D. Earl Stephens

Toxic white men are taking over but I found a simple way to fight back

White, toxic masculinity has become a plague on America, and it’s about time white guys started speaking out about it, and putting it down.

The time to look away and ignore it as if it isn’t plainly in sight is long past, because it is quickly wrecking this country — again.

Too many of our noxious, white brothers are vile, rude, loud, and even very dangerous in today’s unsteady America. Worse yet, these guys somehow think they have a free pass to be just as gross as they want to be, because one of our very worst ascended to America’s most powerful office — twice.

Graciousness in defeat has been replaced by sore losers.
Good manners have been shoved to the floor to seat rudeness at the table.
Truth has been replaced with lies, lies, and more lies.
Thoughtfulness has gone the way of bombast.
Right has been replaced with might.

Nothing is their fault.

We are in a terrible place thanks to these men, and they must be called out by the men who know better.

I’m dead serious about this, guys.

Somehow these grown boys who were born with a leg up solely because of their race and gender, believe everybody is against them, and mostly these uppity, educated women and people of color. They’ve ended up in the slow lane, while everybody else has passed them by, and now that needs to be everybody else’s fault except theirs.

Instead of taking accountability, they play the victim, and that’s just pathetic.

We saw them in Charlottesville, when they marched on that Virginia city in 2017 with their tiki torches at a “Unite the Right” rally, where that vile president they worship called them “very fine people.”

We saw them again at our nation’s capitol January 6th, 2021, when they violently attacked our country at behest of that outgoing white supremacist president, who spent the better part of three hours doing nothing except hoping they would succeed in destroying the results of an election he lost.

They gather at his ugly rallies, so they can be just as gross as they want to be while setting one helluva terrible example for our children.

Man, I am sick and tired of these guys.

This is a piece that has needed writing for years now, but I was finally spurred to action by a run-in with one of these dudes very early one morning this week.

We have a condo we frequent in North Carolina. That makes me luckier than hell, and there isn’t an hour of the day, I don’t know it. It’s on the beach, and every time I get here, I am reminded that things worked out better for me than they had a right to.

I have no trouble admitting that the color of my skin and gender, gave me a hand up. I never had to look over my shoulder, only straight ahead to the good that was coming if I worked hard enough.

We’re on the top floor of the building, which affords a nice view, but also means negotiating several flights of stairs. The place is pretty basic, because all you really need is the beach. There is no elevator, but there is a creaky lift for things like boxes, bags and groceries.

When the lift is on the fritz, as it has been since yesterday, the small things in life can be a little inconvenient.

As the sun was rising this morning, and I was rolling around in bed, I could hear the lift starting and stopping. Apparently, somebody had rolled in early with their boxes and bags, and got a rude welcoming from the grouchy lift.

After about 10 minutes of listening to the thing start and stop, I grumbled, rolled out of the rack, slapped on some shorts and a T-shirt and wandered out onto the corridor to break the news that didn't need breaking: “The lift isn’t working,” I said to a blonde woman about my age.

That’s when she turned around, and said “I know, but he said he is going to fix it.”

I looked down and saw “he.”

Gray, flabby Hercules was three flights down, shaking the lift, and moaning like a bear who got the bees, but not the honey.

You’ve seen the type, crewcut, stocky build, walrus goatee, red ball cap, muscular and fat at the same time, boots suffocating dirty white socks, shorts that go down to the shins, tattoos everywhere …

Look, I am not stereotyping here, because this is a genuine type, and you know it.

We’ve become overrun with ‘em in America. When they are not attacking this country, they’re likely the guys working for ICE, zip-tying kids, while wearing those masks they hated during a killer pandemic, but now cover their chicken-shit faces, because thankfully most Americans still don’t like women- and children-abusing bullies.

Did I mention that Hercules was driving a loud, black pickup truck? Again, not stereotyping here, just reporting a disturbing pattern …

And for all of Hercules’ unattractive features, it was his quiet wife I became concerned about. Because when she turned around and told me her husband was “Going to fix it,” I saw pretty clearly the fixer had already broken his wife — or “Baby” as he called her while he was screaming and bossing her around the joint.

“Baby” was to stand on the third floor and keep quiet while Hercules shook the lift and sweated buckets.

I shot her a knowing glance, turned around, and headed back to my place. But the nagging wasn’t going to let me get back to sleep.

I’ve seen women like this, and the trouble they live with.

My mother was one of those women, until she escaped my rotten dad when I was young. You never forget the look in their eyes, when they around the monsters …

That was many decades ago, but it seems like these men are being celebrated now, instead of condemned.

So I rolled out of bed, and returned to the scene of the crime, went down the stairs and starting carrying their crap up to their condo. Hercules told me it wasn’t necessary, even if it was. Then he said he couldn’t help because, “his knees hurt.”

I let that one go, because guys like Hercules generally carry guns to overcompensate for what little they were given underneath those baggy drawers.

When I finished, Hercules thanked me for the help, apologized for waking me up, and got back to pushing Baby and their life around.

Baby never said another thing. Her sad eyes were doing all the talking …

(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.)

Top Dems finally see Trump has given them the fight of their lives — here's how to win it

As many of you know, I have been critical of what passes for the Democratic leadership gasping for air and a clear message in the toxic exhaust of the immoral Trump/Republican efforts to drive the United States of America off a cliff.

Their insistence on pushing lightweights like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries to lead us during these dangerous days has been tone deaf and insulting. At a time we so clearly need fighters, and patriots who can effortlessly and forcefully articulate easy-to-digest talking points, we instead have timid letter-writers, monotone men who inspire sleep, not action.

Somehow the party still doesn’t understand that legislation and political backroom brawling have been replaced by public street fighting, and doing everything possible to seize the message, and win and win again in the court of public opinion.

Unfortunately, perception is everything in the Cell Phone Era, and right now most Americans do not like what either party is dialing up.

Forgetting the Democrats’ failures to break through, I still admittedly have a damn hard time with anybody who can’t see the differences between party that wants to poison our air and drinking water, and a party that wants to protect these things … a party that wants to release the names of the lowlifes who befriended a child-rapist, and the other that wants these people (and one orange one in particular) protected at all costs.

The stark differences between the two major parties in America are endless, and any failure to see this is intellectually lazy at best, and willingly ignorant at worst.

And while it is correct to say they both lean on the dirty money from all these corporate thugs to keep them in work, it is equally correct that America has never been more politically polarized. This has nothing do with the differences in the colors blue and red, and everything to do with the gaping distance between what is right and what is wrong.

Democrats are not perfect, but they are vastly more honest, moral, and decent than Republicans, too many of whom I have absolutely no problem classifying as racist liars.

In fact, I just described their president right there.

Fact-check it.

We are in the early days of this Trump/Republican shutdown of our government, and it feels to me like Democrats have stiffened their upper lips, are unified, and have finally found a hill worth dying on. By allowing Trump and his Republican majority to shut down the government they so clearly hate, Democrats have been given a platform and a megaphone to take a bold message to the American public, and win that battle of public opinion.

Finding themselves on an equal perch to make their case has rarely happened the past decade or so, because Trump — even while he was out of office — has been afforded the opportunity to suck the oxygen out of every room thanks in large part to a corporate media that is run by right-wing billionaires, who are more interested in profits than the truth.

Every hour the Trump shutdown continues, more people will learn just how badly Republicans are screwing them, while they stand up for billionaires, and against the working folk in this country. (Oh … and that they will do literally ANYTHING to keep us from seeing the Epstein Files, because once the government opens again, it could well be there is finally enough votes in Congress to release them.)

Trump and his pathetic Republicans have overplayed a really bad (bruised) hand, and Democrats must make them pay.

Poll after poll shows Americans are blaming Republicans for yet more needless pain in their lives. As more and more of them learn that nine years later, Republicans’ only alternative to Obamacare is a diabolical scheme that will double their healthcare premiums, support for the grotesque Republicans will only continue to erode.

A new Kaiser Family Foundation poll revealed that a whopping 78 percent of Americans say Congress should EXTEND enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits due to expire at the end of the year, including … are you ready for this … 57 percent of MAGA.

As always, Republicans are making it harder on the families they allege to care about, not easier.

Just ask any farmer ....

We are coming off a week in which Trump somehow outdid himself as the most repulsive man in the world. His ugly, anti-American Mussolini act at Quantico last week was another one of those five-alarm fires that should have ended it for this sickening man. You should never get a second chance to publicly rally our military against the citizens they are supposed to defend and serve.

Of course, he never should have gotten a second chance after violently attacking us on Jan. 6, 2021, either.

The man is a traitor, and completely unfit for any duty outside of stiffing some caddie on one of his garish golf courses, which is exactly where he was yet again Saturday, showing just how little he cares about his job or Americans.

He is in declining mental and physical health, and this, too, is becoming more apparent every day.

He is a blowhard gasping for air.

America and her hard-won democracy are in the same peril they were before Trump’s shutdown began last Wednesday, but more and more Americans finally seem to be seeing they have a helluva lot more to lose than to gain with Republicans in leadership.

This shutdown is the Republicans’ doing. They have the House, the Senate, and the presidency. They are being exposed for their insistence to extend tax cuts for the rich, while doing their level best to screw everybody else.

By not caving to these vandals, Democrats are on the right side of the fight, yes, but more important: They have claimed the coveted high ground from which they can finally take their message to the American people, and the fight to Trump’s pathetic Republicans.

(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.)

This vile spectacle showed how Trump's hatred threatens us all

We are just a few days removed from the most toxic, anti-American speech ever given by a sitting President of the United States, and I am not letting it go, dammit.

And neither should you.

While addressing a gathering of military leadership from across the globe at Marine Corp Base Quantico in Northern Virginia Tuesday, the vile, America-attacking Donald Trump called on our generals and admirals to “… use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military,” so that he can attack us again.

There’s no sense being cute about it, or trying to sanitize it. The President of the United States is intent on using our military against us. And because I am one of the few in media — or the Democratic or Republican Party for that matter — who refuse to just merrily skip to the next Trump-made catastrophe, I want to repeat this again, until everybody hears it and understands it:

NOTHING Trump does with our military will be to protect the citizens of the United States of America. EVERYTHING Trump does with our military will be to protect himself from the citizens of the United States of America.

By words and by deed it is clear as day that Trump has absolutely no respect for the country 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.

And just so there was no misunderstanding about his objectives, Trump went on to say that the people who protest against him in America and disagree with his policies are, “The enemy within.”

Can you please read that again?

Look, while these words might pour out of his dirty mouth like contaminated water from an overflowing toilet because he is such a dreadful public speaker, they are nevertheless scripted and tested for affect before he ever harrumphs upon some poor, unsuspecting stage to use them.

The President of the United States was very intentionally telling us he will use our military against any American he doesn't like, which we all know is a very long, damn list.

I suggest we take this very damn seriously.

Just a decade ago, if you heard the leader of any country say these things, you would have rightfully said, “Thank God I live in the United States where these kinds of terrible things never happen.”

Trump’s vile speech should have triggered a national discussion that would be reaching a fever pitch right now. Instead, we’ve just moved on to more drama: the predictable Trump/Republican shutdown of our United States Government that they so clearly hate.

We have dealt with shutdowns before, but never a president who is so intent on using our military to attack us.

All pressure should be brought to bear on these military leaders that this kind of thing is not remotely OK in America. As a veteran and journalist who worked closely with military leadership during my professional career, I would like to think that the vast majority of these men and women understand this.

Don’t get me wrong, I dealt with a few screwy, power-drunk flag officers during both my time at Stars & Stripes, and as a sailor way back when, but for the most part, I have confidence that most of these people understand nuclear-grade fascism when they see it and hear it.

I’d think they also know when they are being insulted by their punk of a secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, who can’t hold his liquor, his tongue, or handle a tricky communications platform like Signal.

So a suggestion: Locate the nearest military base to your home and contact the commanding officer (CO). Tell him or her how outraged you are by the commander in chief’s unbecoming conduct. If you can’t get to the CO directly make sure you are in contact with a base public affairs officer.

These folks are generally very responsive, and if I have this at all right, will be relieved by your concern. As I typed Tuesday after Trump’s grotesque speech: “Any flag officer who wasn’t deeply disturbed and insulted watching this unhinged rant isn’t worth the uniform she or he is wearing, and should apply for a job cleaning Trump’s pool.”

We have entered the most dangerous time in America history since our Civil War.

We may yet be able to solve this terrible mess politically, but if Trump continues to succeed in militarizing our troops against us, we are finished.

Done.

This is not the time to move on to the next thing, just because Trump and his odious Republicans want you to.

This is the time to fight back, because we have to.

(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.)

This Trump rant was his most delusional and dangerous yet — by far

I had intended to write today about a video the repulsive President of the United States loaded up on his odious social media account Monday night. I had intended to warn you (again) that the normalization of terrible things like this by our worthless corporate media was even worse than the repellent videos themselves.

By allowing an obviously mentally unstable man to send out these sickening images to tens of millions of people around the world, without framing in 100-pt. type how grotesque and phony they are, our media was once again abdicating its singular responsibility of holding power accountable to the truth.

They are no longer even bothering to pretend they are up to the job.

I had intended to tell you as I have in the past, to find the truth wherever you can and share it everywhere. I hope this is one of those places, but in the case of this damn video, I’ll let one of America’s national treasures, Heather Cox Richardson, tell it, because I saw it first in one of her “Letters from an American” missives in the early-morning hours Tuesday.

(And if you aren’t subscribing to Richardson’s work you are missing what I believe to be the definitive snapshots of these worrisome times.)

From Richardson’s piece:

Tonight, Trump’s social media account posted a deepfake video of (Chuck) Schumer and (Hakeem) Jeffries speaking to reporters. In the doctored video, Schumer talks with Mexican music playing in the background, while Jeffries stands beside him wearing what appears to be a colorful Mexican sombrero and sporting a mustache with the ends waxed and turned up.

In the video, Schumer’s image is made to say: “There’s no way to sugarcoat it. Nobody likes Democrats anymore. We have no voters left because of all of our woke, trans bullsh*t. Not even Black people want to vote for us anymore, even Latinos hate us. So we need new voters. And if we give all these illegal aliens free healthcare, we might be able to get them on our side so they can vote for us. They can’t even speak English, so they won’t realize we’re just a bunch of woke pieces of sh*t, you know? At least for a while, until they learn English and they realize they hate us too.”

Here is an image from Trump’s childish, racist, and repugnant post:

A post by Donald Trump.

THIS is how the sickly President of the United States is spending his time. Snotty, spoiled five-year-olds behave with more class …

Because we have never had a president who constantly shares disgusting things like this, it should be the very definition of NEWS. Right now I am looking at the lead stories on The New York Times, The Washington Post and Associated Press websites and there is no mention of this video.

It is as if it never happened.

Well, millions saw it, and we should all be outraged by both the madman who shared it, and our worthless press, which can’t see the danger of it.

In her piece 16 hours ago, Richardson also set the stage for what did rightfully get plenty of press on Tuesday: our joke of a Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, speaking to a gathering of our military leadership at Marine Corp Base Quantico in Northern Virginia.

Hegseth, an alleged stone-cold drunk and liar, finished with his foul speech, but not before predictably being upstaged by his repugnant, orange boss, who projectile-vomited all over room, and fully half the citizens of the country he hates.

It is also worth pointing out because they were too damn stupid to consider it, that gathering all our nation’s top generals, admirals and their commander in chief in one room might be the single greatest threat to national and operational security I have ever seen — even stupider than texting war plans to a reporter.

But who cares about little things like that when you have a president who is a pathetic showoff and malignant narcissist, and lives only to feed his insatiable, bloated ego. Acting the tough guy in a roomful of tough guys, was just too much for this low-class coward to pass up.

I could fill 50 column inches with the stench emitted from Trump’s big mouth on Tuesday, so I’ll share just this stained nugget:

“We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.”

These “dangerous cities” he was talking about, of course, are in the country he governs, because nothing excites him more than attacking America.

He lives for it.

He also called people who protest against him and disagree with his policies: “The enemy within.”

Again, he is talking about U.S. citizens. WE are the enemy.

So let me just duck this in before I forget, because I am furious: I served my country, you draft-dodging candy-ass, and you can kiss my ass, sport.

Thanks.

As always, Trump came off as a complete moron today as he crashed from one subject to another, head cocked like Stupid Mussolini.

Any flag officer who wasn’t deeply disturbed and insulted watching this unhinged rant isn’t worth the uniform she or he is wearing, and should apply for a job cleaning Trump’s pool.

And while this nauseating gathering allowed Trump to feel like a real man for about an hour, the real reason for the event was to put military leadership on notice yet again that they, and mostly their troops, are to be loyal to HIM and not the United States of America.

From Day One of this regime, I warned you that the very first thing Trump was going to do was use the military for his evil devices.

Keeping our military loyal to him is an essential ingredient of authoritarian leadership.

In WARNING SHOT: The America-attacking Trump is coming for our military, and then US ... I typed:

“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.

You can never say you weren’t warned, because if you believe nothing else I type today, you damn well better believe this:

NOTHING Trump does with our military will be to protect the citizens of the United States of America.

EVERYTHING Trump does with our military will be to protect himself from the citizens of the United States of America.

Trump’s true enemy is the truth and anybody who dares speak it, or report it.

As I put this piece to bed, Republicans are in the process of shutting down our government, our military is in our streets, perceived enemies of the crown are being prosecuted, our FBI is firing “disloyal” people at will, and the bedrock of any Democracy, our vote, is under attack.

Fascism is here.

Just don’t expect it to be reported that way.

(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.)

For a few precious moments, I saw something so pure even Trump couldn't destroy it

In the past two days, I have seen both horrible and wonderful things.

While sitting on the beach, er, researching information for a future piece Thursday, I spied a baby on my port side scrambling along in the sand on all fours like an oversized fiddler crab. His chubby hands doubled as chubby feet, as he expertly moved about sideways, backwards, and forwards — to and fro.

I’ve seen infants do this before, and knew the crab-like baby on the beach was within inches of doing the most human thing possible: rising up on his two back claws, to start seeing the world from a higher place.

He’d still be looking up at most things, but now also straight ahead and down at others ...

I got back to my research … and sometime later the little crab returned to the magic spot where the surf licks at the beach, with what looked to be his dad and grandpa. The little crab was still dashing about on all fours, but this time with more reliance on his back two. He’d push up hard with his front claws before crumbling to the sand off his back ones.

I realized I was about to have the incredible privilege of watching this baby take his first steps. I had only seen this one time before, when my eldest, Kaite, stood up, pushed off and toddled into my arms.

You’ll never see anything better in your life, and the lump you get in your throat while inhaling the memory and typing it out testifies to that.

I missed my younger daughter’s first steps. Kristin began her two-legged journey through life while I was banging around a newsroom that magic evening helping to manufacture the next day’s paper.

When I departed for work, she was but a crawler, when I returned many hours later, she was a cruiser, and able to bang from coffee table to chair, and chair back to coffee table, leaving spilled water glasses and TV remotes in her choppy wake.

Now the little crab on the beach was about to change everybody’s life around him, and I was going to be a fortunate witness. The grandpa had propped the little crab on his two back claws, and he precariously swayed in the wind, the surf lapping at his fat little toes. The dad was crouched just an arm’s-length away, calling for the little crab to push off and join him …

It was riveting theater.

The baby wobbled on his fat feet for what seemed like forever, before his grandpa released him. His father, eyes alight, urged his son to join him. Suddenly free and untethered, the baby wobbled again, before plopping on his ample, back padding.

They tried again … and again … but the tired baby wasn't quite up to the biggest step of his lifetime.

He never did walk that afternoon, but I learned through surf-side intel the next morning, that the Baby Jake had figured it all out overnight, and was now terrorizing coffee tables and anything that dared sit atop them.

I’m an old man and see things through worn eyes. I am slowing down, while God willing, Jake will spend the next many years of his life getting up to speed, before settling on a cruising altitude that suits his fancy.

I saw a wonderful thing on the beach that day as a baby stretched out toward boyhood.

When I returned to my research, and crashed into a couple of news sites, I saw some truly awful things. I saw financial aid being pulled that would have gone to help starving children, who very well could have been Jake had he been on the other side of the ocean he now toddled on.

I saw the ugly, abominable, orange man making a mockery of good and decency, while banging around in the knee-deep slop where he had chosen long ago to spend his worthless life.

I put my phone down and cursed that moment, before returning to the spot where Jake had grown wings.

This was the moment I would feast on.

These things replenish us. They fortify us, and give us the strength to go forward on our own two, blistered feet.

We can stand watch against the evil in our lives and celebrate the wonderful things.

In fact, we must …

(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.)

This abominable choice exposed the single saddest thing in my lifetime

Well, Kamala Harris’s memoir is out, and while I am generally not a fan of political books, I believe this moment deserves some attention given the weighty timeframe and consequences of one of the most significant events of American history.

When this very good woman lost to the most abominable man in America last November, it opened the door to hell and exposed a fractured country that used to fight against fascists, not elect them.

We’ll know soon enough whether this is just an end of a chapter of the American story, or the definitive conclusion of that book. Today, our military is in our streets on behalf of a king, and human beings are being locked away in alligator-infested swamps.

We’ve seen worse, but it took a bloody “Civil” War to address it.

And let’s get this out of the way early: I proudly voted for Harris, and did what little I could to help get her elected. I was at her rally in the Milwaukee suburbs on day one of her truncated campaign, and walked away convinced she had what it took, despite one hand being tied behind her back thanks to her party’s inability to get out of its own damn way and pull together as a team.

No matter what you are hearing from all the Monday Morning Quarterbacks out there since the book’s release, she ran a damn fine campaign, walloped the America-attacking Trump in their one and only debate, and was right about literally everything — unless you believe Trump really had no idea what was in Project 2025, RFK Jr. is a renowned scientist, Stephen Miller is a caring social activist, or anything at all that pours out of the pursed lips of Trump’s personal press secretary, Karoline Leavitt.

I have read myriad excerpts from 107 Days, and watched Harris’s lengthy interview with Rachel Maddow Monday night. She looks good, sounds refreshed, and instead of carpet-bombing the countryside with anti-American, destructive nonsense that the election was stolen, is trying to reckon with what happened, while providing some insight into why it did.

I will touch on a couple of common themes, but not before asking again how any person who truly cares about this country, could have voted for a grotesque, orange lowlife whose attack on America on Jan. 6, 2021, left law enforcement officers wounded in the halls of our Capitol, and our democracy in its greatest peril since that civil war.

To say this should have been a disqualifying event goes to the top of the list of my career understatements. Republicans’ failure to vote for his impeachment, and Attorney General Merrick Garland’s disregard for Trump’s heinous attack, go to the top of my list of lifetime disappointments.

So let me start here: If you did not vote for Harris, please go find the nearest door and slam it on your head. Sure it will hurt, but maybe it will knock some damn sense into you. If nothing else, you will feel the pain millions of Americans are experiencing right now.

You are to blame for all of this.

Own it.

Longtime readers will know that I thought Joe Biden should have dropped out of the race after the 2022 midterms and been the bridge president he promised to be when he ran in 2020. When he didn't, I probably should have raised more hell. In my thin defense, I had one eye on my country, and the other on the America-attacker who was gaining strength by the hour, because of Garland’s stunning refusal to bury him with the full weight of the law.

I did spend a lot of time on that one, and still turn red with anger when typing about the feckless, galling attorney general.

Meanwhile, Harris was behind the scenes pretty much doing what vice presidents do, staying the hell out of the spotlight, and offering public support for her boss.

In her book, and with both arms free to express herself, Harris takes aim at Biden’s refusal to drop out of the race earlier:

“In retrospect, I think it was recklessness … The stakes were simply too high. This wasn’t a choice that should have been left to an individual’s ego, an individual’s ambition. It should have been more than a personal decision.”

Then she goes further, and blames herself for not doing enough to force her boss out. I find this to be both an endearing and lamentable trait in many women, who often apologize when they have nothing to apologize for. I suppose this is because too many men like the odious Trump have given themselves free reign to never apologize for anything at all, and have the audacity to think it somehow projects strength, when really it is just ugly, completely pathetic, and a poor example to our children.

Here’s what Harris says:

"I realize that I have and had a certain responsibility that I should have followed through on — and so when I talk about the recklessness, as much as anything, I’m talking about myself."

It wasn't her fault.

Period.

She was dealt the cards late and played the lopsided hand for all it was worth. The loaded Trump card was too much to overcome. That the Democrats still haven’t found better dealers, is what we should be worried about most right now, and I hope Harris will help with that.

I’m dubious she will lead the Democratic ticket in 2028, but I am positive she will be a powerbroker. So let’s close with what we know, and some irrefutable facts.

Had Kamala Harris been elected …

… there’d be more jobs and prices would be lower.

… smarmy Billionaires like Elon Musk would be on alert to start paying their fair share, and Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security would be untouchable.

… Project 2025 would have been placed in a nuclear-powered shredder, and Stephen Miller would be cleaning Trump’s pool at Mar-a-Lago.

… murdering regimes around the world, starting with Russia, would be our enemies, and places like Mexico and Canada would be our friends.

… vaccines would be readily available to protect us from things like polio and the measles, and the demented RFK Jr. would be off scraping up roadkill with the hope of eating it.

… our air and water would be protected from corporate vandals, and our women would be protected from Republican perverts who can’t keep their sweaty hands off of them and their rights.

… voting rights would be a top order of business.

… truth, not lies, would reign.

As a dad to daughters, as a son, and as a husband, I am worried the single saddest thing in my lifetime will be America’s inability to check its grotesque misogyny at the door and finally put a woman in our White House.

Harris was the first woman of color to head the ticket of a major party in the United States of America, and I fear for whatever is left of my life, she might be the last.

She wasn’t the perfect candidate, because perfect candidates don’t exist, and damn I wish people would start getting that.

But this much is undeniably true: She deserved far better than what she got, and for now, a disintegrating America is getting exactly what it deserves.

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.

How two decent Virginians gave hope that Trumpism can be crushed

As the anti-science Republican Party urgently tries to turn out the lights to the lab of the great American experiment, I want to remind you again that there are patriots and truth-tellers everywhere fighting them, and we should all take heart …

Like you, these good people are leaning in hard and spending their time and treasure to protect us from the most anti-American regime this country has seen since the racist, traitorous Robert E. Lee was leading armies against our country 165 years ago.

I ran into two of these good folks on Saturday, and I want to tell you about it.

My wife and I were shaking off the last of the grisly road grime from a long journey that started in the Battleground State of Wisconsin, and 1,200 miles later ended hard on the coast of the Battleground State of North Carolina.

We were busy settling into temporary housing that should shelter us nicely for the next few months, as the state that stretches out to the north of us, Virginia, readies for crucial elections Nov. 4. Democratic victories in that state could radically change the battlefield for the forces defending America against the odious, fascist Republicans who mean to end us.

On the way to our car, I spotted a white Subaru in the parking lot with a handsome, bright blue Abigail Spanberger sticker on the car.

Spanberger is the Democrat running to replace the grotesque, book-banning, Glenn Youngkin, in Virginia as the state’s governor in just six, short weeks.

I told my wife that I endeavored to meet the fine people who would fly this flag in a N.C. county that isn’t shy about touting their anti-American ignorance by supporting the orange, convicted felon who violently attacks us …

There are plenty of pro-American, pro-environment patriots out here in the Outer Banks, but we don’t carry guns or wear our ignorance on stupid, childish cammies. We’re more inclined to go about our work with a quiet purpose, while picking up their trash on the beach.

Just after lunch, and on my way to the hardware store to grab some much-needed supplies, I got the opportunity to meet these people who wore their hearts on their sleeves.

A man and woman were piling into the Subaru, when I approached them. Here is how that encounter went:

ME: “Howdy!”

THEM: “Howdy!”

ME: “I was hoping to meet the people with that Spanberger sticker on their car.”

THE MAN: “Why? Are you going to punch me in the nose?”

I laughed out loud …

Such times we live in …

I told the man, named Joe, that I actually wanted to hug him, because Spanberger was badass, and anybody who would support her must be some kind of badass themselves.

That’s when they laughed.

The wife, Carol, asked where I was from in Virginia, and I told her I was just a loudmouth activist lately stationed in Wisconsin, where we are fighting the good fight from the rooftop of the country.

She said, “Oh!! You guys are killing it up there!”

I agreed, of course, because since 2018 it’s hard to point to another state that has altered its political landscape as dramatically as Wisconsin.

We’ve kicked out Republican governors, flipped our Supreme Court from dark red to middling blue, put fair-ish maps in place, and basically restored order to a state that had gone mad thanks to the poison the billionaire Koch Bros. had been ladling out to the mouth-breathing Republicans, who were led by Scott Walker, perhaps the stupidest man alive.

Yeah, we fell short last November, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Kamala Harris actually got more votes than Joe Biden did in 2020, but just enough Republicans and dummies in the middle helped put the woman-abusing felon back in our White House. We did keep the steady Tammy Baldwin in the Senate for six more years, so there was that.

So now I was talking to a couple of patriots who knew the importance of every election going forward, and were dug in on the frontlines of Virginia.

I told Joe that Spanberger was going to win big, because she was made for the moment, and so, too, were he and his wife.

He said, “I sure hope so,” before Carol interrupted and said, “She’s great. Yer damn right she’s gonna win!”

I gave her a high-five, smiled big, walked off, climbed into my car, and headed for the store.

There are patriots everywhere, my friends, and this is the time to be loud, proud and purposeful. You need to search these people out. Lean on them … If necessary, help show them the way.

There is great power in connection, because connection brings power.

It’s time to take that power back.

(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.)

Two looming contests will tell if America still lives or if Trump has doomed us all

When I was a young man, I never figured that well into my seventh decade on this green and fading earth, I’d need to reiterate that I was a proud anti-fascist, and a veteran who served his country to defend it from violent, lawless convicted felons.

Like the one who has somehow scraped his way back into our White House …

It would have been completly inconceivable — a thing of fiction. When I was discharged from the Navy in 1980, America was an imperfect place, but tied together with the imperfect notion that if we stood together we could work our way out of nearly any self-inflicted mess.

Today, I am typing to you that Republicans have declared war on America, and as grotesque as that is, it is nonetheless a terrible reality we must come to grips with.

Maybe they are finishing what they started with Nixon and Reagan, but I’m here to tell you they have never been this sinister.

Donald J. Trump is a homegrown terrorist who hates America. After violently attacking our country once, he again has his fat little foot on the gas pedal, and this time means to run us over for good.

Instead of spending my golden years writing another damn book, and squeezing out every ounce of good that might be due to me, I am furiously banging out these three chilling words:

Authoritarianism is here.

Look, Trump will stop at nothing to protect himself, and continue to endanger this country. There are no lines he won’t cross, or laws he won’t incinerate. He’s a wholy dishonest man, who is good at exactly one thing: breaking things.

Like our economy, for instance ...

Since he slithered his way into our White House and spray-painted it tacky-gold, prices are rising, inflation is rising, unemployment is rising, and jobs are on the decrease. And that peace he promised to deliver on Day One? Well, things are escalating quickly in the Mideast, and along the frontlines of democracy in Eastern Europe.

Trump has predictably been a complete and utter failure, because history tells us that is all he has ever been. He was a rotten kid, a rotten businessman, a rotten husband, a rotten father, and is a poor damn excuse of a man.

His approval ratings are tanking, and everywhere he goes, which lately was an appalling stop in Great Britain, he is met with hate and derision.

His health is failing, and he looks even more hideous than usual. All the spray tan, and stringy stuff he tapes to his head each day are doing nothing to hide the fact he is quickly approaching the point where he is almost as dead on the outside as he is on the inside.

Instead of doing what every other president has done before him, and reassessing what has taken us down, he is steadfastly dragging along his dead right leg, and limping forward without looking back. He is climbing over the dead bodies toward the higher ground in his bunker where he can blame somebody else for his deep and never-ending failures.

It’s what losers do, and what he has always done.

If what’s left of our media is reporting on his ongoing failures, they are the problem, and need to be silenced.
If comedians are making light of his never-ending moronic tendencies, they need to be squashed.
If economic data comes out that doesn't put a shine to his dark failures, he needs to manufacture his own numbers that will.
If proven science doesn't align with his hair-brain thinking on things like vaccines and clean air and water, scientists need to be silenced, and crushed by the morally bankrupt billionaires who keep him in office, so their profits will soar.
If some inconvenient law is getting in the way of his march against the truth he can just ignore it, because he knows his bought-off, reprehensible conservative Supreme Court has already decided their lopsided, orange lout is fit to be king.
If none of that works, it was Obama or Biden’s fault.

And while ALL of this was inconceivable even 15 years ago, none of it comes as any surprise to those of us who have been doing nothing but paying close attention since the initial blast on Nov. 8, 2016.

If only everybody cared even half as much, we might not be in this terrible mess. Sadly, most don’t.

I’ll be spending the next couple of months typing to you from the coast of the Battleground State of North Carolina, and inside the Tidewater, Virginia, media market, as that state girds for crucial elections Nov. 4, that will decide which party holds power there.

Those elections, and similar contests in my home state, New Jersey, will be the first signs of whether our slide deep into fascism continues, or if we are interested in climbing out of the abyss.

For now, I’ll exit at the same place I left my last couple of columns by reiterating WE must be the truth-tellers going forward. We can no longer rely on our corporate media to tell us what is going on, because too many have pathetically surrendered to authoritarianism. We must turn to independent journalists to provide the truth, and confirm what is right in front of our eyes.

You … we … must all light the way ahead.

I’ll be very honest with you: I don’t need this shit, and know many of you don’t either. I think I speak for many of my generation when I say this is not how our retirement was supposed to go. We were planning to toss our flashlights and keys to the younger folks to guide the way. It was finally our turn to get the hell out of our own way, collect our social security, lean carefully on our savings, and make the most of whatever remained of our short lives.

I figured I’d find time at the nearest beach, and write about soft, pretty things of absolutely no consequence. I’d ride bliss, until it tossed me off and into some grave.

That’s when war came, and I made the decision not to ignore it.

It has been left to us to be true patriots and rescue America from the bruised grip of a maniac and his morally busted political cheap-shots, and misogynystic racists who mean to end us.

We must speak up, and stand against the latest Republican attack against our Democracy. There are no magic potions, or thoughts and prayers that will get us out of this mess. There is nobody coming to rescue us.

Once our Democracy is gone, we won’t get it back. Not in this lifetime.

At one point, America was the land of the free and the home of the brave.

I believe we are here to prove it still can be …

(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.)

Charlie Kirk was killed. We are in danger of letting our most valuable ideals die with him

On Aug. 9, 2016, Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, stood on his steel-enforced soapbox in Wilmington, North Carolina, and said this through a smirk about his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton:

"Hillary wants to abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. But the Second Amendment people … maybe there is, I don't know."

This was Trump at his absolute worst, which makes it as bad as it gets, or anyone can be, with his veiled suggestion that his supporters exercise their gun rights to stop Clinton from abolishing the Second Amendment.

Like so many toxic statements Trump made on his campaign trail of fears that year, it should have ended his candidacy on the spot. No presidential candidate in the history of our country had openly hinted at a call to arms against an opponent. And for the record, Clinton never once said she wanted to incinerate the Second Amendment.

Many Republicans called it simply a “joke gone bad” at the time because they had all heard those horrible words and the context in which he delivered them. Trump later denied he was advocating an assassination attempt, and instead was simply trying to coalesce a political movement.

I know how I felt when I heard his disgusting comments, and have no doubt what the odious Trump was implying with his sick “joke.”

Just four years later, Trump left no doubt about his violent intentions when he tried to overturn an election by instigating the worst attack on our Capitol since the War of 1812. Law enforcement officers were beaten with American and rebel flags. His vice president was threatened with hanging, and his thugs whom he later told us that he “loved” roamed the halls hunting down Speaker Nancy Pelosi, among others.

I remind you of these terrible things, because much of our broken-down legacy media refuses to in the wake of the murder of right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk.

I remind you of this, because any reporting that doesn’t mention Trump as the root cause of the Republican hate speech and political violence across this country, isn’t worth the screen it is printed on.

I remind you of this because any reporting that doesn’t mention Kirk’s overt racism and misogyny as the catalyst for his popularity on the right is fooling itself, but worse, trying to fool you.

This is incredibly dangerous, because by treating the death of Kirk as some “political assassination” instead of yet another preventable gun death among tens of thousands in this country, our media is providing fuel to a fire that Republicans would like to burn to the point of out of control.

As I wrote on Friday:

I am not celebrating Kirk’s death, but I am lamenting the demise of truth in this country.

So here is the truth:

Trump is a hardcore racist, and Kirk was one too. I could fill 14 columns using only their racist words to buttress this fact.

He was not as New York Times columnist Ezra Klein typed Thursday, presumably with a blindfold on: “Practicing politics the right way.”

Klein’s column defied belief, because up until the moment he wrote those idiotic, dangerous words, I had a fair amount of respect for a guy who generally takes a reasoned approach to these unreasonable times we live in.

Here’s the column. I’ll guess it’s paywalled, but assure you it’s not worth a dime or a single minute of your time. Klein was slammed by NYT readers in the comments section, before they had to close the one-way discourse down. I’ll hope he read them. If he’s not embarrassed, and rethinking his shoddy, tone-deaf take on Kirk’s killing, he’s not human. Worse, he’s never to be trusted again, which would be a damn shame, because he generally is a voice of reason, whether you agree with him not.

I am not here to exclusively batter Klein, but I am saying he is one of the leaders of the chorus in our broken media, whose mishandling of the Republican attack on our Democracy has helped lead us to this terrible place.

The man who violently attacked our country, now has troops in our streets.

The man who tried to overturn our 2020 election, is now relentlessly attacking our election process.

The man who lied on the camping trail that “I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” is now implementing it almost to the letter in an effort to make sure we never recognize our government or our country ever again.

I have not seen ONE story in our legacy media calling him a fascist, even if he is the definition of one.

The same way I did not hear anybody in our legacy media call him a liar when in fact, he told a documented 30,573 lies or mistruths during his first, disastrous term.

The same way, I am not seeing the legacy media calling him a racist even now …

I want to remind you of something else I typed on Thursday, that is keeping me up at night:

DO NOT LET THE CORPORATE MEDIA FRAME THIS MOMENT.

As a lifetime journalist, that isn’t easy to type, but I was taught to report the truth, and that accuracy breeds credibility.

Without truth, accuracy, or credibility you are finished in the news business.

We all must gravitate toward the truth-tellers in our society right now, and become truth-tellers ourselves, if we are going to survive this rightwing onslaught on our Democracy.

Charlie Kirk's terrible murder should shed light on this national sickness

Too much of the media coverage and reaction I am seeing to the shooting of right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk is completely absurd and very, very dangerous.

At a time when truth and context are absolutely vital, I am seeing too damn little of both.

There would be less angst and our country would be far safer if only we accepted people for who they want to be instead of who the judgmental right and people like Kirk think they should be.

Kirk’s death might have been preventable if only he had advocated against putting more weaponry in the hands of civilians, instead of fighting for it.

The right wing’s intentional bastardization of our 2nd Amendment has been perhaps this country’s greatest tragedy, and has led to countless, senseless deaths.

Thousands of people — many of them children — would have been saved if only America got out of its own way, and got a damn grip on a gun problem that has spun way out of control.

There are more than 400 million guns in America. If that doesn’t chill you to the bone, congratulations, you are part of the problem.

For too long we have been gaslit by the gun lobby and the Republican Party into believing that more guns mean less violence. This is absolutely preposterous, and it would be my fervent hope that Kirk’s death would lead to the necessary dialogue and changes we need to end this grotesque, wrong-headed thinking.

I will not hold my breath.

Instead, the fire-breathers on the right led by the odious Donald Trump are using this killing to pour gasoline on a fire that warms their cold hearts.

They aren’t calling for calm, they are calling for more revolution.

The people who say and do nothing after our children are slaughtered in our schools, except ask for thoughts and prayers, are everywhere right now fanning the flames of hate.

The same so-called president who just three months ago said he wouldn’t “waste time” calling the governor of Minnesota after the political assassination of Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Horton, and wounding of state Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvonne Hoffman, had plenty to say after Kirk was killed.

Including this:

"For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now."

This is the convicted felon who told the violent people who tried to overthrow our government and stomped law enforcement officers into the pavement on January 6, 2021 that he loved them, before going on to pardon them for their terrible crimes.

The numbers of times Trump has used hate speech to rally his base could fill several books. He is not a man to listen to. Nor can he be ignored ...

By whitewashing who Kirk really was, too many in our our media, too many of these damn “influencers,” and too many politicians on both sides of the aisle are insulting the sensibilities and fears of tens of millions Americans, who have been warning about gun violence for decades, as well as the dangers of the overt racism and hate that poured from the mouths of people like Trump and Kirk.

DO NOT LET THEM FRAME THIS MOMENT.

Until Republicans and our media start treating the countless deaths of our children with the same regard they are showing Charlie Kirk, I encourage you to remain peaceful and ever vigilant.

As a veteran, peacenik, anti-gun nut, and proud liberal, I do not advocate violence of any kind.

Kirk used his politics as a weapon, and aimed to hurt innocent people. My God, his final words were cloaked in the hate he spent his life peddling.

I am not celebrating his death, but I am lamenting the demise of truth in this country.

(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.)

We were warned Trump would sell out key allies. A year later, here we go

Exactly one year ago last night, Vice President Kamala Harris confidently walked up to Donald Trump, looked him in his bloodshot eyes, offered her hand, and then proceeded to spend the next 90 minutes dragging him all over the stage of Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center in their one-and-only 2024 presidential debate.

Harris was prepared, disciplined, and clearly demonstrated her keen understanding of both domestic and foreign policy issues. She wasted no time stating her key plans for her administration, and effortlessly illustrated a command of the Constitution. She made it clear that she, not her opponent, who was a convicted felon, had spent an entire professional career upholding our nation’s laws, not violating them.

She even predicted how the debate would go down telling the world that Trump would haul out “the same old, tired playbook,” and warning he would resort to “a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling.”

While Harris strongly defended a woman’s right to choose, Trump stammered and lied saying, “As far as the abortion ban, no, I’m not in favor of an abortion ban. But it doesn’t matter because this issue has now been taken over by the states.”

Then he weirdly said, “I have been a leader on fertilization.”

With an incredulous look, Harris stared at him and then the camera, and said without speaking, “I have no idea what the hell he is talking about, either.”

This was repeated several more times, as Trump used the shovel Harris casually tossed him to bury himself.

When she wasn’t relentlessly fact-checking and battering the haggard Trump with the facts, she was nonchalantly casting a line and patiently waiting for the two-ton sucker fish to hit it, before setting the hook, and reeling him in.

By the time she was done, the orange, flapping fish was bleeding out all over the stage, and screaming, “They’re eating the dogs! They’re eating the cats!”

Harris also effortlessly dog-walked Trump into the very racist trap that he set weeks earlier when he questioned Harris’s “Blackness.”

“All I can say is, I read where she was not Black, that she put out. And I’ll say that, and then I read that she was Black. And that’s OK. Either one was OK with me. That’s up to her. That’s up to her.”

That’s up to her … How kind.

Harris again looked at the camera, with a “you decide” look.

When the ass-kicking was finally over, Harris had masterfully humiliated Trump. She had proven she had the capacity to be one damn fine president, and knew how to stand up to fascist bullies, not roll out the red carpet for them.

So badly was Trump beaten, he actually flat turned down an offer from Republican state media at Fox TV to host a second debate, saying “there will be no rematch.”

It’s fitting then, that on the one-year anniversary of Harris’s knockout of Trump on that Philadelphia stage, we are getting news of Russia President Vladimir Putin’s incursion into Polish airspace today. High-ranking Polish military officials are decrying an “unprecedented violation” as a “huge number” of Russian drones were shot down by Polish and NATO forces over that country.

This is the first time in the history of NATO that alliance fighters have engaged enemy targets in allied airspace.

Read that again.

As I type this, Poland’s government has invoke Article 4 of the NATO treaty, that states alliance members “will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened.”

Without invoking Article 4, there cannot be Article 5, which could entail military action.

From reporting in The New York Times this afternoon:

Since NATO’s founding in 1949, Article 4 has been invoked eight times. Before Wednesday, the last was on Feb. 24, 2022, the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

What we know for sure right now is that the world is less safe today than it was yesterday, and certainly one year ago. We still don’t have a clue what Trump has to say about any of it, except what he posted on his social media account:

"What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!"

Here we go? Good God.

This is the terrifying stuff of world wars, but of course, Harris was on top of this issue, too, during that debate, because unlike Trump, she read her national security briefings, and could tell our friends from our enemies.

At one point, Harris turned to Trump and said this:

“Why don’t you tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up for the sake of favor, and what you think is a friendship with a known dictator (Putin) who would eat you for lunch?”

She wasn’t done:

“If Ukraine loses, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe, starting with Poland.”

Holy hell …

And let me remind you that Trump promised to end Russia’s war with Ukraine on Day One of his presidency. Of course, anybody who was paying attention, and/or really loves this country, knew that like so much of the heated bilge that pours out of his lying mouth, it was all complete bulls–––.

Instead, just last month he surrendered to Putin on American soil by giving the murdering dictator the red-carpet treatment Harris had predicted.

But if we are really being accurate here, all of this was forecasted on another debate stage in 2016, when Trump was dragged around by another smart, tough, unflappable woman.

When Hillary Clinton went after Trump’s bromance with Putin, the man who would violently attack America only four years later said this:

“He (Putin) said nice things about me. He has no respect for her (Clinton), he has no respect for our president (Obama). I’ll tell you what, we’re in very serious trouble.”

Clinton responded this way:

“Well that's because he'd rather have a puppet as president of the United States.”

Truer words have never been spoken.

Both of these patriotic women were right about everything, and we should all be reminded of that every single day.

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.

This tiny act could end the galling stupidity that keeps Trump in power

One of the most significant developments in what was another ear-shattering, soul-crushing week in American politics transpired quietly last Monday evening, when Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) announced he was stepping down.

Nadler, 78, has been a liberal force during his three decades in Congress, and by finally throwing in the towel signaled that maybe — just MAYBE — Democrats are starting to listen to their angry constituents, who are not at all pleased by the way the party has comported itself leading up to, and after, the most consequential election in American history this past November.

“Watching the Biden thing really said something about the necessity for generational change in the party, and I think I want to respect that,” Nadler said, before grudgingly adding, that a younger replacement “can maybe do better, can maybe help us more.”

Using the word “maybe” was Nadler’s ego talking, but it was the “Watching the Biden thing …” that really interested me. I’ll have more on that in a minute, but for now, it’s instructive to listen to how news of Nadler’s departure was received in Democratic circles. Put it this way: I have not heard from ONE person of note who thought this was a bad decision.

Basically, this is what I have been hearing:

“Thank you, sir, for your many years of service. I wish more Democrats would do the same.”

To put it kindly, the Democratic Party has become a stale, useless brand. It is a party crying for a new direction, and new leadership. It needs fresh faces, and new ideas. Again: Nobody I have talked to disputes this.

One only needs see what is transpiring in Nadler’s haunts in New York City for a vivid illustration of the party’s self-destructive clash of cultures.

Up-and-comer, Zohran Mamdani, 33, handily won the New York City Democratic Mayoral Primary in July, but instead of celebrating his victory, the Democratic old guard, led by Andrew Cuomo, are fighting hard against him.

This is grotesque, it really is, but is serving to expose all that is wrong with a party that refuses to get out of its own way.

Even Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has not been able to bring himself to endorse his fellow New Yorker, most likely because his campaign has accepted upwards of $1 million from the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (which loathes Mamdani) in just the last year alone, and because Jeffries has proven himself to be too cute by half.

Once an up-and-comer himself, Jeffries has lately fallen flat, and is out of tune with the majority of his party these days, who see him as a lurker, not a leader. Sadly, he seems to be one of the only people who doesn’t see this.

Mamdani’s stunning victory in the July primary was a repudiation of the old guard, their failed ideas, and all that old money. Mamdani has proven he can reach the voters that Democrats must have to win elections, which begs the question:

Why then are so many old guard Democrats throwing rocks at him?

The easy answer is all that damn money, but there is also something else at play here: Sheer stupidity, as well as that ego even Nadler has found so hard to shelve.

Listen to me:

If there was just ONE thing Democrats could do to enhance their chances in every election for the next 20 years it would be this: Throw out that old guard, swap out your so-called leadership, and make good and damn sure every person in America knows you’ve done it.

REPEAT: Throw out the old guard, swap out your so-called leadership, and make good and damn sure every person in America knows you’ve done it.

Nothing would signal you are listening to your terrified and angry electorate more than that. Further, it would serve notice to the growing number of Americans who don’t see a difference between our two major parties that this version of the Democratic Party isn’t serving up just more of the same old bulls--t.

Politics is a competitive, bottom-line sport. And in every sport except politics, winners are rewarded with a second chance, while losers go home. When a team wins, coaches, players and general managers are rewarded for their efforts. When a team loses, coaches, players, and general managers are sent packing.

At least this is how the perennial winners do it …

Fans of these teams expect nothing less. Why would they pour their hard-earned money into the pockets of losers? Are these fans any different than the constituents of the Democratic Party? Why should the people who do all the heavy lifting, volunteering, door-knocking, and rallying and marching until their feet hurt keep showing up if their party is just going to trot out the same old, tired-a-- losing team?

If you’ve read even a little of my stuff, you know how I feel about the revolting, racist, misogynistic, anti-American Republican Party.

That this group of bought-off goons has been able to garner the support of something called the “working-class American” is not only patently insane, but speaks to the massive failures of the Democratic Party, which has allowed for the greatest heist in American history.

How can the party that stands with unions, workers’ rights, increased minimum wage, wages overall, healthcare, childcare, social security, Medicaid and Medicare be losing the working-class voters?????

And, by the way, have you seen the latest job reports, showing Trump’s predictable and massive failures?

We’ve heard a lot about Democrats’ inability to communicate to the American public, but I’m not sure if that messaging is as much of a problem as the people who are doing it — those losing players I was talking about.

Like it or not, most Americans are sick and tired of the Cuomos and the Clintons, the Chuck Schumers and Hakeem Jeffries, the Amy Klobuchars and the Steny Hoyers, the Mark Warners and the Cory Bookers …

The list is really long, and growing.

None of these people should be in leadership any longer, and none of them will ever become president despite all their unbridled ambition, so they need to finally get that out of their hard heads.

Like it or not, they are the faces of a failed brand. I am not saying they all need to go, but they do need to learn to lead from behind, while pushing new, aspiring leaders forward.

THAT is how you truly serve your country, and thank you in advance.

It was bad enough the party lost the House, the Senate and the presidency in the most consequential elections in American history last November, but they somehow made it even worse by the way they completely and callously mishandled their beating.

It was almost as if they couldn’t wait to surrender.

It was as if they didn’t give a good goddam about the people who spent their time and treasure working their tails off to get them elected, and were now terrified about what was coming down the pike in a second, vengeful Trump dictatorial term.

A term, by the way, that should have never been allowed to happen if we had a damn Justice Department that acted with the urgency Trump’s January 6, 2021, attack on our nation most certainly demanded.

Joe Biden himself was absolutely appalling in Kamala Harris’s defeat, what with his warm welcome to America’s dictator in front of that damn fire in the White House only days after the election. I will never be able to unsee or un-hear that grotesque spectacle.

Then there was the cheery Klobuchar handling the inauguration festivities of the fascist dictator as if hosting some terrible, pinky-out cocktail party, while Schumer took it all in doing his worst impression of Chuck Schumer.

The gall of these people …

Within months, polls started reflecting Americans distaste for this out-of-touch, ineffective group. As I type this, the Democratic Party’s approval ratings are at roughly 20 percent.

Four out of five Americans don’t like what they are being served by Democrats.

It almost makes Trump’s 40 percent approvals look stellar by comparison.

But maybe Democrats are finally opening the door a crack, to let the fresh air in.

In the past few weeks I have seen hints of a different party, with different tactics, even if I am still seeing the same galling stupidity out of too many selfish dimwits like the odious, women-groping Andrew Cuomo.

Maybe Jerry Nadler’s resignation is a sign Democrats really are beginning to listen to their bosses in the field. We need more of this, people.

FAR MORE OF IT.

We need to hear from the new politicians, with new voices and ideas, who are advancing all the good Democrats have done and are doing, while forcefully standing against the most dangerous party in our nation’s history.

And we need to see them competing in our Red States as well as the Blue and Purple ones. Quit conceding turf to these fascists, who offer nothing to their voters but vitriol and death.

WE are the good guys, dammit.

WE need fighters.

These are the people who I will support. I am done getting my a-- kicked by backing the same old losing team with the same old losing players.

(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.)

Trump's most maniacal sidekick is about to ruin Florida — and it's not groveling Ron

Florida announced plans this week to become the first state to end all vaccine mandates, INCLUDING FOR SCHOOLCHILDREN.

Read that again.

I had intended to write about the Epstein files today, and the incredibly brave survivors of alleged child rape, who gathered on Capitol Hill to tell their stories. They were there because it is beginning to look like our president who ran on releasing those files, instead has a starring role in them, and will do everything possible to make sure they never see the light of day.

That would generally would be a banner story. In a sane, just world, it would have the potential to end Donald Trump's presidency, and ultimately land him jail for the rest of his miserable life.

But because you hang around places like this and pay attention, you don’t need me to tell you that we are not living in a sane, just world.

Just how insane and unjust is the world? Consider that the possibility of the president being accused of sexual abusing underage women was by far only the second-biggest story of the day ...

Truth is, this vaccine news might be one of the most significant stories of the century, because of its gruesome ramifications on the future of our rattling civilization.

Bluntly: If Florida goes through with this death plan, it could potentially result in one of the largest losses of human life ever.

Look, vaccines have been a life-changing discovery, and one of mankind’s greatest achievements. The advent of vaccines has saved hundreds of millions of lives the past 100 years or so.

That we are reversing our thinking on the use of vaccines in America is almost too absurd to contemplate. The profound stupidity and danger this presents really can't be overstated.

MILLIONS of lives are at risk if Florida out-Floridas itself and actually puts this deranged plan into action.

We need only look at COVID to see this.

Despite what you’ll hear from many ghoulish, anti-life Republicans, millions of lives were saved thanks to COVID vaccines. Maybe even more startling, an estimated 317,000 lives in the United States alone would have been saved during the COVID outbreak had everybody just done their civic duty and gotten vaccinated.

If Florida goes ahead with this insane plan, just as sure as I am typing this, all kinds of otherwise preventable diseases will begin reappearing all over the place — measles and polio just to name a couple. And while our children will be most vulnerable, because Republicans never saw a kid whose life wasn’t worth jeopardizing, Florida’s huge population of retirees will also be under direct threat.

We will ALL be under threat.

Today’s gruesome news comes in the backdrop of the insane vaccine guidance being shoveled out to the American public by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., our secretary of Health and Human Services, who listens to everybody but professionals in the medical and scientists communities, ignores a century’s worth of vaccines’ positive results, and has been a vocal vaccine skeptic.

Last month, after Kennedy proudly announced the rollback of nearly $500 million in vaccine funding, I typed this:

“Instead of answers and more science and discovery to make sure we are ready for the next mass-medical emergency, Trump instead has inflicted us with this gruesome stray from the Kennedy dynasty, who is quickly becoming a one-man pandemic.”

Last week, Susan Monarez, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was forced out by Captain Death less than one month into her job for refusing to go along with this maniac’s plans to end us.

Four other leading officials at the CDC resigned because they too had come under extreme pressure from the sickening Kennedy. One of those officials said Kennedy’s team asked him to “change studies that have been settled in the past” to fit Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views.

Yep, “change studies.” Just make stuff up. I mean, it’s only people’s lives we are talking about …

So who are the players down in the Sunset State, who are putting this latest death plan into action?

Let’s start with Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general, who made the announcement standing beside the state’s grotesque and Trump-slobbering Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Ladapo is a COVID vaccine-denier. A quack. A nut. A complete moron.

And dangerous as hell.

He has associated with a group of whacko militants called “America’s Frontline Doctors,” which is led by Texas physician Stella Immanuel, who has put forth the theory out loud and often that sperm from alien or demon sexual visitations are responsible for much of what ails us.

With qualifications like that, there is a good chance Ladapo has the inside track to the 2028 Republican Presidential nomination …

In announcing what will henceforth be known as the “Florida Death Plan” Ladapo said this:

“Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body?”

Who are YOU to tell us??? You are allegedly a doctor, sonny. Should we be going to an exterminator to get advice on medical issues?

Er … That actually might be advisable in Florida.

He added that the administration would be “working to end” all vaccine mandates, because “every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery.”

I’m not making this up.

Not a single word about the lives vaccines have saved, just lies and conspiracy theories, because that is the Republican way in 2025.

And then, of course, there’s DeSantis himself. A dumb man’s idea of a smart person. The ultimate Florida Man. A guy, who says, “Watch this!” while playing with matches and gasoline, as is the case with this maniacal, evil vaccine plan.

While standing next to Ladapo with that beachball-sized smirk on his face, Trump’s willing punching bag announced that his wife, Casey DeSantis, will head the commission on the Florida Death Plan, because if we are going to kill hundreds of a thousands of children best we have a dreadfully unqualified ghoul doing it.

Her beaming husband, Ron, ended the press conference by bragging:

“We’ve already done a lot. I don’t think any state has come even close to what Florida has done.”

He’ll get no argument there.

(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.)

The GOP has a death wish — we have a golden chance to fulfill it

I’ll start by asking a question:

Why do Republicans want so many of us to die?

If I’m a Democratic politician, or voter, or even a loudmouth columnist, this is the only question I am asking repeatedly until the polls open in every election in America, before our sickly dictator uses our military in an attempt to end voting for good.

We are in a life-or-death situation in America right now, and if you don’t believe me, why not let Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst tell it. In May, Ernst defended Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Death Bill and his elimination of life-saving Medicaid at a town hall meeting by belittling her constituents and telling them: “WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE.”

It is actually the most honest thing Ernst has ever said during her appalling reign of terror, which makes it a real irony that it also ushered in the death of her political career.

Ernst made it clear on Friday she will not seek a third term, because running on the campaign slogan, “We are all going to die,” might even be a bridge too far for some of the Trump cultists in the state, who somehow still believe they are immune to things like measles, and the truth.

I will touch on this in a minute when I’m officially done with Iowa — er, like Ernst apparently is.

The death of Ernst’s political career means another crucial U.S. Senate seat is in play, which suddenly gives life to the possibility that Democrats could pull an inside straight and gain control of the Senate next year.

It’s a long shot, sure, but already, Maine and North Carolina look ripe for the flipping, and if Democrats can get out of their own way, and demand answers to crucial questions like, why Republicans want so many of us dead, they could swipe the Senate from Trump’s rotting hands.

November 2026, is a long way off, but Democrats continued to prove they are capable of moving the political needle in Red States like Iowa Tuesday night when Catelin Drey handily defeated Republican Christopher Prosch in a district Trump won big last year.

Drey’s loud win in that state senate race smashed Republicans’ supermajority, which means their Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, will no longer be able to simply wave her magic wand to crush the hopes and dreams of Iowans. She will now actually have to legislate in something resembling a bipartisan environment.

And Drey’s win wasn’t a one-off, because Democrats in the Hawkeye State also picked off another state Senate seat in a January special election, as well as a House seat in an April special.

That’s a lot of winning in a state that’s all but been lost to Democrats since Barack Obama won it for a second time in 2012, and their Legislative Campaign Committee President Heather Williams was only too happy to spike the football Tuesday night:

“As Trump and Republicans wreck the economy and erode democracy with power-grabbing schemes, Democrats’ special election wins should send a flashing warning to the GOP: voters are rejecting the failing MAGA agenda and leaving Republican candidates in the dust.”

The good times kept rolling in the Upper Midwest when word came out Friday that Conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley would not seek reelection next April, citing "conservative failures" for her decision.

Now “conservative failures” takes in a lot of territory, so I’ll surmise in this instance she’s talking about liberals’ convincing victories in four of past five Supreme Court races in the Cheese State, dating to 2018.

This has been an incredible run, especially when you consider that liberals had not controlled that crucial chamber for decades, and now will lead it through at least 2028.

If they can pick off Bradley’s open seat next April, they will own a stunning a 5-2 advantage on that court. Judge Chris Taylor’s the liberal running for that slot, and it can never be too early to support her.

Which takes us to Iowa’s rooftop of Minnesota, where the news went from good on Tuesday night to horrific on Wednesday morning, and gets me back to wondering why despite Ernst’s prediction that “we are all going to die,” Republicans are so damn eager to make that happen.

On Wednesday, another man with another gun slaughtered two children and wounded 17 people, mostly children, in a church attended by Catholic school children in Minneapolis.

The party of death actually outdid themselves with their response to this sickening tragedy by once again asking America to pray for these children, who were shot in a church while doing just that.

Haven’t we finally had enough this Republican carnage?

Are we finally done listening to a party that is now telling us out loud that “we are all going to die” and then doing whatever they can to make that happen?

Are we finally done with people like Captain Death himself, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is currently doing more to intentionally wipe out people than any man since Adolph Hitler?

As I type this, Kennedy is continuing his gruesome crusade to end our vaccine program in America as we know it, which, according to The World Health Organization, has saved more than 150 million lives and reduced infant deaths by 40 percent.

Can you read that again? Are we really trying to make sense of this, as if it’s in the vicinity of anything resembling normal?

While Captain Death, and his brain worms, and his drug addictions, and woman-abusing and dead animal fetishes, was in his laboratory scheming to kill millions this week, he was also eliminating key public servants who have given their professional lives to protect us.

Just this week, Susan Monarez, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was forced out of her job by Captain Death less than one month into her job for refusing to go along with this maniac’s plans to end us.

Monarez, who is still fighting the dismissal, while she fights for our lives, had her lawyers release this statement:

"When she (Monarez) refused to rubber-stamp unscientific reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts, she chose protecting the public over serving a political agenda. For that, she's been targeted."

Four other leading officials at the CDC resigned this week because they, too, had come under extreme pressure from the sickening, Kennedy. One of those officials said Kennedy’s team asked him to “change studies that have been settled in the past” to fit Kennedy’s anti-vaccine views.

Yep, “change studies.” Just make stuff it. I mean, it’s only people’s lives we are talking about …

And here’s where I remind you that the only reason the grotesque Kennedy is even in this job in the first place is … you guessed it … Republicans.

Republicans confirmed this ghoul, despite the fact he claimed COVID-19 vaccines are “the deadliest ever,” when the facts are they saved tens of millions of lives.

So I’ll ask one more time: Why do Republicans want so many of us to die?

I suggest we all keep asking this crucial question, and demanding answers while we are still around to do it.

(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.)

This unspeakable horror is all Republicans' fault

School shootings are now as American as baseball and apple pie.

Just the whiff of fall ushers in back-to-school ads, which appear between news stories detailing the brutal slaughter of our children in those schools.

You can set your clock to it. Every year for roughly the past three decades, we’ve known open season on our children was coming, yet we’ve done nothing about it.

Once the school doors open, so does the mass-murder of our children.

Do you know why? Because of Republicans, that’s why.

Say that with me: REPUBLICANS ARE THE CAUSE OF THE SLAUGHTER OF OUR CHILDREN.

They are to blame. No guns, no murders. Less Republicans, less shootings.

This isn’t hard to understand.

Don’t get it twisted.

We always get it twisted. We always make the cause of these shootings way too hard.

It’s not hard.

This a Republican plague on America.

If Republicans didn’t want more and more guns in this country, there’d be less and less children dead in our schools.

I know this, because it wasn’t always this way in America. It really wasn’t.

All these school shooting are a fairly recent thing, which has coincided with the increase in all the guns in this country, and Republicans’ falling at the feet of death-rattling organizations like the National Rifle Association.

There are currently more guns than people in the United States of America, and more children are dying than ever before because of it.

Again, don’t get his twisted. It’s not hard to understand.

Republicans want more guns. Democrats want less guns.

Not only do Republicans want more guns, and Democrats less guns, they want more military-grade weaponry in the hands of our citizenry. These are the kinds of guns that can kill many, many people really, really fast.

Like little children in our classrooms, for instance.

I grew up in the 1960s and 70s. There were almost no school shootings, and I was raised in a pretty tough city in New Jersey. Nobody worried about being shot in school.

Make that NOBODY.

Did these things happen on the rare occasion?

Of course, but almost never.

And when they did, people — Republicans and Democrats — were appropriately outraged by it, and vowed to make sure they would do everything possible to make sure it never happened again.

Because what kind of society would we be living in, if we accepted the slaughter of our children in their classrooms, as business as usual in America? What kind of society would we be if the best that one of the two major parties could offer up in response to these killings, was some stupid prayer.

So no, shootings weren’t a major problem when I was growing up, because there weren't all these guns that Republicans have since eagerly introduced.

Again, please don’t get this twisted.

And let me duck in here and ask a quick question: Do you want more guns, or less guns?

I bet you want less guns, because you care about our children. Everything should be done to protect our children.

Democrats believe that. Republicans don’t.

Don’t get it twisted.

Me? I don’t want any guns. NONE. Zero.

I was in the service, and I know what guns do. Guns are designed for one purpose: to kill things.

Let’s say that again, too, America: GUNS ARE DESIGNED FOR ONE PURPOSE: TO KILL THINGS.

That’s all they are good for: KILLING THINGS.

Why do people want to kill things?

That’s a real damn problem right there. It’s sick.

If you want to kill things, you are a complete sicko.

Broken.

Again don’t get it twisted. Don’t make it hard.

I haven’t touched a gun since I was in the military, because guns kill things. People who have guns have them for one reason: to kill things.

But, sure, let’s introduce more and more guns into our society. Let’s make them available everywhere. Let’s make guns easier to get than registering to vote.

All these guns are a Republican problem. They have even gotten to the point of telling us that more guns make us safer.

Seriously.

Republicans want people to have more guns to protect themselves from all the guns out there.

Now THAT’S twisted.

An anecdote. When I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s, All in the Family was the No. 1 TV show in America for many years. The protagonist, Archie Bunker, was basically a well-meaning bigot, who generally collapsed under the weight of his own ignorance by the end of each episode.

Back then we didn’t have many mass-murders in our schools, but we did have the occasional hijacking. So what was Archie’s answer to this problem?

Arm everybody on the plane, so that they could shoot any prospective hijacker that boarded said plane.

Talk about twisted ...

But we knew twisted logic back then. We knew that more guns meant more killings. We knew Archie was a complete idiot. Occasionally lovable, but an idiot.

Now we don’t, because Republicans are telling us they think more guns will mean less school shootings. It’s as if we have thousands of Archie Bunkers running our country.

Oh, and did I mention Archie was a bigot? Because the biggest single year-on-year increase in gun sales until COVID, was the year Barack Obama was elected …

Republicans tell us more guns will make us safer when they know for a fact that America is the only place in the civilized world where mass-murder has been reduced to just another way of life — before death, that is ...

I have lived all over this world, and America is the only place I worry about being shot to death when I go into a mall, a movie theater, a restaurant, a school, a library, a museum, a zoo, or attend a parade or a ballgame.

People in other countries think we are completely out of our minds.

You know why? Because they know that if we didn’t have all of these guns we wouldn’t have all of these shootings.

They aren’t twisted.

Are you still twisted? Is this hard to understand? It shouldn’t be, because again: Guns kill things. The more guns, the more killings.

Say, have you seen that the racist in the White House is currently introducing more guns into our cities to keep them safer?

The children in our cities, small towns and suburbs are under attack from mass-murdering madmen with guns. So what’s he doing? Sending our military and their guns into our cities, while warning about immigrants eating our dogs and cats in those suburbs.

Talk about twisted.

This afternoon, hundreds of lives will never be the same because a man with a gun slaughtered two children and wounded 17 others in a church attended by Catholic school children in Minneapolis.

Who then has the gall, besides every grotesque Republican in America, to think the appropriate response to this tragedy is to pray for these children, when they were shot in a church … praying?

Apparently they don’t see the sheer hypocrisy and evil insult in this.

Twisted.

America has Republicans to thank for our children’s bloody bodies being splattered all over the walls, floors and ceilings of our schools.

THEY ARE TO BLAME.

I am literally praying we don’t get this reasoning twisted yet again ...

(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.)