Trump's troll boomerangs back onto his favorite event
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
An ugly radioactive surprise is buried deep inside Trump's deal for a loyal MAGA state
One of the most critical issues facing Idaho is one that has received little attention but has profound consequences for the future of our state – the agreement that would make Idaho the dumping ground for a third of the radioactive waste generated in our country.
It’s not surprising that Idahoans don’t know much about this issue. Gov. Brad Little, who is pursuing this agreement, and U.S. Sen. Jim Risch have said precious little or nothing about it, apparently wanting to keep it under the radar until they are safely re-elected in November.
New nuclear campus deal would require Idaho to accept, store spent nuclear fuel, radioactive waste
Congressman Mike Simpson applauded the agreement, saying it will bring jobs to his eastern Idaho district.
“Idaho didn’t become the nation’s nuclear leader by being afraid of hard problems. It became the leader by being the state willing to do the difficult, careful work that others wouldn’t. That’s still the right instinct now,” he wrote.
The Trump administration will choose three states to create what it calls a “Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus.” The other states in the running for this dubious honor besides Idaho are Utah, Tennessee, Louisiana and Oklahoma.
The chosen states will each have to receive 33 percent of the radioactive waste generated by the other 47 states.
The public did not know that Gov. Little agreed to be one of the states until the Department of Energy announced it in late July. The memorandum of understanding that Little signed in July without informing Idahoans said: “The host agreement shall provide for the acceptance of out-of-state used nuclear fuel, spent fuel, and high-level radioactive waste.”
In its announcement, the Trump administration promised that the campus will boost manufacturing, create jobs, promote American energy independence, and attract other unnamed financial investments. Of course, we don’t know what this means since Little and our congressional delegation have not told us what’s in the fine print.
Idaho’s long history with nuclear waste
To put the importance of this issue in perspective, it is important to understand Idaho’s long and dark history with radioactive waste.
Starting in the 1940s, the federal energy site in eastern Idaho, which is now called the Idaho National Laboratory, became the repository for much of the nation’s nuclear radioactive waste.
The issue came to a head in the late 1970s when the press reported that the federal facility had regularly poured low-level radioactive liquid waste down an injection well above the Snake River Aquifer, which is the size of Lake Erie and provides much of the water for southern Idaho’s farmers and ranchers. There was also concern about other radioactive liquid waste being stored in containers buried above the aquifer.
I covered energy issues for the Idaho Statesman at the time and reported on the controversy over this waste. There was concern among Idaho’s political leaders because the federal site was also known for its porous volcanic soil and seismic activity. Coverage of the issue made front-page news for months.
That same year the General Accounting Office recommended that Idaho become a permanent repository for the nation’s radioactive waste. That proposal came nine years after the federal government promised to remove the existing waste from Idaho.
The GAO report was quickly opposed by then Gov. John Evans and even a Republican legislator from Boise who introduced a bill in the Legislature to ban any shipment of radioactive waste into our state. Legislators from eastern Idaho rallied and killed the bill.
Fast forward to 1988, when then Gov. Cecil Andrus finally had enough and promised Idahoans that he would block the federal government from transporting more radioactive waste from its Rocky Flats, Colorado, nuclear weapons plant. To emphasize his opposition, Andrus stationed a 24-hour state police detail on one of the shipments that made its way into the state as far as Blackfoot.
A picture of a muscular state trooper standing by the railroad car with his cruiser in the background made the front page of the New York Times and the story was covered by every national TV news outlet. The crisis was averted when the governor of Colorado agreed to take the waste back.
“I’m not a nuclear scientist,” Andrus later wrote, “but I understood on one point from the beginning: Radioactive garbage from the nuclear reservation in Idaho could not – must not – be allowed to come anywhere near the Snake River Aquifer.”
After Andrus left office, Republican Gov. Phil Batt took up the issue and negotiated a landmark 1995 agreement with the federal government that would prevent Idaho from becoming a permanent repository for nuclear waste, limit the waste Idaho would take on a temporary basis, and require the federal government to remove all the waste by 2035, a timeline that it is far from meeting at this point.
It is significant that Gov. Batt did not just sign the agreement with the federal government. He took the question to the people of Idaho to vote on whether to support his agreement which they did overwhelmingly.
“I think the best thing I did was telling (Idahoans) what it meant to them,” Batt told me in a 2019 interview before he died.
Andrus and Batt never gave up on the demand to have the waste at INL removed. They spent the rest of their lives holding the federal government accountable for removing the waste and keeping the issue in front of the people of Idaho.
Gov. Batt’s agreement demonstrated that the Idaho National Laboratory could conduct much-needed nuclear power research and development while still working toward the removal of all radioactive waste from the site. Idaho did not have to accept waste in exchange for being the nation’s leading laboratory for nuclear research and development.
There is more to this story than meets the eye
There is another twist to this story which has received no attention here in Idaho.
Last December, Trump Media & Technology (TMTG) announced that it was merging with the California-based TAE Technologies with an all-stock deal worth an estimated $6 billion. The new company said it plans to find a site and begin construction in 2026 on the “world’s first utility-scale fusion power plant to help power data centers critical to the artificial intelligence industry,” according to the Associated Press.
TAE is currently financially backed by Google and other high-tech investors. Once the merger with Trump Media & Technology is finished, the private company would become one of the first nuclear fusion companies on the American stock exchange.
Donald Trump’s revocable trust owns 114.75 million shares or about 41.5 percent of Trump Media & Technology. After the merger is completed, Trump’s trust would own about 21 percent of the new company. The president is the sole beneficiary of the trust, although Donald Jr. is a trustee and has voting and investment authority.
Here’s the bottom line: The more money the new company earns building and selling fusion reactors, the more money Trump’s investment would be worth. One estimate is that if the value of the new company grows from $6 billion to $50 billion, the president’s investment could be worth more than $10 billion.
“He’s (Donald Trump) jumping into this industry just like he jumped into cryptocurrency a couple of years ago,” Richard Painter, a former ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush Administration, told the Associated Press. “Just as the United States government is gonna get all involved in it. And it’s so obvious that there’s a huge conflict of interest.”
That is an understatement.
Last year Trump Media & Technology lost about 70 percent of its value, but after the announcement of the merger with TEA, its stock jumped by 34 percent.
But that’s only part of the story. Trump signed an executive order in May 2025 to have the federal government speed up the development, construction, and deployment of nuclear reactors. He plans to spend taxpayer dollars doing it.
The Army recently announced that it would spend $2.5 billion to buy micro nuclear reactors for five of its bases as part of Trump’s “Janus Program.” The Army says eventually nine of its bases will buy reactors costing taxpayers billions more.
Alan J. Kuperman, associate professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas and a nuclear nonproliferation expert, told the Associated Press that Trump is using the military’s “deep pockets to provide a hidden subsidy” to help nuclear companies that can’t find private-sector customers for their reactors.
Furthermore, the reactors would be licensed by the Army rather than the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which licenses all commercial nuclear reactors. Kuperman told the Associated Press that is “a dangerous scam on many levels.”
Then last month Trump signed a multi-billion-dollar agreement with Saudi Arabia to share nuclear technology so that it can develop a domestic nuclear power program. The agreement gives exclusive rights to American nuclear reactor companies to help the kingdom develop its nuclear power infrastructure.
The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists expressed concern that the deal would allow the Saudis to enrich their own uranium without international oversight and could lead to the proliferation of nuclear armaments in the Middle East.
So, what does this mean for Idaho?
All this means plenty for Idaho.
As more nuclear reactors go into operation, the more radioactive waste will be generated across the country. The more waste generated, the greater the amount of waste that will be shipped to Idaho under Gov. Little’s agreement to take 33 percent of the commercial radioactive waste generated in the country.
That is, of course, unless Gov. Little writes into the agreement that Idaho will only take so much of the country’s waste. But such a change in the memorandum could kill Idaho’s chances of becoming a Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus. Besides, Gov. Little isn’t known for bucking Donald Trump.
Historically, one of the biggest impediments to the development of commercial and government nuclear reactors is what to do with the waste that is generated. Efforts to create a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain near Las Vegas was stopped by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, during the Obama administration.
Thus, Donald Trump, the investor in nuclear power, must find permanent repositories if his dream of manufacturing and selling reactors to utilities, AI companies, to the military and to other countries comes a reality.
If he can’t find permanent dumps for the waste, his investment and dream of turning the United States into a commercial nuclear giant would go from a financial dream to a financial nightmare.
Trump has always been a transactional businessman and president. His plan to create so-called “Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses” is a way of leveraging states like Idaho into providing the permanent repository that he needs. It’s a quid pro quo that looks like Gov. Little, our congressional delegation, and INL supporters are ready to buy.
In two years, Donald Trump will be out of office and can’t leverage taxpayers’ dollars to expand the use of nuclear power plants. Future presidents and Congresses may not be as open to spending billions supporting “Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses.”
But Idaho will forever be stuck taking 33 percent of the nation’s radioactive waste – material no other state wants to accept.
So, what’s next?
If Gov. Little insists on accepting the waste, there are several questions he should have answered. What will be the impact on Idaho’s current power grid, how much water will the campus require and where will it come from, and how can the federal government prove that it is safe to dispose of the so much waste over the Snake River Aquifer when its track record hasn’t been stellar.
Most importantly, Gov. Little should do the same thing Gov. Batt did: Be fully transparent with Idahoans about the deal and ask them if they are willing to make Idaho a radioactive waste dump for a third of the nation’s waste.
When I interviewed Gov. Batt for my book, “Lucky, The Wit and Wisdom of Governor Phil Batt,” he predicted that Brad Little would change his nuclear waste agreement as soon as he died. As predicted, Gov. Little did amend the agreement shortly after Batt’s death in 2023. Now, if Little accepts the Trump administration’s quid pro quo deal, the Batt Agreement will be shredded for all intents and purposes.
I asked Gov. Batt if he thought the people of Idaho would stand for allowing the state to become a repository for radioactive waste. “Well, I don’t know,” Batt told me. “At one time, they were all excited about not doing things like that, but you don’t hear them (the people) talking about waste leaking into the Snake River and all that stuff like you used to.”
I pointed out that’s probably because the Batt Agreement limited shipments of waste into our state, banned permanent storage, and provided a timeline to get all the waste out of our state. Batt simply replied, “Yeah.”
It remains to be seen if our current governor will include Idahoans in this decision – and whether the people of Idaho still care.
Idaho Capital Sun is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Idaho Capital Sun maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Christina Lords for questions: info@idahocapitalsun.com.
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The damning Republican tell hiding in plain sight with this red state witch hunt
On Nov. 3, Kansans will vote on whether to amend our state constitution, again. This time, we’ll be voting on whether to make it harder for many American citizens who live in Kansas to vote in future elections.
The proposal would amend Section 1 of Article 5 of the Kansas Constitution to state that no person can vote unless they are a United States citizen. To most of us, that sounds reasonable — people who are not citizens should not be voting. However, the proposed amendment is a solution in search of a problem that is statistically nonexistent. Noncitizens are not voting in Kansas elections (or any other state elections, for that matter).
The Kansas Constitution already grants every citizen (and only citizens) the right to vote. So why propose this repetitive and unnecessary amendment? It would be used by certain lawmakers as a pretext to pass laws that supposedly bar noncitizens from voting.
The goal is to require proof of citizenship to register to vote. The proposed amendment will make it more difficult, costly and sometimes impossible for many Kansans to vote. Rep. Pat Proctor, R-Leavenworth, proposed the amendment with near-unanimous Republican support. Proctor is currently running for Kansas secretary of state, the office that oversees our elections.
Proctor has a documented legislative history of introducing bills making it harder for citizens to vote — prohibiting voter registration efforts and restricting advance and mail-in voting.
Requiring documentary proof of citizenship means that, to register to vote or to change your voter registration (you moved, got married or divorced), you’ll have to provide either your passport, your birth certificate or your naturalization papers (if you became a citizen but were not born here).
A Real ID in Kansas is not proof of your citizenship, so that won’t work to register.
About 62% of Kansans do not have passports — those documents take time to obtain and cost around $150. As such, Kansans without them will have to provide their birth certificate to register to vote. For some, that’s easy. For others who might not have ready access to their birth certificate or can’t afford to get one (getting a birth certificate copy costs money), a barrier to voting has been created.
It’s a poll tax and would disproportionately impact low-income, young and elderly voters. Another group disproportionately affected by proof-of-citizenship requirements? Women who changed their last name through marriage or divorce.
Proof of citizenship requires that a person’s name on their birth certificate be identical to the name on their ID. This is a huge problem for women voters who have changed their name, because in addition to providing her birth certificate to register, they also will have to provide “proving documents” — papers that prove her name change(s).
Women will have to obtain their marriage licenses or divorce decrees tracking name changes over the years to prove the women presenting their IDs are the same women presenting their birth certificates. Easy peasy for some women. For others, tracking down and paying for official marriage certificates and divorce papers will be a barrier to vote.
Fewer women voting seems to be a feature, not a bug, of Proctor’s plan.
In response to the defeat of the 2022 anti-abortion amendment, Proctor complained that women — specifically 20- to 30-year-old women — “stole” that election by voting. Proctor complained that the very people who would be most affected by an anti-abortion amendment chose to vote for their reproductive freedom. That is not stealing an election. Women tend to vote against Proctor’s far-right ideology, so the more women who can’t locate or afford the proper documentation to register to vote, the better for Proctor and his party.
Voting is a fundamental right, and every barrier to voting, such as requiring proof of citizenship, means fewer people get to exercise that right. Illegal voting is not occurring, and the Kansas Constitution already adequately specifies voter requirements that protect fair elections. The proposed constitutional amendment is a pretext to require proof of citizenship to register to vote and will be used to justify voter suppression.
Amii Castle is a professor at the University of Kansas, where she teaches at the law and business schools. Through its opinion section, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com.
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Elon's in a panic as his ex spills all — and that's just his latest crisis
Elon Musk is the Donald Trump of South Africa.
Born to millionaire parents, Musk inherited his wealth instead of earning it. He has never invented anything or built anything himself. Instead, he just buys companies he thinks will make him look cool — Tesla, Starlink, Twitter, etc. He also keeps showing up in public dressed like the loneliest goth kid at Hot Topic in 1997 and then dancing like he’s on Ketamine, because he’s admitted to always being on Ketamine
My cringe has cringe with extra cringe sprinkled on top.
Everyone needs to stop thinking that nepo baby billionaires/trillionaires are natural-born leaders when they keep proving they absolutely are not. Elon can’t keep rockets or cars or Twitter from exploding, and he’s the son of two white supremacists, so he isn’t called “Apartheid Clyde” for nothing.
Other nicknames for the friendless Musk include “Sissy SpaceX” and “Clarice Starlink” (that one is all mine, and I’m very proud of it, I can’t lie) because, just like Trump, Everything Elon Touches Dies.
That includes the American voting system, because that guy bought Twitter to mess with the 2024 election, and he couldn’t stop telling us so. Trump and Musk became besties right after the fake assassination attempt in Butler, PA, and they immediately began implementing a plan leftover from 2020 to steal the 2024 election.
Elon tweaked the Twitter algorithm to boost paid MAGA influencers, while suppressing liberal voices. Those of us who had (FREE) blue checkmarks before he plundered our online town square were forced to either start paying him for the privilege of being ourselves or be doomed to basic invisibility. Like, that Nazi needs any of our money.
Oh yeah, that part. The Nazi part. Remember the Nazi salute that he and MAGA claimed wasn’t a Nazi salute? He’s still this guy, and he will be this guy forever.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk gestures during a rally on the inauguration day of U.S. President Donald Trump's second Presidential term, inside Capital One, in Washington, U.S. January 20, 2025. REUTERS/Mike Segar
Anyway, Elon’s stupid DOGE stole every American citizen’s Social Security number and other personal information, and now he has even more data to manipulate the 2026 midterms.
Election interference is a federal crime. I don’t know why Democrats didn’t try to stop him when he was paying people millions of dollars to vote in Wisconsin and, while he was threatened with consequences, they magically didn’t come through. Because no jury would find his actions constituted election bribery, according to a Wisconsin state prosecutor.
He only offered people $1 million to vote, but I guess he bribed someone else to make sure he didn’t get prosecuted for bribery.
BRB, I need to go scream into a pillow.
Brazil's Supreme Court previously ordered an investigation into Musk regarding obstruction and the “instrumentalization of Twitter” by participating in public arguments with users over free speech and content moderation. French prosecutors recently escalated a criminal probe into Twitter over algorithm manipulation, foreign interference, and issues tied to the AI chatbot Grok.
Elon also just lost a court case in New York State after bringing a lawsuit seeking to void a 2024 state law requiring social media companies generating over $100 million in profits to disclose how they monitor hate speech, extremism, harassment, foreign political interference and disinformation. Musk had gotten rid of Twitter’s content moderation policy after he bought that company in 2022, claiming to be a “free speech absolutist” while literally messing with everyone else’s First Amendment rights by choking liberal accounts and boosting propaganda instead.
Twitter is now said to be 64% fake accounts, with bots having blue checks and getting more visibility than actual humans like your intrepid contributor here. Elon has multiple alt accounts, from “Doge Designer” to “ALX” to his own mom’s, Maye Musk. So this means that Elon technically blocked me when “she” was defending her poor, defenseless little boy from this very scary lady on Twitter who called Elon out for being transphobic against his own daughter, Vivian.
At the same time, Elon is said to be “extremely worried” about a new documentary by Alex Gibney, which shares plenty of damning footage connecting Musk to the 2024 election, including a text exchange with one of his many baby mamas, former MAGA influencer Ashley St. Clair.
The Hollywood Reporter saw Musk at an early screening and details that moment and others. St. Clair alleges in the forthcoming documentary that Elon had a “degree of certainty” about the election results before they came in that “I had never seen before.”
Screenshots of the texts between them definitely indicate that something hinky was going on behind the scenes. “He had told me [before the election] he was going to unleash the ‘anomaly in the matrix,’ ” St. Clair says in the clip.
“I have ten thousand lasers in space,” Elon’s text reads.
Musk has also amassed a body count to rival Trump’s, thanks to his dismantling of USAID, which he referred to as a “criminal organization” one month after the inauguration, because every accusation is a confession.
And he’s still acting like the juvenile d-bag weirdo he is, which might explain why “Elon Is A Martian” was trending on Twitter Saturday. For a guy who’s so obsessed with going to Mars, he’s certainly not brave enough to be a test pilot.
Or decent enough to use his unearned wealth to help others. With a fraction of his fortune (a mere $6.6 billion), Elon could feed upwards of 42 million people and not feel the pinch. A Business Insider piece broke it down into a staggering standalone statistic: It equals about 43 cents per person per day to supply one basic meal a day to stay alive.
But Elon would rather keep blowing up rockets and cars while dumping millions into buying another election for Trump.
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A breathtaking scandal has engulfed a red state after an explosive secret report leaked
Just when you thought state politics could not possibly get sleazier, Hope Florida comes roaring back from the dead, putrid yet powerful, casting a light on the breathtaking arrogance and corruption of Florida’s government.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, Attorney General James Uthmeier, and U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody thought they’d killed it and driven a stake through its dirty little heart.
A Leon County grand jury looked into the scandal. But, since they could not get the people involved to tell the truth about how and by whom $10 million of taxpayer money disappeared into political causes, they could not bring charges.
DeSantis, Uthmeier, and Moody counted on that report never seeing the light of day.
But, as is the way with explosive secret reports, it was leaked.
To a reporter.
God forbid the public learn what politicians and their enablers do with public money.
The parties did not express concern, much less remorse.
They attacked journalists.
During a press conference, Uthmeier threatened to bring criminal charges when asked about the matter: “Are you trying to solicit a crime here in violation of the law?”
Somewhat unconvincingly, he went on, insisting, “Nobody did anything wrong here; there was not even probable cause to move forward. This is a hoax.”
Which are you going to believe, Florida’s law-challenged AG or your lying eyes?
DeSantis agreed: “The only crime that was apparent was whoever leaked the grand jury report.”
You may recall First Lady Casey DeSantis founded Hope Florida in 2021, claiming it was a community support program to connect people with faith-based or other non-government assistance. She called it “a philosophy.”
Two years later, the Hope Florida Foundation appeared, its stated purpose to support the Department of Children and Families.
The money
It’s a 501(c)(3), the kind of nonprofit that must, by law, follow strict limits on political involvement and lobbying.
It soon became clear there was shady stuff going on. DCF failed to make public Hope Florida Foundation’s fiscal plan, code of ethics, tax documents, and results, as required by law.
Then a Medicaid contractor that had over-billed the state had to cough up a $67 million settlement, supposedly repaying the taxpayers.
Of that money, $10 million was (strangely) “donated” to the Hope Florida Foundation.
That $10 million (very strangely) ended up in a couple of political action committees controlled by Ron DeSantis’s chief of staff, a fellow by the name of James Uthmeier.
The money got fed back into the state Republican Party machine to fuel its fight against a constitutional amendment to legalize recreational marijuana.
Uthmeier’s PAC was called Keep Florida Clean.
(You can’t make this stuff up).
Many in the Florida Legislature were, to put it mildly, unimpressed.
Then-House Speaker Daniel Perez said the Hope Florida business looked “as though it could be illegal.”
Rep. Alex Andrade, chair of the House Healthcare subcommittee, suggested fraud might be involved and the Hope Florida “donation” could be “money laundering.”
Ron DeSantis flapped his wings like an outraged hen and squawked that these “jackasses” were merely trying to “smear” his wife and crush her dreams of political advancement.
At the time, Casey DeSantis seemed to be considering a run to succeed her husband as governor.
Andrade launched an investigation.
Then ended it. Almost no one involved would talk.
‘Mistakes were made’
He did get Joshua Hay, then chairman of the Hope Florida Foundation board, to testify under oath, but didn’t get much out of it — other than that Hay seemed spectacularly ignorant of what goes on in the charity he runs.
“I cannot confirm what the funds were used for,” Hay said. “We have no monitoring procedures.”
He added, “Mistakes were made.”
State Attorney Jack Campbell in Leon County agreed mistakes had, indeed, been made. He convened a grand jury to discover who made them.
What the grand jury unearthed is pretty damning, finding the Hope Florida Foundation “misappropriated” taxpayer money as “part of a sophisticated scheme.”
The report said, “While we can’t prove who is responsible, we can plainly see that taxpayer money was misused for political purposes.”
It also states: “Nobody will take responsibility for deciding the $10 million of taxpayer money would go to Hope Florida.”
“This decision was the original misappropriation, and no witness would take responsibility for making the decision or had any memory of who made it.”
Those in charge of running this dubious show insist they acted on legal advice. So, it was all fine.
Besides, they couldn’t remember what happened.
It’s a mystery!
Those who should have known better turned a blind eye. The report said Ashley Moody’s chief deputy failed to conduct “due diligence to ensure the proper appropriation of taxpayer funds.”
Those most deeply implicated now go around pitching loud hissy fits.
Uthmeier yelped the whole thing was nothing more than a “politically motivated witch hunt driven by the Democrats and a far left Democrat state attorney.”
Sounds a little desperate: Those of us in North Florida know Jack Campbell is about as “far left” as a ham sandwich.
Indignance
As for the people at the top of the power pile getting all red-faced and indignant over the grand jury report, well, as we say here in “far left” Tallahassee, a hit dog will holler.
Meanwhile in the blue corner, the Florida Democratic Party can’t believe its luck: The midterms are coming and the Republicans are trying to excuse the inexcusable.
Angie Nixon says Ashley Moody, her opponent in the 2026 Senate race, should resign.
José Javier Rodriguez, who’s running against Uthmeier for attorney general, calls the Hope Florida mess “the most brazen act of political corruption we have seen here in Florida.”
“My opponent is a criminal,” he says.
Gubernatorial candidate David Jolly doesn’t want Casey DeSantis attacked over Hope Florida: “I think she was used.”
Very gentlemanly.
But he’s not going to ignore the issue: “The scheme de-funded healthcare services for poor children to instead advance the political agenda of Gov. Ron DeSantis.”
Jolly and the rest of the Dems are getting some help from Florida Republicans, too.
GOP nominee Byron Donalds, forced to answer questions about the grand jury report at every campaign stop, insists voters aren’t that interested.
Come on, can’t we please talk about something else?
But even some Republicans, especially those Ron DeSantis has antagonized, aren’t inclined to talk about something else.
Sen. Rick Scott, no fan of Florida’s current governor, demands “accountability.” Scott’s company defrauded Medicare of $1.7 billion. Nevertheless, he’s getting pious on Hope Florida’s dodgy finances: “Money designated to help poor kids was diverted to political ads.”
‘Disgrace’
Don Gaetz, a longtime state senator, says Hope Florida “brings disgrace onto the Florida government.”
He’s pushing “a bipartisan coalition that simply makes sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Not a good look for the Rs less than two months before an election.
Of course, Democrats shouldn’t get giddy: Polls in the races for governor, U.S. senator, and state attorney general still favor Republicans, although they’ve been tightening up: Jolly is within a few points of Donalds, even leading in some polls.
But political scandals have a way of hanging around. They show up in campaign commercials, further souring the mood of voters sick of high gas prices, grocery store sticker shock, the Iran war, Uthmeier’s inflated adjunct professor salary (plus his arrogance), and Ron DeSantis’ attacks on education (plus his arrogance), not to mention Florida’s sky-high rents and unaffordable insurance.
Will Hope Florida make a difference? Maybe we’ll find out in November.
Maybe a couple of long-shot Democrats will break through.
What is certain is that the Hope Florida “philosophy” is as dead as a door nail.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.
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Devastation looms as ego-blinded Trump churns up new midterm hurricane for GOP
The Tuesday after Labor Day has always been the unofficial start of the home stretch of campaign season, when new ads flood the airwaves, campaign websites settle on final messaging, and candidates start swinging. Well, at least that’s the way things used to be.
But this year’s home stretch appears to be heavily focused on — wait, scratch that — dominated by one person who is not on the ballot, but whose ego can’t tolerate anyone else stealing the spotlight
First, recent GOP polling, door-knocking data, and internal focus groups are all picking up the same signal, an almost crippling case of "Trump fatigue" among traditional voters. And the evidence of this diagnosis is far and wide.
A leaked audio recording caught Oklahoma Rep. Stephanie Bice privately admitting the fatigue is real. And over the weekend, an internal Republican polling memo circulated by Americans for Prosperity and published by the Washington Post warned that the exhaustion is no longer scuttlebutt. It's a measurable number that could tank GOP turnout in the very districts the majority depends on.
So what's the party's answer to voter exhaustion with Trump? Apparently, more Trump. A lot more.
For the next 10 weeks, Donald Trump is about to become inescapable in a way even Trump-numbed Americans haven't braced for. Trump fatigue? Ha. We ain't seen nothing yet.
Start with the money. MAGA Inc., Trump's super PAC, is sitting on roughly $400 million with fewer than 100 days until Election Day. The obvious move, the move that would actually help embattled Republicans, is to dump that cash directly into the House and Senate races that will decide control of Congress. But Trump is making zero commitments at this point.
Instead, he has reportedly rejected that plan, apparently directing the money toward ads built around his own record rather than the candidates on the ballot, a so-called "environmental lift" with spots designed to nationalize the midterms around Trump personally, touting the stock market, border enforcement, and fentanyl deaths.
With his approval rating stuck in the low 30s and Democrats already trying to make November a referendum on him, Trump's strategy is to lean all the way in and make the referendum official himself.
Then there are the rallies. Fox News's Peter Doocy has reported that Trump is weighing a rally a day, every day, in October, hitting the most competitive states and districts in the country. If that happens, buckle up, because these rallies will be live, and unscripted. An hour of Trump saying whatever crosses his mind, and cable news will not be able to look away from riffs about jihadists, communists, and "Dumocrats," which is presumably the entire point, i.e. distraction.
It also means any Republican trying to run a local race, and a keep-Trump-off-your-lips campaign is out of luck. He's landing in their backyard whether they invited him or not.
And then there's the upcoming convention that even Republicans are dreading. September 9th and 10th in Dallas will mark the first-ever midterm party convention in American history. It's far from a nominating convention, instead being a two-night infomercial that RNC officials have nicknamed "Trumpapalooza." And it all comes with a very steep price.
Rather than saving and distributing cash to local campaigns that badly need it, state GOP chapters are charging attendees who could be putting the money directy into cash-strapped campaigns.
They have been selling premium packages ranging from a $5,000 "Honorary Guest" pass to a jaw-dropping $250,000 "Golden VIP" tier. One high-ranking GOP official has already predicted the made-for-TV spectacle is turning into a "s---show,” scheduled directly against the NFL's prime-time season openers and wrapping up on the eve of the 25th anniversary of September 11th, guaranteeing that images of a “Trumpapalooza” will run right up against a national day of mourning.
Put it all together, and you have the money, the rallies, and the convention and all the attention on Donald Trump. Trump everywhere, all at once, all the time, from now until November 3rd. Not because it's the best thing to do for down-ballot Republicans bracing for a wave, but because it's the only thing Trump seems willing to do to help — or not help — those GOPers up for re-eleciton.
Now, don’t cry for the Trump-strapped GOP candidates just yet, because the Republican Party is far from being cash-strapped. It enters the peak of the 2026 midterm election season with an overwhelming financial advantage, amassing a $1.1 billion war chest that is more than triple the Democratic reserves.
While Trump hoards his $400 million stockpile through his super PAC for his own rallies and ads rather than down-ballot races, independent conservative fundraising ensures the broader GOP remains fully funded.
So it’s sort of a Catch-22 for Republicans. They’re entering September flooded with cash, and most likely flooded by Trump. The candidates then likely have money to douse the airwaves with their ads, but will they be drowned out by Trump’s ads about himself? And, will news coverage force them to address Trump’s dismal record because Trump can’t be avoided?
In other words, will candidates be forced to answer for the Iran war, high gas prices, or Trump’s latest gaffe and offensive or whack-a-doodle comment? Proving that you might try to run from Trump, literally and figuratively, but you can’t hide.
The bottom line here is that whatever exhaustion voters feel right now is just the calm before the storm. Fittingly, this is also peak hurricane season. It will be hard to find a storm system with more ferocity, or more collateral damage to the GOP's midterm hopes, than the onslaught and deluge of Donald Trump that's about to make landfall.
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This horrific pattern shows who is truly in charge of the White House
In one of the most obscene segments ever aired on Fox “News,” our billionaire Treasury Secretary this week said the inflation Americans are suffering is Ukraine’s fault because, in response to Putin’s criminal regime daily murdering Ukrainian civilians (a war crime), Zelenskyy has been blowing up Russia’s energy assets.
Stupidity? Hypocrisy? Owned by Putin? Or is something even more sinister at work here?
That same morning, the Financial Times revealed that, for the past three years, Russia has been helping Iran build a supersonic cruise missile capable of blowing our ships out of the water, and at an Iran/Russia/China summit with Iran’s president, Putin, and Xi in Bishek, Putin said he’ll continue to supply Iran with “the necessary goods” that can be used to kill Americans.
Europe’s policy chief told the world that Russia gave Iran the satellite intelligence they needed to target and kill and maim American troops while destroying billions worth of our military infrastructure in the region. A senior official confirmed to CBS that Moscow was doing this, with 13 killed and 380 wounded by Iran (official numbers) just in the first 40 days.
Still, Trump invited Russia’s finance minister to the G20 meeting that was supposed to focus on punishing countries that are aiding Iran.
When Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked about it all, he waved the question off as irrelevant, saying that Putin’s got his own set of problems.
Are you seeing the same pattern I am? Our Treasury Secretary scolded Ukraine for fighting back against naked, murderous Russian aggression, our Secretary of State shrugged his shoulders about Iran and Russia working together to kill our troops, and Trump issued a new threat against our closest neighbor and ally, Canada.
If Putin had sat Trump, Hegseth, Kennedy, Bessent, Rubio, and Stephen Miller down in a room and ordered them to hurt and weaken the US, exactly what would they have done differently?
Of course, it was Trump who gave the orders and created the environment for all this to help Putin and screw America. And his motivation may be even more disgusting than the simple treason that this Manchurian Candidate scenario seems to indicate.
Start with the war. Ignoring the Constitution’s requirement that only Congress can declare war, Trump has now bombed at least 8 countries, the most recent being Iran, where we’ve now burned through air defenses that we could have used to defend Europe (including Ukraine) from Russia or Taiwan from China.
Our Patriot interceptor inventory has collapsed from 2,330 before the war to somewhere between 759 and 827 today, a drop of at least 65 percent, and our military has expended nearly four-fifths of its THAAD inventory. It’s going to take years to rebuild those stocks, and in the meantime we’re badly weakened on the world stage.
While Russia knows that the Patriot is pretty much the only weapon capable of knocking down the ballistic missiles Russia’s been throwing at Kiev every night — and Trump has refused to provide any more new ones to Ukraine for over a year-and-a-half — Moscow has kicked their own missile production into high gear to exploit that shortage. Their ballistic missile strikes on Ukraine went from 61 in April to 198 in July, with an even more radical increase across August.
The war Trump chose to join against Iran in violation of our laws and Constitution, in other words, is directly helping Putin kill children in Ukraine and assists Iran in hitting our troops in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, a humiliated South Korean President Lee had to go on TV and admit to his country that he was incapable of stopping Trump from pulling THADD components and Patriot batteries out of South Korea at the same time North Korea’s brutal dictator, Russian/Chinese ally, and Trump’s “good friend” Kim Jong Un is adding to his nuclear weapon inventory and testing ballistic missiles capable of incinerating Los Angeles and San Francisco.
While all that’s happening, Whiskey Pete Hegseth is hollowing out the Pentagon from the inside in his crusade to get rid of women and Black or Hispanic officers. The Army’s top civilian leader, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, resigned this week after multiple disputes with Pete, who’d previously fired Army chief General Randy George.
The resulting disaster is that our Army has no Senate-confirmed civilian or uniformed leadership in the middle of a shooting war.
Morale has collapsed, just like Putin would want, as Pete has most recently blocked another six officers from promotion, forced polygraphs on his own subordinates, and installed white male MAGA-only officers in senior slots.
And when reporters at Stars and Stripes — published since 1861 and started by Abraham Lincoln — dared write about the hardships sailors were enduring aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, Pete fired the paper’s editor and publisher. So much for a free and honest press for our troops.
There’s also, in no particular order:
— Ordering new carriers back to steam catapults on a ship already under construction
— Making the future drone-carrier harder to build because now the ship won’t reach the fleet until 2034
— Bombing boats in the Caribbean in what legal scholars across the spectrum call criminal extrajudicial killings
— Our national debt hitting $40 trillion because of Reagan’s, Bush’s, and Trump’s tax cuts, on pace to break the World War II record by 2030
— Interest on that debt is already exceeding all defense spending, money that instead could have given us healthcare and free college for the past two generations
— Handing roughly a trillion dollars in tax cuts to the top one percent last year while cutting Medicaid by about the same amount
— Cutting SNAP so hard that more than a million poor American children lost their food benefits
— Refusing to raise the minimum wage or make it easier to unionize
— Cutting the CDC’s parasite surveillance staff from 11 people to three and stopping surveillance for cyclospora
— Driving inspections of foreign food facilities to historic lows
— Cutting the childhood vaccine schedule from seventeen diseases down to eleven while discouraging Americans from getting any vaccinations
— Refusing to enforce our antitrust laws
— Firing the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for publishing a jobs number he didn’t like, so now we’re getting happy-talk numbers that must be corrected 2 months later
— Attacking our closest allies and trading partners, Mexico and Canada, with punitive tariffs
— Withholding $1.7 billion from NIH and canceling 2,200 grants for medical research and cancer cures while Europe and Canada recruit our scientists
— Moving nearly 150 programs out of the Education Department to kill it and our kids’ chances at a better future
— Killing Voice of America and smiling about it as Russian and Chinese state media move to fill the vacuum
— Weaponizing the DOJ against Trump’s personal enemies
— Defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS, and NPR because they told the truth
— Threatening the broadcast licenses of networks that offended Dear Leader
— Hollowing out our cybersecurity agency protecting our infrastructure and elections (CISA) so today states are freaking out that there’s no federal election security plan for the midterms
— Pausing enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, our main defense against foreign money bribing or otherwise corrupting American officials, including the president
— Handing our media to friendly oligarchs
— Deregulating the crypto underground that moved $104 billion to sanctioned entities in a single year, most of it Russian, Iranian, and North Korean
— Pardoning the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other cop-killers and then erasing their seditious conspiracy convictions entirely
— Sending masked, unmarked, armed federal agents into American neighborhoods
— Deploying armed National Guard troops into American cities over the objections of their governors, mayors, and citizens and in violation of posse comitatus
— Labeling “anti-capitalism” and “anti-Christianity” as terrorism indicators under NSPM-7
— Destroying faith in our elections
— Standing up an FBI and IRS joint effort to harass good-government and anti-corruption nonprofits
— Capping federal student borrowing in ways that hit aspiring teachers hardest.
In addition to hugely helping out Vladimir Putin, almost every thing on that list can be used in one way or another to put money (often government money) into somebody’s pocket.
At the same time, Trump’s appointee at the CFTC is suing states that try to regulate the futures betting markets, Uday’s … er, Don Jr’s … 1789 Capital venture fund led a billion-dollar funding round for Polymarket, valuing that betting outfir at $21 billion. Uday himself told Republican attorneys general to back off.
Both Uday and Qusay now have major stakes in both drone and other defense companies that benefit from our Pentagon tax dollars (that are never audited), and a rare-earth firm Uday invested in just got a $620 million Pentagon loan after the White House intervened to make it happen.
Whatever happened to my father’s GOP that fought fascists in WWII, hated repressive governments like in Russia and China, and preached fiscal moderation?
Between the Powell Memo, Jude Wanniski’s Two Santas strategy, five corrupt on-the-take Republicans on the Supreme Court, and Trump’s ass-kissing embrace of Putin, it’s pretty much entirely dead. Nothing left but suck-ups, bigots, and cynical opportunists who figure the best way to win an election is to shut down polling places in Texas.
We’re now watching a government run by people philosophically (and often financially) aligned with Putin and other tinpot dictators, who view our nation as a resource to be stripped for their own private gain.
So make sure everybody you know is registered and ready via vote.org, and double-check your registration if you live in a Red state. And then this November, turn out and vote these greedy bastards out of office while voting is still available to us.
And if this is the kind of reporting and analysis you want more of, please subscribe to the Hartmann Report and share this piece with the people in your life who need to hear it. Getting this kind of information in front of one more voter today matters more right now than almost anything else we can do.
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These squirming underdogs are the key to putting Trump in prison
No characteristic or attitude has defined Trump Administration 2.0 more broadly or blatantly than the money grab, a pattern established well before Inauguration Day. There was the $TRUMP meme coin pump and dump, and then through airplanes and Saudi projects, continuing right through today with Republicans now concerned that President Donald Trump plans to simply keep his $400M in PAC money for his own mostly private projects.
There is no news to be had in revealing that there appear to be no limits.
But things change. And those midterms loom with the possibility that Democrats in Congress will obtain the subpoena power and autopsy the death of the law, above and beyond that which we already see in front of our not-shocked faces.
Great. That's what they're there for, should it come to pass, over and above all the electoral obstacles Trump puts in the way. But let's assume Trump fails and that Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) gavels a Democratic majority Oversight Committee in January. And then assume a problem.
Well, many problems, but start with the first problem.
Priorities. Where to even begin? After all, since January 20th, 2025, it appears Trump's entire raison d'etre has been to strip this nation bare and sell it for scrap. How does one investigate that with the biggest impact, given SCOTUS's ruling essentially giving any president free rein to run a mobbed-up White House, dependent solely upon one tangential link to a presidential duty?
Some thoughts occur.
Namely, don't start with that president, nor any presidential duty; work the middlemen, make them squirm; you never know what they'll say when they face ... dunno, that's the problem and the point. They only know they're not the real root of the problem, but they are holding the problem by the roots. And that's when things might get interesting.
Let's get to the single most "non-presidential" and yet "Oh, my God! They actually just did that in the open?" action, one most certainly not touching any presidential duty. How was it that then Deputy A.G. Todd Blanche, Trump's own former attorney, got assigned a prosecutor's duty to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, ignored all obvious follow-up questions, allowed her to entirely clear Trump in the world's most notorious child-sex trafficking case, and only weeks later, she appears at Club Fed? (Oh, and not even a pardon has been ruled out?)
No explanation. No shame.
Trump says he has nothing to do with either interviewing Maxwell or prisoner exchanges. Well, sure. Normally. But normally, child sex-traffickers don't go to Club Fed-style puppy prison. And yet someone sure did approve and initiate that move. Subpoena that guy and ask him everything.
See how this works? Trump's top people are going to ignore Congressional subpoenas looking into corruption, and there is precedent for that, claiming executive privilege; even Eric Holder once told a Republican Congress to get bent over a particularly weird subpoena. Since the very top dogs will likely largely ignore Congress, ignore them. Start a level below, and outside the government.
Don't judge just yet.
Trump made $2.2B in his first 18 months or so as president, or roughly 5,500 times a presidential salary, much of it from crypto. Now, Trump himself doesn't know crypto from calypso, but someone does, and that someone had to put together a $Trump meme coin, and it had to involve the Trump family, who owned it and then sold it. Fast.
Money is not made that cleanly without some sort of plan. Subpoena those people whose wallets made the most money, people who sold very, very high, and get all up in their faces about how they knew precisely when the gig was up. That person might have been on a phone call Congress wants to know all about.
It is tempting to pick out some billionaire bros and put them in the hot seat. Ultimately, though, they'd just chill. Bezos bankrolled one of the world's worst movies ever made in Melania? That sure looks like corruption. Oh, hell — of course it's corruption. The problem is, deals like that, the billionaire favors, never need to come with a firm plan, only a familiar connection, and we're right back around to presidential duties, and possibly deregulating whatever Bezos buys these days.
Stay away.
In keeping with the billionaire rule, ignore Elon Musk, but do not ignore DOGE. Musk wasn't making those cuts himself, evaluating millions here or there. And many cuts came about at the right place and time for a private sector conglomerate to pick up what had been a public government service, now a for-profit savior.
For example, look into who ordered the Office of Personnel Management, which ran an entirely functional HR department that, through a series of no-bid moves through "Workday" (a private company,) eventually found a home as a private endeavor doing the same job in the lap of... Oracle.
Really rich and powerful guys like Trump and Musk don't make moves to simply make others really rich and powerful. There is always a backend: start in the middle, find the backend. It had to be planned.
And since Congress really does need to figure out what the buck(s) is going into and out of this ballroom, trace back how it was that Trump first said he'd build it, then said friends might contribute to fund it, then asked Congress for a big big pile of cash to build it, and doing so while having the East Wing demolished all but overnight, almost as if to ensure someone was building something on that side of the White House.
Rep. Garcia? Please subpoena some of those somebodies tearing down and building things on the White House grounds and, you know, review the accounting. Look for "consultants" and "advisors" receiving massive sums. Subpoena them. How were they worked into this work?
The pattern is set, and it should be done this way (in fact, some Dems are already leaning this way and doing so for a reason).
First, neither Trump nor his top privateers — not family, friends, or high-ranking coworkers — will allow a "Democrat Congress" to inconvenience them. And, "tbh," they may have the muscle to get away with it. Tough to tell. What is easy to tell is that one might not need said profiteer if Oversight has the middleman under him (they're all men) spilling all he can — behind closed doors for his protection — about all he "understood" to go on above.
Moreover, these types of things — a Bureau of Prisons coordinator, a 26-year-old DOGE staffer who tosses OPM's departments, and contractors for the ballroom — none of them really touch on a presidential duty. No, they're literally in the "middle" of the corruption. All one needs is to tie them to someone truly linked to Trump, and then you are in business.
Because the presidency isn't about business, or it's not supposed to be, and yet the more evidence one gains on establishing just how much of this administration's focus has been on dumping government cash upon private companies, the more the noose tightens. Enough is happening in front of our faces that even the MAGAs will likely admit, "Yeah, he's definitely getting rich off being the greatest president ever."
But there are fewer and fewer true MAGAs left, and those that are continue to peel away because seeing a president make millions while your disposable income goes into the gas tank and grocery store gets gross.
To the extent this administration has a focus, it's been centered on privatizing profits while letting the public suck up losses. They have acted as though there are no limits from the beginning because there are — almost literally — no limits, so long as one fully supports Trump. As things stand, not a single corrupt actor needs to fear anything — well, anything beyond insufficiently supporting Trump. Until then, they're safe.
But things change.
No matter how committed Trump might be to ignoring every single norm, every law as written, every manifestly insane instance of self-dealing, committed to the point he'll even hide in a well-appointed ballroom basement before coming out to face just desserts he doesn't believe will ever come, things change.
He has always gotten away with it before. He and those around him might get away with most of it now. But to the extent Democrats commit to cleaning up the corruption, or at least combing it, do it in the most productive way.
Ignore the top. Don't start at the bottom (As Merrick Garland did). Start two steps below the gilded gaggle, right in the middle, the ones who had to do the actual money-moving. Give those people immunity, and only then challenge those at the top; establish a record and see how far a future administration of either party will go to ignore stripping the country bare, making it rain.
Make middlemen great again. Great witnesses.
Jason Miciak is a Raw Story columnist, author, political consultant, attorney, and single parent girldad. Please follow on Bluesky, and he can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com.
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A sinister pattern takes shape as Trump takes another wild swing with his hatchet
It’s one thing for Trump to usurp powers that belong to Congress — quite another for him to usurp places that belong to all of us.
I’m talking about his renaming and demolishing what we share in common.
Trump said he “decided” to change the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America because he was pissed off at Canada.
How can one man decide to change the name of one of the Great Lakes — a name that we all learned when we were in elementary school? Not only is it part of our shared heritage; it’s part of our common reality.
Well-known place names anchor us. They provide a shared set of markers by which we navigate ourselves and situate others. By what right can he arbitrarily rob us of them?
He’s also changed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. He’s even considering renaming the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
A U.S. president has legal authority to instruct the U.S. Board on Geographic Names to update official maps and domestic databases. But that’s to maintain uniformity — quite the opposite of what Trump is doing.
And why the hell are Google Maps and Apple Maps following Trump’s arbitrary “decision” to change these place names? Good for MapQuest for refusing.
It’s not just place names that concern me. It’s also revered places we hold in common.
The building in Washington, D.C., called the White House is as much a part of our shared reality and common heritage as is Lake Ontario or the Gulf of Mexico.
How many of you have visited it? Taken photos of it? Seen pictures of it in books and on souvenirs?
Its “stately simplicity is … in accord with the purposes it was designed to serve,” President Theodore Roosevelt once said of the White House. Safeguarding it, he said, gives us continuity with our past. (Chief Justice John Roberts used this quote in his dissent from the Supreme Court majority’s recent opinion allowing Trump to continue to build his ballroom.)
After Trump has erected a giant ballroom in place of the East Wing, the White House will lose its continuity with our past. He’s robbing us of the White House we knew.
Same with the long pool extending eastward from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument, called the Reflecting Pool. He had its bottom painted dark blue (and is now claiming that vandals caused the paint to peel).
To the west of the Lincoln Memorial lies Arlington National Cemetery and the stately Lee-Custis Mansion. These are also part of our shared reality and common heritage. He wants to erect a giant arch that would block this view.
I’m not saying that our shared reality has to remain exactly the same through time. Place names we’ve relied on for our entire lives can be changed. Iconic buildings and monuments can be altered.
But one man should not be able to summarily and heedlessly change these places — Lake Ontario, the Gulf of Mexico, the White House, the Reflecting Pool, the view from the Lincoln Memorial.
No single person should be able to arbitrarily alter the place names and physical places that anchor us, orient us, provide us with a shared meaning — at least not in a democracy.
Trump’s place robbery is another way he is asserting his dominance. He wants us to know he has the power to alter our world at will — force us to call places whatever he decides they should be called, to accept whatever physical alterations he makes, and to abide one of the most intimate kinds of subservience: making us literally lose our place.
When sane people are once again in charge, I hope that among the first things they do is restore the names, demolish the impositions, and reclaim our common understandings of where and who we are.
- 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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This bumbling Trump buffoon just humiliated his boss in front of the entire world
In what seems like a rotating game of tag, with Donald Trump always being the “tagger,” the latest “it” guy — or, as Trump might aptly put it, “it-iot — is Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who this week proved yet again that when you get touched by Donald Trump, it never ends well. Ever.
There’s not enough space in this column to name all the people who have been burned after entering Trump’s orbit. Bessent, unlike others before him, sounded like a solid choice for Treasury secretary when he was nominated and confirmed. He got a whopping 69 votes in the Senate which, in the Trump era, is about as close to unanimous as you can get.
But Bessent’s stock, if you’ll pardon the pun, has been diminished. And this week, he demonstrated that the administration’s favorite approach to international conflict — bully first, build a coalition later, and brag about nothing at the end — works about as well at the Treasury Department as it does at the Pentagon.
Bessent arrived at the G20 finance meeting in Asheville asking the world’s finance ministers to unify behind a sanctions campaign against Iran. He left mostly empty-handed, having annoyed allies by inviting Russia’s finance minister and asking countries to join in sanctions while the United States simultaneously punishes some of those same allies with tariffs, most jarringly Canada.
He also left major business media organizations out of covering the meeting.
The results were predictable. Bessent left the G20 without a joint communiqué because China’s finance minister vetoed the U.S.-drafted text, blocking the required consensus.
But while Bessent was trying to persuade the world to unite against Iran, China’s President Xi Jinping was on the other side of the world doing something far more consequential.
In Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Xi joined Vladimir Putin, India’s Narendra Modi and seven other heads of state at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s anniversary summit to counter U.S. influence. And unlike the G20, they issued a joint declaration about Iran that reads like a direct answer to everything Bessent (And Hegseth!) spent the week asking for.
The bloc explicitly rejected “unilateral coercive measures,” defended Iran’s right to pursue peaceful nuclear development and condemned U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iranian territory as violations of international law.
Then came the kicker: Putin separately pledged to keep supplying Iran with the “essential goods” it needs to get through the war.
So much for CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s trip to Russia last week to warn them to stop violating U.S. sanctions and providing military support to Tehran. Putin knows how to make Trump look like the world’s biggest dunce.
The Trump administration seems to believe that countries just trip over themselves to help America because America is a military and economic superpower, or we used to be, until Trump, Hegseth, Bessent, et al. came along and screwed it all up.
But here’s a brainless thought: Don’t sanctions work better when allies participate? And don’t they work better when you’re not punishing those allies with an absurd game of whack-a-mole tariffs? Further, diplomatic pressure works better when countries trust the person applying it. And coalitions work better when you actually consult the people you want in them.
Bessent, because he’s now a limp appendage to Trump, failed spectacularly on all fronts.
Bessent’s decision to invite Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov to Asheville, his first in-person G20 appearance since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, was particularly tone-deaf. European allies were not pleased — at all. Germany’s finance minister called the invitation “troubling” to Bessent’s face, and when it came time for the G20’s traditional group photo, delegation after delegation refused to stand next to the Russian minister.
Treasury ultimately released an official photo with Russia’s seat conspicuously empty. Talk about shadow diplomacy. How do you build a coalition by informing people of your decision after you’ve already made it? Just another obvious question.
Then there are the tariffs, which turn the whole trip into a joke Bessent told on himself.
He spent the summit pushing “Operation Economic Outcast,” his laughable “D-Day” campaign to pressure countries into cutting off trade with Iran, while the same administration was fighting with Canada over tariffs. Canada, as you, dear reader, already know, is one of America’s closest and most reliable allies.
Bessent tried to save face by touting the fact that 19 of the 20 nations agreed that China’s export practices were unsustainable. But when the G20 requires consensus and China vetoed it, there was no joint communiqué at the conclusion of the summit.
And while Bessent was flailing in the mountains of North Carolina, the other side was demonstrating exactly how ineffective America has become, and how America’s haphazard and edict-driven diplomacy is an utter failure.
Hegseth started a war without a coalition, without clear objectives and without an endgame. Bessent’s doing the same thing with these willy-nilly sanctions for Iran. Not only did Putin say Russia would help Iran economically, but it was revealed that Russia was helping Iran militarily, too, by helping Tehran develop advanced supersonic cruise missiles designed to target U.S. warships and aircraft carriers in the Middle East.
If America, via Hegseth and Bessent, only ends up with egg on its face, we will be extremely and extraordinarily lucky.
To help save face, and avoid embarrassment, though, both Hegseth and Bessent have resorted to freezing out the media. Hegseth has heavily restricted the media by trying to ban them, physically relocating them and not doing press conferences. All of this, mind you, during a war.
Apparently unwilling to let anyone else monopolize the assault on the free press, Bessent denied credentials to prominent economic and policy reporters from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg News.
And so, after all the bluster, tariffs, sanctions, the empty chair and the press restrictions, Scott Bessent has earned himself a new distinction: Trump’s top fool. Not merely because he has been foolish enough to turn American economic diplomacy into an international game of whack-a-mole, but because he has helped make America look like the fool.
And that may be the most dangerous part of all. Under Trump, being a loyalist increasingly means being willing to embarrass yourself on the spot, and, in the process, embarrass the country you supposedly serve. Bessent hasn’t just mastered this art. He’s getting to be very good at it.
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Mike Johnson's sickening silence catches him in a shameful lie
In more reasonable times, our nation’s leaders used to worry about what kind of message their actions would send to our children. They used to worry about how the policies they passed would harm kids. They used to worry about the well-being of those youngsters, who are forced to live in the world we are in charge of.
Those days are over.
And there’s no greater symbol of the moral bankruptcy of the Trump-era Republican Party than the placement of partisan loyalty over the well-being of children.
Mike Johnson and the rest of the Republican Party’s steadfast backing of alleged abuser Max Miller is exactly that. They have decided that placing their political backing behind this unhinged, angry, abusive man is more important — because it might help them pick up one additional seat in the House of Representatives — than the well-being of his ex-wife and his daughter.
Shame isn’t a strong enough word.
Miller has been accused of domestic abuse by his ex-wife, Emily Moreno. Among the allegations are abhorrent instances of physical violence, including holding a gun to Moreno’s head, throwing scalding hot water on her, and shoving her into a wall. Miller is also alleged to have physically harmed their two-year-old daughter. Moreno is one of three women who have accused Miller of violence, with the pattern of abuse dating back a decade.
In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper last month, Miller denied the accusations and vowed that he will stay in his congressional race, insisting that “Speaker Mike Johnson, everyone else, they’re standing behind me. No one told me to get off the ballot.” That part is true. The Speaker has offered no public call for resignation or withdrawal, not even a condemnation of Miller’s behavior. Instead, he has stood behind Miller, calling him a “great member of Congress” and supporting his re-election campaign.
I have a daughter myself. It is unfathomable to me that a party leader could sit idly by while a member of their caucus is accused of child abuse and domestic violence. The Speaker of the House treating that as nothing more than a private family matter tells every parent that Republicans would rather protect a seat in Congress than protect a kid. That sickens me.
Miller is far from the only Republican House member under Johnson’s tutelage getting a free pass from the Speaker. Predatory behavior has become a routine issue within the Republican Congressional delegation, and the enabling of it has become a routine response from Johnson.
After the House Ethics Committee found "substantial reason to believe” that Rep.Chuck Edwards violated House rules against sexual harassment, the North Carolina Republican withdrew from his re-election campaign. A barrage of evidence shows that Edwards has been inappropriate with young female staffers, yet all he’s received is a censure. In public, Johnson and members of the North Carolina delegation have stayed silent.
Florida Rep. Cory Mills is under a House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations of dating violence. And last year, his ex-girlfriend accused him of threatening to release sexually explicit images of her after they broke up. Johnson’s response when reporters pressed him on the allegations against both Mills and Miller? “The key word there is ‘allegation.’”
Then there’s Tony Gonzales, the former Texas representative who resigned from his seat earlier this year after it was revealed that he had had an affair with a staffer who later took her own life. Johnson refused to join the bipartisan calls for Gonzales to drop out until after Gonzales admitted to the affair and it was absolutely clear there was no viable path to re-election. The Republican now running for that seat, Brandon Herrera, has a documented history of making vulgar, degrading comments about mothers and children. Johnson is fundraising for him anyway.
Mike Johnson’s heedlessness toward predators is despicable, but it isn’t surprising. This is the same man that spent weeks trying to block the release of the Epstein files at the President’s behest. He has built his career as speaker around protecting Trump, which in practice means protecting powerful abusers over children. That’s the path he chose, and he has chosen to keep walking it no matter who that means shielding next.
Johnson’s official government website insists that a “just government” embraces “morality.” Yet when members of his own conference are accused of violence against children or women or using the power differential of their office to pursue young staffers, Johnson’s moral rhetoric becomes deafeningly silent.
Johnson has the power as Speaker to hold his own members to some standard of conduct, to help root out the predators in his caucus, or at minimum say that credible allegations of violence are not tolerated in his party. He has chosen instead to wield that power to run interference and shield the men committing these acts. He doesn’t care about the dignity of survivors of abuse or the integrity of his party, just holding on to the majority.
Pat Dennis is the president of American Bridge 21st Century, a progressive research and rapid response operation affiliated with the Democratic Party.
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Just as you thought MAGA couldn't get crazier, the idiocy hits hyperdrive
If every accusation is a confession from Trump and the MAGA cult, then every dumb thing they say or do is a distraction from the Epstein Files.
Despite his promise to release the files himself if he won the 2024 election, Trump has done everything in his power to block them from seeing the light of day. From the initial claims of a “Democratic hoax” to Pam Bondi claiming there was “no Epstein Client List” after saying it was on her desk, the “most transparent administration in history” has been anything but. Remember when the White House staged a photo op with multiple MAGA influencers holding binders full of redacted pages?
Now that Bondi has been replaced by Todd Blanche and he’s joined forces with his fellow Trumpsimp, Mike “Speaker Jesus Freak” Johnson, we’re really never getting anything else out of this compromised administration. Johnson has already announced that the House will be sent back home for the last two weeks of September — all, some say, to avoid a floor vote on the Epstein Files.
The House members are already set to be in district in October, taking them UP TO THE MIDTERMS, which is fully unacceptable. Save for Rep. Thomas Massie, it’s glaringly obvious that all House Republicans are participating in the Epstein cover-up. And it’s a given that Senate Republicans are as well, but at least they’re not blowing off work for weeks at a time (except Mitch McConnell, who’s allegedly coming back “soon”).
House Democrats should take advantage of all that time off to not just focus on winning the midterms and boosting downballot candidates, but also to create that Democratic Press Secretary position that I will never shut up about, just like I will never stop talking about the Epstein Files.
In the meantime, they sent JD “Vladimir Futon” Vance out there to handle a press conference on Thursday, and it went about as well as you might expect.
Vance refused to call the Iran war a war, then made disparaging remarks about the upcoming memorial honoring the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks and joked about looking forward to hanging out with former President Joe Biden at the ceremony. He conveniently sidestepped the fact that he’s only going to be there because King Baby Trump was denied the chance to make a speech and is staying home like the petty toddler he is.
Republicans are in full disarray at the moment, but they can’t possibly let on, so they’re out there trying to pull focus in a million different directions. Aside from the failure that is the Iran War (that’s not a war!), Trump’s upcoming two-day “Midterm RNC” is poised to be a full disaster. Expect bad optics from an “Epstein Filesmobile” that will be parked out front. And most invited Republicans are declining to attend, which means Trump will end up speechifying in front of a mostly empty audience, making him look even weaker.
Which means he’ll make everyone say it was a roaring success, and then he’ll still have a different daily take about Iran based on who he last spoke with before falling asleep on camera yet again.
In fact, the Trumpcringe has gone beyond anything we’ve ever seen from any political party. The GOP is experiencing collective torticollis from looking the other way every time Trump embarrasses America, and yet they’re all still pretending that everything Trump does is aces, even as he continues to be our biggest national security threat.
Right now they’re pretending that it’s totes normal and fine for Trump to arbitrarily rename Lake Ontario to “Lake America” (how original), with Apple and Google falling in line. But some smart person at MapQuest (*cue your printer crying because it hasn’t been used since you needed to print out something from MapQuest*) not only wasn’t having any of that Lake America business, but they created a meme generator so people could make up their own names.
And while this dumb thing is still dumb-ing, Trump sycophants are pretending that building him an arch is something to be super psyched about. Gas prices are astronomical (with diesel hitting an all-time high), whatever food isn’t contaminated or recalled is crazy expensive, measles has made a comeback, and more miseries are being heaped upon us, but Trump is getting his stupid Ego Arch.
I would love to know why Doug “Burgumeister” Burgum is this excited about something no one asked for nor needs. Washington, D.C. doesn’t belong to Trump, just like the White House doesn’t belong to him.
Trump has said it’s being built to “honor himself.”
With our taxpayer dollars.
And the same Republicans who were mad that Michelle Obama planted a vegetable garden at the White House are pretending it’s all normal, because they’re still compromised and scared Trump will spill what he knows about them.
But wait, there’s always more idiocy to distract from the Epstein Files!
The White House website introduced a new online video game where people can pretend to be ICE agents who get to “deport illegals.” This is when stupid and dangerous hook up to spawn some potentially awful offline incidents, but anything goes when you’re owning the Libs.
Btw, I’ve never once felt “owned” by hateful science deniers who don’t care about the crimes Trump has committed against women and (allegedly) children.
MAGA influencers who are already paid to lie for Trump are suddenly out there acting like Flock cameras and data centers are the best things ever! Like, who cares about privacy or people being issued tickets for traffic violations they didn’t make? And really, who needs clean drinking water, farmable land, and breathable air when data centers can replace people and further enrich billionaires?
Not MAGA, you weak Leftists! *facepalm emoji*
All of this stupidity, compounded with the GOP’s threats to mess with our midterms votes, has me more furious than ever about these morons sitting in the highest power positions in the land.
Don’t get distracted!
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Buried in JD Vance's scary-as-hell rant was a terrifying admission
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed – I mean, there are just so many damn distractions these days – but our Vice President JD Vance is a crazed religious zealot untethered from reality.
This is not terribly reassuring considering that his boss is even more deranged than he is.
Maybe Vance is just trying to continue peddling his memoir, “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith” that came out in June. But in a visit with a Christian podcaster named Bryce Crawford on Monday, he theorized that there’s “some really, really weird spiritual dark energy” around the use to Artificial Intelligence.
In that same interview, Vance said he was unsure if we were in “end times” but noted that there were some things “about the world” that would render him “not shocked if the Antichrist was walking among us.”
Huh. That seems to be a terrifying admission, and one we can agree on. I wonder if we have the same Antichrist in mind.
He went on to talk with Crawford about his belief in “otherworldly” forces and a “burial ceremony” that was held for a retired AI model. “That makes me very uncomfortable,” he admitted. He also spoke about how some people are using AI for marital advice, which he dubbed “kind of Satanic.”
Apparently, in the Vance world, the Prince of Darkness is there hanging around every corner, leaving me wondering if J.D. has been privately binging “South Park” episodes.
Besides pushing his book, you may recall how this past April, the Veep publicly criticized Pope Leo XIV after the pontiff condemned the U.S. military’s involvement in the war in Iran. He had stated that God is never on the side of those who use the sword or drop bombs. He called the violence in Iran inhuman.
Oh, but Vance believed he was more Catholic than the Pope despite having been raised in a Protestant household and having gone through a period of atheism as an adult. He argued at a Turning Point USA event in Georgia that Leo was wrong and God was on the side of Allied forces during World War II when they stopped the Nazi atrocities.
And then he turned all Cosa Nostra on the pontiff by saying the Pope needed to be very careful when talking about theology to ensure that his words are anchored in truth. He might as well have warned him, “Nice little Vatican ya got there. Be a shame if something were to happen to it.”
So what we have here is a guy who’s delusional enough to believe he out-Catholics the Vicar of Jesus Christ, And again, this is the dude who has been cast as the reasonable alternative to the schmuck who believes himself king.
Now let’s remember that we theoretically live in a country where the separation of church and state remains the law of the land. In that same Monday podcast interview, he explained his approach to governing in explicitly providential terms. He said that Christians are commanded to try to make the world the way God wants it to be and said he’s concentrating on doing “as much of God’s work as possible.”
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always found that when someone invokes God often in their declarations, you can usually count on it being a substitute for the pronoun “me” or “I.” It’s also a simplistic but effective way to exert control over people, particularly those who are already extremely devout.
When the podcast discussion turned to whether Vance’s efforts on behalf of God could actually contribute to the apocalypse, his basic answer was that he is doing on behalf of God leads to end times, that’s OK, because those end times will eventually happen anyway.
How very reassuring.
This man, who is a heartbeat away from the presidency, defends white supremacists and white nationalists over his brown-skinned wife and children, yet claims to be more godly than thou. Like so many pious extremists, he has no character. It’s all just about using religion as a means to control and dominate.
This is all to confirm that the Vice President of the United States is very publicly discussing his exercise of worldly responsibility within an apocalyptic theological framework. If it came down to it, and he had his hand on the nuclear button, he might well push it since it would only serve to confirm his “end times” prediction.
Earlier this summer, Vance made another remarkable argument: Satan wants Christians to believe religion should be kept separate from politics. Actually, I’m with Satan on that one, and so is pretty much everyone in my circle. But this bolsters his declaration of America being “a Christian nation.”
Actually, JD, we’re a multifaith, pluralistic, multireligious society. But you know, semantics can be so inconvenient when you’re pushing a bigoted and insular narrative so hard.
At least equally disturbing and consequential is the fact that by invoking the devil so freely and often, a sitting VP appears willing to employ supernatural causation as a serious interpretive framework for real-world technological and political phenomena.
It should scare the literal and figurative hell out of us that Vance appears to interpret political reality through an apocalyptic religious lens in which Satan, the Antichrist, divine purpose and paranormal forces of “dark energy” are plausible forces operating in contemporary American life.
More troublingly still, he explicitly connects that radical worldview to governing, arguing for a “more fully Christian politics” while describing his political mission as doing “God’s will.” In that context, pretty much anything you come up with can come under the heading of something God would want, up to and including the state-sponsored terror we’re seeing daily now.
My own personal belief is that God – whatever we conceive He or She or It to be – has very little to do with what’s happening to this country right now. More likely, it’s about doing the bidding of the being with the horns, red tail and pitchfork down under.
(Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.)
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