This person is extremely thankful for Trump
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
Fake working class candidates like this one won't help Dems regain control
When it comes to Graham Platner, I don’t have skin in the game. I live in Connecticut, not Maine. The good people of that state will figure out for themselves whether he has the right stuff to be their next Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate. Indeed, there’s a lot to sort through, including the story of his Nazi tattoo. I wish them the best.
My interest in him is personal, not political. Platner claims to be the son of the American working class. On the basis of that authority, he hopes Mainers will give him the power to fight for the common man against an oligarchy that’s crushing him.
“I’m a veteran, oysterman and working-class Mainer who’s seen this state become unlivable for working people,” he said. “And that makes me deeply angry.”
But Graham Platner is not the son of the American working class. This is evidenced by a few facts about the world he was born into. His mom is a restaurateur. His dad is an attorney and elected official. His dad’s dad was a famous architect and furniture designer. Warren Platner was part of the firm that designed Dulles Airport and Ezra Stiles College at Yale. There’s even a chair named after him, the Platner Armchair.
That Graham Platner is not the son of the American working class is also evidenced by a few facts about his life. In childhood, he was at one point enrolled at the Hotchkiss School, the elite prep school here in Connecticut. (He does not appear to have been there long, though.) In adulthood, after returning from military service, the oyster farm he now owns was given to him by a family friend. It was then financed in part by family money. His mom’s business buys most of his harvest.
There are many ways of interpreting these facts. To me, they paint a picture of a man born into a comfortable and supportive middle class family who over time chose for himself a “working-class lifestyle.”
Graham Platner didn’t finish college. He served in the armed forces. Oyster farming looks tough. These are choices that he made amid an abundance of them. No son of the working class has such luxury.
It’s hardly damning. As I said last time I wrote about Platner, there’s nothing saying that “a decent man of integrity from a respectable bourgeois background cannot be a champion of the masses. Solidarity against the ruling oligarchy does not require warriors for the working class to be of the working class. After all, Franklin Roosevelt wasn’t.”
But since there’s nothing wrong with it, why doesn’t Platner come clean? In his most recent federal disclosure filing, which was overdue, he offered strikingly few details about his finances. Why? The answer is that there’s something more authentic about being seen as a “working-class Mainer” than in being seen as the privileged son of a well-off family who seems to have failed to live up to expectations.
More importantly, however, is this: The authenticity that comes from appropriating the culture of the working class seems to satisfy the needs of elites outside the Democratic Party who seek to reshape it.
As The Guardian’s Moira Donegan said, in Platner, “some pundits and members of the consultant class seem to have found a vehicle for their own project for the party’s reform, one that is less about policy outcomes than about transforming the Democratic Party’s image to embrace men, masculinity and a vision of a rugged, rural whiteness.”
So the problem isn’t only that Platner is a man born of good fortune who has successfully co-opted the image of the working-class man. It’s also that this image is being exploited by elites who want to move the Democrats away from being a party of multiracial pluralism to one that serves the interest of the only Americans who are supposed to count.
The belief is that in order to win again, the Democrats must relearn “a style of masculinity,” as Donegan put it, that will bring young white men back. To succeed, you must accept his “ruggedness” at face value.
When you know something about his origins, however, the truth is revealed. What kind of “masculinity” arises from the fact that his business was given to him by a family friend and that his mom, by being his best customer, effectively gives him a regular allowance?
Answer: “masculinity” as imagined by men who can afford to cosplay “manliness” without the risk and responsibility of serious manhood.
One more thing about those elites. They include more than the rich consultants who keep getting richer by advising Democrats to restore “rugged, rural whiteness” to the center of their party’s attention.
They also include what some call the pod bros or the dirtbag left. These are online personalities. Some are former party insiders. Some are self-proclaimed democratic socialists. All stand in dedicated opposition to the Democratic establishment while claiming to be tribunes of the people. They are educated, articulate, witty and ideological. They see themselves as champions of the working class.
Like Platner, none comes from the working class.
Because of that, they can’t see that he doesn’t either. All they see is his “working-class image.” He’s a “gravel-voiced vet.” He’s a “rugged oyster farmer.” In fact, Platner is a leftist intellectual’s idea of a working class man, or rather, the idea of a working-class man that’s envisioned by children of affluence who turned to leftist politics as some kind of recompense, or who see in him something that’s lacking in themselves. They want it so much they’re willing to overlook his Nazi tattoo. It’s not an indicator of questionable morality. It’s a mark of authenticity!
That Platner doesn’t carry the burdens of the working class can also be seen in the frictionless way he interacts with online leftists who will also never face the consequences of failure. They read the same books. They cite the same authors. They know the same cultural references. They share what you might call the unspoken vocabulary of the upper middle class, in which humor is usually expressed ironically — “I am not a secret Nazi,” Platner said — while conflict is expressed performatively. “Nothing p----- me off more than getting a fundraising text from Democrats talking about how they're fighting fascism,” he said.
The late comedian Paul Mooney once said that everybody wants to be Black but no one wants to be Black. Everybody desires the social capital of blackness, but no one desires the burden of racism. People take what they want — Black music, Black fashion, Black food – and leave the rest. They appropriate the product of the struggle without the struggling, which allows them to pretend to be what they’re not.
Setting aside the serious and obvious differences, I see a similar dynamic at work in Graham Platner. He wants the authority that comes with being seen as a son of the working class who has had to fight his way through life, but none of the pain of fighting. He wants to accuse his opponents of lacking the courage to do what needs to be done. And he wants influential people, the online left, to play along with him.
“Nothing p----- me off more,” he said, as if he would know.
I said at the top that my interest in Platner is personal, not political. This is why. He has no idea what the struggle is. I’m sure he has had his own, but the struggle he wants Mainers to believe is his is not his. No true son of the working class can pretend like that. He knows that if he fails, he fails downward. (And if he gets a second chance, he’s lucky.) There is no time for such childish make-believe. He can’t afford it.
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There's one issue on which Dems and GOP can agree — and weaken Trump's poison
The most gruesome feature of the Trump/Vance/Miller regime is their glee in brutalizing non-white people and terrorizing anybody who objects or tries to hold them to account. Their entire rationale is that the barbarity and savagery are “necessary” to deal with millions of “illegals.”
Denmark is onto something that could blow up their entire excuse for this violence against both people and our Constitution, and Democrats need to pay attention.
Back in June 2008 I did my radio program for a week from the studios of Danish Radio in Copenhagen. They let me hire one of their producers and I asked her to book prominent Danish conservatives, at least one a day, and she pulled it off. (I used to regularly debate conservatives until they started refusing to come on my show over the past decade.)
Several were prominent politicians, a few were well-known commentators, and one was the publisher of a major Danish newspaper. All identified themselves as conservatives, and a few even referred to themselves as “a right-winger.”
I asked every one a similar set of questions, and the answers I got were consistently pretty much the same. It went sort of like this:
Q. “So, you’re a Danish conservative. Does that mean you want to do away with your unions representing about 80 percent of the labor market, resulting in a roughly US$18/hour functional minimum wage?”
A. “No, of course not. Conservatives don’t want people living in poverty. And they have a right to representation to balance the power of giant corporations.”
Q. “So, you must want to do away with free college and the roughly $1,000 stipend Danish college students get every month for living expenses?”
A. “Why would we ever want to destroy our country’s intellectual infrastructure? We conservatives value education!”
Q. “So, if you’re a conservative you must want to do away with your single-payer Medicare-for-All healthcare system that’s free for all residents, has no premiums, free doctor visits and hospital stays, and has very tiny co-pays for dental and drugs?”
A. “What, are you nuts? I don’t want to sit next to a sick person in a restaurant or on the bus. Healthcare is a human right that true conservatives have always embraced.”
Q. “Do you, like conservatives in America, want to do away with environmental protections and the move toward green energy?”
A. “Who would be stupid enough to want to do that? We conservatives are at the forefront of environmental protections and building out renewable energy.”
Q. “So, other than wanting to slightly lower taxes and supporting the Danish monarchy, what makes you a conservative here in Denmark?”
A. “I want the immigrants to leave. Denmark should be for Danes, and Danes only.”
That was 17 years ago, and the Danish conservatives largely got their way in the years since. In fact, they’ve been joined by Danish moderates and even Danish progressives in embracing what here in America we’d call comprehensive immigration reform.
The New York Times reports that particularly since the 2015 influx of Syrian refugees into Europe, “the Danish government has enacted policies to make life challenging for asylum seekers, trying to discourage them from coming.”
For some it’s simple racism, but for most Danes, particularly those on the left, the changes in Danish law and policy just reflect the simple reality that no country can quickly absorb large numbers of immigrants without social and political disruption.
Immigration and accepting refugees is fine, in other words, but only in numbers that allow for successful integration into society. Social scientists have found that when those thresholds are exceeded, the result is a loss of social cohesion, a rise in racism and bigotry, and political chaos that can even threaten democracy.
The embrace across the Danish political spectrum of rational immigration limits and polite, nonviolent expulsion of undocumented immigrants has not just stabilized the political system in that country; by joining hands with conservatives, it’s also strengthened the power and influence of the center-left and progressive parties and politicians.
Left-leaning political parties across Europe are taking notice, and several are actively imitating or emulating Danish policies.
The result is a universal loss of support for radical rightwing parties that had been mostly focused on hating on immigrants, and a rise of centrist and progressive parties, politicians, and policy successes.
Democrats here should be paying attention, as I’ve argued for years, including in my 2010 book Rebooting the American Dream, which Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) delivered to all 99 of his colleagues with a personal note, and then read from on the floor of the Senate during his famous filibuster.
The chapter titled Put Lou Dobbs Out To Pasture basically argues the Danish position: we need immigration, but to avoid disruptions to labor and society it should be well-regulated.
Opposition to immigrants was where Donald Trump kicked off his 2016 presidential campaign. It’s the one consistent issue where Republicans beat Democrats in the polls, typically by double-digits.
Failing to address uncontrolled immigration also endangers our democracy: Viktor Orbán, for example, rose to power in Hungary by railing against immigrants, and has since used the issue as an excuse to create a secret police force, shut down media outlets, pass draconian “anti-immigrant-crime” laws that outlaw dissent, and pack the legislature and judiciary.
Trump, it appears, has similar plans for America. But there is a reasonable solution that would take the wind out of his sails.
In early 2024, Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) — a guy who’s about as close to a Goldwater conservative as you can get — and progressive Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) introduced a bipartisan bill that would largely accomplish here in America what Denmark and other European countries are doing now.
It would have limited immigration, tightened asylum criteria, funded deportations of actual criminal immigrants, punished employers who hire people without legal status, and given then-President Joe Biden the legal authority to close the southern border. It had widespread support among members of both parties in both the House and Senate and was sailing toward passage.
But because the bill would have neutralized the immigration issue as a political weapon — both parties openly supported it and it was written by a conservative Republican and a progressive Democrat — Trump, then the leading Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential nomination, ordered his MAGA followers in Congress to kill it.
Enough Republicans bowed to Trump’s demand that the legislation died, setting the stage for Trump to demagogue the immigration issue all the way up to election day, and then use it to justify the creation of a massive new masked secret police force largely answerable only to Trump, based on the excuse that immigration was “out of control.”
The last time US immigration policies were significantly reformed was during the Reagan presidency, when he signed legislation that gave amnesty to around 3 million people and tightened up our southern border. A 21st-century reform is long overdue.
Congress needs to step up and revisit the Lankford/Murphy bill to stop the brutality Trump’s ICE and CBP officers are inflicting on our nation and bring sanity to our immigration policies.
It’d not only be a good thing for the Democratic Party (and the Republicans) in next year‘s midterms, it’d help rescue American democracy from the racist demagogues Trump and Miller have unleashed and empowered.
Let your member of Congress know you support comprehensive immigration reform now. The issue, after all, is bipartisan, and it’s high time to end the brutality.
The switchboard number for Congress is 202-224-3121.
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In one key way, Trump has united us all
I have always thought of Donald Trump as the most divisive U.S. president in modern history, causing the greatest political polarization among Americans. Now I have to take that back. Based on nearly a year in office, Trump is turning out to be the Great Uniter.
Thanks to our president, the large majority of the American people are uniting in their disapproval of Trump, cutting across party lines like never before. According to the AP-NORC poll, 67 percent of Americans disapprove of the job that Trump is doing — a much higher percentage than only Democratic disapproval could account for.
Among Republicans, 32 percent disapprove of how Trump is doing, a huge 13 percent increase from March. That degree of disaffection among Republicans, coupled with the high percentage of Democrats and Independents who disapprove of Trump, reveals the greatest oppositional unity across party lines since Trump first took office in 2017.
Not surprisingly, Trump’s high disapproval rating is tied strongly to the economy and cost of living, which polls consistently show as the most critical issue for the American people. Today, low and middle-income Americans are feeling the budget pinch from increasingly higher prices with tens of millions struggling to make ends meet.
A large majority of Americans say that their costs have increased for groceries, utilities, health care, housing, and gasoline, with Democrats, Republicans, and Independents in agreement. Trump’s attempt to convince people that they are doing just fine doesn’t wash with the bleak economic reality that Americans are experiencing.
Higher consumer prices hurt lower and middle-income Americans across all political persuasions. Nearly 70 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy which includes 94 percent of Democrats, 78 percent of Independents, and 32 percent of Republicans.
Most Americans agree that the cause for the increased consumer prices is Trump’s tariffs. In March, according to Gallup, 66 percent of Americans believed that the tariffs were “very likely” to increase prices and 23 percent more said they were “somewhat likely.” Among Republicans, 36 percent believed the tariffs were “very likely” to increase prices and 46 percent believed they were “somewhat likely.”
Overall, 89 percent of Americans proved prophetic about the impact of tariffs. Trump’s tariff policies have contributed directly to their economic pain as businesses have frequently passed the cost of tariff import taxes on to consumers.
That Americans are more united against Trump than ever is revealed in more results from the recent AP-NORC poll. Just 33 percent of respondents approve of how Trump is managing the federal government, a 10 percent drop in his approval rating from March — 68 percent of Republicans approve, down from 81 percent in March. Only 25 percent of Independents approve, down from 38 percent in March.
While Democrats’ disapproval rating of Trump has consistently remained about 90 percent, Republicans’ and Independents’ disapproval ratings have increased significantly, representing growing negative sentiment across the political board.
Among US voters, 43 percent declare as Independents while approximately 27 percent register as Democrats and Republicans respectively. Applying those percentages to Trump’s approval ratings in the AP/NORC center poll, 65 percent of probable voters disapprove of the job Trump is doing.
In March, that percentage was 52 percent on average among polls, a remarkable 13 percent increase. Since Democrats' disapproval rating has remained constant, the significant increase in Trump’s disapproval rating comes from Independents and Republicans, again revealing a more unified anti-Trump electorate.
Of the 43 percent of voters who are Independents, about half lean Democratic and half lean Republican. However, 78 percent of Independents today disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy. That means that over half of the Republican-leaning Independents have joined Democratic-leaning Independents in their disapproval of Trump.
Thanks to Trump, we are seeing a united opposition to his job performance that has never been seen. When 78 percent of Independents and 32 percent of Republicans join 90 percent of Democrats in disapproving of Trump’s economic job performance, we are seeing a huge potential bloc of voters whose common experience is stronger than any ideological differences that may divide them.
The strongest uniting factor among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents is a shared understanding that Trump’s tariff policies are inflicting economic pain. Of all the issues that concern Americans, nothing hits families more directly than the cost of living, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike.
Of course, Trump won’t be on the ballot in the 2026 midterm elections. But the most united disapproval of Trump ever seen may have a huge impact on the election as Americans use their most powerful constitutional right to express their anger and frustration.
Not only do the vast majority of Americans rightfully blame Trump for their economic hardship, they are revulsed by cowardly Republican politicians who dance obediently to Trump’s tune, spreading and amplifying his lies to justify the sorry state of the economy. The Vice President, Republican Congress members, cabinet appointees, and red-state governors are complicit in enabling Trump to undermine the economic welfare of Americans.
The Great Uniter may rue the day that he brought Americans across the political spectrum together in common purpose: to send the craven political scoundrels packing on election day and condemn Trump to the depths of lame-duck hell.
- Tom Tyner is a freelance editorialist, satirist, political analyst, blogger, author and retired English instructor
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What the Comey and James dismissals mean for bungling Trump
By Ray Brescia, Associate Dean for Research and Intellectual Life, Albany Law School.
On Monday, a federal judge dismissed the indictments against former FBI Director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, blocking the Department of Justice’s efforts to prosecute two of President Donald Trump’s perceived adversaries.
But U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie qualified her dismissals, saying she did so “without prejudice.”
What does that legal term mean?
Unaddressed charges
In her ruling, Currie concluded that the appointment of interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan, who filed the cases against Comey and James, was unlawful. Currie wrote:
“Because Ms. Halligan had no lawful authority to present the indictment, I will grant Mr. Comey’s motion and dismiss the indictment without prejudice.”
She wrote the same about the case against James.
Currie’s “without prejudice” reference means the dismissal did not address what legal scholars like me call the merits or substance of the underlying criminal charges.
A “without prejudice” dismissal is legalese for “you can try again if you can fix the problems with your case.” Had the judge ruled that the dismissals were “with prejudice,” that would have meant the government could not have brought the cases again.
Here’s what prosecutors would need to fix to be able to bring cases against Comey and James again.
Federal law provides that whenever a U.S. attorney’s position is vacant, the attorney general may appoint an interim U.S. attorney for a period of 120 days. At the end of that period, it’s up to the federal judges of the district where that position is vacant to appoint someone to continue in that role unless and until the president nominates, and the Senate confirms, a U.S. attorney through the normal appointments process.
The Trump administration appointed Halligan’s predecessor, U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert, in that interim role in January 2025. And when the 120 days from his appointment lapsed, the district judges of the Eastern District of Virginia selected him to continue on in his interim role.
Currie found that when Siebert resigned after his reappointment, that did not empower the Trump administration to appoint a new interim prosecutor. The power still resided with the District Court judges. Because of that, Halligan’s appointment and her efforts to secure the Comey and James indictments were void.
The end of the beginning
The Department of Justice can certainly appeal these rulings and could get them reversed on appeal, or it could refile them after a new U.S. attorney is named in accordance with law.
It may be too late for the case against Comey, however, because the statute of limitations on those charges has already run out. As Currie noted in her Comey ruling, while the statute of limitations is generally suspended when a valid indictment has been filed, an invalid indictment, like the one against Comey, would not have the same effect on the statute of limitations.
That means the time has likely run out on the claims against the former FBI director.
If Currie’s rulings stand, the Justice Department can’t just file the cases again, with Halligan still in this role, unless the Trump administration follows the procedures set forth in the law for her proper appointment.
While this is not the beginning of the end for these prosecutions, it is, at least, the end of the beginning.
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This sinister setup is essential to Trump's power. Here's how it ends
The richest man on earth owns X.
The family of the second-richest man owns Paramount, which owns CBS — and could soon own Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN.
The third-richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
The fourth-richest man owns The Washington Post and Amazon MGM Studios.
Another billionaire owns Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post.
Why are the ultra-rich buying up so much of the media? Vanity may play a part, but there’s a more pragmatic — some might say sinister — reason.
As vast wealth concentrates in the hands of a few, this small group of the ultra-wealthy may rationally fear that a majority of voters could try to confiscate their wealth — through, for example, a wealth tax.
If you’re a multibillionaire, in other words, you might view democracy as a potential threat to your net worth. New York real estate and oil tycoon John Catsimatidis, whose net worth is estimated at $4.5 billion, donated $2.4 million to support Trump and congressional Republicans in 2024 — nearly twice as much as he gave in 2016.
Why? “If you’re a billionaire, you want to stay a billionaire,” Catsimatidis told The Washington Post.
But rather than rely on Republicans, a more reliable means of stopping majorities from targeting your riches might be to control a significant share of the dwindling number of media outlets.
As a media mogul, you can effectively hedge against democracy by suppressing criticism of yourself and other plutocrats and discouraging any attempt to tax away your wealth.
And Trump has been ready to help you. In his second term of office, Trump has brazenly and illegally used the power of the presidency to punish his enemies and reward those who lavish him with praise and profits.
So it wasn’t surprising that the owner of The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos — the fourth-richest person — stopped the paper from endorsing Kamala Harris last year, as Trump rose in the polls. Or that, once Trump was elected, Bezos decreed that the Post’s opinion section must support “personal liberties and free markets.” And that he bought a proposed documentary about Melania Trump — for which she is the executive producer — for a whopping $40 million.
Bezos’s moves have led several of the Post’s top editors, journalists, and columnists to resign. Thousands of subscribers have cancelled. But the Post remains the biggest ongoing media presence in America’s capital city.
Bezos is a businessman first and foremost. His highest goal is not to inform the public but to make money. And he knows Trump can wreak havoc on his businesses by imposing unfriendly Federal Communications Commission rulings, or enforcing labor laws against him, or breaking up his companies with antitrust laws, or making it difficult for him to import what he sells.
On the other hand, Trump can also enrich Bezos — through lucrative government contracts or favorable FCC rulings or government subsidies.
It’s much the same with the family of Larry Ellison, the second-richest man.
Paramount’s CBS settled Trump’s frivolous $16 million lawsuit against CBS and canceled Stephen Colbert, much to Trump’s delight. Trump loyalist flak Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, then approved an $8 billion merger of Paramount Global, owner of CBS, and Skydance Media.
Larry Ellison’s son, David, became chief executive of the new media giant, Paramount Skydance.
In the run-up to the sale, some top brass at CBS News and its flagship Sixty Minutes resigned, presumably because they were pressured by Paramount not to air stories critical of Trump. No matter. Too much money was at stake.
I’m old enough to remember when CBS News would never have surrendered to a demagogic president. But that was when CBS News — the home of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite — was independent of the rest of CBS, and when the top management of CBS felt they had independent responsibilities to the American public.
Like Bezos, Larry Ellison is first and foremost a businessman who knows that Trump can help or hinder his businesses. In 2020, he hosted a fundraiser for Trump at his home. According to court records, after the 2020 election, Ellison participated in a phone call to discuss how Trump’s defeat could be contested. In June 2025, he and his firm, Oracle, were co-sponsors of Trump’s military parade in Washington.
After taking charge of CBS, David Ellison promised to gut DEI policies there, put right-wing hack Kenneth R. Weinstein into a new “ombudsman” role, and made anti-“woke” opinion journalist Bari Weiss editor-in-chief of CBS News, despite her lack of experience in either broadcasting or newsrooms.
The Guardian reports that Larry Ellison has told Trump that if Paramount gains control of Warner Bros. Discovery — which owns CNN — Paramount will fire CNN hosts whom Trump doesn’t like.
Other billionaire media owners have followed the same trajectory. Despite his sometimes contentious relationship with Trump, Elon Musk has turned X into a cesspool of right-wing propaganda. Rupert Murdoch continues to give Trump all the positive coverage imaginable. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce and owner of Time magazine, has put Trump on the cover.
It is impossible to know the extent to which criticism of Trump and his administration has been chilled by these billionaires, or what fawning coverage has been elicited.
But we can say with some certainty that in an era when wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few individuals who have bought up key media, and when a thin-skinned president is willing and able to violate laws and norms to punish or reward, there is a growing danger that the public will not be getting the truth it needs to function in this democracy.
What to do about this? Two important steps:
1. At the least, media outlets should inform their readers about any and all potential conflicts of interest, and media watchdogs and professional associations should ensure they do.
Recently, The Washington Post’s editorial board defended Trump’s razing of the East Wing of the White House to build his giant ballroom, without disclosing that Amazon is a major corporate contributor to the ballroom. The Post’s editorial board also applauded Trump’s Defense Department’s decision to obtain a new generation of smaller nuclear reactors but failed to mention Bezos’s stake in X-energy, a company that’s developing small nuclear reactors. And it criticized Washington, D.C.’s refusal to accept self-driving cars without disclosing that Amazon’s self-driving car company was trying to get into the Washington, D.C. market.
These breaches are inexcusable.
2. A second step — if and when America has a saner government — is for anti-monopoly authorities to block the purchase of a major media outlet by someone with extensive businesses that could pose conflicts of interest.
Acquisition of a media company should be treated differently from the acquisition of, say, a company developing self-driving cars or small nuclear reactors, because of the media’s central role in our democracy.
As The Washington Post’s slogan used to say, democracy dies in darkness. Today, darkness is closing in because a demagogue sits in the Oval Office and so much of America’s wealth and media ownership is concentrated in the hands of a few people easily manipulated by that demagogue.
- 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/.
- 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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Trump broke the law with this horrible threat — and it will be his doom
I’ve been feeling something unusual these past few weeks: optimism.
Not naïve optimism or the kind that ignores danger, but the real kind that arrives when you see people waking up, standing up, and refusing to bow before a lawless president who believes rules are for suckers and the Constitution is a mere suggestion rather than the foundation of our republic.
We’re now governed by a man who treats legal limits as personal insults. Donald Trump doesn’t just violate our nation’s norms and laws: like every wannabe third-world tinpot dictator before him, he despises the idea that any law can constrain him at all.
Trump and the spineless sycophants in his administration have rejected the entire idea of a rules-based society. He and his lickspittles are turning the presidency into a throne, trying to transform you and me into its subjects, and painting as enemies anyone who insists soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen (and others in government) should follow the law.
Under Trump’s neofascist worldview, the only “legal” act is obedience, while defiance of his whims and illegal orders is a crime. We saw this when Trump lashed out at lawmakers who reminded our military that their sworn oath is to the Constitution and not to him personally.
He posted a rant about those six CIA and military veterans/lawmakers and wrote “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” in response to their message that both history and law — including military law — require soldiers to refuse illegal orders. Then he reposted a message calling for them to be hanged.
That wasn’t a rhetorical flourish: it was Trump’s declaration of war on the rule of law, something so essential that it’s the basis of every democracy and civilized society in history throughout the world. Instead of respecting American ideals, he’s sounding more like his “good friend,” the murderous dictator of Saudi Arabia (who’s given Trump’s family billions, with more billions on their way).
You’d think that after the My Lai massacre, the horrors committed at Abu Ghraib, and the Nuremberg trials, Americans — and Trump and those around him — would have gotten the message, but over at the Fox propaganda channel and on other rightwing media they’re actually defending this obscene behavior.
It’s also criminal behavior: 18 U.S. Code § 610 makes it a crime for any federal official — including the president — to use their authority to intimidate, threaten, or punish citizens for their political expression, voting behavior, or dissent. Threatening members of Congress with execution for following the law is an extreme, textbook violation.
Meanwhile, the country is learning how this un-American philosophy plays out on the ground. In cities like Charlotte, Portland, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc., masked, anonymous, secret police-style federal agents descend without warning, kicking in doors and smashing car windows, arresting U.S. citizens, stealing people’s possessions, invading trusted community spaces, shuttering businesses, and sending tens of thousands of students home in fear.
This isn’t border enforcement or public safety: it’s warfare against due process and America itself. It’s gotten so bad that Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and her peers are getting death and bomb threats.
Our nation’s Founders warned us that America’s greatest threats to liberty would come not from abroad, but from leaders who’d try to turn our legal system and military against us. James Madison said the means used against foreign dangers too easily become instruments of tyranny at home. That warning wasn’t theoretical: it was aimed directly at moments like this.
Yet we’re also see something the Founders hoped for, something that echoed their heroic efforts against King George III: average Americans refusing to be cowed.
People are documenting abuses, flooding the streets in peaceful protest, forming rapid-response networks, hauling the government into court again and again. Ordinary citizens are doing the job Congress has been too afraid, too compromised, or too divided to do.
It’s the most patriotic thing happening in America today.
Which is why Trump’s response to lawful dissent has been so horrific: he’s demanding Saudi-style executions.
He wasn’t being metaphorical: he demanded actual executions (although he later pretended to walk it back). That’s the language of a dictator. It’s the purest expression of Trump’s governing philosophy: if the law gets in his way he simply ignores it.
This isn’t merely corruption. It’s not even ordinary authoritarianism. It’s a direct repudiation of the entire American experiment. Defiance of courts and the law is a poison that says the only legitimate authority is the will of the leader, and Trump’s entire presidency has featured a nonstop campaign to replace the rule of law with the rule of Trump.
He enriched himself in office (he’s made billions off his position in just 10 months), he wielded the government as a tool of reprisal, he attacked judges, he extorted foreign governments, he stole government property and lied about it to federal investigators, he’s using public office to reward loyalists and punish critics, and he now presides over masked, unaccountable paramilitary raids that terrorize American communities.
The Constitution offers a clear remedy for a president who behaves like this.
Impeachment isn’t a political act: it’s a constitutional obligation when a president becomes a danger to the Republic. And Trump crossed that line long ago.
The only way to restore the rule of law is for Congress to begin impeachment proceedings immediately. Half measures are complicity. Silence is complicity. Delay is complicity.
But impeachment alone isn’t enough. There must also be criminal prosecution of Trump and his co-conspirators. Real prosecution, by real prosecutors, following real evidence, for real crimes.
And while we’re at it, DOGE deserves a pretty good looking at, too. And what happened to all those government investigations of billionaire donors’ companies?
Trump and those doing his bidding must face justice. His children who participated must face it. His bagmen and loyalists who broke laws to carry out his will must face it. A nation can’t heal if high office becomes a shield from justice.
Equality before the law is the foundation of any functioning democracy. If we abandon that principle now, we abandon the Republic itself.
I believe we’re at or very near a turning point. People are rising up. Communities are resisting. Judges are pushing back. Journalists are exposing what the administration wants hidden. The illusion of Trump’s invincibility is cracking.
The billionaires who believed he could terrorize the country into submission on their behalf are discovering that Americans refuse to bow.
This country was built by people who rejected kings. It can survive this counterfeit king, too.
But only if we act. Only if we insist that the Constitution still has meaning. Only if we refuse to let a lawless president redefine the rule of law as disloyalty.
Trump has declared war on the American Way. The only acceptable response is the full force of our constitutional system: impeachment, prosecution, and the unrelenting assertion that no man, no family, and no political movement is above the law.
I realize the political reality is that Mike Johnson won’t allow such a vote in the House and the Senate is now controlled by Republicans so timid and cowed by Trump that a GOP senator who’s a physician is afraid to criticize Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But we’re only 12 months away from an election that could sweep both bodies and we must lay the foundation now for that.
That means waking up as many people as possible (share this newsletter and others!), engaging with groups like Indivisible, and supporting litigators and progressive Democrats across the board.
We can do this. We just need resolve, passion, and to begin the hard work of reclaiming the American Way and the American Dream, as Democrats did in the 1930s and the 1960s, and both parties did to oust Nixon and imprison his cronies in the 1970s.
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Trump's vicious response proves he's cornered — and dangerous
This was always going to be one of the most dangerous junctures of Donald Trump’s godawful second term, though I admit it arrived a bit earlier than expected.
How would the dangerous, ill-bred lout, who’s never seen a lie he didn’t like, handle it when the truth about him and his failed policies were dragged into the unfiltered light of hundreds of sunny days for all of us to see?
How would the man who stalked America’s countryside last year, the grotesque billionaire Elon Musk in tow, bombastically floating empty promises and plenty of hate during his profitable, one-after-another hate rallies, handle it when he was found out?
How would the man who promised to release the list of Jeffrey Epstein’s vulgar cohorts deal with the blowback from many in his racist cult, when it was clear all he was really prepared to give them was yet another song and dance, instead of a list of the repugnant headliners behind these horrible assaults on our children.
How would the man handle it when his vile name was used by Democrats all over the map to warn against more of the poison he was dealing, while sweeping to landslide victories in places like New Jersey and Virginia in the first significants elections since America chose so spectacularly wrong a year earlier ...
Well, we got our answer last Thursday, when the unfit Trump took to his caustic, state-run social media channel and threatened to hang politicians who he doesn’t like.
It should matter little what set off this nuclear-powered temper tantrum from our sick king, only that he is now on the record making it clear just how far he is willing to go to quiet the opposition, as well as the dark, vindictive voices that are eating away at what’s left of his decaying brain.
He should be removed from office just as soon as possible, of course, but won’t be because he still has the corrupt, cowardly Republican Party and its mealy-mouthed sinners like House Speaker Mike Johnson under his fat little thumb.
Trump will kill to keep power, and now Johnson and his worthless party can never pretend otherwise.
Trump’s second term has been a bonfire catalyzed by greed, fear and retribution. The terrible man is governing this country in his horrid image. Rather than building, he is breaking. Rather than unifying, he is splitting. Rather than rising up, he is tearing down. Rather than helping the most needy among us, he is going out of his way to hurt them …
He doing all these horrid, vindictive things because he just wants to be loved, you see, and if we are all too stupid to get that, then he will use the enormous power his office grants him to shake us all until it hurts.
We will bend the knee, or else ...
Can’t we understand that he is demolishing the White House for our own good? Can’t we see he is fixing our health-care system, government, and decades-long global alliances by taking a sledgehammer to them first? Can’t we see that prices are actually lower, even though we the buyers can plainly see they are going up?
Trump is failing everywhere and is doing so in spectacular fashion.
When six of my fellow veterans in Congress produced a 90-second video, Don’t Give Up The Ship, reminding our troops that they are obligated to refuse illegal orders, the unhinged Trump wasted no time illustrating why this video was so necessary.
“SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” Trump wrote in one post. And just to make sure his bloodlust was crystal clear to everybody he shared a different post, written by another person, that said: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD!!”
This madman doesn’t belong in our White House. He belongs in a straitjacket.
I knew this day was coming last November, the minute the election was called for Trump in the wee hours of one of America’s darkest nights.
I wrote Warning Shot just two weeks later, because I understood that at some point things were going to get so bad for Trump that he was going to do what every murderous fascist of note has done before him, and hide behind the military for protection.
I’m not sure I have written anything that got more readership.
From that piece:
Once you understand that Trump will use his presidency and whatever is left of his miserable life to settle scores and return the favors of the crooked dictators, and slobbery weaklings in his political party, who helped put him back in office, you can better prepare for the hell that’s most assuredly coming.
By words and by deed it is clear as day that Trump has absolutely no respect for the United States of America he violently assaulted, nor our men and women who wear the uniform, because like any authoritarian leader he sees them as servants to him, and not our country.
I went on to explain:
Remember: Trump, and his Supreme Court see his power as absolute. There is NOTHING that applies, or restricts him from doing whatever the hell it is he thinks needs doing in the interest of national security, which as of January 20, 2025, will mean his security.
So now we are counting on our military not to obey unlawful orders and defend a Constitution their Commander in Chief could care less about. That’s a mighty big ask.
I quoted an official in the Pentagon at the time, who chillingly said this:
“Troops are compelled by law to disobey unlawful orders. But the question is what happens then — do we see resignations from senior military leaders? Or would they view that as abandoning their people?”
I hope everybody now understands why Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former C.I.A. analyst who served in Iraq, organized this important, timely video.
Slotkin was joined by Reps. Jason Crow (D-CO), Chris DeLuzio (D-PA), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH) and Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ).
These patriots and public servants are staying true to their oaths, and their duty to warn. They have watched as Trump has bastardized our military this past year for his political gain. He has taken to our bases to sell his gross MAGA merchandise, and called out Democrats, including past presidents, by name. He has called on these troops to use our cities as their “training grounds.” He has belittled true heroes like John McCain, and disgraced Arlington National Cemetery more times than I can count.
He doesn’t know a single, damn thing about army values, navy values, or ANY values, because the only thing he truly values — the only thing he has EVER valued — is himself.
So now he has proven himself again to be dangerous as hell, as his regime fails on all fronts. He is now looking for others to pay for his mistakes, and there isn’t a single thing he won’t do, including kill opponents, to give himself the vindication he thinks he deserves.
He’s lost his mind, and it is never coming back.
I typed Warning Shot one year ago lat Wednesday. I ended it this way, and so I will again with this piece:
This is not a story of hope, my friends, but words of warning.
Like it or not, and as tired as we are, we must be vigilant and NEVER accept this as anything approaching normal in this country.
A repulsive coward who never had the guts to serve will do everything he can to get our armed forces to serve only him.
WE must be the resistance.
- (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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This Trump betrayal can be stopped
Ukrainians know Donald Trump’s Ukraine deal is a betrayal, even if Volodymyr Zelensky and others have to keep flattering Trump in the hope he changes his mind.
Negotiated between American billionaire Steve Witkoff and Russian oligarch Kirill Dmitriev without Ukrainian or European participation, the proposed deal gives Russia even more territory, forces Ukraine to shrink its army, and prevents the country joining NATO.
Its guarantees of future Ukraine security could easily melt away as did those Russia, the US and European nations made when Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994. The treaty is culmination of Trump’s undermining of Ukraine, from his first cancellations of Biden-era military support to validating Valdimir Putin’s claims to Ukrainian territory.
It’s tempting to simply mourn, but those of us who’ve opposed Russia’s invasion from the start can do more than just play the role of passive spectators, particularly with the Europeans stepping up to make clear they’ll have Ukraine’s back and to push back with a plan of their own.
For all of Trump’s claimed deadlines. Ukraine is not going to simply accept, and may not at all. And while they’re negotiating, supporters of Ukraine and especially Ukrainian Americans, could and should organize nationally coordinated rallies calling on Trump to support Ukraine and not Putin. And making clear the kinds of support that would strengthen Ukraine’s hand.
And while they’re coming up with counter-proposals, supporters of Ukraine, and especially Ukrainian Americans, could and should organize nationally coordinated rallies calling on Trump to support Ukraine and not Putin. And making clear the kinds of support that would strengthen Ukraine’s hand.
These demonstrations should be led by Ukrainian Americans, whose families and futures are most directly affected. But they could also prominently engage other Eastern European communities — Polish, Latvian, Finnish, and others — whose homelands are also threatened by Russian aggression, and who become far more vulnerable if Ukraine accepts this deal.
These communities bring powerful stories, deep networks, and shared stakes in the outcome. They recognize that Ukrainians are fighting both for them and for everyone who believes in democracy. Demonstration organizers can invite them to speak, co-create messaging, and amplify the call across media and social platforms.
Broader outreach — such as to the networks that mobilized an estimated 7 million people for the October No Kings Day — could expand the size and impact. But the core message should remain rooted in the voices of those on the front lines of this geopolitical struggle.
The slogans can be simple and direct: Don't Abandon Ukraine. Stand Against Putin. Stand with Ukraine and Democracy.
The goal would be to pressure once-supportive Republicans to break their silent compliance and themselves demand restoration of at least baseline levels of aid. It would be about making the political cost of inaction too high to ignore — an easier task in the wake of GOP electoral defeats, as Trump’s poll numbers hit new lows, and as Republicans begin to break on the Epstein files.
These rallies would also send a message to Trump himself. He’s refused to authorize new U.S. support, alternately halted and resumed the delivery of previously committed air defense systems and artillery ammunition, and lamented Russia’s expulsion from the G8 for its 2014 Crimea seizure, something he wants to reverse in the new treaty.
Despite occasional tough sounding words, he’s given Putin far more leverage both on the battlefield and at the negotiating table. Ukraine may still prevail with courage, persistence, creativity, increased European support. But Trump’s general abandonment makes the Ukrainian situation far harder, even as the war-burdened Russian economy faces 20 percent interest rates, 10 percent inflation, and key labor shortages.
Could rallies and marches still make a difference? Ukrainian and other Eastern European communities have historically leaned Republican, giving them unique leverage. When economic interests have pressured Trump, he’s reversed course on tariffs and on immigration raids targeting farmworkers and hotel workers. Nixon-era anti-Vietnam demonstrations helped halt bombing raids and accelerated troop withdrawals — even as Nixon claimed they had no affect.
There are no guarantees. But coordinated, visible action could restore at least some of the support for Ukraine that Trump pulled, and shift him back in his weather vane-spin towards supporting Kyiv and not Moscow.
At the very least, action would give Ukrainian Americans and their allies a way to speak out while the fate of Ukraine hangs in the balance, because publicly they’ve been much too silent.
Hope alone is not a strategy. But when people organize with a common voice, they never know what they might achieve.
- Paul Loeb is author of Soul of a Citizen, The Impossible Will take a Little While, and three other books on social change, totaling 350,000 copies in print. An earlier version appeared in The Fulcrum
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Two Republicans may break a deadly promise
The longest government shutdown in American history ended less than two weeks ago, but the battle over Affordable Care Act credits and Americans’ health-care access still rages in Congress. Approximately 100,000 Virginians could lose their health insurance if the credits lapse, lawmakers and advocates say.
Virginia’s Democratic congressional delegation has staunchly supported extending the credits, which help people buy health insurance via the ACA marketplace and are set to expire at the end of December. Now, it’s time for Virginia’s Republican U.S. Reps. Rob Wittman and Jen Kiggans to make good on promises they made before the shutdown and during it.
Specifically, Wittman, who represents Virginia’s 1st Congressional District, and Kiggans, who represents Virginia’s 2nd District, should prove they did not lie when they pledged to protect their constituents’ access to Medicaid and affordable health care.
Virginia’s other GOP representatives also should support access to Medicaid and affordable health care by extending the insurance subsidies. Sadly, they all lacked the courage to sign pledges promising to do so.
Ahead of the shutdown, Wittman and Kiggans signed letters to the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate saying they would not vote for a budget with cuts in Medicaid, which pays medical bills for the poor and disabled.
Wittman and Kiggans also questioned the wisdom of their Republican party’s plan to let federal subsidies that made health insurance affordable for millions of low-income, working-class, and middle-class families expire at the end of the year.
But then, they both voted for Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” that cut Medicaid and let insurance subsidies expire. In doing so, Wittman and Kiggans set the stage for millions of Americans — including tens of thousands in their districts — to lose access to health care and face financial ruin from medical debt.
So, like their GOP peers, Wittman and Kiggans betrayed their constituents who likely will suffer untreated illnesses or crushing doctor bills in the current budget. Their “no” votes could have defeated the current budget bill.
Senate Democrats felt so strongly about this that they refused to pass the budget without affordable health-care measures. And so, the shutdown began.
Wittman, particularly, spent the shutdown talking about how he voted for a “clean budget” that would have kept the government running temporarily, but which Democrats blocked over health-care issues. Wittman implied that the temporary budget left time for negotiating those issues.
Kiggans was among a bipartisan group of House members who offered a bill in September to extend health insurance subsidies for a year to allow more time to negotiate a more permanent extension or put in replacement health insurance subsidies.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson never brought that bill to the floor for a vote. Instead, he adjourned the House when the shutdown started, so no new legislation could be offered.
U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia was among seven Democrats and one independent who broke ranks with their party’s leadership to reach a compromise deal to reopen the government. The Senate compromise included a guarantee of a vote on extending health insurance subsidies by mid-December in the upper chamber. Johnson still has not agreed to allow that vote in his chamber.
At this point, it is up to Republican representatives like Wittman and Kiggans, who promised to support access to affordable health care and Medicaid, to live up to that promise. They must do whatever they can to enable and support a vote that extends health insurance subsidies before those subsidies expire.
If Wittman and Kiggans still lack the courage to do that, they will have betrayed their constituents for a second time.
- Virginia native Jim Spencer is a former Minnesota Star Tribune Washington correspondent, metro columnist for the Denver Post and the Newport News Daily Press, feature writer for the Chicago Tribune, editorial page editor for the Charlottesville Daily Progress, and reporter for the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. He lives in Williamsburg where he started his 50-year journalism career doing a little bit of everything with the Virginia Gazette.
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Trump fans treated to another betrayal
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
This grassroots rebellion can decapitate Supreme Court's catastrophic mistake
Several of you have told me that the first step out of the mess we’re in is to get rid of the Supreme Court’s bonkers Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision of 2010, which held that corporations are people — entitled to the same First Amendment protection as the rest of us.
Corporate political spending was growing before Citizens United, but the decision opened the floodgates to the unlimited super PAC spending and undisclosed dark money we suffer from today.
Between 2008 and 2024, reported “independent” expenditures by outside groups exploded by more than 28-fold — from $144 million to $4.21 billion. Unreported money also skyrocketed, with dark money groups spending millions influencing the 2024 election.
Most people I talk with assume that the only way to stop corporate and dark money in American politics is either to wait for the Supreme Court to undo Citizens United (we could wait a very long time) or amend the U.S. Constitution (this is extraordinarily difficult).
But there’s another way! I want to tell you about it because there’s a good chance it will work.
It will be on the ballot next November in Montana. Maybe you can get it on the ballot in your state, too.
Here’s the thing: Individual states — either through their legislators or their citizens wielding ballot initiatives — have the authority to limit corporate political activity and dark money spending, because they determine what powers corporations have.
In American law, corporations are creatures of state laws. For more than two centuries, the power to define their form, limits, and privilege has belonged only to the states.
In fact, corporations have no powers at all until a state government grants them some. In the 1819 Supreme Court case Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, Chief Justice John Marshall established that:
“A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it, either expressly, or as incidental to its very existence … The objects for which a corporation is created are universally such as the government wishes to promote. They are deemed beneficial to the country; and this benefit constitutes the consideration, and, in most cases, the sole consideration of the grant.”
States don’t have to grant corporations the power to spend in politics. In fact, they could decide not to give corporations that power.
This isn’t about corporate rights, as the Supreme Court determined in Citizens United. It’s about corporate powers.
When a state exercises its authority to define corporations as entities without the power to spend in politics, it will no longer be relevant whether corporations have a right to spend in politics — because without the power to do so, the right to do so has no meaning.
Delaware’s corporation code already declines to grant private foundations the power to spend in elections.
Importantly, a state that no longer grants its corporations the power to spend in elections also denies that power to corporations chartered in the other 49 states, if they wish to do business in that state.
All a state would need to do is enact a law with a provision something like this:
“Every corporation operating under the laws of this state has all the corporate powers it held previously, except that nothing in this statute grants or recognizes any power to engage in election activity or ballot-issue activity.”
Sound far-fetched? Not at all.
In Montana, local organizers have drafted and submitted a constitutional initiative for voters to consider in 2026 — the first step in a movement built to spread nationwide. It would decline to grant to all corporations the power to spend in elections.
Called the Transparent Election Initiative, it wouldn’t overturn Citizens United — it would negate the consequences of Citizens United. (Click on the link and you’ll get the details.)
The argument is laid out in a paper that the Center for American Progress published several weeks ago. (Kudos to CAP and the paper’s author, Tom Moore, a senior fellow at CAP who previously served as counsel and chief of staff to a longtime member of the Federal Election Commission.)
Note to governors and state legislators: The Citizens United decision is enormously unpopular. Some 75 percent of Americans disapprove of it. But most of your governors and state legislators haven’t realized that you have the authority to make Citizens United irrelevant. My recommendation to you: Use that authority to rid the nation of Citizens United.
Hopefully, Montanans will lead the way.
- 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/.
- 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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We elected an imbecile — and his latest move could kill us all
Since Donald Trump has been back in office, energy prices have increased at more than double the rate of inflation. The Consumer Price Index from the end of October reported an “all items price index” increase for food, shelter, and transportation of 3.0 percent over a 12-month period, while energy services for the same period rose by 6.4 percent.
After promising to slash energy prices, Trump has done the opposite. His energy policies reflect the same ethos driving everything else in his retribution playbook: reward donors and inflict pain on Democrats, even when the economic consequences are nationwide.
Lust for retribution
In early October, Trump announced the claw-back of billions of dollars in federal funding for utilities, money that had been appropriated to reinforce power grids and reduce electricity prices.
Targeting blue states exclusively, Budget Director Russ Vought announced the cancellation of “nearly $8 billion in Green New Scam funding to fuel the Left’s climate agenda.” In all, 321 Congressionally set awards supporting 223 wind, solar, and transmission projects were trashed.
Trump’s aversion to clean energy isn’t the only factor driving costs. His refusal to upgrade the grid, his half-baked export and tariff initiatives, and his blind support for energy-sucking AI data centers are all contributing to surging energy prices with no relief in sight.
As Canary Media framed it, “Trump slapped tariffs on certain wind turbine materials and opened a sham “national security” probe to pave the way for even more. He halted construction on a nearly completed offshore wind farm and moved to revoke permits for two more. He canceled hundreds of millions in port funding critical to offshore wind development and imposed new directives to stifle renewable projects on federal lands.”
Trump’s dedication is showing: after only ten months of Trump 2.0, US household electric bills have increased by 10 percent, and are expected to continue climbing.
UN Climate Summit
Trump is doing more than reversing US climate successes, he’s also undermining progress in other parts of the world. Last month, when the International Maritime Organization agreed on the world’s first carbon tax on global shipping to encourage the transition to cleaner fuels, Trump released a childish Truth Social rant threatening to retaliate.
This month, he ignored the UN Climate Summit in Brazil. Thankfully, California Governor Gavin Newsom attended, representing the world’s fourth-largest economy. Newsom highlighted California's efforts to step up on climate where Trump has stepped out.
Facing down the embarrassment of an antiquated, know-nothing, pro-fossil fuel regime, Newsom didn’t hold back. When asked about the US retreat from global climate action, he called Trump “an invasive species … He’s a wrecking ball president trying to roll back progress of the last century … he’s doubling down on stupid.”
Newsom did more than talk. While he was at the summit, he signed new Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with Brazil, Colombia, and Chile to advance clean energy, wildfire prevention, and other climate-related initiatives. He also expanded California’s existing partnerships with China and Mexico on clean energy development and zero-emission freight corridors.
Newsom managed to bolster California's profile as a stable international business and climate partner despite the optics of a US president ruled by ego and impulse.
Our loss, China’s gain
In September, addressing the UN, Trump called climate change a “con job” and urged other world leaders to abandon their climate efforts despite the Earth’s rising temperatures. Trump claimed falsely that China sells wind turbines to the world without using them at home, and told assembled leaders, “If you don’t get away from the green energy scam, your country is going to fail.”
The next day, China pledged the reverse. Xi Jinping announced China’s plan to increase electric vehicle sales and dramatically increase wind and solar power, targeting a 600 percent increase over 2020 levels.
Despite Trump’s claim, China has vastly expanded wind power developments at home, adding 46 gigawatts of new wind energy this year alone, enough to power than 30 million homes. Meanwhile, our Cro-Magnon regime froze permits for wind farms and issued stop work orders, ending tens of thousands of wind energy jobs in the process.
Critics agree that Trump’s withdrawal from climate efforts ceded valuable ground to China, which is now rapidly expanding its renewable and EV industries. China’s Ming Yang Smart Energy just unveiled OceanX, a two-headed offshore wind turbine. OceanX is expected to cut offshore energy costs to one-fifth of Europe’s costs while allowing wind farms to operate with fewer, more powerful turbines.
“China gets it,” Newsom said at the UN Climate Summit, “America is toast competitively, if we don’t wake up to what the hell they’re doing in this space, on supply chains, how they’re dominating manufacturing, how they’re flooding the zone.”
Newsom is right. Americans are suffering the tragedy of an uninformed and unstable president who rejects science, a president who wants to take us back to the 19th century. We have also inflicted our tragedy on the rest of the world.
Pope Leo frames climate action as a moral and spiritual imperative, tying the “cry of the Earth” to the “cry of the poor,” because small island nations and the global south, including poor states in the US, will continue to suffer the most from extreme weather and climate destruction.
Trump will be dead before climate change becomes an obvious existential threat. As Newsom said, he is only temporary. But the global destruction he leaves behind could be permanent. We owe it to our children, ourselves, and all the earth’s inhabitants to never again elect an imbecile, and to shut this one down before he kills us all.
- Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
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