Trump finds new talent that's perfect for his Cabinet
President Donald Trump has found the perfect candidates for open positions on his Cabinet.
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
Trump has only himself to blame for his explosive diarrhea problem
How do we eat healthy in the Trump era?
First, toss your salad. So far in 2026, there’ve been nearly 30,000 suspected cases of cyclospora — the explosive diarrhea parasite — with two fatalities. It’s been linked to produce from Taylor Farms, which supplies grocery stores and restaurants across the country, often under alternative brand names.
Next, throw out jalapeños, dips, and eggs because of salmonella recalls.
Get rid of your blueberries because of E. coli.
Ditch those popsicles that might contain glass.
Chuck bread that might have nails in it.
And dump 30,000 pounds of beef recalled because Trump’s USDA failed to inspect it.
Trump claims grocery prices are coming down. I guess one way to bring them down is to leave us with nothing safe to buy.
All these recalls and illnesses aren’t a coincidence. They’re the result of incompetence and corruption within the Trump regime — and unchecked corporate power.
We saw the incompetence with funding cuts and the massive layoffs of public servants overseeing food safety.
Turns out Trump’s so-called “deep state” was protecting us from diarrhea and keeping our food safe.
Trump, RFK Jr., and Elon Musk cut the FDA’s staff by 20 percent and the CDC and USDA’s by 25 percent.
They dissolved a USDA advisory committee that existed to help prevent outbreaks like the ones we’re suffering. The USDA even CUT several cyclospora research projects — after the outbreak had already spread.
Under RFK Jr., the CDC’s FoodNet program is no longer required to monitor the cyclospora parasite and five other pathogens.
Most of the CDC labor researching and responding was let go as part of the DOGE cuts.
And they canceled more than $11 billion in state health grants, which could have helped address these crises.
The Trump team was too stupid to realize that cutting food safety programs and firing thousands of public servants would have consequences.
Then there’s the possible corruption.
Rather than protect the public from cyclospora, Trump met with Taylor Farms executives at the White House as they sought to delay the FDA’s announcement linking their lettuce to the outbreak. Since then, the FDA sent mixed messages on its initial findings even as cyclospora cases continued to rise. Why?
Perhaps because Taylor Farms’ parent company has donated more than $2 million to Republican PACs this election cycle, with nearly half of that going to Trump’s MAGA Inc.
The donation to MAGA Inc. came within a week of Trump’s FDA delaying a new food tracing requirement that could have helped prevent this summer’s outbreaks.
When excessive corporate power meets an incompetent and corrupt government, the result is a literal shitshow.
Now, if you’ll excuse me … I’ve got to run.
- Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His 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 bombshell signals a horrific October Surprise is in the works
On Monday night in Grand Island, Nebraska, Donald Trump was trying to convince a tiny rally crowd to vote Republican when, as he is wont to do, he wandered off-prompter into a riff about what Iran could do to two American cities and the crowd cheered:
“They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay and it’s going to be over very soon.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom said:
“Donald Trump’s remarks were dangerous – if not treasonous – putting a target on two of our biggest cities and one of America’s largest naval hubs.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the remark could compromise her city’s safety, and the Republican running to represent San Diego in the US House, Jim Desmond, said:
“No American city is expendable, and no American family should ever be treated as collateral damage.”
The White House tried spinning it all, claiming Trump only meant that a (fantasy) nuclear-armed Iran would’ve threatened those cities if he hadn’t gone to war against them first. Maybe so. Forbes magazine — nobody’s idea of a lefty outlet — instead reported that it’s unclear whether he was warning about an attack or daring Iran to launch one.
And then Trump repeated his language again last night in Texas, saying:
“And I said it the other day, let them hit a missile into San Diego or Los Angeles on the way. You want to see a horror show? Let them hit San Diego. Let them hit Los Angeles.”
Trying to read Trump’s twisted mind is a dangerous effort, but we can look at what politicians in positions similar to him have done in the past, as well as checking out whether he’s trying to strengthen or weaken our ability to prevent such an attack.
Back in March of 2003, as George W. Bush was about to invade Iraq, I wrote an essay called “When Democracy Failed” detailing how Hitler used the burning of the German parliament building to consolidate his power.
While the history is still debated, historian Benjamin Carter Hett builds a compelling case that the Nazis essentially set up the 24-year-old (perhaps mentally ill) Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe to do it, or even started the fire themselves. Hitler, standing in front of the smoldering building, told a British reporter, “This is a signal from God,” and by the next day he had his Reichstag Fire Decree pushed through parliament, suspending civil liberties across Germany, creating an instant police state.
It turns out that this meme — a foreign attack that rescues or expands the powers of a political leader — is one of the oldest stories in politics, including American politics:
— President James Polk was incredibly unpopular in 1846 (and since!), so he sent American troops into Mexican territory; when they were predictably fired on, Polk gave a speech to Congress claiming that Mexico had “shed American blood upon American soil.” It was such an obvious attempt to start a war to rescue Polk’s sagging fortunes that freshman congressman Abraham Lincoln introduced his Spot Resolution to try, unsuccessfully, to stop what quickly became the Mexican-American War.
— When the USS Maine blew up in Havana harbor in 1898, most likely from a fire in a coal bunker next to her magazine, newspaper oligarch William Randolph Hearst sent a cable to the artist Frederic Remington at Havana: “Please remain [in Cuba]. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” Within weeks we were at war with Spain, dramatically boosting the popularity of President McKinley and setting the stage for Teddy Roosevelt’s rise to power.
— In 1962 the Joint Chiefs of Staff actually put it in writing. Operation Northwoods proposed the US military covertly blow up an American ship and stage a terror campaign in Miami and Washington, DC so America could blame Castro and invade Cuba; it was only scuttled because President Kennedy said no.
— Two years later, Lyndon Johnson and Secretary off Defense Robert McNamara claimed an August 4 attack on American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin that the National Security Agency’s own historian later concluded never happened. McNamara had wanted the war, and some historians even assert he lied about the attack to Johnson for weeks until the war against Vietnam was underway.
— In the summer of 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt froze Japan’s assets and cut off its oil, knowing fully that he was backing Tokyo into a corner. While Republicans claimed he knew the attack on Pearl Harbor would come out of it, the evidence for that is sketchy; nonetheless, it provided the rationalization to enter World War II, which by then Roosevelt had concluded was necessary to save European democracy even though US public opinion was largely against the war (there was a large “America first” political movement that explicitly embraced Hitler and opposed entering the war).
— Two years before 9/11, George W. Bush told his ghostwriter, Mickey Herskowitz, that if he ever got the chance to invade Iraq he wouldn’t waste the political capital a war would give him the way his father had.
A year later, the Project for the New American Century, whose founding statement his brother Jeb had signed, published a report arguing that invading Iraq and taking their oil wasn’t politically possible unless “some catastrophic and catalyzing event” like “a new Pearl Harbor” were to happen.
Then on August 6, 2001, while he was vacationing in Crawford, the CIA flew an agent all the way to Texas to hand President George W. Bush a briefing titled “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US.” Bush began the longest vacation in presidential history, refusing to return to DC but also refusing to pull together his team to stop the plot. Five weeks later, nearly 3,000 Americans were dead, his approval rating zoomed from 51 to 90 percent (the highest Gallup has ever recorded), and he got the war he’d told Herskowitz about.
This “let them attack us and I’ll become the hero against them” strategy works overseas, too.
— Vladimir Putin (Trump’s mentor, whom he called yesterday to wish a happy birthday) was an obscure prime minister in September of 1999 when apartment buildings started blowing up across Russia, killing around 300 people. When local police in the city of Ryazan caught Putin’s secret police/FSB agents planting a bomb in a basement, the Kremlin claimed it was just a “training exercise.” Putin used the terror from the Chechen attacks to start a war in Chechnya that he rode straight into the presidency.
— In Israel, the military had Hamas’s battle plan for October 7, a document they code-named “Jericho Wall,” more than a year before the attack. Benjamin Netanyahu’s poll numbers were in free-fall, but the attack and his response of bombing the hell out of Gaza both boosted his popularity and postponed his trial for corruption and bribery, keeping him in office.
Which brings us back to Donald Trump, who’s less than four weeks from a midterm election that looks like it’s going to be a screaming disaster for Republicans. He knows that if Democrats take the House or Senate, his life (and that of Uday, Qusay, and Jared) will become a living hell.
On September 26, Trump flat-out rejected an Iranian proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz within seven days and restart talks; the Wall Street Journal then, shockingly, reported he’d privately told aides that he plans to get his revenge for his war humiliation by bombing Iran again after the election. He said much the same to Time magazine last week, causing some to wonder if he’s deliberately trying to provoke Iran into attacking the US now.
Meanwhile, the people who are supposed to catch Iranian operatives inside the United States have been pulled off the job. Just days before the war began in February, Ka$h Patel fired a dozen agents and staff from CI-12, the specific FBI counterintelligence unit that tracks threats from Iran.
Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi warned that nearly a quarter of the FBI’s agents, and up to 40 percent in the biggest field offices (like LA and San Diego?), were pulled onto immigration duty. This included huge numbers of counterintelligence specialists with deep expertise on Iran, and The Intercept found in May that none have been replaced or put back on Iran/terrorism watch.
And the threat of an Iranian attack on US assets is real. Ten days ago British police arrested five men near RAF Fairford, the base American bombers use to hit Iran. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham says there are “strong indications“ Tehran had a hand in it, although this is an evolving story.
Given all this, Trump has some explaining to do:
— Has Trump been briefed on a specific threat to Southern California, and if he has, what’s being done about it?
— Why were the FBI’s Iran specialists fired or relocated on the eve of a war with Iran, and how many of our top counterterrorism agents are still out rounding up brown-skinned day laborers?
— Why did he turn down an offer to reopen the Strait while, at the same time, provocatively promising more bombing after the election?
— And it’s not like the idea hasn’t occurred to Trump: Back when Barack Obama was running for reelection Trump tweeted on November 29, 2011: “In order to get elected, BarackObama will start a war with Iran.” Two weeks earlier he’d posted a video saying that starting a war with Iran was “the only way he figures that he’s going to get reelected.”
The following July he claimed Obama was “preparing a possible attack on Iran right before November,” and on October 9, 2012, with the election a month away, he told his followers that with Obama’s poll numbers falling they should “watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran.”
The last thing in the world that I’d hope for is that Trump is actually encouraging a massive attack on Los Angeles and San Diego just to rescue himself and his party politically. But having lived through 9/11, the subsequent Patriot Act and Bush lying us into two wars to get himself re-elected in 2004 — and having written these sort of histories for decades — I can’t dismiss it.
Congress can get answers to every one of those questions if enough of us insist. Call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and tell your representative and both of your senators that you want Kash Patel under oath about who’s actually guarding this country, that you want those agents back on counterterrorism now, and that you want a public commitment that no attack — no matter how terrible — will be used to delay or federalize the November 3 election.
Then check your registration at vote.org, make a plan to vote, and bring somebody with you.
If you found this useful, please share it with friends and family, and consider subscribing to and supporting The Hartmann Report. Independent media only survives because readers like you pass it along, and an informed and active citizenry is still the best protection this republic has ever had.
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Poisonous Natalie Harp will be the first head to roll in Trump's next purge
Who among us hasn’t been fascinated with the relationship between Donald Trump and Natalie Harp? Well, at least those of us who are obsessed with politics and palace intrigue.
Why, only this week their relationship faced renewed scrutiny following a Nebraska rally where onlookers criticized Trump for leering at Harp. He said that Harp was a “perfect person.” He’s also said that AI should be renamed SI for “super intelligence.”
Trump’s “perfect person” is prime for a clash with “super intelligence.”
Harp, for those who need an introduction, is the aide frequently spotted trailing Trump with a portable printer. She is tasked with scouring the internet for positive news clippings and physically handing the hard copies to her lazy, self-obsessed, bulbous boss.
She’s earned the infamous nickname “The Human Printer.” Her highly unusual role is built entirely around managing a fluffy information flow and curating an emotional cushion of pure praise for the insecure dictator. She may have other secret duties, which seem to be heavily guarded.
But be warned, Ms. Harp, and Donald! As tech companies race to automate white-collar professions, Harp’s daily workflow stands out as perhaps the most perfect candidate for total AI automation.
As a side note — and not having much to do with anything at all — I thought I’d add that millions of people use apps like Replika, Character.AI, Chai AI, and Nomi to form romantic and emotional relationships with AI personas. So “perfect people,” so to speak, can be AI’d too. But I digress.
Back to AI as a “human printer” and sifter alternative. At its core, the job of a media filter is a series of basic data-processing steps. As a former PR guy, when we’d make an announcement, we would have the lowest person on the team totem pole scan the “interwebs” for all the placements, and then put them in an Excel spreadsheet and label the sentiment of each story we placed as positive, negative, or neutral.
Now, AI can do this in seconds, finding the stories and determining the sentiment. What took the most junior person days to do can now be done in minutes. If Harp’s job is to scrape the news and social media, well, in theory, there would be no need for Natalie, since AI can easily and more efficiently take over.
To replace the "Human Printer" with an AI pipeline, an engineer would only need to connect an Advanced Language Model (LLM) — something like ChatGPT — to a standard RSS feed. In even simpler terms: instead of having a human manually copy, format, or print out incoming articles or updates, a smart text-based AI can be plugged directly into the website's automatic update stream to handle the job automatically.
Again, we’d have the junior person physically print out each story that the PR team got placed in a media outlet for hard copies; unfortunately, that task, too, can be turned over to AI and done within minutes.
All told, AI does it all without human boredom, mistakes, lapses in judgment, and, most of all, a salary. And here’s the kicker: Harp earns an annual salary of $150,000 in her official role as Special Assistant and Executive Assistant to President Donald Trump. Her primary function, so far as we know? Scanning the internet for narcissistic news and printing out ego-boosting fluff. If Elon Musk is again called upon to look for places to slash government waste with DOGE, I have a stellar suggestion for his very first cut.
The irony, of course, is that the political world already relies on AI to generate much of its viral content. Trump is the king. His social media feeds frequently feature wacky, surreal, machine-generated imagery of himself as Jesus, as George Washington, and as a Space Force Commander, among other outlandish depictions.
Removing Harp from the equation isn't just efficient; it completely matches how fake modern politics has become, and I don’t mean Trump’s constant cry of “fake news.” Now, a computer creates the image, humans on the internet react to it, an algorithm aggregates the praise, and a machine prints it out. Nothing real about that.
Trump doesn’t need Natalie to do this. AI can spit these out in seconds for him. AI can even schedule the Truth Social posts for him and provide him with automatic data behind the clicks and sentiment of comments.
And before she would leave, Natalie can connect it all to a printer to spit it all out automatically. When Harp’s primary job is to print out the positive public reactions to those very same AI graphics, her “perfect person” becomes an unnecessary middleman in a machine-to-machine feedback loop.
And if that isn’t super intelligence, I don’t know what is.
Furthermore, outsourcing this role to a literal machine eliminates the natural flaws of human gatekeeping. Human assistants, no matter how loyal, operate with emotional biases and career ambitions that can alter how they filter information. Mmm, does that sound like anyone you know?
AI, by contrast, is completely indifferent. It doesn't care about internal optics or palace intrigue; it simply executes its code to deliver unadulterated reassurance on a 24-hour cycle.
This is particularly relevant to Harp. Her volatile temperament and unchecked influence have been well documented, and increasingly draw skeptical scrutiny, raising questions about her presence near the Oval Office. It has been reported that she has a chaotic and erratic operational style, epitomized by an alleged lobby screaming match where Harp ultimately resorted to riding in the trunk of an SUV just to secure her spot in a court motorcade near dictator Donald.
Her influence worries Trump advisors, who, according to The New York Times, described her as "poisonous." When a top aide’s primary function is to appease the boss, then all bets fly out the window.
If the tech industry wants a real-world example of AI's power, what Harp does is a perfect example. Replacing her with software does more than cut down on printing costs, travel expenses, and obsessive behavior. It would also squash all the scuttlebutt around Harp’s relationship with her boss.
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The ammo that will wipe out Congress is in the GOP's own slogan
In a nationwide poll conducted a few weeks ago and reported on by Axios, the majority of all registered voters surveyed said the number one word to describe Donald Trump is “corrupt.” This represents a massive opportunity for Democrats both now and for the next two years.
And the experience of candidates in today’s Democrats’ position around the world validates the argument that this is the best way to both campaign and win elections and political power.
Péter Magyar defeated Viktor Orbán in the Hungarian elections because he ran a Navalny-style playbook, calling Orbán’s and his billionaire buddies’ capture of the media and most other aspects of Hungarian life a “state capture system” grounded in good old-fashioned “corruption.”
From Orban’s son-in-law pulling a Jared and using his government position to become one of the richest men in the country, to his billionaire cronies buying up the media like the billionaire Ellisons are doing here now, corruption was Magyar’s singular through-line message. And it worked, producing an overwhelming turnout and undeniable victory.
It will work here, too!
Democrats are (continuously, it seems) debating what should be their campaign strategy, their main through-line message, for the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election. Every faction and special interest group in the country is pushing their own idea, but there’s one overarching concept — one word — that can encompass most all of them and do so with a proven political punch: “Corruption.”
At every level, ever since the Reagan Revolution, the heart of Republican policies has been the naked corruption of our American political and economic systems. Since the 1980s, Republicans have sold their corruption with slogans like, “Government is the problem, not the solution,” and “Let the market decide,” but their real message is, “Turn it all over to the billionaires and their corporations.” The result has been:
— Tax cuts and loopholes for billionaires and big corporations that, in aggregate since 1981, add up to more than our total national debt of $40 trillion (in other words, Republicans borrowed $40 trillion in our names that our kids will repay and gave all of it to the morbidly rich).
— Reagan’s 1983 suspension of enforcement of the anti-trust laws that has caused every industry in America to become a form of monopoly dominated by five or fewer massive corporations, gutting competition and raising prices.
— Five on-the-take Republicans on the Supreme Court ruling that corporations are persons and money is the same thing as “free speech,” handing our elections over to the highest bidders.
— Virtually every legacy federal regulatory agency being run by industry insiders working on a revolving-door basis.
— Members of Congress and the corrupt Trump regime engaging in insider trading with impunity.
— A GOP-aligned military-industrial complex that’s essentially taken over Pentagon procurement.
— An anti-labor Labor Department; an anti-education Education department; an anti-civil rights Civil Rights enforcement agency; an anti-environment Environmental Protection Agency; etc…
— Trump’s mysterious pardons that always seem to go to people who’ve given him millions of dollars (after Giuliani claimed he and Trump were selling pardons for two million each and splitting the money).
— The wholesale gutting of the Internal Revenue Service enforcement budget and staffing that’s largely ended audits of morbidly rich people and increased audits of working-class people instead.
— The systematic sabotage and privatization of public institutions — from the US Postal Service to public schools to prisons — with virtually every one of the for-profit replacements becoming big GOP donors.
— The explosion of dark money after Citizens United so we don’t even know who’s buying our elections.
— The weaponization of the Federal Communications Commission to loosen media ownership rules while threatening outlets that dare criticize Trump or the GOP.
— Red-state-level voter suppression laws including strict ID requirements, purges of voter rolls, and reduced polling access all to discourage voting by people in demographic groups associated with Democrats.
— The Republican refusal to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices for years and they’re still blocking most efforts.
— The systematic dismantling of campaign finance enforcement, turning the Federal Election Commission into a deadlocked, do-nothing body.
— The use of tax havens and trade policy to encourage offshoring American jobs.
— The Republican normalization of lobbyists literally writing legislation via groups like the Koch-funded ALEC.
— The rewriting of environmental and labor rules to favor polluting industries by GOP appointees who often came from those very industries.
— The strategic packing of the federal judiciary with hardcore rightwing/neofascist judges.
— And now Trump’s pathetic attempts to bribe voters with his $5000 offer backed up by $80 and $500 checks going out this week to people on Medicare and the Affordable Care Act.
Even Republicans understand the power of mobilizing the public’s outrage against the corruption that they themselves have participated in for over 40 years. Astonishingly, cynically, that’s the meta-message to Trump’s main campaign slogan each of the three times he’s run for president:
“Drain the swamp.”
It worked, even though it was an outrageous lie. Democrats, who have actually been trying to do something about corruption for years, need to appropriate the anti-corruption theme as their main message. Because, universally, it works.
— When working in Russia, I witnessed the way Alexi Navalny came so close to taking down Putin that the Russian dictator ordered him murdered; it was done via Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. It systematically and relentlessly exposed the ways Putin and his cronies were looting their nation’s government while passing out favors to oligarchs willing to align themselves with them.
— In the 1980s, I was working for a German international relief organization in The Philippines when Cory Aquino mobilized an anti-corruption message against the Marcos dynasty; the week Marcos and his wife fled the country I was bumped off Philippine Airlines flights five days in a row because so many of their cronies were appropriating all the seats (the airline was run by a crony).
— When Jair Bolsonaro first successfully ran for president of Brazil it was on a campaign against the corruption “Operation Car Wash” had exposed in the Lula administration. When elected, Bolsonaro, instead of ending the corruption, slid right into the system and expanded it, leading to his own ultimate downfall and current imprisonment.
— In Delhi, activist Anna Hazare’s 2011 anti-corruption hunger strike ignited a nationwide movement that helped spur passage of India’s Lokpal anti-corruption law and led his former allies to found the “clean government” Aam Aadmi Party.
— And, of course, it was the anti-corruption message of the EuroMaidan “Revolution of Dignity” in 2014 that lifted then-comedian and TV star Volodymyr Zelenskyy into the presidency of Ukraine.
From Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive Era of the early 20th century to the present, anti-corruption messages have repeatedly proven to be one of the most potent forces in American politics, too.
— In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt built a foundation of mass support by casting monopolies as a “corrupt alliance” between the morbidly rich and our government, while the exposure of William M. “Boss” Tweed’s graft by Thomas Nast’s biting cartoons helped bring down New York’s Tammany Hall by converting complex examples of corruption into the simple story of “stolen public money.”
— The Watergate scandal turned corrupt abuse of power into a national reckoning that forced Richard Nixon from office and fueled sweeping electoral gains for reformers like Jimmy Carter, while more recent scandals like George Santos’ reinforced “clean government” as a winning local message.
— At the national level, Donald Trump’s “drain the swamp” campaign and the “rigged system” critiques advanced by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren show that, across the ideological spectrum, framing political battles as struggle against entrenched, self-dealing elites remains one of the most consistently reliable ways to get energized voters to the polls and win power.
It makes perfect sense that this should be the Democrats’ main strategy: the core philosophy of the GOP that was first made explicit by the Reagan administration — “greed is good” — openly invites corruption. As we’ve seen in virtually every congressional vote over the past decade, Republican politicians are entirely in the pockets of the fossil fuel, health insurance, tax preparation, and weapons industries, among others.
Whether it’s the corrupt collusion between the Kushner and Netanyahu families that helped lead us into an illegal war against Iran, the billions Trump’s family has made in crypto and other schemes, the insider trading on the war, putting industry insiders in charge of regulatory agencies, the DeSantis and Paxton/Abbott corruption scandals, there are vivid examples of Republican corruption laying on the public ground all over the country in plain sight.
Every Democrat in America should scan their local horizon for examples of corruption they can use against Republicans. The words “Republican corruption” should be continuously on their lips, whether campaigning, speaking to constituents, or making media appearances.
Hammer these corrupt SOBs with their own crimes against democracy and the middle class, and Democrats will see results like Magyar, Zelenskyy, Aquino, and so many others have achieved.
It’s simple, easy, and powerful: “It’s the corruption, stupid!”
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This 87-year-old was thrown out on the street — and she has America's titans scared stiff
Will the worldwide revolt against oligarchy reach America before the billionaires buy our elections this fall?
Two weeks ago tomorrow, on September 23, Madrid’s police had to cordon off a downtown street to carry an 87-year-old woman named María del Carmen Abascal out of the apartment she’d lived in for seven decades. She normally uses a wheelchair, so they carried her out on a stretcher, which provided some truly inflammatory social media video. All because her landlord wanted to raise the rent, which requires a change of tenants.
The pictures of María being carried out of her apartment lit Spain on fire; she’s become the face of the nation’s housing crisis, which has seen average rents nearly double in the past 10 years. This past weekend tens of thousands marched again, with about a thousand people camped out in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol: one banner read, “Looking for an apartment, selling a kidney.”
While the pressure campaign worked on the landlord, who backed down and agreed to let her go home, it didn’t work on the “conservative” politicians who dominate the Spanish parliament. When Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government proposed emergency tenant protections, the conservative opposition parties joined forces to kill them in parliament. As a result, Sánchez has pretty much been forced into taking the gamble of calling a snap election for November 29.
Spain is the microcosm, but this is happening all across the developed world. France is on fire because students are tired of their schools being starved for resources. Populist movements are sweeping the European continent.
Forty-five years of “conservative” neoliberalism and austerity — all specifically designed to make the rich richer at the expense of working-class people — have left average citizens furious.
And that fury is driving two parallel movements; the big question before us is which one will prevail both this fall here and over the next few years worldwide.
One movement is reflected in the encampment in Puerta del Sol where people understand that the landlord, land speculators, and the morbidly rich are the cause of their pain. You could call this the New Deal movement, for shorthand.
The other is seen in the far-right parties that have been topping the polls in Germany, France, and Britain by telling those same frightened people that it’s not the billionaires that are the problem; it’s that brown-skinned immigrant with a funny name or the queer kid who lives down the street.
Whichever side wins the argument over who’s the villain in today’s economic crisis for working people will be the one that ends up running these countries, including America.
We’ve seen this movie before here in America, although most people have no memory of it and could only vaguely recognize a quick telling of history.
The last time the morbidly rich held as much of our nation’s wealth and political power as they do today was the Gilded Age from the 1880s to the late 1920s, and popular rage at the oligarchs led to real progressive change:
— Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890, and then progressive Republican Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft used it to break up the railroad and oil trusts along with dozens of others.
— The Tillman Act of 1907 made it a crime for corporations to give money or any sort of support to federal candidates for office.
— The income tax arrived in 1913 and the estate tax in 1916, and by the 1930s Franklin Roosevelt was building Social Security, the right to unionize, and the rest of the New Deal on that simple foundation.
— After World War II, democracies around the world copied FDR’s American New Deal formula, and that tightly regulated capitalism, along with high taxes on the morbidly rich, produced the largest middle class in history.
Then working-class people and progressives got complacent, thinking this would be the new normal forever, with a single paycheck being the entrée into the middle class. The oligarchs, however, were just getting started, just like they did during the Industrial Revolution following the Civil War that produced the first Gilded Age.
As I lay out in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy, the counterattack began in 1971 when a corrupt tobacco lawyer named Lewis Powell wrote a memo for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce urging corporate America to step up and use its great wealth to seize control of our courts, campuses, media, and Congress.
The Heritage Foundation and ALEC followed within two years, as right-wing billionaires started buying radio stations, newspapers, and television networks, while Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan turned the project into government policy.
The regulations and tax rates that had restrained great wealth and political corruption came down, and the money and political power of giant corporations and the morbidly rich have largely controlled both our politics and our economy ever since.
Working people noticed they were getting screwed, but by then there was a massive right-wing media infrastructure to redirect their anger, probably the oligarchs’ greatest achievement.
For example, when Bush’s 2008 property- and bank-crash set off real rage at the banks and their oligarch CEOs, Koch-funded front groups organized it into the Tea Party and pointed it at Obama and his attempts to give all Americans healthcare.
It hit its peak of success when Donald Trump came down the escalator in 2015, telling voters he didn’t need anybody’s money because, as he put it, “I’m really rich.” Suddenly it wasn’t the rich who were screwing average Americans: it was the rich who’d save us!
To pull it off, he appropriated New Deal and Great Society language, promising to save and even strengthen Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; this is what con men have done throughout history.
The voters wanted their New Deal back with its middle-class security on a single paycheck, but, true to Republican form, what they got instead was trillions in tax cuts for billionaires like Trump and his cabinet, paid for with almost a trillion dollars in cuts to Medicaid, an experimental program in six states to further privatize Medicare, and threats to cut Social Security.
One of the most interesting laboratories for finding out whether billionaire money can still buy public opinion the way the Kochs did with the Tea Party is Prop 40 in California, the 5 percent one-time tax on that state’s roughly 230 billionaires that will cover the healthcare shortfall the state will experience because of the Big Beautiful Billionaire’s Bill’s cuts to Medicaid.
A billionaire-backed group has gathered more than $187 million to stop it, while the measure’s backers have only pulled together an estimated $31 million. Google’s Sergey Brin alone has put in over $100 million.
The billionaires’ group even succeeded in getting two decoy measures, Props 41 and 42, on the same ballot, written so that if either one gets more votes than Prop 40, the billionaire tax dies even if a majority of Californians vote for it.
And the ads for the “No on 40” campaign are featuring teachers, firefighters, and the head of the state’s Planned Parenthood affiliates, while the “Yes on 40” side says in the official voter guide that actual teachers, nurses, and Planned Parenthood workers support the tax.
It’s the same kind of phony grassroots campaign Reagan used when he promised cutting taxes and killing unions would increase prosperity, and when the Tea Party and GOP warned against “communism” in Obamacare, forcing the end to the possibility of a public option.
This same billionaire and corporate money is now pouring into the Senate races nationwide, using tools the robber barons of the late 19th century could have only dreamed about.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee released a deepfake of Texas Democrat James Talarico in a dress with a disclosure so small and faint that Berkeley digital forensics expert Hany Farid said most people wouldn’t immediately know it was fake. Another group produced a phony “Daisy” ad portraying him as a doctor performing gender surgeries on children.
In Michigan, Republicans greeted Abdul El-Sayed’s primary win with ads built around his full name and the Muslim Brotherhood, and their main super PAC has committed $51 million to that one race. On Sunday, I watched MS NOW play two of the newest deceptive Republican deepfakes, one putting Talarico in a makeup chair and another inventing “terrorists” in El-Sayed’s family.
Spending just on Senate races is projected to pass $3.4 billion this cycle, and most of the big money is just now starting to hit the airwaves and, thus, tighten the races that had seemed in the bag for Democrats.
And if the lies don’t work, there’s always the power of our currently billionaire-run government to insert itself in ways that can spin an election out of control. Last September, Trump signed a national security memorandum called NSPM-7 that directs the FBI, the Treasury, and the IRS to go after the networks and funders behind what it calls domestic terrorism, and it lists among the “indicators” of that terrorism:
“anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity.”
By that standard, María’s Spanish neighbors camped in a public square to protest a greedy landlord could find themselves under investigation. Add the masked, anonymous, trigger-happy ICE thugs already working our streets with their new electric shock gloves, and the machinery of a “papers, please” society is right here, right now.
There’s no way this one single election will settle all this. During the first Gilded Age, it took 45 years to go from the Sherman Act to Social Security — with quite a few lost elections along the way — and the people who won that fight went through it never knowing if they’d prevail or not; the biggest intervention was probably the Republican Great Depression.
But this November is a hinge moment in history. A Congress that can check Trump, a billionaire tax passed in the biggest state in the union, and senators like Talarico and El-Sayed who explicitly have run against the Epstein billionaire class would tell every Republican and the oligarchs who own them that their old trick of pointing at immigrants and trans kids has stopped working.
On the other hand, if the deepfakes, decoy ballot measures, massive right-wing media penetration, algorithmic manipulation on billionaire-owned social media platforms, and billions in ads win out instead, they’ll be used in every election from here on.
The easy lesson here is that if Spain’s protesters got an 87-year-old woman back into her home by showing up, we can do the same for our democracy that’s been so badly battered by 45 years of Republican con men and Democratic neoliberals.
The next No Kings day of action is Saturday, October 17th, and “No Kings” has always meant “No Oligarchs,” too.
Check your registration at vote.org, call your members of Congress through the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and tell them you want deepfake political ads outlawed, and if you live in California, vote yes on 40 and no on 41 and 42.
Then please share this article with everybody you know, and if you’re not already a subscriber to hartmannreport.com, your support is what keeps this work independent of the very billionaires I’m so regularly writing about.
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Trump's monstrous taunt is more than insanity — it's a demand for civil war
As a human being, I was appalled.
As an American, I was embarrassed.
As a Californian, I was alarmed.
As a citizen, I was unsurprised.
It’s apparently OK now for the President of the United States to threaten two of the most populous cities in the union, Los Angeles and San Diego. It’s even permissible to goad Iran, a nation we’re at war with, to do what he’s been wanting to do himself for years: annihilate areas that despise him.
I don’t give a damn how Donald Trump’s communications dolts try to spin it. There are no two ways of interpreting the meaning of what he said during his rally last night in Grand Island, Nebraska.
Speaking of Iran, Trump said, “They can take out a city, let ‘em take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay.”
Yes, that’s right. Destroying a pair of the nation’s most populous metropolitan locales and threatening the lives of millions of people is just fine with him, with MAGA, with the cheering morons present at his hateful address who responded to the idea that L.A. and San Diego might be vaporized in a cascade of nuclear detonation and fallout, confirming it as a fine idea.
It was, any way you slice it, a terroristic threat. Not a vague warning. Not a modest suggestion. Certainly not a joke. It outright encouraged an attack on a city where I happen to live.
The not-so-elusive subtext here is that this is something Trump himself would be overjoyed to see. He’d order our own military to “take out” the cities if he could get away with it. And the truth is he’s not all that far from having the power and immunity to do it.
“It’s a very small price to pay,” he insisted.
In fact, if you’re Trump, it’s no price at all. It would be cause for wild celebration.
A lot of people are already dismissing this as another, “Oh yeah, there goes Donald again. He couldn’t have meant it the way it sounded.”
But he meant it precisely that way.
Where is the condemnation? Where is the rage?
Oh sure, it’s treasonous, grounds for impeachment, unforgivable, time to invoke the 25th Amendment, blah blah blah. Spare me. We’ve heard it a million times before and nothing ever happens because insanity and incapacity are no longer seen as deal-breakers. Not when your Republican colleagues and the Supreme Court have your back to say and do whatever you want.
So evidently there’s no such thing as, “This time he’s gone too far.” Because if this ain’t too far, what possibly could be? I guess we’re all about to find out in four weeks.
Here’s the thing: I don’t think for a moment that this just accidentally slipped out of Trump’s mouth. He well understands there appears to be no significant penalty for going after California, certainly not the Southern part where Los Angeles and San Diego are located.
I’ve lived in L.A. pretty much my entire life, but it’s only over the past few decades that the rancor directed here has grown particularly ugly. My state occupies a peculiar place in the American imagination. We’re simultaneously envied, resented, admired, feared and held out as a political symbol.
Our economy is the fourth largest in the world. Our weather leaves people envious. Our state is a shorthand for Liberal America, our sun-drenched lifestyle synonymous with ease and comfort. When people from the rest of the country attack us, it’s like going after billionaires. We’re left to defend ourselves, as if enjoying our lives is somehow a character defect.
No one wants to hear about our traffic or housing problems or inflated cost of living or sky-high gasoline. That’s just the price of living in purported paradise. The fact that we’re not nearly as utopian as our reputation might suggest is irrelevant.
The nearby western states like Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Idaho, Oregon and Montana blame Californians moving to their states to escape high prices as responsible for raising their own. That, and we bring our politics with us, too – hence the bumper sticker, “Don’t California My Texas.”
Most of us who call California home have experienced some version of this denigration while traveling around the country. “Oh my God! How can you possibly live there?” I recall being asked precisely that way on multiple occasions, as if they were talking about a landfill.
I’m sick to death of the national demonization of the state in general and L.A. in particular and having to defend it. My basic thought is that this is a pretty great place to set down roots if you like city life – and a lot of how you adapt to an area is in your own attitude. Anywhere can be hell or nirvana, depending on where one’s head is at.
There are plenty of issues you encounter while living in L.A., including a healthy percentage of entitled jerks confronted on one’s daily rounds. But that’s also true nearly everywhere.
This brings us back to Trump’s reprehensible raising of the idea that perhaps Iran should strongly consider nuking Southern California. I mean, we don’t vote for him and, in fact, loathe him, so what gives us the right to continue to exist? A not insignificant percentage of the population seemingly believes the nation would be better off without us.
What it tells me is that we in the city I love have more to fear from our fellow countrymen than from any foreign power. This is not necessarily a shock at this point, but it’s frightening and deeply disturbing. This is what it’s come to in our hopelessly divided nation: a president unfathomably encouraging a nation with whom we’re at war to incinerate a few of the cities he has no use for.
And should that happen, he’d enthusiastically lend a helping hand
It’s nothing less than a call to civil war.
Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.
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A world of pain awaits Todd Blanche — and Trump's pardon is useless
Two things about this administration stick out like sunflowers, though they're blooming black instead of bright yellow.
First, it is absolutely apparent that if one is close enough to Trump, ethics and the law pose no limitations in the ever-pursuit of money and power (mostly money). Second, given that so many of their crimes and ethics violations occur so clearly as to be picked up by satellite, they apparently believe that they will forever enjoy the current political climate.
The first is locked in; the second seems all but ridiculous and must be based on the belief in an impregnable pardon power.
But one better be just as criminally careful relying on that second one. Because there are consequences beyond federal pardons.
Enter Todd Blanche.
Blanche may be so exposed to consequences — possible criminal ones — that he may someday look with envy at Pam Bondi for getting out early. Blanche may be so exposed he looks breathlessly at Don Jr. and Eric. Blanche might someday realize that in the entirety of this corrupt administration, he is actually ground zero as to criminal and ethical investigations, perhaps finding himself impeached prior to Hegseth.
And he may lose a lot more than his law license.
Oh, and Blanche doesn't have the luxury of hoping that he's in office for six years. That is going to matter as we get around to it. It is stunning that he continues, to this day, to flout all laws and ethics as if he were an emperor/king, even a Führer.
Let's start at the top, and possible criminal violations. To wit:
There is the Eric Adams prosecution, admittedly started by Emil Bove, who then drove the prosecution into the ground, with DOJ ultimately abandoning the prosecution and putting three prosecutors on administrative leave after they refused to go along.
Blanche offered the three a return to the department if they expressed regret and admitted wrongdoing. They saw the writing on the wall and resigned, stating, “We will not confess wrongdoing when there was none.” DOJ demanded that “obedience supersedes all else” despite nearly every professional ethics attorney saying the rule is the exact opposite.
If evidence ultimately showed that Blanche and other officials used threats to employment or other adverse governmental action to force lawyers to do something they were legally prohibited from doing, New York's coercion statutes may well come into play. First-degree coercion specifically reaches coercion that compels someone to “violate his or her duty as a public servant,” and it's a Class D felony.
And so wow.
Next up, perhaps a more serious one, though more difficult to prove — crypto market manipulation in violation of the New York securities/commodities fraud under the Martin Act
The facts align with something serious. Blanche owned somewhere between $159,000 and $485,000 in digital assets, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and Cardano. Like a Boy Scout, he had expressly stated that he would avoid any “direct and predictable effect” on those financial interests.
Right.
Except, on April 7, 2025, he dismantled the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, bad enough, and then — this is STUNNING — specifically shifted DOJ away from already-initiated investigations and prosecutions targeting crypto exchanges.
All but as a matter of course, once the crypto market was declared a free-for-all in the Wild West, the market jumped on the news, making every asset, including Blanche's treasure chest, more valuable. Keep in mind, Martha Stewart went to federal prison for lying to investigators about a suspicious stock trade. Our man created policy that would increase the value of assets he owned.
*It must be said that Blanche transferred $116,000-$350,000 to his adult children and a grandchild, which means nothing about nothing under the law if done to enhance that family asset — as if NO ONE had ever thought of that trick before.
So there is serious state criminal exposure without even having to go to Virginia to visit him, forcing bad-faith prosecutions of Comey. (New York is particularly respected for having a well-developed and tested criminal code.)
Moving to the more interesting and more up-to-date violations, let's look at the millions of ways Blanche could lose his law licenses in New York and D.C., and thus an application anywhere else, too.
First off, it's a good idea to emphasize that caution should be used to avoid any situation in which 101 ex-federal and state judges file a bar complaint against you in your home state, as happened on June 22, 2025 (and it gets more recent), out of Blanche's handling of the Abrego García issue. But wait, there's more. The complaint is not just a press release or petition. It is a 69-page professional-responsibility complaint, one that is meticulous in its factual recitation, that alleges a broader pattern of abuse of DOJ investigative and prosecutorial powers, conflicts involving Trump, disregard of court orders, and professional misconduct, and asks New York disciplinary authorities to act.
The complaint then lists ethical rules that Blanche may have violated.
Here's a thing. When a bar association finds itself on the receiving end of a complaint signed by 101 former judges, that complaint tends to get very serious attention — very, very serious attention. After all, it only takes a handful of current state judges to yank that license.
So why the rundown of all the reasons you knew that Blanche could be in serious trouble? Because, just last week, just like Britney, whoops, he did it again.
On September 30, Blanche announced that the DOJ had filed a judicial-misconduct complaint against essentially the entire active federal district bench in Minnesota after judges spoke publicly about Blanche and the Trump administration's handling of immigration enforcement and what they described as ignoring court orders.
Bad, bad, bad. The judges have a ton of ethical authority to speak publicly in defense of judicial independence and the rule of law. But Blanche aimed the Justice Department's own disciplinary machinery against them. For a lawyer already accused of abusing DOJ authority against people who cross the administration, somebody might want to reopen Rule 8.4(d): ‘conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice.'
Bonus round: Just days ago, reporters cornered Blanche about his 2025 remarks to the Federalist Society, in which he essentially declared “war” against “activist judges” and then went so far as to encourage young lawyers to fight back against judges opposing administration policies. Blanche proceeded to lash out toward the reporters.
Okay. So. Wait. First, how does a young lawyer "fight back" against a judge? That lawyer might be better off just offering to go outside and literally fistfight than the only other means: either ignoring the order or burying it in paper to get around the order. An obvious question arises: Is he telling his junior lawyers at DOJ to "fight activist judges by ignoring orders?"
*For non-lawyer readers, an "activist judge" is one who rules against you.
And I may be the only lawyer in the United States who believes it's somewhat possible for future prosecutors to get around presidential pardons, opening a treasure chest of federal crimes. Before anyone yells, I am aware it's a long, long shot.
But it is possible that if a pardon is issued as part of an ongoing fraud conspiracy, such as a quid pro quo, "You do this, protect me from that, you get a pardon forever in some way, but you can't ever talk," it may not be a safe pardon. Put it this way, I'd challenge it — pardons are powerful, especially when done with people you'll never know who came up through a process reviewed and signed off on by others.
And yet, with each pardon issued to everyone around you, they "feel" less powerful and feel more like, well, a mob family, and racketeering that could involve acts (moving money, as one) that continue post-presidency. In some way, for some reason, probably requiring an outright economic depression, in part because Trump was so busy doing his own business, along with shocking findings in investigations, it's conceivable that there will even be federal consequences by stretching those facts post-pardon.
Prosecutors might be granted lots of leeway in such a situation (this country can get mad fast, including MAGA, if the economy truly bottoms out). And Blanche has to be the guy — other than Trump and his family — who tops the leaderboard in post-pardon exposure.
Blanche is a lot of things, but stupid isn't one of them. Unlike Trump, who brags about being "a high IQ person," Blanche is likely loaded with IQ points, perhaps rivaling his crypto points. It is thus utterly mystifying that he keeps doing it. A guy who will already have to navigate a complaint filed by 101 federal judges files his own complaint for judicial misconduct for an act that plainly doesn't violate the judicial canon of ethics?
C'mon, man. Can't he see himself begging for mercy at some point? And NOT getting it? Perhaps sooner than he thinks, at least with respect to his law license. A guy this smart has to know that Trump can't protect him forever. He can't even protect him in three more years, no matter how MAGA they all might be, and can't protect him at all if dude's law license is yanked.
The story is one thing if Blanche got off to a rocky start and then sort of found his own power and ability to say "no" to Trump. But if anything, it's getting worse. And that brings up the final point, the hammer.
If the entire MAGA movement didn't have so much to lose, it would and should be Blanche impeached over and above Pete Hegseth.
Here's another general rule. Every single one of your IQ points is rendered useless when you are utterly reliant on a very low IQ person, especially one granting himself temporary unlimited power; it does no good when authorities with lots of points come along and explain them to you.
We know Blanche can read. But that doesn't do any good when he prioritizes reading his boss more than the rules, especially the limits of possible consequences.
Jason Miciak is a Raw Story columnist, former editor at Occupy Democrats, an author, attorney, public speaker, and single parent girldad. Please follow on Bluesky and he can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com
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Red-state Republicans just swept their colleague's urine-soaked scandal under the rug
If anyone in the private sector had sexual harassment claims substantiated by human resources, they’d be out. Fired. Whatever terminology you prefer.
That goes double if that employee also demonstrated such horrendously bad judgment that they were involved in a situation that resulted in a cup of urine being left on an assistant’s desk.
But not in the Oklahoma House, where a committee stopped short of recommending expulsion for state Rep. Danny Williams.
That bipartisan group of lawmakers met behind closed doors for two days last month to hear testimony from witnesses and victims before determining that Williams, R-Seminole, had sexually harassed multiple women and urinated in that cup.
But rather than vote to discipline the 77-year-old by expelling him, this committee merely recommended the full House reprimand him — the equivalent of a public slap on the wrist.
They also recommended that Williams be stripped of all committee assignments and leadership posts, lose access to a legislative assistant and have no one-on-one contact with House staff. (They didn’t address how they’re going to protect his constituents from having one-on-one contact.)
This committee also suggested Williams complete “approved sexual harassment and toxic workplace training,” though apparently nobody can require him to do that.
They also called on him to resign and not seek reelection, but again that’s optional. So far, he hasn’t done those either.
Rather, Williams denied the claims and called the process unfair.
Despite the fact that this is an HR issue and not a criminal trial, Williams complained that he “couldn’t challenge” those who accused him or “deal with false statements.”
He also denied urinating in the cup despite House Speaker Kyle Hilbert saying Williams was one of only two people working late that night that could have done it. (Even if he didn’t personally urinate in that cup, it’s not the job of William’s assistant to dispose of bodily fluids that belong in a toilet.)
Rep. Andy Fugate, D-Oklahoma City, said if any employee of a private business had faced the same accusations, they would have been terminated.
But Fugate said the House “is limited by its rules, procedures, and the reality of an election just weeks away.”
“The action taken today was all we had available, but it was not enough,” he said. “The House employees who came forward deserve better, and so do the people of Oklahoma.”
They certainly do.
The outcome of the committee hearing was an embarrassment. What was the point of expending the resources on this farce if they weren’t going to actually recommend anything substantive, enforceable and that actually protects the public from the behavior they allege Williams to have perpetuated?
To his credit, Hilbert had previously implemented some of the committee’s recommendations that included stripping Williams of his committee assignments and leadership posts and moving his office to the fifth floor. Hilbert later said he’ll permanently implement the rest of the recommendations, which include no one-on-one contact with House staff. He said he couldn’t force Williams to resign or to complete sexual harassment and toxic workplace training.
So this bipartisan committee left the room metaphorically wringing their hands, and lamenting that they tried their best – but saying those hands were also metaphorically tied.
They might want you to think that, but it’s not true.
Lawmakers have the power to expel each other with a two-thirds vote, but first they need to put on their big boy pants and muster up the guts to kick out one of their own.
While they shouldn’t use that power lightly, if any behavior calls for expulsion, sexual harassment seems to.
I mean, good Lord, the House committee reported that they substantiated the claims of multiple victims. There was even urine involved. Ew.
So that begs the question: why aren’t House members willing to expel their own?
In recent years, they’ve never expelled anyone. They came closest with former Republican Rep. Dan Kirby. A different House investigatory committee found he had sexually harassed an employee and rightly recommended expulsion. Kirby, who denied the accusation, resigned before the House could consider it.
It’s clear House leadership and some Republicans lack the political willpower to police their own membership and friends.
Don’t believe me? Rep. David Hardin, R-Stilwell, inexplicably voted against 2 of 3 disciplinary recommendations. The only one he supported was the do-nothing public reprimand.
Then after the hearing, Hilbert made this comment about Williams: “I think one of the most frustrating things about this is just not acknowledging what has happened, or not having remorse and just kind of doubling down. Because I think with a lot of these things, remorse would have went a long way. But unfortunately, that was not the choice that he chose to make, and so here we are today.”
“Remorse” doesn’t ever excuse sexual harassment. That committee should convene anytime there’s substantiated behavior that would get someone fired in the private sector, regardless of whether someone apologizes.
These aren’t children still learning appropriate behavior.
These are adults who are supposed to be overseeing billions of public dollars. Part of their job is ensuring the people employed in our Capitol are safe from unwanted sexual conduct, regardless of whether the offender is an elected official.
The Capitol is also a place where tens of thousands of everyday Oklahomans visit their elected leaders. Oklahomans shouldn’t have to worry that someone is going to sexually harass them or wonder if lawmakers will sweep it under the rug to protect each other.
If lawmakers behave badly, Oklahomans should know there will be zero tolerance.
Sorry doesn’t cut it. Expulsion does.
We cannot let a good ol’ boys culture continue to thrive where there’s an attitude of “Gawrsh,” as Goofy likes to drawl when he’s surprised or dismayed, anytime an elected official behaves badly.
Williams’ accusers are probably still going to see him around the state Capitol, and this outcome is exactly why people are afraid to come forward.
Our Statehouse should not be allowed to operate like the worst fraternity houses that we see on the news where people are hazed, members are drunk and women are mistreated.
It seems like lawmakers’ motto is “voters will take care of problems.”
Why should victims have to wait for relief? Why should voters have to do this? And what happens if voters don’t?
If a lawmaker wins reelection, they’ll turn back up like a bad penny.
And now duly warned, taxpayers will be on the hook to pay to defend costly lawsuits for any future misconduct if lawmakers continue to refuse to protect us all from their colleagues.
Oklahoma Voice is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.
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Trump knows horrors so awful that Republicans commit treason to silence him
Former special counsel Jack Smith set off a MAGA triggerstorm on Tuesday after Senate Republicans bombed their questioning during a cringeworthy embarrassment of a hearing.
While he was warmly welcomed by the Senate Judiciary Committee’s ranking Democrat, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Smith received the full MAGA beclowning treatment from such political luminaries as the ancient Chuck “Grasshole” Grassley (R-IA) and Eric “Schmitthead” Schmitt of Missouri, who may be the dumbest MAGA clown of them all.
Trying to “gotcha” the unflappable Smith — who never once invoked the 5th Amendment — Schmitt instead humiliated himself when he got all of his facts wrong, while also confusing two different sports teams.
Schmitt is just the latest Trumpsimp to humiliate himself on the global stage, doing his part to weakly distract from the Epstein Files, but instead reminding everyone that everything they’re doing is a weak distraction from the Epstein Files.
It makes me sick to my stomach whenever MAGA Republicans try to make the actions of one person apply to a completely different person. In this case, Schmitt was trying to get Jack Smith to admit he conspired with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, a woman Smith has never actually met, by mentioning her alleged affair with a former colleague. No mention of the thrice-married serial cheater Epstein Bestie, of course.
Schmitt was getting rightfully dragged all over social as a result, but he wasn’t alone in showing just how low the Republican Party has sunk under the weight of Trump’s ineptitude while weakening America on the global stage. Sen. John “I Don’t Deserve This Name” Kennedy (R-LA) brought the collective IQ down even more.
"Do you believe in the Tooth Fairy?" he asked Smith. "How about the Easter bunny?"
When Democrats get their Congressional majority back, I hope they’ll launch investigations into their Republican colleagues’ full fealty, because it’s gone on for far too long.
A decade too long, to be precise.
It’s easy enough to pinpoint when it all began, because we watched it happen. First, Trump was the joke candidate, the spoiler, the media ratings boon of a buffoon. And then the RNC and DNC servers were hacked by the Russians, which Trump clearly knew about because he asked Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s missing emails. We remember that the Russians released what they found on the Democrats (cue the craving for that national security risk of a risotto recipe), but held onto whatever dirt they found out about the GOP.
I’ve written before about what horrors could be so bad that someone would rather be blackmailed into treason against their country than have anyone find them out, and the mind truly reels at the thought.
Whatever their individual reasons are for protecting one man over our democracy — and trust me, I’d love to be able to ask every single Trumpublican myself what they are — there’s also their full compliance this entire time with almost no pushback from within the party.
The Jack Smith testimony reminds us that Trump should’ve been prosecuted once he lost the protection of the White House.
Why that never happened is one of the many frustrations that is beyond me. Trump and his co-conspirators first tried to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 election, then staged an insurrection when that failed. Republicans spoke out against Trump in the wake of January 6th, yet soon went right back to him, even after he left the White House.
I’d love to know why, wouldn’t you? Were they still so worried about blackmail at that point? The smart move for the GOP at that moment would have been to stand together against Trump and use his Russian Propaganda tactics against him. Imagine if they had stood up to Putin and told the world that they had been threatened by Trump. What if they had said he was a liar who stole Top Secret government documents to keep them compliant while he plotted his return to the White House in 2024? What did they have to lose when Trump went on to get arrested four separate times, resulting in a mugshot and 34 felony convictions?
A MUGSHOT. Instead of being embarrassed by it, they embraced it with their newfound false bravado, pretending it was perfectly normal for a former President to have a rap sheet.
That was the moment to collectively shed his blight and walk away to find a proper candidate to run in 2024. Whatever Trump said about any of them after that could be dismissed as lies to overcompensate for what was happening to him.
And yet, they stayed with him.
Even after he lost in court to E. Jean Carroll, branding him a sexual abuser to add to his convicted felon title.
The old Grand Old Party would have walked away long ago.
Now they say nothing as he demolishes the White House and decorates whatever’s left with tacky gold overstock that fell off a Hobby Lobby truck. Save for Thomas Massie, who’s leaving the House early after being primaried because Trump got mad about him over the Epstein Files, they’re all involved in the Epstein Files coverup, a scandal that includes the Attorney General.
None of this is normal and none of it should have been normalized in the first place.
Democrats need to make the Republicans’ fealty to a fascist a much bigger talking point as we barrel ahead towards the midterms. Make everything about Trump stick to them. His every lie, grift, threat, and crime is theirs, too. His legacy of failure and death belongs to all of them as well.
They are Trump. He is them. They made their choice to protect him over our democracy a decade ago, but we should never have to suffer for their sycophantic suppliance.
But every last traitorous Trumpublican should suffer the consequences of their actions.
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Oblivious Trump is barreling forward with a vow even Republicans despise
It has been a long time since any one issue crossed partisan boundaries, as easily as swapping lanes, like voter hatred of AI and data centers.
True, there are a few GOP stragglers out there — non-billionaires who simply follow whatever Donald Trump says, even though Trump has so clearly taken an "America-last" stance on the issue and buddied up with his super-rich friends to defend AI and all its horrors.
And yet it appears to be one of the few issues over which his supporters have said "enough!"
No single thing will propel the blue wave in the midterms more than simply the fact that Americans are getting sick of Trump. But this issue will be a close second, while also contributing to the fatigue.
This is as pure a policy argument as one will find. Nothing to do with personalities. Nothing about "boys playing girls' sports," none of that distracting stuff. Data centers are going up everywhere — to the outrage of local communities, the looming fear of Wall Street, the horror of the regular mid-tier businessperson knowing that their job is gone within the next couple of years, even the CEOs of the companies themselves who have uttered tepid "concerns" about the need to slow down.
Democrats certainly get it — this isn't a MENSA test. AI issues present unique dangers unlike any we've ever seen before, similar to climate change, only more immediate. Unlike climate change, a significant number of right-wingers understand this particular danger along with Democrats. And that's where these Red Congress critters find themselves in a heap of trouble.
Indeed, the issue alone may cost them a once-considered fairly safe Senate seat in Ohio.
Axios reported that the Republican National Committee sent a memo to the John Husted campaign that said Democrats had made data centers a centerpiece of the race and “it's working.” The party distributed the warning nationwide for Republicans, but it is Sherrod Brown, the Democratic candidate, who has spent millions plastering Husted's face as the king of Ohio data center expansion. Smartly, the ads tie data centers to tax subsidies and electricity costs. A Fox News poll cited by Axios had Brown ahead by 8 points at the time.
Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI), Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R-PA), Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA) and Rep. Ben Cline (R-VA) all find themselves in essentially the same spot — purple districts in which Democratic challengers are blasting airwaves and screens with anti-data center issues pulling them ahead of the Republicans.
The data center issue is the more visceral and acute sub-issue, but jobs and the precarious economy should not be far behind. Of course, AI and Data Centers threaten that precarious economy, too. There's no way to separate AI from nearly anything.
And yet there's absolutely nothing the Republicans running can do about it, not while Donald Trump is being Donald Trump, entirely uncaring about voters, caring very much about his billionaire pals who, while they might be a bit hesitant on AI technical developments, are very much behind development of data centers themselves.
Trump is pushing an enormous national AI/data-center buildout, with federal subsidies leaving local voters with the electricity bills, water consumption, land use and subsidies. It leaves Republican candidates discovering that Trump's national economic project is just venomous with voters. The issue has been so bad that Trump's longtime pollster Tony Fabrizio circulated what's been referenced as a "survival guide" instructing candidates what to say in response.
Though none of us have seen the survival guide, one can bet that "beating China" is a major part of the justification, which makes it stupefying that Trump just literally rolled out the red carpet for the adversary we have to beat — no talks or bilateral agreements to slow down, to keep the need from competing with each other. Of course, "slowing down" might mean hurting the market that Trump needs propped up lest it fall apart.
Meanwhile, anti-AI messaging comes from even higher places and beyond this country. Just today, Pope Leo — who hasn't missed a chance to oppose Trump — warned of the larger AI issue, the one well beyond just data centers, the one about, "are we setting ourselves up to be destroyed?" that little issue, when he noted:
If we are to avoid losing our humanity amid a ‘paradise of machines’ invading and conditioning our daily lives, there is an urgent need for education in ethical discernment and the capacity to acknowledge the moral good.
The single last thing that Donald Trump ever cares about is "ethical discernment" and "moral good." The idea is nearly enough to make you fall down laughing, were the topic not so serious.
And it is serious. For the first time, the vast majority of American voters, red and blue, highly oppose both the buildout and the outcome. Indeed on this one issue, the president who brags that he's so smart has a unique opportunity to likely use language about taking time for ethical discussions and moral good, all while largely ignoring it, but have at least Republicans feeling better about it all.
But he cannot even do that right.
Yet again, it's Leo who is the best American leader, the one who likely would pull Congress aside — "pass some legislation, put the world on a six-month break, it's time for some ethical discernment about the moral good" — and what's sad is that he's certainly not the only leader who would make such a move. Give any Democrat a shot at it, or even some Republicans.
It won't happen. And because of it, the GOP is running right into the blue wave because it has to.
It will be one of many reasons they rightfully lose Congress. If only that were enough.
Jason Miciak is a Raw Story columnist, former editor of Occupy Democrats, an author, attorney, consultant, and single parent girldad. Please follow on Bluesky and he can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com
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Hopeless Trump is just a step away from committing the unthinkable
It isn’t catastrophizing to assume that Donald Trump is going to do everything we fear he may do to threaten the midterms, if for no other reason than every one of his actions lately demonstrates his belief that no rule or law applies to him — and losing in Congress obviously threatens his base of absolute power.
What Trump has gotten really good at lately is whining, as his Time magazine cover interview last week makes abundantly clear. Wah! You only write bad stories about me! Wah! Your numbers about my polling are fake and the pollsters are corrupt! Wah! You haven’t asked me one positive question! Wah! The Supreme Court votes against me unfairly! I give those guys the position of a lifetime and look what they do to me! Wah! They blame me for the deficit when it’s all Biden’s fault!
Yes, we know. Poor, poor, abused Donnie. It’s all so very unfair.
But even though his approval rating hovers around 30% and he’s roughly as popular as a cockroach found crawling under your sheets at 2:30 AM, that hardly means the president isn’t as dangerous as he’s ever been, if not more so. Rejection makes him only more desperate. It isn’t as if he’s going to change up the narrative by listening to his detractors and becoming more reasonable.
We still hang on his every word and what it means, despite this guy’s ever-increasing detachment from reality. In that same Time interview, he declined to rule out an emergency before the midterms that would force his hand to invoke the Insurrection Act. Asked about the deployment of armed ICE thugs at polling places, he claimed not to have given it any thought — which of course means he’s given it nothing but thought.
Let’s unpack this a step at a time.
First, what would an invocation of the Insurrection Act actually mean? While it could give Trump substantial power to deploy federal troops in the streets, it wouldn’t grant him legal authority to cancel the November 3 elections, take over election administration, station troops at polling places, seize ballots or decide which election results count.
If he attempted some of those things anyway — and we know he very well might, since he no longer distinguishes between what’s legal and what isn’t, and we can’t rely on Congress to stop any of it — the country would face a constitutional and legal crisis of immense magnitude.
The Insurrection Act does again permit the president the use of federal troops or federalized National Guard forces to suppress an insurrection, domestic violence or purportedly unlawful conspiracy that obstructs federal law or deprives people of federally protected rights.
The civilian government, however, continues operating. Governors remain governors. Courts remain courts. Elections remain in force under civilian administration, and ordinary constitutional protections would likewise stay put.
We can imagine that the only genuine threat under an Insurrection Act order would come from the presence of those very troops, or, of course, from groups like the Proud Boys doing their best to manufacture chaos, mayhem and carnage.
However, deploying the Insurrection Act isn’t the same as declaring martial law, nor would martial law automatically follow. Martial law is considerably more extreme. In its conventional meaning, military authority would temporarily replace, rather than merely assist, civilian authority and assume all government functions.
No existing federal statute authorizes the president simply to declare martial law absent an emergency pretext. But that naturally wouldn’t stop Trump from simply concocting one out of thin air.
It is, frighteningly, a small but significant step from Insurrection Act to martial law.
Suppose Trump invoked the act on November 1 or 2 and ordered thousands of troops into several cities. That alone wouldn’t be martial law. But imagine if the administration subsequently commanded military forces to take control of government buildings; imposed broad curfews preventing ordinary civilian activity (like organizing street protests); interfered with election administration; or disregarded orders from federal courts.
Then we would be in the throes of martial law. At that point, the issue wouldn’t simply be, “Has Trump formally declared martial law?” but “Has the government substituted military power for civilian government in defiance of lawful authority?”
The courts would almost certainly become involved immediately. But their actual authority would only be as recognized as is the rule of law itself. And if the administration has already declared itself all-powerful and immune from being held to account — the executive branch having rendered the legislative and judicial functions of government inert — then it wouldn’t matter.
On some level, we’re all still somewhat assuming that conventional law would be followed simply because it’s difficult for us to envision what an actual government takeover looks like. But there is, in fact, little evidence at present that if it’s clear the Republicans are about to lose the House and quite possibly the Senate as well, Trump’s hopelessness wouldn’t lead to the unprecedented.
And yeah, suddenly the unthinkable is thinkable.
We have already seen what happens when Trump refuses to accept the results of an election. On January 6, 2021, a mob attacked the Capitol to obstruct the certification of a defeat, inspiring havoc, violence, destruction and a grave threat to our ongoing experiment in democracy. And trust me, it is still very much an experiment.
January 6 was the time when the Insurrection Act should have been invoked. Instead, the perpetrators were pardoned, and that Get Out of Jail Free Card they were furnished with that day remains valid.
What makes us think the assault on democracy won’t be 100 times worse should they lose? This is a president who rewards loyalty and uncivil disobedience. Anyone who believes that it happened once but it can’t happen again is living in denial.
Get ready to fight for our country, because this is probably going to get very ugly. But while they have only power hunger and rebellion on their side, we have integrity, justice, the law and history on ours.
Let’s hope that’s enough this time.
(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)
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The GOP's slipping numbers show the one thing Americans won't tolerate
The last time Kansas elected a Democrat to the Senate was 1932. Yet on Friday, Democratic Senate candidate Adam Hamilton received his second endorsement from a Republican former Kansas governor in less than a month, in his race against Republican incumbent Senator Roger Marshall.
The top Senate Republican super PAC is so concerned that Marshall could lose the race that it’s diverting funds to Kansas from North Carolina, where it’s canceled its remaining ads against Democrat Roy Cooper — basically conceding North Carolina (by the way, a Democrat hasn’t won statewide federal office in North Carolina in nearly two decades).
To say it’s not looking good for Republicans is an understatement.
Trump is an albatross around the necks of every Republican running for Congress or governor. He’s also posing problems for plenty of Republican candidates for state office.
Why?
It’s not that Americans have suddenly discovered that Trump is a despicable human being. His personality has been on national display for more than a decade.
It’s not that Trump’s hold over his MAGA base has significantly weakened. Polls show self-identified MAGAs are still firmly in his camp.
It’s not that most Americans have become angry that the major beneficiaries of Trump’s tax cuts are big corporations and the very rich, or that the burdens of his spending cuts disproportionately fall on the poor (as less nutrition assistance and Medicaid), or that his mass deportations are violent and cruel. There’s no evidence that these policies are suddenly swaying voters.
And it’s not that voters have become any more aware of Trump’s lies. He continues to say the U.S. is experiencing a “golden age” with a “roaring economy” that’s doing “better than any other country” in the world, and that any negative public perception is due to a “public relations” problem.
No, the real problem for Trump and Republicans is Americans are hurting, and they know it’s because of Trump and Republicans.
A new AP-NORC poll shows a record low 26 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy, while just 17 percent approve of how he’s handling the cost of living. These are comparable to George W. Bush’s ratings during the 2008 financial crisis and George H.W. Bush’s just before he was swept out of office. The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index fell to 81.9 in September, its lowest since April 2014.
In Kansas, for example, Trump’s tariffs have caused China, Canada, and Mexico to retaliate by sharply cutting demand for wheat, sorghum, and soybeans. As a result, Kansas grain silos are so swollen that grain brokers have been forced to reroute human-grade grain into dog food.
At the same time, tariffs on foreign-produced aluminum and steel have driven up the prices of farm machinery and replacement parts. Trump’s decision to lift certain foreign beef import restrictions has hurt the beef sales of local cattle ranchers.
Trump’s war in Iran has choked off shipping of sulfur and phosphate in the Persian Gulf, causing nitrogen and phosphate fertilizer prices to surge by over 100 percent. The blockage has also caused diesel prices to soar, making farmers pay $200 per acre just to fuel their tractors.
These higher costs and lower crop sales have resulted in the closure of roughly 700 Kansas farms over the past year. Many remaining farmers are barely holding on.
This explains why Kansas’s former Republican governor Mike Hayden endorsed Democrat Adam Hamilton over Republican incumbent Roger Marshall in Friday’s Wichita Eagle:
“Sen. Marshall time and again has chosen to back the tariffs and the war, despite what is happening back in Kansas. Kansans need a senator willing to stand up and say this isn’t working.”
There it is, folks.
Americans can bear Trump’s awful personality. Some might succumb to his MAGA cult. They might believe many of his lies.
But they can’t abide what Trump’s policies are doing to them and their families.
Forget the rip-roaring stock market. When it comes to voting, kitchen-table economics — the financial realities average people talk about over the kitchen table, such as the prices they’re paying and the money they’re earning — are more potent than anything else.
I continue to warn against complacence. It’s still vitally important that we vote, and that we encourage everyone we know — especially those who share our values — to vote. And it’s crucially important to remain vigilant against Trump’s interference in our elections.
But with a little more than four weeks to go, I’m breathing a wee bit easier. I hope you are, too.
- Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His 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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