Trump learns the lessons of the past
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
Trump planted a bomb that's set to sink his whole presidency
Friends,
Trump’s revenge tour continues.
Republican congressman and Trump critic Thomas Massie lost Tuesday to Trump-backed challenger Ed Gallrein in the most expensive House primary in U.S. history (total cost was more than $32 million from combined campaign and super PAC spending).
Massie lost by a 10-point margin after being outspent 2-to-1 for most of the race. Pro-Israel groups (AIPAC, RJC) accounted for just over 30 percent of outside spending in the race, while Trump’s own Super PAC accounted for another 30 percent.
This is just Trump’s latest victory on what has been dubbed his “revenge tour.” Other Trump victories include:
- The retirement of North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who announced last summer he would not run for reelection after voting against Trump’s Big Ugly Bill.
- The primary defeat of all but one of the Indiana Republicans who stood up to Trump by opposing his demand for redistricting.
- The primary defeat of Louisiana’s Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, who voted to impeach Trump for January 6th.
- The potential loss of Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn to Trump-endorsed Ken Paxton in next Tuesday’s runoff. (Trump says he decided to back Paxton because Cornyn was “very late in backing me” in 2024, despite Cornyn’s record of voting for everything Trump has wanted.)
- Incumbent Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who opposed Trump’s plot to “find 11,780 votes” in Georgia in 2020, and declined to seek reelection to another term as Secretary of State in favor of running for governor, was easily trounced in the Republican primary for governor. (The GOP Secretary of State primary in Georgia is headed to a June 16th runoff, with both candidates having promoted voter fraud conspiracies.)
These purges cement Trump’s stranglehold over the GOP. They send a clear signal to all Republicans who seek office or who are planning to run for reelection that they must be a rubber stamp for Trump to gain or remain in power.
They have thereby converted the official Republican Party from a political party into an extension of Trump’s regime — further eroding American democracy.
Trump’s retribution victories have encouraged him to settle additional scores. He’s now demanding that Senate Republicans fire parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough after she ruled that funding for the White House ballroom cannot be included in the Republicans’ party-line immigration enforcement bill.
When Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Trump’s threat against MacDonough was “concerning,” Trump doubled down — posting on Truth Social: “Get smart and tough Republicans, or you’ll all be looking for a job much sooner than you thought possible!”
Trump also reiterated his threat to seek revenge against Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), an “America Firster” who broke with Trump by pushing to release the Jeffrey Epstein files and campaigning with Massie last weekend. (Boebert declared Tuesday on X after Massie’s defeat that “Trump is my President!”)
Trump is also threatening Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who last week criticized Trump’s ballroom funding request. Fitzpatrick is a moderate Republican from a must-hold district if the GOP hopes to defend the House majority. “He likes voting against Trump,” Trump said, “You know what happens with that — doesn’t work out well.”
But the purges in Congress could also make Trump a premature lame duck over the next six months if Tillis, Cassidy, Massie, and Cornyn break with him for the remainder of their terms.
And why shouldn’t they, if they have left a shred of integrity?
They’re already showing some courage. Since his loss, Cassidy has rebuked Trump by voting against ballroom funding and voting for a procedural vote to advance a war powers resolution aimed at limiting Trump’s military action in Iran. The resolution forces Trump to either end hostilities or seek congressional authorization. The motion to advance the resolution passed by a 50-47 vote, marking the first time Democrats successfully advanced this measure.
In addition to Cassidy, other Senate Republicans who broke party lines with their May 19 procedural vote to advance a war powers resolution were Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Rand Paul. Notably, Thom Tillis and John Cornyn were absent from the vote. (Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, who’s fast becoming a DINO, was the sole Democrat to vote with most Republicans against the resolution.)
If Cornyn loses in Texas, the rift between Trump and Thune is likely to deepen — thereby threatening Senate passage of the second reconciliation bill (which incorporates a huge funding increase for ICE as well as $1 billion for Trump’s ballroom).
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 secretly built a network of thugs to crack the skulls of his MAGA foes
There is a reason why we can’t stop talking about the “president’s” breathtakingly appalling IRS “settlement.” It is not in the slightest hyperbolic to call it the most scandalous and despicable arrangement in American history. And in the era of Trump, that’s really saying something.
The $1.776 billion slush fund arranged by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch — otherwise known as Trump’s chief enabler — and the rest of the president’s corrupt cronies is a blatant admission that the criminals now have full control of the country we once knew as the United States. It’s now little more than a banana republic.
The very idea that Trump is referring to this as the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” is sickening beyond comprehension. The shameless Department of Injustice is calling this money “a perpetual appropriation,” which means it’s being set up to reward misconduct in perpetuity — and it’s we taxpayers who are astonishingly having to do the rewarding.
You know the fix is really in when Blanche has full control of the thing. He’s appointing the five-member commission that’s forking over the money. Trump can remove any member without cause if they protest. Only the AG will see the quarterly reports of who gets the money, with no obligation to run it by Congress, much less the public.
Anyone who says they were harmed by the Biden Administration can grab a piece of the action. That includes the nearly 1,600 people charged in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, most of whom were pardoned. Now they can receive compensation for their violent destruction, too.
Sorry to have arrested you for beating cops and destroying the building. We’re letting you out for bad behavior, and here’s $100K for your trouble.
Who says crime doesn’t pay? In fact, in the Trump Administration, it often pays incredibly well and is getting better all the time.
It’s like a bank owner pardoning the robbers who trashed his own branch, then giving them employee bonuses for “showing initiative.”
It’s like a parent whose son sets the house on fire, and instead of consequences, hands him the insurance payout and the keys to the car.
Trump didn’t just excuse the arsonists. He hired them as fire inspectors.
This is the federal government transformed into a full-scale enterprise of organized crime. The Mafia would be wise to take note.
Let’s not sugarcoat this but call it what it is: an ATM for thugs, loyalists, propagandists, and insurrectionists. Anyone who lied or busted a few heads for the president or his allies will now be compensated. Heck, you could turn it into a full-time job. Attack a Trump enemy each month, file a claim, bingo — it’s essentially a salary.
Indeed, it would be shortsighted to think this will only reward past crime. This fund is designed to let everyone know that not only will you not be abandoned if you break the law on Trump’s behalf; your bank account will benefit, too. Interfering in our elections is now a well-compensated career.
If you take care of the president, he’ll take care of you right back. Loyalty officially has an assessed financial value.
It’s the transparent looting of America by a felonious movement that no longer even bothers to conceal its contempt for integrity and constitutional order. The president is raiding the Treasury like a third-world dictator and sharing the gold with those who continue to prop him up.
Could this conceivably be legal? Of course not. But legal no longer factors into the mix. Now, it’s just about what you, and he, and they, can get away with. Rule of law? C’mon, that’s so last century. The law is now effectively defined as whatever you can get away with.
You’ll notice that no one seems capable of stopping this latest piece of authoritarian horror. Trump just does it. Who knew there would be no consequences for brazenly defying all rules of moral and ethical behavior at the highest levels of government?
And now consider this: every crazy MAGA loyalist will now be even more emboldened to do their king’s bidding. No matter how nasty their deed, so long as it’s done on Trump’s behalf, they’ll have a pardon and a payday awaiting them for their trouble.
Lawlessness reigns supreme, ladies and gentlemen. That was made even clearer on Tuesday when the DOJ issued an order permanently barring the U.S. from pursuing any tax claims or other legal actions against Trump, his family, his trusts, and his companies, forevermore — all because his feelings were so hurt when his tax returns got leaked.
I had to read this three times to be sure it wasn’t The Onion.
As if the man’s unfathomable immunity while on duty weren’t enough, now he’s free to pursue any and all forms of fraud (tax and apparently otherwise) without fear of prosecution. Because Todd Blanche needed to drive home that point about his boss being above the law just a bit more forcefully.
To repeat, this means that Trump can cheat on his taxes with impunity, or pay none at all, and there’s not a thing anyone can do about it. Sound familiar?
All of this shows what can be accomplished when embarrassment and disgrace no longer factor into the mix. It speaks volumes about where this country stands on the cusp of its 250th anniversary. And it’s positively tragic.
Forget Iran, or Russia, or China, or any of the other crisis spots impacting the country from outside our borders. The greatest threat to the republic remains the collapse of democracy here at home, and there has never been a more dire risk since at least World War II.
It’s like we’re being run by a bunch of mustache-twirling villains who don’t even seem to fully comprehend everything they’re doing to destroy us on a daily basis.
Oh who am I kidding? They just don’t care.
Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.
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Trump's endgame will be crushed by this profound conviction
The United States and the Republic of China (the official name for Taiwan) — one of the world’s most vibrant and functional democracies — have had a formal defense relationship since 1955. Last week, Donald Trump — who’s been withholding since last year two shipments totaling $25 billion worth of US military hardware Taiwan has purchased — said that relationship is now a “bargaining chip” to get what he, his oligarch friends, and his family want from China.
America was founded on the idea that democracy — a form of government that our Founders discovered functioning well among Native American societies, as I lay out in The Hidden History of American Democracy: Rediscovering Humanity’s Ancient Way of Living — was our north star, the core concept around which all our actions revolved.
We fought Great Britain to establish democracy, fought against the fascist Confederacy to preserve democracy here in America, and helped fight German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese fascists to preserve and restore democracy in Europe and Asia.
After winning each battle, we became a little more democratic, enfranchising women, formerly enslaved people, and even 18-year-olds. We welcomed the diverse people of the world, groaning under oppression and poverty, to share our democracy and the free enterprise system it enabled.
Most of the countries in today’s world, however, have little use for democracy. Certainly, Putin, Xi, and the Middle Eastern sheiks view it as a threat to their wealth and power. Most of the smaller countries across the world are dominated by wealthy families (oligarchy) or violent warlords (autocracy); during the decades I did international relief work, I spent time in many of them.
And yet we always fought for democracy, even though we started out imperfectly. We helped create the United Nations, a democratic institution. We fought and died for European and Asian democracy. We encouraged democracy around the world through foreign aid programs like USAID and through pro-democracy advocacy operations like the Voice of America.
Until Trump.
Today, we have a president who holds democracy and democratic nations in disdain. He openly ridicules our democratic allies while sucking up to and praising autocrats and oligarchs. He gutted USAID, killed Voice of America, and even tried to overthrow our own democracy — and will probably try again.
His racist, homophobic, and “poorly educated” followers agree with his disdain for democracy, openly embracing his despotic proclamations because he hates the same people they hate. Republican politicians who once defended American democracy cower before his threats of revenge when, like Senator Bill Cassidy, they don’t join him in embracing Putin and fail to nakedly cheer Trump’s violations of international law.
Foreign billionaires like the Fox “News” Murdochs and the Middle Eastern sheiks who’ve poured billions into Trump’s family are apparently happy to see our democracy under assault. About a hundred domestic billionaire families are enthusiastically willing to trade democracy and the free press it requires for tax cuts and deregulation.
So, what happens if they win?
What happens if America finally, fully abandons the alliances we’ve built up over 250 years and instead embraces this autocratic new world order of Putin, Xi, and the corrupt billionaires who run most of the world’s autocracies?
If we formally pull out of NATO or, simply, quietly continue the process of abandoning the alliance? If we leave Taiwan, Japan, Australia, and South Korea to the tender mercies of the Chinese Communist Party? If we continue our embrace of “America’s coolest dictator,” Bukele in El Salvador and Rodriguez in Venezuela, and let their authoritarianism continue to metastasize across our hemisphere?
If the GOP and its billionaire owners manage to muzzle all but a token remnant of our once-vibrant free press, if ICE becomes Trump’s and Vance’s personal Schutzstaffel and throws open their “detention centers” to the “liberal” Americans they’ve already designated as “domestic terrorists”? If they continue to follow Putin’s system of tightly regulating who’s eligible to vote (while corrupting Democrats like Fetterman) so Republicans never lose?
What happens if they win?
Then the wealthiest people on Earth finally get the world they’ve always wanted, from the days they opposed the American Revolution, to fighting against Lincoln, to “America First” billionaires trying to hire Smedley Butler to assassinate FDR, to now supporting Trump:
A world where democracy is weak.
Labor is powerless.
The press is controlled.
Religion is weaponized.
Elections are managed.
Fear keeps people obedient.
And billionaires rule without accountability.
That’s the oligarch’s endgame and has been for millennia. It’s why they bought off Sinema, Manchin, Golden, and Fetterman and are inserting themselves in elections across the nation. It’s why they’re buying our media. It’s why Republicans in Congress keep sending more and more of our taxpayer money to ICE while ignoring Trump’s multiple impeachable offenses from war crimes to emoluments violations to the open betrayal of our democratic allies.
Not “making America great.”
Not patriotism.
Not Christianity.
Not freedom.
Power.
Raw power for a small handful of morbidly rich men, enforced by propaganda, corruption, and violence, both committed by agents of the state (against Comey, James, Schiff et al, and soon to be directed against you and me) as well as J6 freelancers Trump is trying to pre-pay with $1.7 billion just in time for this fall’s election.
Roughly every 80 years, it seems, the battle to preserve democracy comes back around and confronts the generation then living. And here it is again.
The generations that defeated fascism in the 1770s, 1860s, and 1940s understood something simple but profound: democracy survives only if ordinary people are willing to defend it.
Now it’s our turn.
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Spurned Republicans poised to destroy Trump as spiteful attacks backfire
Kentucky’s Thomas Massie, a provocateur libertarian and professional pain-in-the-butt to House leadership and Donald Trump, lost his primary yesterday. That was a foregone conclusion given how Trump’s endorsements have won primaries almost across the board.
Those endorsements are going to come back and haunt the GOP in November, but that’s another story for another time.
Back to Massie. He is now a lame duck. And with 36 Republican House members and seven Republican senators already choosing not to seek reelection, there is a growing class of Republicans in Congress with nothing left to lose.
So here’s my question for all of them: What the hell are you waiting for? Grow some and turn your cloakroom whispers about Trump into loud screams to remove him from office. Finally!
Call them the Massies and Cassidys, the GOP members who are done, departing, or already in the crosshairs of a MAGA primary. Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who lost his primary last week, just voted with Democrats on a resolution to end Trump’s war on Iran, a disastrous military engagement launched without congressional authorization — which is to say illegally.
Massie has been a lonely voice of dissent for years. These are men who clearly see what’s happening. Massie knows what’s in the hearts of some of these departing members. They just won’t say it out loud, not loudly enough, not together, and not in a way that actually matters.
Massie in the House and Cassidy in the Senate can help change that now, before it’s too late.
Trump is quickly going off the rails and barreling toward autocracy at the speed of light. Let’s tick through what this president has done in recent weeks, because the pace of brazen lawbreaking has become staggering.
Start with the nearly $1.8 billion slush fund, money being made available to Trump’s friends, donors, and yes, January 6 insurrectionists. This is an illegal and stunning grift conducted in broad daylight, a corrupt reward system so far-fetched it would embarrass a banana republic dictator.
And just as unbelievable, the Department of Justice's move to permanently shield Donald Trump, his family, and his businesses from IRS audits essentially means they don’t pay taxes. How can GOP members sleep at night knowing something like this?
Just for these, Trump could be impeached.
Then there are the outrageous stock trades. Trump’s latest financial disclosures show that he or his investment advisers made more than 3,700 trades in the first quarter. That’s more than some financial firms make in a quarter. It is breathtakingly corrupt.
These trades total tens of millions of dollars and involve major companies with dealings before his administration and companies he’s overtly endorsed from the Oval Office. Wall Street insiders were stunned. Matthew Tuttle, chief executive officer of Tuttle Capital Management, called it “an insane amount of trades,” adding that it looked more like something done by “a hedge fund with massive algo trades” than a personal account.
Trump scooped up shares of AI software maker Palantir weeks before he lauded the stock by name on Truth Social. He purchased Nvidia stock just a week before Nvidia announced a major deal with Meta, and bought AMD stock just before the Commerce Department approved AMD chip sales to China.
Just for this, Trump could be impeached.
Then there’s the war with Iran, launched singularly and illegally by Trump without congressional authorization, in violation of the War Powers Act. Cassidy saw it. He voted to push back. Where are the rest of the dozens of Republicans who are on their way out the door?
Just for this, Trump could be impeached.
And let’s not forget the construction of the White House ballroom, which could cost taxpayers close to a billion dollars. That too is illegal, at least in my view and in the view of many others, including a federal judge who ruled the project likely requires congressional approval.
Again, just for this, Trump could be impeached.
Or consider the collapse of alliances with democratic partners across Europe and Asia, systematically torched by a president who openly coddles thugs like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin while treating NATO allies like garbage.
For traditional Republican members of Congress, who value a strong diplomacy-driven foreign policy, this has to be something they want to rectify immediately. Every day is a lost opportunity to mend fences.
Trump’s behavior is accelerating, and as he approaches 80, questions about his mental acuity, his stability, and his grip on reality grow with every passing day.
His overall health is openly discussed by people around him.
Republicans in Congress have been whispering about all of this. In private. Off the record. Never on camera, never on the House and Senate floors. The country deserves to know how members really feel.
Yes, the conventional Beltway wisdom says wait for the midterms, wait for Democrats to take back the House and Senate, then impeach. And maybe that’s how it goes. But given the speed at which Trump is becoming a king, why not now?
Seven Republican senators are walking out the door. If even a fraction of them found their nerve, found each other, and found Democratic partners willing to move, impeachment proceedings could begin now.
Republican congressional leadership has spent years rolling over, playing dead, and handing Trump everything he’s demanded. It would be the biggest middle finger to this ongoing spineless accommodation that Washington has seen in a generation.
And if they want to be selfish about it, they can dump Trump now in an effort to save their party’s candidates around the country who will face the wrath of moderate Republicans and independent voters.
The call of history is on the side of the Massies and Cassidys. They have nothing left to lose politically. They have everything to gain morally. And the country, whatever is left of its democratic institutions, is running out of time.
Step up. Speak out. Do the right thing while you still can.
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Trump's spitting image is lining up a fresh con for America
Once upon a time, a reality TV star with a dubious track record of personal bankruptcy, bad business deals, terrible public behavior, and mistreatment of women — but no experience working for the government at any level — decided to run for one of the most high-profile political roles in the country. He was buoyed by large, right-wing social media accounts, as well as rich benefactors, many with their own connections to reality TV. His entire platform was one based on his belittling his female opponent, mirroring back the hate from the people who were more than happy to platform him. Despite having no policy other than parroting some propaganda, he was normalized by the media and others who turned around any criticism of the candidate to bully his critics.
If you were picturing Donald Trump that whole time, you’d be both right and wrong. Because in this case, I don’t mean him.
I mean Spencer “Bel Airstream” Pratt, the current Republican candidate for MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, which is the second largest city in the United States. Spencer is running on a platform that’s essentially “I’m a white male Republican who’s not Karen Bass” while turning the loss of his home in the devastating Palisades Fire into just another MAGA grift.
Pratt became famous as Heidi Montag’s villainous boyfriend on MTV’s reality series The Hills, which ran from 2006 to 2011. But he had appeared on a show called The Princes of Malibu in 2005, which I’m glad I didn’t know existed until I started researching him for this piece, because I can only imagine the level of douchery on that show.
I’ve also never watched an episode of The Hills, its predecessor, Laguna Beach, or anything else related to the franchise, because I lost all interest in watching reality TV (minus cooking shows and home reno content on HGTV) after the New Orleans season of The Real World. What I knew of any of them was limited to what I absorbed by pop culture osmosis, plus eventually Lauren Conrad had a clothing line at Kohl’s. Otherwise, I couldn’t have had less interest in a bunch of rich teens whining about each other, and I could still be blissfully ignorant of everything about them right now, if only Spencer Pratt hadn’t somehow weaseled his way into California politics.
Pratt embodies the false bravado of all empty MAGA men, pretending he offers more substance and experience than he actually has. Long before he and Heidi lost their house, they went bankrupt after a gleeful shopping spree in 2012 when they thought the world was ending and therefore wouldn’t have to pay for everything they charged on their credit cards.
The only other “job” Pratt can claim on his “resume” is owning a crystal shop after spending even more millions on crystals. He would probably still be working the counter there if it weren’t for the Palisades Fire, which he blamed on California Governor Gavin Newsom for his “mishandling” of the disaster. He is running to "expose the system" which failed to “protect his family.”
MAGA blaming the winds and dry conditions thanks to the current climate emergency they keep denying is fully on brand, but in Pratt’s case, his family’s current “homelessness” — back to that in a moment — is his own fault for not buying homeowner’s insurance despite living in an area prone to earthquakes, mudslides, and wildfires.
Dude, even Trump insured his hotels.
Pratt is otherwise following the Trump playbook, adopting the carnival barker personality and proudly trying to make people believe it’s sunshine coming from his dark side.
Like Trump, Pratty is always making false promises while grifting donations by claiming his family is being forced to live in an Airstream trailer on his scorched property.
In reality, Pratt is living in the Bel Air Hotel, where room rates start at $1,000-a-night and can go as high as $10,000 a night. He blamed that on Karen Bass as well, as if there wasn’t a Motel 6 nearby, or at the very least a Kardashian’s guest house where they could crash, considering they’re openly supporting his run.
Like Trump, Pratt is doing what he can to profit from his candidacy, inking a deal for yet another reality show. Viral videos showed Pratt at the center of a fundraiser hosted by David Foster and Katharine McPhee this week after his weirdly Trumpian performance in last week’s LA Mayoral debate against Bass and the other remaining candidate, Los Angeles Councilmember Nithya Raman.
My cringe has cringe.
There’s plenty of opposition to Pratt among California liberals, of course, with many celebrities taking the time to point out the similarities between Bel Airstream and Epstein’s Best Friend.
Fresh off of reducing MAGA comedian Kill Tony to ashes at Netflix’s Roast of Kevin Hart, Chelsea Handler used her Threads account to remind everyone of what they’re seeing play out in real time.
And like Trump, he doesn’t like it when people remind him that he’s a lying, bankrupt, grifting loser who isn’t qualified to run a crystal store, let alone the City of Los Angeles.
Or the United States of America.
Come on LA voters, I know you’ve had it rough, and I know Mayor Bass hasn’t been performing to your highest standards lately, but you need to learn from history and never repeat it. LA needs a Democratic Mayor who understands the basic concepts of math and government, not another Trump.
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Bone-chilling conversations about Trump are being held behind closed doors
Donald Trump flew to Beijing last week and bent his wobbly knee to Xi Jinping, a man who runs a surveillance state, disappears dissidents, and has made no secret of his desire to absorb Taiwan by force.
Trump came home with nothing. No agreements. No concessions. No trade framework. Not a single thing to show for the trip except a declaration that it was an “honor” to be Xi Jinping’s friend.
Xi played Trump for the fool he is. And Putin, arriving in Beijing this week, will raise a glass right alongside Xi, a celebratory toast to Greenland and a galoot.
To think about what these two men say about Trump behind closed doors? Well, to say you'd love to be a fly on the wall when that happens would be an understatement.
The two most dangerous autocrats on the planet have undoubtedly and assuredly reached a conclusion, and they’ve reached it with considerable authority, that the American president is a useful idiot. Not an adversary. Not even a detour.
He is a gift from heaven that keeps on giving, and for the next two years, that should terrify the hell out of everyone who is paying attention.
Xi wants Taiwan. In a weekend interview that received nowhere near enough attention, Trump essentially shrugged at the island’s fate, breaking with decades of bipartisan American commitment to its defense. There is no question that Trump now most likely considers it ok if Xi invades Taiwan.
And Xi heard that loud and clear. The question was never whether China had the ambition to take Taiwan. The question was always whether the cost would be too high. Trump just answered it. And Taiwanese are no doubt alarmed at Trump’s capitulation.
Putin wants Eastern Europe. Trump pulled U.S. troops out of Poland and Germany, the very bulwark that has kept Russian tanks from rolling west since the Cold War ended. Putin is salivating. That’s too understated. He’s foaming at the mouth. He’s been running his Ukraine war with reckless abandon, and Trump just told him don’t let the U.S. stand in your way.
Last week, Russia launched the largest drone attack on Kyiv since the war started.
Ukraine is the test case, and it tells you everything. Analysts largely agree that Ukraine has been punching well above its weight, degrading Russian military capability at relatively low cost to the West. But Trump has convinced himself, and is working detestably hard to convince the rest of us, that Ukraine is losing and should simply accept Putin’s terms.
He is parroting Putin’s framing of the war, and he always has been. Trump doesn’t assess through analysis. He assesses through admiration.
And now Xi is getting that same admiration over Taiwan.
Unlike the doofus and shortsighted Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin think in terms of decades and spheres of influence. They are students of history, and they are watching American power abdicate, putting a gleam in their eyes.
Trump isn’t just giving them an opening, he’s alarmingly laying out a welcome mat and asking them to fire away at what remains of the post-World War II order. It’s hard to fathom that one singularly stupid person can demolish what took decades to accomplish
Meanwhile, Trump is laser-focused on Greenland. On Monday, as the U.S. envoy arrived in the country, the administration began demanding a major operational role in running the island. Trump genuinely believes a continent-sized Arctic landmass, or as he calls it “a piece of ice,” is the geopolitical prize of the century.
Xi and Putin are doubling over with laughter. Trump covets ice, and they crawl over their borders.
In Trump’s deluded thinking, he’s playing the same game these men are playing. He thinks he can invade just like they do — read Iran. He thinks flattery is diplomacy — that will be the second, gleeful toast by Xi and Putin, i.e. what a schmuck.
He thinks calling Xi his “friend” and Putin a strong leader earns him their respect, restraint, and a favorable deal somewhere down the road. Those are Xi and Putin’s third, fourth and fifth toasts. It will be a long night.
Xi and Putin are giggling over their U.S. counterpart who genuinely believes strongmen can be his friends. They will high-five over how pliable their 79-year old American “partner” is. They will sketch out what’s now possible in a world where the United States president publicly shrugs at Taiwan and pulls troops from NATO’s eastern flank in the same month he threatens to annex an ally’s territory.
The Cold War ended because the West held together to stop expansionism. What Trump is doing, with stunning speed and imbecility, is making broken borders the new reality. The predictive bet of Xi moving on Taiwan and Putin pushing into Eastern Europe has shifted dramatically in the past four months.
Safe to say, that in the coming months, the world will be less safer than it is right now.
While Xi and Putin are marching toward domination. Trump is obsessing over Greenland. And world order is on the brink of catastrophe.
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Sam Alito used Barack Obama to strip Black voters of their rights
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the conservative majority’s opinions in two of the most consequential Supreme Court decisions in recent years: 1) Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization—overruling Roe v. Wade; and 2) Louisiana v. Callais—neutering the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In both cases, Alito recited and relied on asserted “facts” that did not exist.
Alito Rewrote History to Ban Abortion
Ohio State University Prof. Treva Lindsey observed, “From the nation’s founding through the early 1800s, pre-quickening abortions—that is, abortions before a pregnant person feels fetal movement—were fairly common and even advertised.”
But Alito claimed incorrectly in Dobbs that “no common-law case or authority... remotely suggests a positive right to procure an abortion at any stage of pregnancy” and, in the United States specifically, “an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment persisted from the earliest days of the common law until 1973.”
Writing for the three dissenters, Justice Elena Kagan called Alito “embarrassingly” wrong. There was no such “unbroken tradition,” and historical evidence undermined his claim. But the conservative majority got its desired outcome.
Roberts Began the Assault on the Voting Rights Act
In 2013, Chief Justice John Roberts and the conservative majority began undermining the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby County case. Prior to that decision, states and localities with a history of racial discrimination in voting had to obtain federal approval before making changes to election rules—a process known as preclearance. The state or locality had to prove that any changes would not disadvantage racial and ethnic minorities.
Rewrite history; distort reality; make up facts; overturn longstanding precedent. For Justice Alito—with an occasional assist from Chief Justice Roberts—it’s all in a day’s work.
Roberts argued that the elections of 2008 and 2012—when there was no difference in voter participation rates between Black and white voters (i.e., no “turnout gap”)—meant that the Voting Rights Act had done its job and preclearance could be suspended.
Even at the time, Roberts’ reasoning was suspect. The elections of 2008 and 2012 were anomalies—not the end of the turnout gap—because Barack Obama’s candidacy had driven up Black turnout.
In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted another flaw in Roberts’ logic: “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”
Justice Ginsburg was correct, and now democracy is getting wet. A 2024 study concluded:
The formerly covered states [subject to preclearance] have large nonwhite populations and large turnout gaps, leading to some of the largest statewide turnout distortions in the nation. Put differently, a decade after Shelby County, the turnout gap continues to have a disproportionate impact in precisely the parts of the country that were once covered due to their histories of racially discriminatory voting practices.
Stated simply, “[S]ince 2013, the racial turnout gap around the nation has exploded.”
Alito Finished the Job
Justice Alito ignored the exploding turnout gap in striking the fatal blow to the Voting Rights Act on April 29, 2026. For decades previously, the court had ruled repeatedly that a state could not undermine minority voters’ power to choose their desired candidates by drawing legislative districts that dispersed such voters across majority-white districts. Instead, states had to create “majority-minority” districts, thereby assuring minority representation in statehouses and Congress.
In its amicus brief to the court in the Callais case, the Department of Justice (DOJ) ignored the trend after 2013 and argued that majority-minority districts were no longer necessary because “the racial gap in voter registration and turnout had largely disappeared, with minorities registering and voting at levels that sometimes surpassed the majority. Shelby County, 570 U.S. at 547-548.” To emphasize the point, the DOJ observed, “Since 2004, black voters have turned out at higher rates than white voters in two of five presidential elections nationwide and in Louisiana.”
Armed with the Callais decision, Republicans are now racing to eliminate majority-Black districts throughout the country.
Alito parroted the DOJ’s sophistry: “Black voters now participate in elections at similar rates as the rest of the electorate, even turning out at higher rates than white voters in two of the five most recent Presidential elections nationwide and in Louisiana.”
As election experts have observed, Alito’s claim that Black and white turnout reached parity in 2 of the 5 most recent presidential elections “represents egregious cherry-picking. [H]e was not referring to recent elections, but to those in 2008 and 2012—the years that Barack Obama ran for president. In the three most recent presidential elections, the trend shows exactly the opposite. The indisputable fact is the racial turnout gap is widening, and the Roberts Court is partially responsible [because of its Shelby County decision].”
Armed with the Callais decision, Republicans are now racing to eliminate majority-Black districts throughout the country.
Rewrite history; distort reality; make up facts; overturn longstanding precedent. For Justice Alito—with an occasional assist from Chief Justice Roberts—it’s all in a day’s work.
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These Trump suckups crossed a line — and are now criminals
Friends,
On Saturday, Trump took revenge on Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy for Cassidy’s vote five years ago to convict Trump, in his second impeachment, for instigating an attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Cassidy thereby became the first GOP senator defeated by a Trump-endorsed candidate in a Republican primary. (Other Republican senators who have stood up to Trump — such as North Carolina’s Thom Tillis and Utah’s Mitt Romney — saw the writing on the wall and didn’t seek reelection.)
Trump’s purge of Cassidy comes in the wake of Trump’s purges of House Republicans who stood up to him, such as Wyoming’s Liz Cheney.
Trump’s next Republican target in the House is Kentucky representative Thomas Massie, who had the guts to oppose U.S. military involvement in Iran, demand release of the Epstein files, and criticize Trump’s spending bills for adding to the national debt. Massie appears likely to be defeated by a Trump-backed opponent in Tuesday’s Kentucky primary.
Trump has also purged state legislators who have refused to do his bidding, such as the seven Indiana Republicans who refused to redistrict the state as Trump demanded they do, and who Trump insured were defeated in their recent primaries.
The message is clear to every current or aspiring Republican politician: Be a toady to Trump, or you’re out.
In his concession speech Saturday night, Cassidy stated the obvious reference to Trump:
“Our country is not about one individual. It is about the welfare of all Americans, and it is about our Constitution. And if someone doesn’t understand that and attempts to control others through using the levers of power, they’re about serving themselves. They’re not about serving us. And that person is not qualified to be a leader.”
Nicely put but sadly irrelevant because Trump — who’s clearly serving himself rather than the American public — now possesses all levers of power in the official Republican Party.
As Republican senator Lindsey Graham said Sunday on Meet the Press, “There’s no room in this party to destroy [Trump’s] agenda.”
Former generations of Republican politicians had principles, beliefs, ideals. They thought the federal government too large. Or believed it spent too much money. Or was too lenient on criminals. Or was too eager to support the civil rights of Black people. Or any number of issues with which Democrats disagreed.
Today’s Republican Party no longer has any purpose other than achieving whatever Trump wants, which is making Trump richer and more powerful. The GOP is now Trump’s; it is no longer America’s.
Today’s Republican voters, by contrast, are showing increasing frustration with Trump. Those who think of themselves as traditional Republicans don’t like Trump’s expansive use of federal power. Those who are fiscally conservative, like Thomas Massie, are upset by Trump’s wanton spending, tax cuts, and soaring debt. “America-first” Republican voters are concerned about Trump’s intrusions into Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and elsewhere. And they want the rest of the Epstein files released.
Yet for elected Republicans, survival now depends on personal loyalty to Trump.
All of which raises a fundamental question: Has the official Republican Party — now nearly purged of anyone willing to reflect the concerns of Republican voters rather than Trump’s will — become complicit in Trump’s criminality? Is it aiding and abetting Trump’s lawlessness?
A case can be made that the official Republican Party is indeed complicit.
For Trump, the first and most basic sign of loyalty to him — and therefore survival as a politician in Trump’s Republican Party — is a willingness to publicly proclaim as truth what we know to be two big lies: that Trump won the 2020 election, and that he did not seek to overturn its results by illegal means. As a result, almost all congressional Republicans are now election deniers.
Trump has also made it clear that loyalty to him bars any criticism of his unlawful immigration dragnet, which has so far resulted in the murders of three U.S. citizens by ICE agents and the detention and deportation, without a hearing, of people suspected of being in the U.S. illegally.
To Trump, loyalty requires full support of his foreign policy — including the abduction of a foreign leader, an undeclared war with Iran, and the killing on the high seas of people only suspected of smuggling drugs, in violation of international law.
Loyalty also demands unquestioned support for other of his lawless acts — using the Justice Department to prosecute his political opponents, building a mammoth White House ballroom, issuing no-bid contracts to his friends, promoting his family’s businesses and implementing policies favorable to them, accepting gifts from foreign powers, and defying court orders.
Is it fair to conclude from all of this that today’s official Republican Party — the people who are in office because Trump has put them there, or who maintain their office because they back whatever Trump wants — has in effect become a criminal organization, analogous to the mafia or a drug cartel, whose members are blindly loyal to their criminal bosses?
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 is neck deep in this despicable scam — and his own words prove it
And now, he’s paving the way for you and me and all taxpayers to foot the bill for the enemies of democracy.
You know how the “president” filed that lawsuit in January seeking $10 billion in damages from the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department for the purported damage inflicted by his tax returns getting leaked? Well, as ABC News reported on Friday, Donald Trump is fully prepared to settle it by creating a $1.7 billion slush fund to pay off his allies, including the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol whom he already pardoned.
This money would come from the Treasury’s Judgment Fund, a pool of taxpayer assets that serves to pay out legitimate court judgments against the country. Instead, it would remunerate Trump’s allies, essentially those who purportedly were harmed by what he calls the Biden Administration’s “weaponization” of the legal system.
Of course, it’s the president himself who is doing all of the weaponization. And it’s beyond deplorable. In this scenario, every recipient’s name would be hidden from the public record, so none of that pesky shame need be revealed as people pocket their blood money.
Who controls this “Judgment Fund”? That’s another thing. It’s a five-member commission that would have complete authority to distribute the money as they see fit. And if any of those five defy Trump? He can simply replace them. There is no oversight or transparency or accountability.
This is of course the stuff of authoritarian regimes. And that’s entirely the point.
How can this happen in the United States of America? That will perhaps be for the history books to clarify. For now, it’s inexplicable.
But let’s back up a moment.
The original $10 billion suit was filed by Trump along with sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump and the Trump Organization against a former IRS contractor named Charles Littlejohn, who pleaded guilty in federal court of leaking the Trump tax returns. He was sentenced to five years in federal prison.
Trump claimed the $10 billion figure to be a fair number to account for his damage to business and person over the leak. But considering it is the president’s own Department of Justice that is supposedly representing the “other side,” it’s been completely ludicrous.
Trump has been, in fact, suing himself.
It was officials in the DOJ are currently negotiating the potential settlement cited above. According to The New York Times, it could also include an agreement that the I.R.S. would drop any audits of Trump, his family members, or businesses.
Sticking with the money part, Trump has obviously been using that $10 billion figure as a bargaining chip, seemingly never imagining he’d ever be able to get away with enriching himself at such a massive figure. If he could, it would potentially more than triple his net worth – an amount that was said to be less than $3 billion when he took office in January 2025.
It is basically a government version of a no-bid contract, because sitting at the negotiating table is none other than Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s lackey who essentially does whatever the boss demands. And right now, the client’s thinking seems to be, “Hey, I’m only asking for less than $2 billion, and none of it’s directly for me.”
In TrumpWorld, this is what passes for reasoned thinking.
The federal judge overseeing the case, Kathleen Williams – an appointee of President Barack Obama in the Southern District of Florida – has requested briefs from both sides by this coming Wednesday. By “both sides,” however, we are talking about Trump and his Justice Department that is anything but non-partisan.
So, what’s the conflict? This is evidently something Williams would like to know, too. She wonders how the president can sue an agency he controls. Quite simply, it’s insane.
To put this into something approaching perspective, the largest administrative settlement the Justice Department has ever paid under the Federal Tort Claims Act was $138.7 million, split among 139 women, over the FBI’s failure to properly handle sexual assault allegations in 2015-16 in the Larry Nassar sexual abuse case involving USA Gymnastics.
Now we have a sitting U.S. President demanding more than 70 times that much – over leaked tax info. Even the payouts to the 9/11 victims’ families were rarely more than $10 million. But $10 billion would be a thousand times that much.
It happens that Littlejohn leaked the returns of thousands of high rollers and billionaires, not just the Trumps. One of those, hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin, also sued the I.R.S., settling in 2024 for zero in damages. Instead, he received a public apology from the agency, the I.R.S. having successfully argued that the government can’t be held liable for the actions of a contractor.
Somehow, though, it’s different when the plaintiff is the president. Why? There’s the 10 billion-dollar question. It shouldn’t be, of course, unless he’s outside the rule of law – which we all know Trump to be.
Expect a settlement to come by early this week, before Judge Williams officially decides the case is utterly without merit and can toss it in the trashcan.
It would be the height of irony were Trump to fleece the populace via the I.R.S., an agency he’s fought with his entire life to avoid paying his fair share. On the other hand, it would be entirely on brand for the man who claims not to think about Americans’ financial situation to negotiate himself a monstrous payoff for positively no reason whatsoever.
But again, given how the man has so effectively transformed this presidency thing into the greatest kleptocracy con going – and how the human guardrails that once hindered his greediest instincts are long gone – it would make equal sense that he’d want to create a fund where his cronies can share in the booty.
It remains flat-out astonishing that this criminal is using the legal system to extract so much wealth from a country that’s rendered itself powerless to stop him. Can anyone? In the short-term, unfortunately, it’s doubtful.
Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.
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This ghastly nightmare was meant as a warning. It became the GOP's mission
They may call themselves the “Pro-Life Party,” but the GOP certainly doesn’t act like it.
They claim to be “Pro-” a lot of other things as well: family, faith, women, and above all else, children.
In the Upside Down of Trumpworld, “Pro-” actually means “Anti-” every time, because they’re ultimately only “Pro-” padding their own bank accounts regardless of how many others might get hurt in the process.
Trump’s already said he doesn’t care about anyone’s financial problems. But he doesn’t care about American kids, either, because he doesn’t even care about his own.
The most glaring example, of course, is Republicans' feigned ignorance of the Epstein Files and Trump’s name appearing in them nearly as much as Jeffrey Epstein’s. Despite their every attempt to distract from Trump’s detailed, disgusting history, the Epstein Files continue to stick to Epstein’s Best Friend like no other criminal scandal of his overextended reign of terror.
Trump bombed a school full of kids to distract from thousands of pages that include his name. Then there’s the famine in Gaza and the untold number of children who have died in both Palestine and Israel as he continues to commit war crimes with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Setting aside the Epstein Files for now, let’s look at some recent bad choices made when it comes to Trump and kids. You know, besides cutting SNAP benefits while hiking healthcare premiums amid rising grocery prices.
Imagine you’re six years old and this is the face across from you on Easter Sunday.
Moving on, whose bright idea was it to have these teenage girls dance for Trump?
And why doesn’t anyone in China know that kids jumping and dancing for Trump is like throwing chum in the ocean? Oh, it’s because they can’t Google him, never mind.
If you’re not already cringing, how about Trump dubbing himself--and this is REAL--“The Father of Fertility”? Just typing that makes me throw up.
Trump met with Sen. Katie “TradWife” Britt (R-AL) via one of those churchy forced-birth cults like Sean Duffy and Amy Coney Barrett belong to, and apparently decided it was time to go Full Gilead on the country. This led to “Dr.” Mehmet Oz, stressing heavily on the MEH, to say that “too many women” in America are “under-babied,” which is not a thing but definitely sounds like something Margaret Atwood would’ve used to describe Serena Joy.
Then there’s Elon Musk’s obsession with the world population and making sure it’s all white everywhere, not just America and South Africa. He’s certainly done his part to add to the birth rate, and his unhealthy fixation with eugenics, combined with his money and access to global dictators with similar obsessions about population control, is concerning. As is his return to Trump’s side ahead of the 2026 midterms after they both bragged about stealing the 2024 election.
Now, think about the gerrymandering of Black districts and the deliberate whitewashing of American history at the same time Trump’s administration is trying to push the narrative that we’re a Christian nation, and you can see a very strong pattern emerging. It’s why they’re also dismantling the Education Department while claiming they’re focused on education. The dumbing down is all part of the master plan to bring back their Master Race. It’s been their goal ALL ALONG, and now it’s within their grasp.
If they can get rid of everyone who isn’t white and Christian, they can create a new nation of fully obedient white automatons who just repeat the propaganda and keep propagating the white race.
They began by normalizing the sexual abuse of women and children as part of this Project 2026, reducing more than half of the country’s population to nothing more than birthing vessels. It may sound extreme, but anyone with even a casual knowledge of The Handmaid’s Tale can see that someone in the GOP saw it as a blueprint instead of a warning.
The acting AG of the United States has openly pledged his love to Trump while claiming the Epstein Files case has been “closed” by Trump’s compromised DOJ, even as Congressional Democrats from both chambers continue to investigate.
MAGA Republicans around the country are doing what they can to lay the groundwork for this unspeakable future. The Gross Old Pervs are continuing to prove Rachel Maddow’s adage of “Ignore what they SAY, watch what they DO.”
They say they want to protect kids, but Republicans in Oklahoma voted against a bill to ban CHILD MARRIAGE.
Thankfully, Democrats were able to prevail and pass the bill, so there goes your state’s legalized abuse of kids, you monsters.
Republicans say they care about kids, but it also seems like another MAGA molester is exposed every single day, many of them pardoned January 6th prisoners or men who sit on local school boards.
I could keep going, but I’ve made my point about the “Party of Family Values” all too clear. Thankfully, Democrats like my Senator, Ron Wyden, are also seeing this pattern. And they’re not remaining silent like Trump’s co-conspirators.
Wyden has expanded his sweeping investigation into RFK Jr and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) following disturbing reports of abuse in federally contracted facilities and a five-fold increase in detention times since this administration took office.
“Family values are all about what’s best for children,” Wyden said. “This Trump administration is the exact opposite with its miserable record of leaving already vulnerable kids wide open to abuses and other unspeakable cruelties. It all adds up to a shameful history that demands answers.”
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One comment just showed madman Trump's delusions are worsening — but here's how we prevail
Friends,
My first quote of the week comes from Trump on Air Force One, on his way back from Beijing on Friday — telling David Sanger of The New York Times:
“I had a total military victory. But the fake news, guys like you, write incorrectly. You’re a fake guy. We had a total military victory. I actually think it’s sort of treasonous what you write. You should be ashamed of yourself. I actually think it’s treason.”
Note Trump’s use of the pronoun “I.” He didn’t say “we” had a military victory. Trump’s malignant narcissism is worsening.
Also take note of his blatant lie. His war in Iran has been anything but a victory. His delusions and deceptions about the war are escalating.
Americans are far worse off today than we were before Trump started his war. We’re now paying $1.50 a gallon more for gas, on average. Paying even more, indirectly, for the diesel fuel powering trucks that transport much of what we buy. Food costs are also rising because the fertilizer used to grow much of the food we eat can’t move through the Strait of Hormuz. The soaring cost of jet fuel is also being passed on to those of us who fly.
And none of these costs will come down soon, even if the war ends tomorrow, because the price for oil is largely set in a global market, and much of the oil infrastructure of the Middle East is in ruins.
Trump has made it harder for us to switch from oil and gas to renewable sources of energy, in which China is excelling. Trump loves fossil fuels — he’s subsidizing oil and gas and has ended subsidies for renewables (remember his election deal with Big Oil?) — but the future lies with wind, solar, and biomass, and the batteries that store them.
And note the not-so-subtle threat Trump directed at Sanger — that Sanger could be accused of treason if he continued to report that Trump’s war is failing. Trump’s dangerous accusations are intensifying.
Which brings me to my other quote of the week — Trump’s comment just before leaving for China that:
“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all. That’s the only thing that motivates me.”
I believe the first part, that Trump doesn’t think about Americans’ financial situation; he never has and never will. But it can’t possibly be that the only thing motivating him is preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon.
I say this because we were much closer to achieving this goal when Iran was still observing the nuclear deal it struck with Barack Obama — in which Iran agreed to limit its nuclear activities, including reducing its enriched uranium stockpile and modifying reactors to prevent the production of weapons-grade plutonium. (In exchange, the United States, United Nations, and European Union agreed to lift international economic and financial sanctions on Iran.)
But Trump pulled out of that deal. And Iran’s new leadership is hellbent on creating a nuclear weapon. Trump’s and Israel’s aggression apparently have proven to Iran’s new (and more extremist) leaders how much they need it. And the Trump regime has no idea where Iran is storing its near-weapons-grade plutonium.
Friends, a madman is in charge of American foreign policy — but almost no Republican member of Congress, no major CEO or university president or head of a major foundation, and certainly no member of Trump’s regime is willing to sound the alarm. They are all cowards.
I mentioned to you earlier this week that I had dinner with a group of political operatives who gave 30 percent odds that JD Vance and Marco Rubio would lead a coup within the next three to four months, invoking the 25th Amendment to get rid of the madman. Those odds may be higher now.
But you and I are not powerless. We can achieve the next best outcome — limiting Trump’s power to do more damage — by getting out the vote on or before November 3 and throwing the cowardly Republican senators and representatives out on their assets.
We have less than six months to get the largest midterm turnout in American history — a blue tsunami that will start the process of repair, reform, and return to sanity.
I know how frightening and discouraging all of this has been. I know how daunting the forces of cruelty and corruption can sometimes feel. I also know how hard you’ve been fighting, while at the same time working to keep yourself, your family, and your community on an even keel. And I thank you for it.
Despite Trump, please do not feel shame in America. Feel pride in the ideals we share. Feel honored that you are an activist warrior on the right side of history. Feel strength in our conviction. Feel power in our cause.
Have no doubt: We will prevail against the madman-in-chief and his lawless regime.
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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The key to Trump's destruction is working — there's just one major obstacle
Back in 2019, Donald Trump pointed at Hunter Biden’s brief “cup of coffee” with a Chinese banker during a 2013 ride on Air Force Two and turned it into the single biggest line of attack he ran against Joe Biden for the next five years.
The grift! The corruption! The selling-out of America! Oh, the humanity!!!
Trump told Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo that Hunter “walked out of China with $1.5 billion” because his father was vice president, even though no evidence ever surfaced that the elder Biden touched his son’s business dealings, nor that Hunter ever pocketed anything close to that sum.
This week, Donald Trump landed in Beijing for a three-day summit with Xi Jinping with his son Eric and daughter-in-law Lara on Air Force One, alongside more than a dozen of the wealthiest CEOs in America: Elon Musk of Tesla, Tim Cook of Apple, Larry Fink of BlackRock, Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone, David Solomon of Goldman Sachs, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, and many others.
The Trump Organization, which Eric runs, has flirted with Chinese business deals for years, and Eric’s American Bitcoin company works directly with Chinese crypto-mining giant Bitmain.
Hunter Biden’s cup of coffee looks like a teetotaler’s glass of water next to this rolling roadshow of self-dealing, where every executive on board is openly there to negotiate his own deal while Beijing’s officials size up the willingness of the family of the most powerful man in the world to sell out America for a few billion dollars.
That’s the thing about Trump. He brags about corruption, lives on corruption, and treats every lever of the federal government as a personal slot machine, yet because he yelled “drain the swamp” loud enough in 2016, half the country still believes he’s the guy fighting the corrupt part of the establishment.
He isn’t fighting it; he is it, only stupider, more openly larcenous, and more contemptuous of the public good than anyone who’s ever held the office.
Consider what he’s done just in recent months.
In January, Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS and the Treasury Department, agencies he himself runs, over the leak of his tax returns during his first term while his own appointees were running the IRS. He’s suing himself, in other words, for damages he then expects his own Justice Department to pay him out of taxpayer money.
According to reporting in The New York Times and New Republic, Trump’s DOJ is now negotiating a settlement that may include dropping all IRS audits of Trump, his family, and his businesses, which would amount to a get-out-of-tax-fraud-free card signed by the very man whose taxes the IRS is required by law to audit every year.
ABC News is now reporting that he also wants $1 billion to give to the January 6 rioters. Perhaps as prepayment for his “army” that will attack people during this November’s elections?
This is naked corruption on a scale we've never seen. The federal government's now a personal piggy bank for one criminal man and his violent cult.
Senators Ron Wyden and Elizabeth Warren rightly called it “a shameless and transparent act of corruption that should make any American’s head spin.”
Trump’s corruption extends to his civil debts too. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals denied his motion to undo the $83 million defamation judgment won by E. Jean Carroll, whom a jury found Trump had sexually abused and then defamed.
Now Trump’s lawyers are floating a brand new theory: maybe the Department of Justice should substitute itself as the defendant under the Westfall Act, on the theory that defaming a woman he abused “is part of the official duties of the President of the United States.”
Because the federal government can’t be sued for defamation, this would vaporize Carroll’s judgment entirely and let Trump walk away free. Trump’s corrupted DOJ, naturally, is willing to argue it. That’s what happens when you corrupt the Justice Department into your personal law firm.
The same corrupt Justice Department is also doubling as Trump’s cortupt personal revenge machine. There’s been a fresh corrupt indictment of former FBI Director James Comey over a beach photograph of seashells that prosecutors claim, against all credulity, was a coded threat to kill Trump.
The DOJ corruptly raided John Bolton’s home and indicted him on classified documents charges.
They corruptly went after what they called the “Seditious Six,” the Democratic lawmakers who recorded a video reminding service members they have a duty to refuse illegal orders, until a grand jury embarrassingly refused to indict.
Senator Adam Schiff is being corruptly investigated by the DOJ for alleged mortgage fraud that his attorneys call “transparently false, stale, and long debunked,”
Special Prosecutor Jack Smith is under a corrupt investigation, New York Attorney General Letitia James is under a corrupt investigation, and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was under a corrupt investigation until even Trump’s corrupt Republican allies told him the optics were getting bad before the midterms.
That’s the corrupt behavior of authoritarian regimes, not constitutional republics. But corrupt Republicans appear just fine with all of it.
Meanwhile, the Trump family’s corrupt World Liberty Financial crypto empire has cleared something north of $5 billion in valuation after a flood of corrupt foreign and corporate money, including a $2 billion stablecoin deal from a state-owned Emirati fund that, as 60 Minutes reported, corruptly routed itself through a coin issued by the president’s sons.
Shortly afterward, Trump corruptly pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who had pleaded guilty to money-laundering crimes that included moving funds for Hamas, Iranian-linked terrorists, and child sexual abusers. He has apparently helped the Trump family business; former DOJ pardon attorney Liz Oyer called the Zhao pardon, simply, “corruption.”
And the corrupt $400 million White House ballroom? It’s funded by Lockheed Martin (with $33 billion in federal contracts in 2025 alone), BlackRock, Google’s parent Alphabet (after settling a $24.5 million lawsuit/shakedown with Trump), Palantir, Coinbase, and a parade of crypto firms, tobacco giants, and defense contractors whose names the White House corruptly tried to keep secret until a court ordered disclosure.
Every one of those companies has business in front of the federal government Trump personally oversees, and every check is a bribe by any honest definition of the word.
This corruption is the political opportunity of a generation, and I keep waiting for Democrats to wake up to it.
Péter Magyar just defeated Viktor Orbán in Hungary by running a Navalny-style anti-corruption campaign on the single through-line of criticizing the “state capture system” Orbán built with his billionaire cronies.
When I was working in Russia, I watched Alexei Navalny build his political career almost entirely around exposing the corruption of Putin and his oligarchs through his Anti-Corruption Foundation, the same foundation that got Navalny murdered for becoming too effective.
Back in the 1980s, working for a German relief organization in the Philippines, I watched Cory Aquino bring down the entire Marcos kleptocracy by running on corruption alone. They literally bumped me off the plane — several days in a row — in their rush to leave the country.
From Bolsonaro’s first Brazilian victory on the back of his “Operation Car Wash” call for clean government to Volodymyr Zelenskyy riding Ukraine’s anticorruption EuroMaidan “Revolution of Dignity” into the presidency, to Teddy Roosevelt and Thomas Nast smashing the Tammany Hall machine, the anti-corruption frame has been the most reliably winning political message of the last 125 years all over the world.
It will work here, too. In fact, it’s already working: Trump’s “drain the swamp” lie was the cynical perversion of a real anti-corruption message, and that lie put him in the White House twice. Democrats now have the much easier job, because the corruption being exposed is real, vast, well-documented, and entirely on the other side.
But, and this is where Democrats keep tripping over their own feet, they have to be willing to clean their own house first.
When John Fetterman takes hundreds of thousands of dollars from AIPAC and its allied PACs and then joins Republicans to demand the US keep arming Netanyahu through a war that killed tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians and ultimately dragged us into a hot war with Iran, that’s the kind of corruption that lets Republicans laugh in our faces every time we accuse them of being on the take.
And it’s particularly disheartening to younger voters who’re awakening for the first time to the impact of politics on their daily lives.
When Senate Democratic hopefuls Haley Stevens and Angie Craig accept tens of thousands of dollars from donors employed by the very corporations (Lockheed, Comcast, Microsoft, Coinbase) that are paying for Trump’s ballroom, the message we’re trying to send on corruption gets muddled.
When AIPAC openly brags that it’s the top donor to the Democratic Party and to the Black, Hispanic, and progressive caucuses on the Hill, that’s not a moral failure on AIPAC’s part: lobbies will lobby, and five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized it. But that doesn’t make it right.
If we want to win on corruption, we have to be willing to refuse it ourselves, or at least make overturning citizens United the declared number one priority of the entire party.
This doesn’t require unilateral disarmament, but it does require bold, public, and loud promises and the initial actions necessary to follow through on them.
Bernie Sanders has shown for decades that in some districts/states you can fund a serious national campaign out of small dollars alone, and a growing group of Democrats have followed his lead in refusing corporate PAC money. That ought to become the rule, not the exception, and it ought to start now, at least with primaries.
Every Democrat in America should be hammering the GOP’s corruption every single day from now through November 2026 and on into 2028.
Consider the opportunities:
— Eric Trump’s seat on Air Force One,
— the $10 billion settlement that’s about to flow from the Treasury into Trump’s personal pocket,
— the DOJ’s attempt to bail Trump out of his E. Jean Carroll debt,
— the revenge prosecutions of Comey and Bolton and James and Schiff,
— the Zhao pardon,
— the ballroom bribes,
— the multibillion-dollar crypto self-dealing,
— and the Kushner-family Saudi sovereign-wealth payouts are all sitting on the public ground in plain sight, and every Republican on a 2026 ballot owns every bit of them.
While we’re naming their corruption every day, we’d better be ready to name the corruption inside our own party too, because the Democrats who run on cleaning up Washington while taking AIPAC checks and ballroom-donor money will never beat Trumpism.
Only an honest, anti-corruption, small-dollar, working-class Democratic Party can do that, and it’s the kind of party Magyar, Aquino, Zelenskyy, and Navalny would all have recognized.
It’s still simple, easy, and powerful: “It’s the corruption, stupid.”
If you want to do something about it, start by checking your voter registration at vote.org, since dozens of corrupt Red states have quietly purged voter rolls under cover of Trump’s various election-integrity executive orders and with permission from the corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court.
Call your senators and representatives through the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and tell them three things: work to end all corporate PAC and AIPAC money, support real anti-corruption legislation including a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United, and make GOP corruption the central message of every campaign from now to 2028.
Find your state legislators at openstates.org and demand they pass state-level disclosure, lobbying, and stock-trading reform. Join, fund, and amplify the activist movements organizing the public outrage, like Public Citizen and CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington), the same kind of grassroots energy that toppled the Marcos and Orbán machines abroad.
This work doesn’t get done without independent voices, since the mainstream media is too compromised by its own billionaire ownership to consistently name what’s happening. If this article was useful to you, please share it as widely as you can, forward it to five friends today, and consider subscribing to the Hartmann Report so we can keep doing this work.
Americans have toppled corrupt regimes before, and we can do it again, but only if we refuse to be quiet about the grift that was legalized by five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court and the resulting corruption that’s become the normal way of doing business for the GOP and a handful of corporate “problem solver” Democrats.
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