The Trump dumpster fire vows to put out latest blaze
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
America's most dangerous enemy sits at its very heart
The only United States President in history to violently attack his own country, and attempt a coup to stay in power was always going to be a threat to illegally attack other countries like Venezuela, and destabilize the entire world.
This was the greatest fear when Donald J. Trump was recklessly reelected in 2024 by a slim majority of voters in a battered country that is split apart at the seams, and gasping for air.
Trump, of course, promised these people he’d fix 90 percent of our problems on day one, and has instead doubled and tripled them, while officially becoming the most dangerous problem the United States has ever had to grapple with.
He is a madman with the most powerful military in the world under his fat little thumb, a blank check from a Republican Congress which has surrendered its powers, and a bought-off conservative Supreme Court that has lost its honor.
To be clear, Trump’s continued attacks on Venezuela have been illegal from the start, violate our Constitution, and have been an affront to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
We told the people who voted for Trump this was going to happen, and while I’d like to sit here and used 225 choice words to rub their faces in it, that will accomplish nothing except blowing an old, functioning fuse.
This morning is a time for resolve, and a clear-eyed vision of the scary road ahead. We are in uncharted territory, but not because we have unilaterally and illegally attacked a sovereign nation. Lord knows there’s been far too much of that in our checkered history.
No, we are in this new, terrible place, because this time a man who has made it clear how little respect he has for the United States and its institutions is behind this latest illegal attack.
I say again: A man who will attack his own, has long since proven he is incapable of defending us and our Democracy.
In fact, he is our enemy.
So now what?
The answer is simple, and the execution will be hard: America has a dangerous dictator entrenched in its White House, who must be removed.
Starting right now, I am suggesting Congress move immediately to assemble a coalition of the willing, and announce their intent to work feverishly toward Trump’s removal.
We simply will not survive three more years of this, or even three more weeks or months at this frenetic, bloody pace, and that must be clearly articulated. Trump’s “presidency” thus far has been chaotic, brutal, and has accomplished nothing but weakening our standing in the world, and making our day-to-day lives far more challenging, expensive, and stressful.
Building consensus for Trump’s removal will be key, and cannot be done politically unilaterally. I doubt highly many Independents who voted for Trump to drop their egg prices voted for illegal, murderous foreign attacks, or Marines in our streets. I am also dubious that many in MAGA are good with Trump’s fixation on everything but addressing our skyrocketing cost of living.
This case for his removal must be taken to the public, begin apace, and the stakes must be laid out clearly: Donald J. Trump is a morally busted, mentally unstable tyrant who won’t stop until he is stopped cold.
This is classic fascism.
He is clearly unfit for the job, and the most dangerous man on Earth.
I am also suggesting the Democratic leaders throughout the world condemn these attacks and lay out the necessary sanctions against us for our illegal acts. The majority of the people in this country would support this during this time of war.
What Trump has done to Venezuela is no different than what Vladimir Putin has done to Ukraine.
Listen to me, friends around the world: We need your damn help.
When another murdering fascist, Adolph Hitler, attacked Poland in 1939 in the run-up to World War II, he justified it with lies and propaganda, which is exactly what Trump has been doing during his drumbeat for war with Venezuela and attacks inside his own country.
Already Trump’s propaganda channels at places like Fox are working feverishly to support this illegal incursion into Venezuela. These must be immediately countered with facts and vigor, and you can count this piece as but a spark that will lead to the raging fire for truth that must be kindled right now.
The only significant difference between 1939 and 2026, is that Hitler was far more popular in Germany than Trump is in America. This is problematic for Trump, of course, but will only make him that much more dangerous as he lashes out, and listens to the unhinged voices in his head, while grotesque men like Stephen Miller and Pete Hegseth tug at his sleeves.
Trump’s illegal attack on Venezuela is only the beginning if we don’t put an end to it right now. It’s not a matter of if he’ll attack again, but simply when and where.
And if we won’t do everything we can to stop this now, he will have successfully conquered the United States of America, because we will have surrendered to a traitor.
- D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.
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The most shameful day in American history
Five years ago tomorrow was the most shameful day in American history.
We must not allow Trump to persuade America that it did not happen or that he was innocent, or let him deflect the nation’s attention from the fifth anniversary of what occurred that day.
Less than three weeks ago, Jack Smith, the former special counsel to the Justice Department, appeared before the House Judiciary Committee and testified under oath:
“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power.”
The sole reason Donald Trump is not now behind bars is that Smith dropped the case after Trump was elected to a second term, because the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States — written by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by five other justices, three of whom were nominated by Trump — prevented the prosecution of a sitting president.
Let us ponder this for a moment.
Although the peaceful transfer of power lies at the heart of American democracy, Trump sought to overturn the result of the 2020 election. He is now president once again.
Five years ago tomorrow, on January 6, 2021, when Vice President Mike Pence walked into the Capitol, he faced a withering pressure campaign by Trump.
Trump and his henchmen had already twisted the arms of governors and election officials around the country to change the result of the election in his favor. They had coaxed loyalists in five swing states to submit signed certificates falsely claiming they were “duly elected and qualified” members of the Electoral College.
Pence was about to throw out the slates of false electors. As he began the electoral vote count, thousands of Trump supporters — many of them armed — stormed the Capitol. Some chanted they wanted to “hang Mike Pence” for refusing to block the certification.
They came directly from a rally Trump held on the Ellipse, in which Trump repeated his false claim that the election had been stolen and told the crowd, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
According to the criminal indictment,
“After it became public on the afternoon of January 6 that the Vice President would not fraudulently alter the election results, a large and angry crowd — including many individuals whom the Defendant had deceived into believing the Vice President could and might change the election results — violently attacked the Capitol and halted the proceeding.”
The FBI estimated that between 2,000 and 2,500 people entered the Capitol Building in the attack, some of whom participated in vandalism and looting, including of the offices of members of Congress. Rioters also assaulted Capitol Police officers. They occupied the empty Senate chamber while federal law enforcement officers defended the evacuated House floor.
Within 36 hours, five people died. One was shot by Capitol Police; another died of a drug overdose; three died of heart attacks or strokes, including a police officer who died the day after being assaulted by rioters. Many were injured, including 174 police officers. Four other officers who responded to the attack died by suicide within seven months.
“President Trump was wrong,” Pence said subsequently. “I had no right to overturn the election. And his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”
A week after the attack, the House of Representatives impeached Trump for incitement of insurrection. In February 2021, after he left office, the Senate voted 57–43 in favor of conviction but fell short of the required two-thirds majority, resulting in his acquittal.
Senate Republicans then blocked a bill to create a bipartisan independent commission to investigate the attack, leaving the House to organize its own select committee.
After an 18-month investigation including more than 1,000 witnesses and nine televised public hearings, the House’s select committee identified Trump as the “central cause” of the Capitol attack by the pro-Trump mob.
The panel, made up of seven Democrats and two Republicans, voted unanimously to recommend charges to the Justice Department to prosecute Trump for seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Following a special counsel investigation by the Justice Department, Trump was indicted on four charges in August 2023.
As I’ve noted, all charges against Trump were dismissed after his reelection to the presidency.
Of the 1,424 people charged with federal crimes relating to the riot, 1,010 pled guilty and 1,060 were sentenced and served time in prison. Enrique Tarrio, then the chairman of the Proud Boys, received the longest sentence, a 22-year prison term.
Upon retaking the presidency, Trump pardoned them all.
***
Trump and his lackeys in the Republican Party have since promoted a revisionist history of the event — downplaying the severity of the violence, spreading conspiracy theories, and portraying those charged with crimes as hostages and martyrs.
Trump has tried to recast the violent events as a “day of love.”
On December 8, 2024, in his first broadcast news interview since the 2024 election, Trump said members of the House committee that investigated the riot “should go to jail.”
***
We must never forget. We must teach our children and our children’s children and all future generations of Americans what happened on January 6, 2021— so that, as Mike Pence hoped, “history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”
January 6, 2021 was the most shameful day in American history. It should live in infamy, as should the traitor who refused to accept the election results and incited the attack on the U.S. Capitol — Donald J. Trump.
Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/
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This super-sized problem threatens Trump's survival — and he's making it worse
If you were hung over on New Year’s Day, and decided to take it easy by reading the Wall Street Journal’s deep dive into Donald Trump’s aging and health, one item no doubt stood out, because it was so viscerally grotesque.
The Journal resurfaced an account of a McDonald’s meal Trump consumed on the 2024 campaign trail that would make anyone suffering from a New Year’s Eve booze-binge gag at the thought.
According to Republican National Committee chair Joe Gruters, Trump had fatty fresh fries followed by an off-the-charts cholesterol, carbohydrate and sodium binge: a Filet-O-Fish sandwich, a Quarter Pounder, and a Big Mac. It was a gourmand of guzzlement, not only vomit inducing but plain offensive to anyone who lives by the motto “you are what you eat.”
This obscene occasion of gluttony is a window into a long-standing pattern of Trump’s behavior, one that directly intersects with well-established medical science about aging, vascular health, and cognitive decline. Trump’s McDonald’s habit is central to his health and humanity.
In other words, when you are 20, it’s natural to feel immortal and adventurous with food. But a soon-to-be octogenarian surely understands the fragility of life and mortality. Unless, of course, the octogenarian in question is an obtuse, obstinate and obese oaf.
Trump’s long-documented dependence on McDonald’s is a dietary habit defined by ultra-processed foods, high saturated fat, excess sodium, refined carbohydrates, and minimal fiber, precisely the combination most consistently associated with cardiovascular disease, and in older adults, cognitive decline.
The medical consequences were demonstrated vividly two decades ago by the filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, with Super Size Me. In Spurlock’s experiment, consuming only McDonald’s for 30 days resulted in rapid metabolic deterioration, elevated liver enzymes, mood disturbances, and alarming cardiovascular markers. Physicians urged termination of the experiment due to the risk of lasting harm.
Far from distancing himself from fast food, Trump has elevated it. He staged a McDonald’s “work shift” as a campaign stunt, served fast food to NCAA athletes at the White House, and famously posed alongside allies surrounded by McDonalds boxes and bags on his private plane — making the health-conscious Robert F. Kennedy Jr. look a supplicant hypocrite.
These moments were presented as Trump being Trump, yet they are evidence of sustained exposure to a diet known to worsen the very conditions Trump either has or is at elevated risk of developing.
The Journal cited Trump’s claim of having “good genes.” He frequently cites the longevity of his parents as proof that he will similarly endure. What that narrative — like the WSJ article — omits is that while Trump’s father, Fred Trump, lived to 93, he suffered for years with Alzheimer’s disease.
That omission matters, especially when it applies to Fred’s fourth child.
Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias are complex, but decades of research point to strong associations with cardiovascular health, chronic inflammation, and, most pointedly, diet. It doesn't take a nutritionist or physiologist to figure out that a crummy diet makes a dummy brain.
Diets high in saturated fat and ultra-processed foods are associated with increased amyloid deposition, vascular dysfunction, and accelerated cognitive decline.
No credible clinician would claim McDonald’s “causes” Alzheimer’s. But no credible clinician would dismiss the cumulative effect of Trump’s dietary habits either, especially in an over-weight, exercise-phobic individual fast approaching 80.
Mary L. Trump, a clinical psychologist and Trump’s niece, has stated publicly that she recognizes in her Uncle Donald behaviors and patterns she observed in her grandfather as Alzheimer’s progressed. A plethora of examples suggest Trump’s mental health issues are progressing.
This was evidenced at 3am on Friday, when Trump alarmed the world by threatening Iran with war, saying the U.S. was “locked and loaded.”
Such middle-of-the-night Truth Social posts validate Trump’s brag that he doesn’t like to sleep.
And guess what? Poor sleep raises the risk and speeds the progression of Alzheimer’s by preventing the brain from clearing toxic proteins. Their build-up worsens memory and symptoms, creating a pattern in which disrupted sleep fuels the disease.
Sleep and diet are only two components of Trump’s disregard for medicine and doctor’s orders. The WSJ story lays out how he ignores medical recommendations on aspirin dosing, taking amounts far exceeding typical preventive guidelines, and not using compression socks to treat chronic venous insufficiency. Trump is making the condition worse.
All told, these are decisions that worsen vascular health, the system most closely tied to cognitive preservation. Yet Trump responds with defiance. He sees adhering to medical advice as weakness.
The irony is that Trump’s dismissiveness and insistence on projecting invincibility are defying and testing an unforgiving Mother Nature. When Morgan Spurlock attempted to do the same, doctors stopped his experiment. Trump has surrounded himself with aides and allies, even doctors, who enable it.
As Trump approaches 80, his spectacle of defiance gives way to something more sobering: the certainty that time always wins. Always. Fast food, bravado, and denial may fuel his persona, but they cannot outrun biology.
Trump has spent a lifetime supersizing, insisting the rules of physiology do not apply. But Mother Nature has the final say. She’s never wrong. And she never loses.
- John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”
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The right can howl all it wants — Muslims have always been part of the American story
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” — Frederick Douglass
America’s story has always been a story of struggle — for liberty, for justice, for recognition. On a cold January afternoon outside City Hall, Zohran Mamdani stepped into that struggle. Raising his right hand, he took the oath of office as mayor of New York City — the first Muslim ever to hold the city’s highest office — embodying Douglass’ truth: Progress demands courage, perseverance, and the relentless pursuit of inclusion.
The headlines captured the surface: a 25-minute inaugural address, roughly 4,000 spectators, a private swearing in just after midnight at the Old City Hall subway station, appearances by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). But the moment ran far deeper. Mamdani’s inauguration was not only a municipal milestone; it was the latest chapter in a debate as old as the republic itself: where Muslims belong in the American story — and whether they ever truly have.
That question stretches back to July 30, 1788, when North Carolina ratified the Constitution. Anti-federalist William Lancaster warned that by rejecting religious tests for office, the new nation might allow Muslims to govern.
“Papists may occupy that chair,” he cautioned, “and Mahometans may take it. I see nothing against it.”
A warning, then. A prophecy, now.
There were no Muslim candidates in 1788. But there were Muslims in America — thousands of enslaved Africans whose presence exposed the republic’s deepest contradiction. Between 5 percent and 20 percent of enslaved Africans were Muslim, many literate in Arabic, bearing names like Fatima, Ali, Hassan, and Said. Their faith was violently suppressed, yet fragments endured — in memory, language, and resistance.
Even the founding generation reflected this tension. Thomas Jefferson studied the Quran and treated Islam as a serious intellectual tradition, even as he owned enslaved Muslims. Islam existed in theory, in human reality, and yet was denied civic recognition.
That tension carried forward into the nation’s greatest moral reckoning: the Civil War.
Muslims fought for the Union. Mohammed Kahn enlisted in the 43rd New York Infantry. Nicholas Said — born Mohammed Ali ben Said in Nigeria, raised Muslim, later converted to Christianity — served as a sergeant in the 55th Massachusetts Colored Regiment and as a Union clerk. Captain Moses Osman held a high-ranking post in the 104th Illinois Infantry. Union rosters show names like Ali, Hassan, and Said, hinting at a wider Muslim presence than history often acknowledges.
Yet rifles were not the only weapons. Islam entered the moral imagination through words and witness. Sen. Charles Sumner, nearly beaten to death on the Senate floor, quoted the Quran to condemn slavery. Ayuba Suleiman Diallo — Job ben Solomon — had already unsettled transatlantic assumptions through literacy, eloquence, and dignity. His story endured into the Civil War, republished in 1864 to reinforce the war’s moral purpose. Overseas, Hussein Pasha of Tunisia urged the US to abolish slavery “in the name of humanity,” showing Muslim advocacy was part of a global ethical conversation.
Muslims remained largely invisible in America’s public self-understanding — until the 20th century produced a figure too large to ignore.
Muhammad Ali, still the most recognizable man on Earth decades after his gold medal at the 1960 Rome Olympics, transformed boxing and American consciousness alike. He was named “Athlete of the Century” by Sports Illustrated, GQ, and the BBC; “Kentuckian of the Century” by his home state; and became a global icon through speed, grace, and audacious charm.
Ali’s significance extended far beyond the ring. By insisting on the name Muhammad Ali instead of Cassius Clay, he forced America to confront the legacy of slavery embedded in naming itself. His embrace of Islam was unapologetic and public. His refusal to be drafted into the Vietnam War cost him his title and livelihood, yet anticipated the anti-war movement. His fights in Kinshasa, Manila, and Kuala Lumpur shifted attention from superpower dominance toward global conscience.
Ali’s humanitarian work was relentless: delivering over 232 million meals, medical supplies to children in Jakarta, orphans in Liberia, street children in Morocco. At home, he visited soup kitchens, hospitals, advocated for children’s protections, and taught tolerance in schools through his book Healing. For this, he was honored as a United Nations Messenger of Peace, cited by Amnesty International, and recognized by President Jimmy Carter as “Mr. International Friendship.”
Ali showed the nation something fundamental: that Islam is American. That Muslims have always belonged to the moral and civic fabric of this country. That a nation built on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, on religious tolerance, on care for the poor, is naturally aligned with Islam. Mamdani is American not in spite of his faith, but because Islam is American.
It is against this long arc — from slavery to abolition, civil rights, global conscience, and the moral courage of Muhammad Ali — that Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration comes into focus.
Mamdani’s life traces modern routes of migration and belonging. Born in Kampala, Uganda to parents with roots in South Asia, he was raised in New York City. Yet his rise fulfills an older constitutional promise. In his inaugural address, he thanked his parents — “Mama and Baba” — acknowledged family “from Kampala to Delhi,” and recalled taking his oath of American citizenship on Pearl Street.
When Mamdani declared, “New York belongs to all who live in it,” he answered a question first posed in fear in 1788, tested in war, dramatized by Muhammad Ali, and deferred for generations. He named mosques alongside churches, synagogues, temples, gurdwaras, and mandirs, making visible what history had long rendered partial. When he spoke of halal cart vendors, Palestinian New Yorkers, Black homeowners, and immigrant families bound together by labor and hope, he articulated a civic vision rooted in lived American reality.
Notably, Mamdani did not frame his Muslim identity as something to defend. It simply existed.
“Where else,” he asked, “could a Muslim kid like me grow up eating bagels and lox every Sunday?”
Hybridity was not an exception. It was inheritance.
Yet it is equally important to recognize that Mamdani’s historic victory does not make him infallible, nor should it. The fact that he is the first Muslim mayor of New York City is not a personal achievement alone — it reflects the barriers that Muslims, like many others, have historically faced in participating fully in American democracy. Discrimination, racial and religious bias, and systemic obstacles made this moment possible only now, not because of any failing on his part. He will, like all mayors before him, make mistakes. He will face limits, criticism, and flaws — because he is human. To hold him to an impossible standard would be to misunderstand both history and democracy.
There is, too, something unmistakably American about Mamdani’s politics. By invoking La Guardia, Dinkins, and de Blasio; by embracing democratic socialism without apology; by grounding his agenda in labor, affordability, and collective responsibility, he situates himself firmly in an American tradition — one that echoes the abolitionists, the New Deal, and the moral courage of Ali.
And as Malcolm X reminds us, this is the guiding principle for American civic life: “I believe in the brotherhood of man, all men, but I don’t believe in forcing anyone to accept it.”
This is what makes the moment historic. Not that a Muslim has finally entered American politics, but that an old constitutional anxiety — once voiced as a warning — has become an ordinary fact of civic life. Islam, Mamdani, and the ideals of this nation converge in a single, undeniable truth: America is not a Christian nation, nor a nation for whites, nor a nation for the rich alone. It is a nation built on principles shared by all who live in it, and Islam has always been part of that inheritance.
The work, as Mamdani said, has only just begun. But the story his inauguration tells — that Muslims were enslaved at the nation’s birth, debated at its founding, fought in its wars, shaped its abolitionist conscience, transformed its civil rights culture, and now govern its greatest city — is no longer hypothetical.
It stands, unmistakably, on the steps of City Hall.
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What next at the Fed? Will the AI bubble burst? For Trump, economic questions mount
The U.S. economy heads into 2026 in an unusual place: Inflation is down from its peak in mid-2022, growth has held up better than many expected, and yet American households say that things still feel shaky. Uncertainty is the watchword, especially with a major Supreme Court ruling on tariffs on the horizon.
To find out what’s coming next, The Conversation checked in with finance professors Brian Blank (Mississippi State) and Brandy Hadley (Appalachian State), who study how businesses make decisions amid uncertainty. Their forecasts for 2025 and 2024 held up notably well. Here’s what they’re expecting from 2026 — and what that could mean for households, workers, investors and the Federal Reserve:
What’s next for the Federal Reserve?
The Fed closed out 2025 by slashing its benchmark interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point — the third cut in a year. The move reopened a familiar debate: Is the Fed’s easing cycle coming to an end, or does the cooling labor market signal a long-anticipated recession on the horizon?
While unemployment remains relatively low by historical standards, it has crept up modestly since 2023, and entry-level workers are starting to feel more pressure. What’s more, history reminds us that when unemployment rises, it can do so quickly. So economists are continuing to watch closely for signs of trouble.
So far, the broader labor market offers little evidence of widespread worsening, and the most recent employment report may even be more favorable than the top-line numbers made it appear. Layoffs remain low relative to the size of the workforce — though this isn’t uncommon — and more importantly, wage growth continues to hold up. That’s in spite of the economy adding fewer jobs than most periods outside of recessions.
Gross domestic product has been surprisingly resilient; it’s expected to continue growing faster than the pre-pandemic norm and on par with recent years. That said, the recent shutdown has prevented the government from collecting important economic data that Federal Reserve policymakers use to make their decisions. Does that raise the risk of a policy miscue and potential downturn? Probably. Still, we aren’t concerned yet.
And we aren’t alone, with many economists noting that low unemployment is more important than slow job growth. Other economists continue to signal caution without alarm.
Consumers, the largest driver of economic growth, continue spending — perhaps unsustainably — with strength becoming increasingly uneven. Delinquency rates — the share of borrowers who are behind on required loan payments in housing, autos and elsewhere — have risen from historic lows, while savings balances have declined from unusually high post-pandemic levels. A more pronounced K-shaped pattern in household financial health has emerged, with older higher-income households benefiting from labor markets and already seeming past the worst financial hardship.
Still, other households are stretched, even as gas prices fall. This contributes to a continuing “vibecession,” a term popularized by Kyla Scanlon to describe the disconnect between strong aggregate economic data and weaker lived experiences amid economic growth. As lower-income households feel the pinch of tariffs, wealthier households continue to drive consumer spending.
For the Fed, that’s the puzzle: solid top-line numbers, growing pockets of stress and noisier data — all at once. With this unevenness and weakness in some sectors, the next big question is what could tip the balance toward a slowdown or another year of growth. And increasingly, all eyes are on AI.
Is AI a bubble?
The dreaded “B-word” is popping up in AI market coverage more often, and comparisons to everything from the railroad boom to the dot-com era are increasingly common.
Stock prices in some technology firms undoubtedly look expensive as they rise faster than earnings. This may be because markets expect more rate cuts coming from the Fed soon, and it is also why companies are talking more about going public. In some ways, this looks similar to bubbles of the past. At the risk of repeating the four most dangerous words in investing: Is this time different?
Comparisons are always imperfect, so we won’t linger on the differences between this time and two decades ago when the dot-com bubble burst. Let’s instead focus on what we know about bubbles.
Economists often categorize bubbles into two types. Inflection bubbles are driven by genuine technological breakthroughs and ultimately transform the economy, even if they involve excess along the way. Think the internet or transcontinental railroad. Mean-reversion bubbles, by contrast, are fads that inflate and collapse without transforming the underlying industry. Some examples include the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 and The South Sea Company collapse of 1720.
If AI represents a true technological inflection — and early productivity gains and rapid cost declines suggest it may — then the more important questions center on how this investment is being financed.
Debt is best suited for predictable, cash-generating investments, while equity is more appropriate for highly uncertain innovations. Private credit is riskier still and often signals that traditional financing is unavailable. So we’re watching bond markets and the capital structure of AI investment closely. This is particularly important given the growing reliance on debt financing in some large-scale infrastructure projects, especially at firms like Oracle and CoreWeave, which already seem overextended.
For now, caution, not panic, is warranted. Concentrated bets on single firms with limited revenues remain risky. At the same time, it may be premature to lose sleep over “technology companies” broadly defined or even investments in data centers. Innovation is diffusing across the economy, and these tech firms are all quite different. And, as always, if it helps you sleep better, changing your investments to safer bonds and cash is rarely a risky decision.
A quiet but meaningful shift is also underway beneath the surface. Market gains are beginning to broaden beyond mega-cap technology firms, the largest and most heavily weighted companies in major stock indexes. Financials, consumer discretionary companies and some industrials are benefiting from improving sentiment, cost efficiencies and the prospect of greater policy clarity ahead. Still, policy challenges remain ahead for AI and housing with midterms looming.
Will things ever feel affordable again?
Policymakers, economists and investors have increasingly shifted their focus from “inflation” to “affordability,” with housing remaining one of the largest pressure points for many Americans, particularly first-time buyers.
In some cases, housing costs have doubled as a share of income over the past decade, forcing households to delay purchases, take more risk or even give up on hopes of homeownership entirely. That pressure matters not only for housing itself, but for sentiment and consumption more broadly.
Still, there are early signs of relief: Rents have begun to decline in many markets, especially where new supply is coming online, like in Las Vegas, Atlanta and Austin, Texas. Local conditions such as zoning rules, housing supply, population growth and job markets continue to dominate, but even modest improvements in affordability can meaningfully affect household balance sheets and confidence.
Looking beyond the housing market, inflation has fallen considerably since 2021, but certain types of services, such as insurance, remain sticky. Immigration policy also plays an important role here, and changes to labor supply could influence wage pressures and inflation dynamics going forward.
There are real challenges ahead: high housing costs, uneven consumer health, fiscal pressures amid aging demographics and persistent geopolitical risks.
But there are also meaningful offsets: tentative rent declines, broadening equity market participation, falling AI costs and productivity gains that may help cool inflation without breaking the labor market.
Encouragingly, greater clarity on taxes, tariffs, regulation and monetary policy may arrive in the coming year. When it does, it could help unlock delayed business investment across multiple sectors, an outcome the Federal Reserve itself appears to be anticipating.
If there is one lesson worth emphasizing, it’s this: Uncertainty is always greater than anyone expects. As the oft-quoted baseball sage Yogi Berra memorably put it, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
Still, these forces may converge in a way that keeps the expansion intact long enough for sentiment to catch up with the data. Perhaps 2026 will be even better than 2025, as attention shifts from markets and macroeconomics toward things that money can’t buy.
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Once you see what is driving Trump into darkness, it can't ever be unseen
In the Donald Trump era — praise be! — so much is possible that previously no one had ever even imagined. For instance, not only has “the late, great Hannibal Lecter” come back to life, he might even join Trump’s cabinet.
Well, that’s just a guess, but why not? I think he’d fit right in. All of which is to say: “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear...”
It’s not simply that Trump is unique (i.e., uniquely crazy). He definitely is, but he’s also American to the core. Under his leadership, our political structure is naked and exposed, stripped of its political correctness. The emperor has no clothes! Suddenly we can’t avoid seeing this.
Indeed, we can’t avoid seeing ourselves. As psychologist John Gartner has pointed out, Trump is not only a malignant narcissist, but — as has been clear in his second term — he’s slithering ever more deeply into dementia. Yet people still support him — enough people to let him win elections. Why?
Because, Gartner notes: “He’s beating up on their shared enemies. There’s a psychological appeal that a Hitler-like character has. Someone who feels disempowered feels re-empowered by someone who, in a punitive way, is attacking their shadow enemies and making them feel powerful and entitled to dominate.”
I would add that these “enemies” may simply be pulled out of the blue ... a group his supporters weren’t even aware of. But the strongman has declared them to be the enemy: in effect, creating the enemy. What matters is not that a long-despised group of people are getting what they “deserve,” but that the disempowered supporters now have someone they can feel like they’re dominating.
And, yeah, Trump is going crazy, so to speak, attacking various enemies. As Bret Wilkins wrote at Common Dreams:
President Donald Trump — the self-described “most anti-war president in history” — has now ordered the bombing of more countries than any president in history as US forces carried out Christmas day strikes on what the White House claimed were Islamic State militants killing Christians in Nigeria...
In addition to Nigeria, Trump — who says he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize — since 2017 has also ordered the bombing of Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen, as well as boats allegedly transporting drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean. Trump has also deployed warships and thousands of US troops near Venezuela, which could become the next country attacked by a president who campaigned on a platform of “peace through strength.”
On Saturday, Trump duly attacked Venezuela, kidnapping its president, Nicolás Maduro.
But this “leadership” is anything but unprecedented. As Palestinian-American comedian Sammy Obeid asks, in a comedy routine with more factual clarity than is often present in the official media: What actually is terrorism, this thing we’ve been trying so hard to eliminate for the last couple decades? To find out, he looked up the definition: Terrorism is “using violence to achieve a political goal.”
Uh ... America itself is the biggest terrorist of all time, apparently! Or at least it’s well up there on the list. Beyond the Vietnam War — millions dead — there’s the alleged War on Terror, launched by George W. Bush, continued by Barack Obama, eventually ended by Joe Biden.
According to Brown University’s Costs of War Project: “An estimated over 940,000 people were killed by direct post-9/11 war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan between 2001-2023. Of these, more than 412,000 were civilians. The number of people wounded or ill as a result of the conflicts is far higher, as is the number of civilians who died ‘indirectly,’ as a result of wars’ destruction of economies, healthcare systems, infrastructure, and the environment. An estimated 3.6-3.8 million people died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the total death toll to at least 4.5-4.7 million and counting.”
You might say Trump brings the darkness of all this to light. Isn’t that where war belongs — in raw public scrutiny? Perhaps the greatest enemy of peace is the collective justification and abstraction of war by the political and media complex, along with the financial flow making it possible. This is our national infrastructure. Trump is exposing it, not intentionally, but with snarky, 12-year-old honesty, mixed with dementia.
“Terrorism is using violence to achiever a political goal.” The “war” on terror, the transcendence of terror — the transformation of humanity, of Planet Earth — begins by looking deeply at ourselves and choosing to evolve. If we refuse to do so, we have Donald Trump.
- Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. Koehler has been the recipient of multiple awards for writing and journalism from organizations including the National Newspaper Association, Suburban Newspapers of America, and the Chicago Headline Club. He's a regular contributor to such high-profile websites as Common Dreams and the Huffington Post. Eschewing political labels, Koehler considers himself a "peace journalist. He has been an editor at Tribune Media Services and a reporter, columnist and copy desk chief at Lerner Newspapers, a chain of neighborhood and suburban newspapers in the Chicago area. Koehler launched his column in 1999. Born in Detroit and raised in suburban Dearborn, Koehler has lived in Chicago since 1976. He earned a master's degree in creative writing from Columbia College and has taught writing at both the college and high school levels. Koehler is a widower and single parent. He explores both conditions at great depth in his writing. His book, "Courage Grows Strong at the Wound" (2016). Contact him or visit his website at commonwonders.com.
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This thug has dragged us back to the imperial age — what comes next should terrify us all
In the first year of Donald Trump’s second term, he imposed his thuggery on the United States. In the second year, apparently he will impose it on the hemisphere.
America’s takeover of Venezuela — because it’s in our “backyard” and we didn’t like its leader — strengthens Vladimir Putin’s claim over Ukraine, Xi Jinping’s over Taiwan, and Benjamin Netanyahu’s over the West Bank and Gaza.
Make no mistake: Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro was a vicious dictator who harmed Venezuela and its people. But the world is populated by many vicious dictators. We don’t take over their countries.
The postwar order was supposed to stop thugs who use aggression to take over their “backyards,” as Hitler had done in Europe and Japan in East Asia.
But Trump is now reverting back to the pre-World War II, might-makes-right, spheres-of-power, order.
For more than 80 years, America’s moral authority has rested on our claim to be on the side of democracy. That claim was often belied by American aggression that bolstered dictators — in Vietnam in the 1960s, in Latin America in the 1970s, and more recently in Afghanistan and Iraq — but it at least gave a patina of legitimacy to our alliances and to our “soft power” through USAID and the United Nations.
Now we’re back to the rawest form of neo-imperialism.
“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” Trump explained on Saturday morning.
Let’s be clear: When it comes to Venezuela’s giant oil reserves, America’s oil companies will be making money for themselves. During the 2024 campaign they made a deal with Trump on which they’re still cashing in.
In December, Trump tried to justify his blockade of Venezuela by referring to its “expropriation” of U.S. oil company assets, presumably referring to the nation’s nationalization of its oil reserves in 1976.
“They’re not going to do that again,” Trump told reporters. “We had a lot of oil there. As you know they threw our companies out, and we want it back.”
Rubbish. The 1976 nationalization was the culmination of decades of efforts by both left-wing and right-wing administrations in Venezuela to regain financial control over oil that earlier had largely been given away.
Trump seems intent on carving up the world into three large power blocs: one under the thuggery of Putin, the second under the thuggery of Xi, and the third under Trump’s thuggery (allied with sou-thugs like Israel’s Netanyahu).
To be a “neighbor” of a thug is to surrender to the thug’s wishes or to the thug’s direct control. Within Putin’s thuggery fall Ukraine and quite possibly Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the rest of the former Soviet bloc.
Within Xi’s thuggery fall Taiwan, Tibet, Mongolia, and possibly Nepal.
Within Trump’s thuggery fall the rest of Latin America, including Mexico, and possibly even Greenland and Canada.
Beware. The Trump world order makes the world safe only for major tyrants.
- 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/.
- Robert Reich's new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org
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Is this key service about to save Trump from a midterms mauling?
It’s not just a brand new year; it’s a midterm election year. And the stakes this coming November are mind-boggling, so, of course, Republicans are starting to do everything they can to rig the election.
Just a week ago, for example, Trump’s Postal Service changed the rules about getting your mail-in ballot postmarked so it’ll be counted. Instead of postmarking letters when they’re received, Post Offices will now postmark them when they get “processed,” which may happen days later.
In the 2024 presidential election, the feds estimated that around 104,000 mail-in ballots nationwide weren’t counted because they were postmarked late; with this change, the number this fall and for 2028 could be in the millions.
Meanwhile, Republican secretaries of state are enthusiastically purging voters from the rolls as they get ready for this fall. Remember, reporter and economist Greg Palast found, using official federal and state numbers, that in 2024:
“Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes.
“And, if not for the mass purge of voters of color, if not for the mass disqualification of provisional and mail-in ballots, if not for the new mass “vigilante” challenges in swing states, Harris would have gained at least another 3,565,000 votes, topping Trump’s official popular vote tally by 1.2 million.”
You’d think we each have a right to vote, rather than voting being just a privilege that Republican-controlled states could take away in dozens of different ways.
Republicans on the Supreme Court ruled, for example, that we have a right to own a gun. As a result, before a state or local government can take away your gun, they must first go before a judge to prove the necessity of doing so.
But, Republicans on the Court tell us, Republican secretaries of state can eliminate your right to vote without even telling you; how does that make sense?
After all, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution references “the right to vote at any election” and even says that any state that violates that right shall lose members of its congressional delegation as punishment.
The 19th Amendment references “The right of citizens of the United States to vote…”
The 24th Amendment starts, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote…”
The 26th Amendment is all about, “The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote…”
Additionally, the Constitution, in Article I, Section 4, says that Congress can make federal laws that overrule state laws restricting or regulating voting:
“The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations…”
And, sure enough, Congress did just that in 1993 when it passed the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), sometimes referred to as the Motor Voter Act because, among other things, it provided for the option of instant voter registration when a person gets a driver’s license in every state in the union.
Now known as 52 U.S. Code § 20501, this law of the land opens with:
The Congress finds that -
(1) the right of citizens of the United States to vote is a fundamental right
(2) it is the duty of the Federal, State, and local governments to promote the exercise of that right and
(3) discriminatory and unfair registration laws and procedures can have a direct and damaging effect on voter participation in elections for Federal office and disproportionately harm voter participation by various groups, including racial minorities.
And it wasn’t a particularly contentious law when it was passed: every Democrat present in the Senate voted for it (Rockefeller missed the vote) as did all but two Republicans.
So how did we get from the Constitution repeatedly asserting a “right to vote” and Congress passing a law that unambiguously proclaims that right, to the current state of affairs where states regularly and methodically deprive citizens of their “right” to vote and instead claim that it’s merely a privilege?
As I lay out in The Hidden History of the War On Voting, much of the blame rests with the most conservative and regressive of our federal institutions, the Supreme Court.
The first real test of the NVRA came in 2018, when Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State, John Husted, went on a voter-purge binge (that hit Black, student, and elderly neighborhoods particularly hard) and was sued by the A. Phillip Randolph Institute for violating Ohio citizens’ constitutional right to vote.
In a bitter 5-4 decision, the Republican majority ruled in Husted v Randolph that purging voters because they failed to return a junk-mail-like postcard was entirely legal.
It’s a practice that was called “caging” back when Karl Rove’s guy was allegedly doing it and it was illegal then but has, since that Court ruling, spread to pretty much every Republican-controlled state in the nation.
They’ll identify a part of the state that they consider particularly “prone to fraud“ — in other words, filled with a lot of Black and brown people — and mail postcards that look like junk mail into those precincts. When people failed to return them, they are automatically removed from the voting rolls. In most cases they don’t even know they’ve been purged until they show up to vote and are turned away.
Justice Samuel Alito’s decision was particularly biting, claiming that the arguments made by the citizens who’d lost their right to vote were “worse than superfluous” and their argument that they shouldn’t have to regularly check in with the Secretary of State’s office to stay on the voter rolls represented logic “no sensible person” could agree with.
Sensible or not, in his dissent, liberal Justice Stephen Breyer pointed out that around 4 percent of Americans move every year. Yet, he wrote:
“The record shows that in 2012 Ohio identified about 1.5 million registered voters — nearly 20 percent of its 8 million registered voters — as likely ineligible to remain on the federal voter roll....”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent was even more scathing.
“Congress enacted the NVRA against the backdrop of substantial efforts by States to disenfranchise low-income and minority voters,” she wrote, “including programs that purged eligible voters from registration lists because they failed to vote in prior elections.
“The Court errs in ignoring this history and distorting the statutory text to arrive at a conclusion that not only is contrary to the plain language of the NVRA but also contradicts the essential purposes of the statute, ultimately sanctioning the very purging that Congress expressly sought to protect against.”
She then quoted the “right to vote” NVRA preamble noted above, and, essentially, accused the conservatives on the Court of helping Republicans in the states they controlled engage in massive racial and economic discrimination in the voting process.
“[This decision] entirely ignores the history of voter suppression against which the NVRA was enacted and upholds a program that appears to further the very disenfranchisement of minority and low-income voters that Congress set out to eradicate. … Our democracy rests on the ability of all individuals, regardless of race, income, or status, to exercise their right to vote.”
The “right to vote” took another hit when the State of Florida’s Supreme Court ordered a recount of the 2000 presidential election but five Republicans on the US Supreme Court ignored the 10th Amendment (“states’ rights”) and stopped the recount.
That was a good thing for George W. Bush because when the Florida vote was later recounted by a consortium of newspapers including the New York Times and the Washington Post, they found, as the Times noted on Nov. 12, 2001:
“If all the ballots had been reviewed under any of seven single standards and combined with the results of an examination of overvotes, Mr. Gore would have won...”
Nonetheless, Chief Justice William Rehnquist dismissed all the nation’s concerns about the Court flipping the 2000 presidential election in that totally partisan 5-4 decision, writing in his opinion:
“[T]he individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States.”
Which casts us in a pretty terrible light. As Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) points out:
“The constitutions of at least 135 nations — including our fellow North American countries, Canada and Mexico — explicitly guarantee citizens the right to vote…”
Instead, Raskin notes, because of five corrupt Republicans on the US Supreme Court we’re in the company of countries like Azerbaijan, Chechnya, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, and Pakistan.
Republicans are pushing a full-blown authoritarian agenda and they know it’s so unpopular that the only way they can get it through is to suppress the vote and thus rig the system.
That’s why they’ve already successfully passed previously-unthinkable major voter suppression laws in 18 states and have them pending in many more. They’ve changed the law in Georgia and several other states so that they can now throw out the votes from entire neighborhoods or cities where they don’t like the outcome; all they have to do is vaguely assert a “suspicion of fraud.”
Between the massive gerrymandering effort the GOP has launched nationwide and the Post Office’s changes that’ll hit Blue states with high levels of mail-in voting (some only have mail-in voting), the next few elections are going to be a real challenge for Democrats.
Additionally, as you’re reading these words, millions of voters are being purged from the rolls in Red states, particularly in Blue cities with significant minority populations.
As a result, this fall we’re going to have to show up in absolutely overwhelming numbers just to get squeaker victories in these now-heavily-rigged Republican-controlled states.
Unless enough of us stand up, speak up, and get active to regain control of Congress this fall and push legislation protecting American voters, Republicans will continue to eviscerate the voting right they’ve now turned into a privilege until it becomes completely meaningless.
And that will signal the end of America as we know it.
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I'm trying to work out how ordinary people can support the worst American ever
We who follow this website spent the whole of 2025 wondering how it’s possible for anyone – much less seemingly a full third of the American populace – to support a literal monster named Donald Trump.
It appears to have little to do with his policy or ideology, both of which are nonexistent. No, this is about the man, a person who utterly lacks sensitivity, compassion, empathy, ethics, integrity, decency, and depth.
He looks to have been biologically denied the gene that produces genuine humanity. When he reacts to his environment with as much cruelty and malice as possible, it’s less an active choice than an impulse.
At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, Trump is the worst human being this country has yet produced, a collection of all the worst traits a person can conceivably possess.
Presented with a choice, he will reliably take the lowest possible road. Given an opportunity to correct course and lessen damage, he will double down and ramp it up.
We saw this in his responses to the recent deaths of Rob Reiner and Tatiana Schlossberg, the daughter of Caroline Kennedy, as he went into attack mode mere hours after the passing of each.
This is a man whose loyalty to others isn’t merely conditional but nonexistent. His instinct is to kick and pummel those who are at their most vulnerable. That may be the most grievous of his sins. He has no filter. The depth of his tone-deafness is staggering.
Like all sociopaths, Trump cannot conceive of a world, even a mere situation, in which he is not at the center. This makes him not just inhuman but supremely dangerous. His reaction to a nuclear crisis is likely to be, “Screw it, I’m close to death anyway, let’s blow this little planet up.”
He’s a compulsive liar, a cheat, a thief, a con, a racist, a xenophobe, a misogynist, an egomaniac, a traitor, a narcissist, a moron, and an abuser of the populace over which he presides as the most powerful figure in the country’s history — which he is, when you factor in the impotence of Congress and the support of the Supreme Court.
It’s inconceivable to those of us with any level of insight how anyone can actively choose to support someone as morally bankrupt as this guy, much less cast a vote for him to be the leader of the purported free world.
I don’t buy the argument that Trump’s MAGA supporters are just trying to “own the libs,” or that they buy his bull—- law and order rhetoric, or fall for his lies about everything he touches being great while anything anyone else does sucks. I believe they instead rationalize whatever Trump says or does because they misperceive his cruelty as strength and his menacing tone as honesty.
I am not trying to understand these people. I gave up on that during the first Trump administration. To my mind, they’re like the people who watch Godzilla and root for the monster. There is no reasoning with them. They’re basically brainwashed, in a trance.
My scientific study of them is restricted to my friend Dave.
Dave is a guy I met at the park in Los Angeles where I walk every morning. One day, he asked if I’d like some company. He seemed earnest and friendly, so I said yes. We became walking buddies. I learned he was retired from the sheriff’s department. He had a cop’s straight-arrow bearing.
Inevitably, we talked politics. It turned out Dave is a Republican. And yes, though he’s not conventional MAGA, he voted for Trump in all three presidential elections. This alone almost made me break off our burgeoning friendship. I wasn’t interested then, and I’m not interested now, in any justification.
At the same time, I knew I had to hear Dave out. I just couldn’t figure out how a seemingly decent guy — divorced with three kids and a steady girlfriend, living an upstanding life with a nice nest egg and pension — could possibly see a single thing worth voting for in Trump.
So, I had to ask. This was back in February.
“Don’t misunderstand me,” Dave replied. “I’m not a big Trump fan. He’s not a guy I would want to hang out with. He’s kind of a jackass. But I couldn’t vote for [Joe] Biden. All of that woke bul—- and supporting trans policies, forget it.”
I had so many follow-up questions, all of which started with, “But…”
I decided to portion them out over time, in the interest of maintaining a bond with a dude I found myself caring about despite this massive area of disagreement.
So whenever something comes up that I want to get Dave’s take on, I toss it out. His response is some form of, “Yeah, Trump is being an idiot. He says a lot of stupid crap. I’d rather have someone else calling the shots — but never a Democrat.”
“And you don’t care that he’s a lunatic who’s killing the government and crushing democracy?” I invariably ask.
“I think you’re overreacting,” Dave says. “The system is working. You just don’t know it.”
And that’s where we leave things, entirely unresolved.
Dave has proven to be a caring friend, demonstrably not racist. We grab breakfast once a month or so, and he usually insists on picking up the check. He has in every way shown himself to be a decent guy, just one with, to my mind, a blind spot the size of the Grand Canyon.
Has this experience changed my thinking about the civility and intellect of Trump supporters? Not even a little bit. I still dismiss them as everything horrible that’s plaguing the country.
In making a single exception, I’m left more baffled than ever.
- Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.
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Trump has given these Americans billions of reasons to be happy
The first year of the second Trump administration was a very happy new year for the US billionaire class. The richest 15 billionaires, all with assets more than $100 billion, saw their combined wealth surge 33 percent, from $2.4 trillion to $3.2 trillion. This is double the growth of the S&P 500 over 2025, which was 16.4 percent.
Over 2025, the combined wealth of all US billionaires climbed to $8.1 trillion, a 21 percent increase over 2025, up from $6.7 trillion exactly a year ago.
Based on an Institute for Policy Studies analysis of data from the Forbes real time billionaire list from 2025, there are 935 billionaires in the United States with combined wealth totaling $8.1 trillion at the close of 2025 markets. This is an increase from 813 US billionaires at end close of 2024 markets, with combined wealth of $6.7 trillion.
The richest three American wealth dynasties — the Waltons, Mars, and Koch families — saw their wealth accelerate from $657.8 billion to $757 billion in one year.
[Note: Bloomberg reported global billionaire wealth increased $2.2 trillion over 2025, in an analysis released several days before the market closed at 4pm on Dec. 31. The market fluctuated considerably in the final days of 2025.]
The top five current billionaires and their individual wealth on Jan. 1, 2026, compared to Jan. 1, 2025:
- Elon Musk of Tesla/X and SpaceX with $726 billion, up from $421 billion.
- Larry Page of Google, with $257 billion, up from $156 billion.
- Larry Ellison of Oracle with $245.billion, up from $209 billion.
- Jeff Bezos of Amazon with $242.billion, up from $233.5 billion.
- Sergey Brin of Google with $237 billion, up from $148.9 billion.
The three wealthiest dynastic families in the US hold an estimated $757 billion, up from $657.8 billion at the end of 2024, a 16 percent gain. These are:
- Walton — Seven members with combined wealth of $483 billion, up from $404.3 billion.
- Mars — Six members with combined wealth of $120 billion, down from $130.4 billion.
- Koch — Two members have a combined wealth of $154.8 billion, up from $121.1 billion.
Many top billionaires have seen their wealth surge during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit at the beginning of 2020.
On March 18, 2020, Musk had wealth valued just under $25 billion. Less than five years later, at the end of 2025, Musk’s wealth is $726 billion, a dizzying 2,800 percent increase from before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Bezos saw his wealth rise from $113 billion on March 18, 2020 to $242 billion at the end of 2025.
Three Walton family members — Jim, Alice, and Rob — saw their combined assets increase from $161.1 billion on March 18, 2020 to $378 billion at the end of 2025.
- Chuck Collins is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies where he co-edits Inequality.org. His newest book is Burned by Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power is Ruining Our Lives and Planet (The New Press). His near future novel "Altar to An Erupting Sun” explores one community’s response to climate disruption. He is author of numerous books and reports on inequality and the racial wealth divide, including “The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Spend Millions to Hide Trillions,” “Born on Third Base,” and, with Bill Gates Sr., of “Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why American Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes.” See more of his writing at www.chuckcollinswrites.com.
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Trump ignored this clear warning about reckless strikes and the disasters that follow
There is an old warning in foreign policy about the arrogance of power, “If you break it, you own it.”
That principle, popularly known as the Pottery Barn rule, was articulated by Colin Powell in private conversations with President George W. Bush ahead of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Powell, an experienced general turned Secretary of State, was blunt and prophetic. Forcibly removing a government means inheriting responsibility for everything that follows: security, governance, infrastructure, and human suffering.
The United States ignores that truth at its own peril. Chaos is guaranteed.
With Donald Trump’s alarming and potentially illegal incursion into Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Powell’s warning feels less like history and more like indictment.
I learned how seriously some leaders once took these decisions 35 years ago this month, when I was working on Capitol Hill during the debate over whether the U.S. should use force to expel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.
The congressman I worked for, a Marine veteran and member of the Armed Services Committee, understood the gravity of the vote. He summoned each staffer individually and asked what we thought. That alone was unprecedented in our small corner of the Hill.
I urged him to vote no. I feared it wasn’t in America’s long-term interest. Quietly, personally, I also feared for a Marine I was dating at the time. The congressman voted against the authorization, alongside a majority of Democrats.
History unfolded differently than many expected. Operation Desert Storm was swift and successful. President George H.W. Bush’s approval ratings soared. But that success wasn’t accidental. It was disciplined. It was done by the book.
Bush checked every box that matters before committing American force. He sought and received congressional authorization. He built a broad international coalition. He defined clear, limited military objectives. And most importantly, when those objectives were achieved, when Iraqi forces were expelled from Kuwait, he stopped.
That restraint was not weakness. It was wisdom born of experience.
About a year earlier, Bush had authorized the invasion of Panama to remove dictator Manuel Noriega. The mission succeeded, but the aftermath was destabilizing and messy. Civilian infrastructure was damaged. Governance failed. You don’t simply dispose of a dictator and call it quits. Barack Obama would later learn the same lesson in Libya after the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, a decision Obama himself later called the “worst mistake” of his presidency.
Bush understood what happens when you remove a dictator without a durable plan.
So when faced with Saddam Hussein in 1991, Bush resisted the urge to march on Baghdad. He was criticized for leaving Hussein in power but history has been far kinder to that decision than to what followed.
In 2003, George W. Bush ignored Powell’s warning and invaded Iraq based on two falsehoods: that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, and that Iraq was connected to the September 11 attacks.
Despite private doubts, Powell went along with the case presented to the world at the United Nations. He would call that moment a “blot” on his record.
We know the catastrophe that followed. Two decades of war, regional destabilization, hundreds of thousands of deaths, the U.S. still paying the price.
Trump now appears to be repeating every mistake history has warned against, while ignoring every safeguard that once constrained American power.
Unlike George H.W. Bush, Trump did not seek congressional approval. Not that there is any point pretending Mike Johnson’s House or John Thune’s Senate would act as meaningful checks on a president who treats the Constitution as optional.
Unlike Bush, Trump did not work with allies or build an international coalition. He acted unilaterally, foolhardy, and in secrecy.
Unlike Bush, Trump has no clear strategy, no defined endgame, and no plan. He admitted as much this morning, saying the administration is “still trying to figure out what’s next for the country.”
Still trying to figure it out? That question is not a postscript to military action. It is the central requirement before the first move is made.
Public approval? There is none to speak of, largely because the American people arguably have no idea what is happening in Venezuela. Most couldn’t locate the country on a map. They hear vague references to drugs or “bad hombres,” but nothing approaching an honest justification.
Strategy? Double ha.
For weeks, military analysts and regional experts have warned that any action without a clear political and military endgame would be disastrous. Maduro and his inner circle are deeply entrenched. The military is fractured. Armed groups operate throughout the country. This is not a system where you “cut off the head” and expect the body to collapse.
Greek mythology offers a better metaphor: cut off one head, and two more take its place.
Yet instead of behaving like a statesman, or even a cautious commander-in-chief, Trump went before the cameras and acted like a slurring and “sleepy” but braggadocious thug, boasting about American military might rather than explaining honestly why we need to break and own another country.
He said today that “we” — the United States — “will run the country.”
Who? How? Here we go again. A quagmire in the making.
He promised a larger attack if needed. He pledged that the U.S. would spend “billions” fixing infrastructure, i.e. oil infrastructure, of course. Like Iraq. Like Libya. It always comes back to oil. Trump has always said the quiet part out loud.
There were also echoes of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who after we invaded Iraq said the U.S. would be welcomed with open arms, freedom will ring, prosperity for all, and the restructuring, rebuilding, etc. would be paid for by oil. It was B.S. then and it’s B.S. now.
Trump hates Cheney, but he sure has no problem stealing his bogus talking points.
Finally, is this what MAGA wanted? Is this America First? Spending billions in Venezuela, just as we did elsewhere in the region, i.e. bailing out Argentina? Trump campaigned on isolationism. But “dominance,” as he called it today, means nothing to 28 million Venezuelans who will likely reject American intervention.
George H.W. Bush understood something Trump never has, and that is power without restraint is not strength. It is recklessness. And we are about to see the consequences.
The Pottery Barn rule exists because history demands it. Break a country, and you own the consequences for the people whose lives are upended, for the region destabilized, and for America’s standing in the world.
Colin Powell learned that lesson in Vietnam. He reinforced it in Desert Storm. He warned about it in Iraq, and regretted being ignored.
Trump now has his own blot. Given his extraordinarily blotted record, it may seem redundant. But this one will haunt Venezuela, South America, and the U.S. for years to come.
Trump broke Venezuela. Now we own it. And this never ends well.
- John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”
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Republicans started this key battle in the states but they should beware the backlash
When the Indiana state Senate recently rejected a mid-cycle partisan redistricting of its congressional delegation, it was not only a rebuke to President Donald J. Trump. It also upheld a norm that has guided American democracy for more than a century.
Since the early 1900s, states have almost never redrawn congressional maps outside the decennial census, except to comply with court orders or to make minor technical corrections. That restraint has served an important stabilizing function.
History suggests that midcycle gerrymanders lead to greater division and polarization, and more volatility in the Congress. And the impact may hit closer to home, if Virginia voters uphold Democratic legislators’ current effort to reshape the state’s political maps.
Earlier fights
America has experienced mid-decade redistricting battles before, including a failed attempt in Virginia’s legislature by GOP leaders in 2013 but they have largely been confined to the 19th century. Between 1870 and 1896, mapmaking became a weapon in a relentless partisan war. And the federal courts largely ignored review of these plans.
During this period, “partisan gerrymandering” was indistinguishable from “racial gerrymandering,” as Black voters were a monolithic Republican voting bloc targeted by Democrats, primarily in the South, which was rebuilding after losing the Civil War and facing scores of newly franchised voters who had previously been enslaved. Democrats in Alabama redrew congressional maps in the mid-1870s to pack nearly all Black Belt counties into a single district to reduce Republican seats.
Ohio was the biggest culprit in the 19th-century redistricting wars. It had the third-largest congressional delegation at the time behind New York and Pennsylvania. As control of the state’s General Assembly flipped between Republicans and Democrats between 1876 and 1892, partisans in the legislature redrew maps seven times, creating massive swings in the makeup of their congressional delegation, and influencing which party had the majority in the U.S. House.
Like today, the impetus for these state actions came from national leaders. In 1878, the Democratic Speaker of the House implored Ohio and Missouri to act to save their majority. The two states complied, flipping nine seats to the Democrats and preserving their slim majority in the House.
Because the U.S. House was smaller then (293 members in 1878 versus 435 today), small swings in congressional delegations had greater impact. And, like today, small party majorities in the House made partisan gerrymanders attractive options to gain an advantage or fight the opposition.
In 1888, for example, Republicans in Pennsylvania responded to Ohio’s efforts by carving 21 pro-Republican districts out of 28 statewide, just enough to move the House into GOP hands.
The era was marked by shifting majorities, rapidly redrawn maps, and sudden swings in the size and orientation of state delegations. There were fewer states, no “one person, one vote” standard, no independent commissions and virtually no judicial review. Redistricting was a political free-for-all. Party leaders gradually concluded that midcycle redistricting was creating too much chaos, and their numbers dramatically decreased after 1896.
For more than a century, we believed we had left this chaos behind.
Why Texas matters
Apart from Texas in 2003 and Georgia in 2005, recent mid-cycle revisions have been rare and used mainly to correct errors or comply with court orders.
The 2025 Texas mid-cycle gerrymander marks a return to this earlier era and has opened a new front in our partisan conflict. Conservative legislatures in Missouri and North Carolina quickly joined this Trump-supported effort to influence the midterms by passing new maps.
Democrats felt they had no option and moved forward with their own plans. California voters have now authorized a new Democratically flavored map for 2026, and Virginia Democratic state legislators proclaim their desire to create a 10-1 Democratic congressional majority in a state where Republicans received 42.2 percent of the vote in the last gubernatorial election. New York and Illinois may soon follow.
States race to outmaneuver rivals, each pushing the envelope of partisan advantage. The redistricting process risks becoming a rolling, perpetual conflict rather than a once-a-decade recalibration.
Supreme Court retreat
The Supreme Court’s role is central to this shift. The court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, has been eroding 50 years of federal court redistricting oversight since landmark cases like Baker v. Carr (1962), which established the “one person, one vote” principle and forced states to draw districts of equal population size.
In LULAC v. Perry (2005), the Court upheld the practice of mid-decade redistricting for partisan purposes. But its most significant decision was Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), where the Supreme Court held that federal courts should not review partisan gerrymanders, defining such disputes as “political questions.” And, in the recent Texas case, the majority ignored evidence that race was considered by the legislators and upheld the map as a “purely partisan” action — thereby shielding it from federal scrutiny.
Racial gerrymandering remains reviewable under Shaw v. Reno (1993), but the pending case of Louisiana v. Callais could restrict that avenue as well. The erosion of federal oversight returns primary authority to the states — just as in the 19th century.
The gamble
History shows hyper-partisan maps can backfire. In the 1880s and 90s, parties would gain power in state legislatures and proceed to draw new maps with small margins for error. Missouri Democrats in 1892 engineered a 13–2 partisan advantage in its delegation — only to lose eight seats two years later when the national tides shifted and the Republican landslide brought GOP control of the U.S. House.
Texas may face similar risks. The state’s new map relies heavily on 2024 voting patterns. By 2026, an anti-Trump backlash coupled with demographic shifts — especially among Hispanic voters — could make several engineered “safe” seats unexpectedly competitive.
Barriers exist in other states as well. California has provided itself some protection against court challenges because its map enjoys the imprimatur of a constitutional amendment approved by the voters.
Virginia legislators are trying to do the same but will need to convince voters to approve a constitutional amendment before new maps are adopted.
Missouri’s plans are now threatened by a 300,000-signature petition drive that mayplace the GOP’s new maps directly before the public for an up-or-down vote. Expect court challenges to these maps to include arguments they are too late in the cycle to be implemented, a claim that the Supreme Court has found appealing in the past.
Power in the states
As the U.S. Supreme Court withdraws from oversight, state laws and constitutions grow more significant. The problem is that every state has its own constitution, laws and precedents. Today, 11 states restrict mid-decade redistricting, including Colorado, where its Supreme Court struck down a 2003 Republican attempt to redraw congressional districts after the party gained control of the legislature. Several other states permit challenges to partisan gerrymanders.
- In 2022, the Alaska Supreme Court invalidated two state senate districts as constitutional violations of equal protection.
- Michigan and Wisconsin courts have historically shown willingness to engage such claims.
- Oregon and New York constitutions explicitly prohibit map-drawing that favors or disfavors parties or incumbents.
- Courts in New Mexico and Kentucky acknowledge a willingness to evaluate partisan-gerrymander claims, even as they have not yet overturned them.
- State supreme courts in North Carolina and Ohio struck down partisan gerrymanders, only to reverse themselves after political turnover on the bench.
Yet uniformity remains elusive. Courts in Kansas, Nevada, New Hampshire and North Carolina presently embrace the U.S. Supreme Court’s view that partisan gerrymanders are “political questions” better left to legislatures. And the composition of state Supreme Courts can change dramatically, and with it, rulings on the constitutionality of partisan maps. This patchwork ensures that challenges will succeed in some states but not others, deepening an already troubling trend toward national division.
A nation dividing itself
Texas did merely not redraw its congressional lines. It revived an old practice at precisely the moment when federal oversight is diminishing and partisan stakes are growing. The result is a redistricting system that increasingly resembles the volatile 19th-century environment — only now with a larger Congress, more diverse electorate, sophisticated data tools and far more at stake.
If this trend continues, redistricting will shift from a decennial process to a continuous political battlefield, intensifying division among the states and accelerating the geographic, political and cultural split already reshaping the nation.
- David J. Toscano is a practicing attorney in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he formerly served as Mayor. He also served fourteen years in the Virginia House of Delegates, including seven as Democratic Leader. He is the author of "Fighting Political Gridlock: How States Shape Our Nation and Our Lives," and "Bellwether: Virginia’s Political Transformation, 2006-2020," and writes a column called “Fights of Our Lives” at https://deltoscano.substack.com/
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