioning of the courts by scaring away defendants, witnesses and plaintiffs who are afraid they might be arrested if they show up to participate in legal proceedings.
But that big picture perspective was not a major feature of the defense’s closing arguments, which relied heavily on raising reasonable doubt about Dugan’s intentions and her actions during a stressful and chaotic day.
That’s frustrating because, contrary to Schimel’s assertions, the big picture, not the events of “a single bad day” is what was actually at stake in this case.
One of the most distressing aspects of the Dugan trial was the prosecution’s through-the-looking-glass invocation of the rule of law and the integrity of the courts.
The federal agents called to the stand, the prosecutors in the courtroom, and Schimel, in his summary of the case, made a big point about the “safety” of law enforcement officers.
Repeatedly, we heard that immigration agents prefer to make arrests inside courthouses because they provide a “safe” environment in which to operate.
In his comments on the verdict, Schimel emphasized that Dugan jeopardized the safety of federal officers by causing them to arrest Flores-Ruiz on the street instead of inside the courthouse: “The defendant’s actions provided an opportunity for a wanted subject to flee outside of that secure courthouse environment,” Schimel said.
This upside-down view of safety has become a regular MAGA talking point, with Republicans claiming that when citizens demand that masked agents identify themselves or make videos of ICE dragging people out of their cars, they are jeopardizing the safety of law enforcement officers — as opposed to trying to protect their neighbors’ safety in the face of violent attacks by anonymous thugs.
Churches, day care centers and peaceful suburban neighborhoods are also “safe” environments for armed, masked federal agents. But their activities there are making our communities less safe.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Brown Watzka, delivering the prosecution’s closing argument, told the jury it must draw a line against judges interfering with law enforcement, or else “there is only chaos,” and that “chaos is what the rule of law is intended to prevent.”
But chaos is what we have now, with federal agents terrorizing communities, dragging people out of courthouses and private residences, deporting them without due process and punishing those who stand in their way in an attempt to defend civil society.
The real questions raised by Dugan’s case are whether we believe the “safety” of the agents making those dubious arrests matters more than the safety of our communities, and whether we want the courts to be able to regulate the conduct in their own courthouses as a check on the government’s exercise of raw power.
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This surging force is an existential menace — and it's capturing our leaders
“This is the West, sir. When the facts become legend, print the legend.” — journalist in the 1962 film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The top editors at Time (yes, it still exists) looked west to Silicon Valley and decided to print the legend last week when picking their Person of the Year for the tumultuous 12 months of 2025. It seemed all too fitting that its cover hailing “The Architects of AI” was the kind of artistic rip-off that’s a hallmark of artificial intelligence: 1932’s iconic newspaper shot, “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper,” “reimagined” with the billionaires — including Elon Musk and OpenAI’s Sam Altman — and lesser-known engineers behind the rapid growth of their technology in everyday life.
Time‘s writers strived to outdo the hype of AI itself, writing that these architects of artificial intelligence “reoriented government policy, altered geopolitical rivalries, and brought robots into homes. AI emerged as arguably the most consequential tool in great-power competition since the advent of nuclear weapons.”
OK, but it’s a tool that’s clearly going to need a lot more work, or architecting, or whatever it is those folks out on the beam do. That was apparent on the same day as Time‘s celebration when it was reported that Washington Post editors got a little too close to the edge when they decided they were ready to roll out an ambitious scheme for personalized, AI-driven podcasts based on factors like your personal interests or your schedule.
The news site Semafor reported that the many gaffes ranged from minor mistakes in pronunciation to major goofs like inventing quotes — the kind of thing that would get a human journalist fired on the spot.
“Never would I have imagined that the Washington Post would deliberately warp its own journalism and then push these errors out to our audience at scale,” a dismayed, unnamed editor reported.
The same-day contrast between the Tomorrowland swooning over the promise of AI and its glitchy, real-world reality felt like a metaphor for an invention that, as Time wasn’t wrong in reporting, is so rapidly reshaping our world. Warts and all.
Like it or not.
And for most people (myself included), it’s mostly “or not.” The vast majority understands that it’s too late to put this 21st-century genie back in the bottle, and like any new technology there are going to be positives from AI, from performing mundane organizing tasks that free up time for actual work, to researching cures for diseases.
But each new wave of technology — atomic power, the internet, and definitely AI — increasingly threatens more risk than reward. And it’s not just the sci-fi notion of sentient robots taking over the planet, although that is a concern. It’s everyday stuff. Schoolkids not learning to think for themselves. Corporations replacing salaried humans with machines. Sky-high electric bills and a worsening climate crisis because AI runs on data centers with an insatiable need for energy and water
The most recent major Pew Research Center survey of Americans found that 50 percent of us are more concerned than excited about the growing presence of AI, while only 10 percent are more excited than concerned. Drill down and you’ll see that a majority believes AI will worsen humans’ ability to think creatively, and, by a whopping 50-to-5 percent margin, also believes it will worsen our ability to form relationships rather than improve it. These, by the way, are two things that weren’t going well before AI.
So naturally our political leaders are racing to see who can place the tightest curbs on artificial intelligence and thus carry out the will of the peop... ha, you did know this time that I was kidding, didn’t you?
It’s no secret that Donald Trump and his regime were in the tank from Day One for those folks out on Time‘s steel beam, and not just Musk, who — and this feels like it was seven years ago — donated a whopping $144 million to the Republican’s 2024 campaign. Just last week, the president signed an executive order aiming to press the full weight of the federal government, including Justice Department lawsuits and regulatory actions, against any state that dares to regulate AI. He said that’s necessary to ensure US “global AI dominance.”
This is a problem when his constituents clearly want AI to be regulated. But it’s just as big a problem — perhaps bigger — that the opposition party isn’t offering much opposition. Democrats seem just as awed by the billionaire grand poobahs of AI as Trump. Or the editors of Time.
Also last week, New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul — leader of the second-largest blue state, and seeking reelection in 2026 — used her gubernatorial pen to gut the more-stringent AI regulations that were sent to her desk by state lawmakers. Watchdogs said Hochul replaced the hardest-hitting rules with language drafted by lobbyists for Big Tech.
As the American Prospect noted, Hochul’s pro-Silicon Valley maneuvers came after her campaign coffers were boosted by fundraisers held by venture capitalist Ron Conway, who has been seeking a veto, and the industry group Tech:NYC, which wants the bill watered down.
It was a similar story in the biggest blue state, California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2024 vetoed the first effort by state lawmakers to impose tough regulations on AI, and where a second measure did pass but only after substantial input from lobbyists for OpenAI and other tech firms. Silicon Valley billionaires raised $5 million to help Newsom — a 2028 White House front-runner — beat back a 2021 recall.
Like other top Democrats, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro favors some light regulation for AI but is generally a booster, insisting the new technology is a “job enhancer, not a job replacer.” He’s all in on the Keystone State building massive data centers, despite their tendency to drive up electric bills and their unpopularity in the communities where they are proposed.
Money talks, democracy walks — an appalling fact of life in 2025 America. In a functioning democracy, we would have at least one political party that would fly the banner of the 53% of us who are wary of unchecked AI, and even take that idea to the next level.
A Harris Poll found that, for the first time, a majority of Americans also see billionaires—many of them fueled by the AI bubble — as a threat to democracy, with 71 percent supporting a wealth tax. Yet few of the Democrats hoping to retake Congress in 2027 are advocating such a levy. This is a dangerous disconnect.
Time magazine got one thing right. Just as its editors understood in 1938 that Adolf Hitler was its Man of the Year because he’d influenced the world more than anyone else, albeit for evil, history will likely look back at 2025 and agree that AI posed an even bigger threat to humanity than Trump’s brand of fascism. The fight to save the American Experiment must be fought on both fronts.
- Will Bunch is the national columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer -- with some strong opinions about what's happening in America around social injustice, income inequality and the government.
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The corrupt Supreme Court gave us this horror — but there's a way to end it
America’s 465th mass shooting in 2025, this one at Brown University in Rhode Island, should remind us all that it’s insane that the GOP passed and George W. Bush signed into law the so-called Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) in 2006 that largely gives immunity from liability lawsuits to the gun industry (and only the gun industry).
It’s time to end the predator-state coalition in America, of which this is just one glaring example.
Ever since five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court ruled that “money is free speech” protected by the First Amendment and “corporations are persons” protected by the entire Bill of Rights, pretty much every industry in America has poured cash into politicians’ and judges’ pockets to be able to freely rip us off. Or, in the case of the gun industry, kill our children.
Even though a clear majority of Americans want stronger gun laws, our politicians have colluded with the gun industry to give us the exact opposite, as I detail in The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment.
But it’s not just the gun industry.
When greedy banksters crashed our economy in 2008, Bush made sure not a single one went to prison, in stark contrast to the S&L scandal/crash in the 1980s: between 1988 and 1992 the Department of Justice sent 1,706 banksters to prison and obtained 2,603 guilty verdicts for fraud in financial institutions.
In 2008, however, after Bush and his cronies cashed their “contribution” checks, hundreds of banksters walked away with million- and even billion-dollar bonuses. Steve Mnuchin, who allegedly threw over 30,000 people out of their homes with robo-signed documents, was even appointed Treasury Secretary by Donald Trump and later given a billion dollars by the Saudis to invest.
Are you regularly hearing about these horrors on social media? Probably not, because prior to 1996, social media companies (then it was mostly CompuServe and AOL) had to hire people like me and Nigel Peacock to monitor their forums, make sure people followed the rules and told the truth. Nobody was the victim of online predators, and the company didn’t run secret algorithms to push rightwing memes at you and shadow-ban progressive content.
That year, however, after generous contributions to both parties, Congress passed a bill that gave Zuck and his buddies almost complete immunity from liability, which is why social media is now so dangerously toxic that Australia just banned it for kids.
Similarly, every other democracy in the world does your taxes for you and then lets you know their math so you can check it. In several European countries it’s so simple it’s basically a postcard; you only respond if you think they’re in error. The US is the only developed country on Earth where there’s a multi-billion-dollar industry preparing people’s tax returns for them.
For example, in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland returns are pre-filled and can be approved via text message or an online portal in minutes. In Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, and France tax forms are similarly filled out in advance by the government; you just sign and mail them back. And in Estonia, widely seen as a digital government pioneer, filing taxes takes minutes and is done with a simple online form that a fifth grader could complete.
Here in the US, Democrats thought this was a fine idea — it would save time and money for both taxpayers and the IRS — and so Biden rolled out a program where people with few deductions could simply file their taxes online for free.
Republicans, however, being on the take from the billion-dollar tax preparation industry, objected; they didn’t want the financial gravy train to stop because that would mean less of the money charged us for tax prep would end up in their campaign coffers, not to mention the fancy vacations, meals, and other lobbying benefits they can get.
So, the Trump administration announced — after tax prep company Intuit “donated” $1 million to Trump’s “inaugural” slush fund — that they’re killing off the free filing option; going forward, pretty much everybody must either learn enough tax law to deal with the IRS themselves or pay a tax preparation company.
And then there’s the health insurance industry, a giant blood-sucking tick attached to our collective backs that made $74 billion in profits (in addition to the billions paid to its most senior executives) last year by denying us payments for doctors’ visits, tests, procedures, surgeries, and even organ transplants.
Most Americans have no idea that the United States is quite literally the only country in the developed world that doesn’t define healthcare as an absolute right for all of its citizens and thus provide it at low or no cost.
That’s it. We’re the only one left. We’re the only country in the entire developed world where somebody getting sick can leave a family bankrupt, destitute, and homeless.
A half-million American families are wiped out every year so completely that they lose everything and must declare bankruptcy just because somebody got sick. The number of health-expense-related bankruptcies in all the other developed countries in the world combined is zero.
Yet the United States spends more on “health care” than any other country in the world: about 17 percent of GDP. Switzerland, Germany, France, Sweden and Japan all average around 11 percent, and Canada, Denmark, Belgium, Austria, Norway, Netherlands, United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia all come in between 9.3 percent and 10.5 percent.
Health insurance premiums right now make up about 22 percent of all taxable payroll (and don’t even cover all working people), whereas Medicare For All would run an estimated 10 percent and would cover every man, woman, and child in America. And don’t get me started on the Medicare Advantage scam the Bush administration created that’s routinely ripping off seniors and destroying actual Medicare.
And if disease doesn’t get us, hunger might. One-in-five American children live in “food insecure” households and frequently go to bed hungry at a time Trump and Republicans are cutting SNAP and WIC benefits and grants to food banks.
The amount of money that America’s richest four billionaires (Musk, Bezos, Gates, Zuckerberg) added to their money bins since 2020 because of the Reagan/Bush/Trump tax cuts is over $300 billion: the cost to entirely end child poverty in America is an estimated $25 billion.
And, because of the body and brain damage hunger and malnutrition are doing to one-in-five American children, child hunger in the US is costing our society an estimated $167.5 billion a year in lost opportunity and productivity.
So, why do we avoid spending $25 billion to solve a $167.5 billion problem? Because of the predator-state coalition, which was legalized and enabled by five corrupt on-the-take Republicans on the US Supreme Court.
The predators don’t want you to know this stuff, of course, which is why they’ve bought up or started over 1500 radio stations, hundreds of TV stations, multiple TV networks, multiple major and local newspapers, and thousands of websites to bathe us in a continuous slurry of rightwing bullshit and pro-industry talking points.
And then there are the monopolies that Reagan legalized in 1983 and the Bush and Trump administrations have encouraged. Before that, we had competition within industries, and most malls and downtowns were filled with locally-owned businesses and stores.
Grocery stores, airlines, banks, social media, retail stores, gas stations, car manufacturers, insurance companies, internet providers (ISPs), computer companies, phone companies, hospital chains: the list goes on and on.
All — because of their monopoly or oligopoly status — cost the average American family an average of over $5,000 a year that is not paid by the citizens of any other developed country in the world because the rest of the world won’t tolerate this kind of predatory, monopolistic behavior.
Trump has even managed to turn immigration into a predatory scheme, transferring hundreds of billions of dollars from social programs to a masked, secret police force and Republican-aligned private prison contractors, as he gleefully inflicts brutality on dark-skinned immigrants and American citizens alike.
It’s time to roll back the predatory state, and it’d make a hell of a campaign slogan for Democrats running next November and in 2028. End Corporate Personhood and the legal bribery of politicians and judges.
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I found the perfect gift — for the Trump-loving maniac in your life
For a merry MAGA Christmas, I believe one of the best gifts you can give, receive, or gift yourself is Bond Arms’ DT47 (Trump Gun), a “stunning salute to a remarkable comeback by our 45th and 47th Commander in Chief,” according to Bond Arms. The DT47 will be a cherished memento that MAGA faithful can hand down one generation to the next.
The Trump Gun is a 45-caliber handgun beautifully inscribed with the words “Living Legend” and “I’m Back” on the barrel and the numbers “45th” and “47th” denoting Trump’s two presidencies. It is an absolute steal for $545.47 — a priceless treasure for any Trump-loving, gun-toting patriot.
The Trump Gun is a stainless steel, double-barreled beauty with a rebounding hammer and retracting firing pin. Be aware that there is a very limited quantity and that the DT47 is not available in California or Massachusetts.
The Trump Gun is chambered to handle both .45 caliber and .410 cartridges. The .45 caliber cartridge offers greater range and is the best option for self-defense if you prefer a single point of impact. The .410 is very effective for defense against close-range targets where the greater spread of the .410 shot produces the most devastating effect on impact.
Of course, the Trump Gun is a deadly weapon and should never be kept loaded with children around. For example, when our family celebrates Christmas, we will all gather around to admire the unloaded DT47 and give everyone a chance to handle it. Not until the children are put to bed, however, will I go to the ammunition safe and load the Trump Gun.
An unloaded gun won’t stop a home invader, so I will keep the loaded TD47 in reach. It’s always possible that a homicidal maniac lurking in the bushes will evade our twin Doberman Pinschers, the 1300-watt dual flood lights, the outdoor surveillance camera system, the SimpliSafe home security system, and breach the VIZ-PRO steel security door. If that occurs, my Trump Gun and I lie in wait.
The Trump Gun will give my wife and me the peace of mind to relax and enjoy every evening. What better way than to share a bottle of Trump Super Premium Vodka ($374.99), my wife in her 45-47 Trump ladies’ knit sweater ($110), I in my Mar-a Lago Jersey Hoodie ($210), cuddled up by the fire in the loving embrace of our Donald Trump Plush Throw Blanket ($49.99).
As good Christians, we like to spend some time each evening reading from our beautiful Trump Bible ($59.99), often ending our reading with the inspiring words of the Lord in Deuteronomy 19:21 — “Your eye shall not pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” One of our favorite passages.
When the kids arise the next morning, the Trump Gun will be safely unloaded and showcased on the living room mantle next to a personalized signed picture by Donald Trump ($49.95) and a Donald Trump Keep America Great Flag ($19.95). After breakfast, the family will head to the sportsman’s club shooting range for some target practice.
For the children, we started with easy-to-handle .22 caliber handguns. They first took two years of gun-safety courses at the range and weren’t allowed to fire a gun until they turned six. Needless to say, they were chomping at the bit to start shooting by then, and their enthusiasm continues to grow.
My wife favors a 9 mm handgun for the range while I prefer shooting a .44 Magnum at the longest-range targets. My children do their shooting first with my wife and my strict oversight, and then they head to the club’s arcade while we pound out 200-300 rounds.
We have a family custom of sending out New Years’ cards to friends, so our next stop will be JC Penny’s Portraits Studio to get a family picture taken. For my MAGA gun enthusiasts, I can’t resist prominently displaying the Trump Gun in hand aimed at the camera, a mock-menacing look on my face. The kids will get a kick out of that.
I’m not saying that a family that shoots together stays together, but we have bonded over our love of guns in a way that only gun lovers can appreciate. When my ten-year old daughter puts a bullet square between the eyes of a 3D grizzly bear target at 200 yards, my wife and I are filled with) indescribable pride. We believe we’ve done our job.
The Trump Gun is not only a great collector’s item to enjoy for a lifetime. It is a tribute to the president who ensures my right to buy, own, brandish, carry-conceal, and shoot any gun from a Beretta 92x pistol to an AK-47 rifle as long as he is president. What more could any American ask for?
Have a very merry MAGA Christmas, God bless Donald Trump, and keep your powder dry.
- Tom Tyner is a freelance editorialist, satirist, political analyst, blogger, author and retired English instructor. The Trump Gun is real. His interest in buying one, and description of a gun- and Trump merch-filled home life, may not be.
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