Opinion

At this hour, enough Senate Democrats seem willing to cave to give Republicans the 60 votes they need to end the shutdown without agreeing to Democratic demands to restore Obamacare subsidies starting next January.

IMHO, this is really stupid.

In yet another display of the same divisive rhetoric that defined his first term, US President Donald Trump has once again pulled the United States into the crosshairs of global instability, this time by saber rattling over Nigeria’s complex ethnic and religious conflict. Trump not only threatened to slash US aid, but he also said he might order “fast and vicious” military strikes against what he calls “Islamic terrorists” slaughtering Christians. Aside from the fact that Trump is wrong, he is ranting xenophobic ideas, platforming American exceptionalism, and demonstrating a blatant disregard for the lives of millions caught in the cross fire of what is simply a resource war with colonial-era grudges.

Let’s be clear: The violence taking place today in Nigeria is heartbreaking and must end. Boko Haram’s extremism, clashes between farmers and herders, and general hooliganism have claimed over 20,000 civilian lives since 2020. It is true that Christian communities in the north-central regions have suffered unimaginable horrors as raids have left villages in ashes, children murdered in their beds, and churches reduced to rubble. The April massacre in Zike and the June bloodbath in Yelwata are prime examples of the atrocities taking place in Nigeria. These incidents are grave reminders that the international community must pay more attention to this crisis.

I know what it means to be starved by those in power. As a little girl, if not for my grandparents’ ancient walnut tree that fed us, and not for my grandma’s beloved chickens who laid eggs and now and then were a very special Sunday soup, if not for my sister—just a few years older than me—standing in line at dawn to fight adults for bread, I would have been significantly malnourished. I would watch my sister come home exhausted from those pre-dawn battles with full-grown adults, clutching a loaf of bread that meant we might be a little less hungry than we were the day before.

I never thought I’d see that kind of chosen starvation—the kind that Romania’s Nicolae Ceaușescu was notorious for—in America. I was wrong.

Last week’s column noted the dismal approval ratings for Trump and even worse for Montana’s all-Republican Congressional delegation. Indeed, with one in three (or fewer) Montanans approving the delegation and the record low national approval of the president, it seemed like the propaganda about how great everything is was, well, running into the hard wall of reality.

Then came Tuesday’s elections and the reality-TV president and his gobbling MAGA sycophants nationwide went down hard as the voters “just said no” to the anger, lies, and aggression spinning out of the White House.