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This horror finally launched the anti-Trump insurrection — 'The time is now'

The facts are so damning that it’s unclear to me why moderate Democrats are being careful about their reaction to them.

Renee Good was shot in the face. Alex Pretti was shot in the back. Their deaths were not accidental. They were not the result of poor or insufficient training. They were the result of intent.

Why are moderates worried about seeming extreme when the context is murder by the state? In that setting, there’s no such thing as an overreaction. Call on Kristi Noem to resign. Call on Stephen Miller to resign. Call on the president himself to resign.

The real danger is under-reacting. Noem shouldn’t only be impeached and removed. She should be arrested and tried.

In addition to murder, ICE and CBP are going house to house, kicking in doors, terrorizing people. They are taking babies from mothers. They are preventing fathers from grieving their dead sons. They are letting sick kids taken from their parents die in custody.

These are crimes against humanity that everyone would recognize as such if they were taking place in Iran. It’s a sick joke to suggest they wouldn’t happen if ICE had proper “guidance.”

Sadism doesn’t occur in a vacuum. It is accepted. It is condoned. It is encouraged. It is a choice originating from the very top. Without criminal accountability, sadism as policy will continue.

Fortunately, moderate Democrats are not most Democrats. Some in the Senate are threatening to shut down the government if Donald Trump and the GOP do not accept their reforms. More important is what’s happening among House Democrats.

The leadership there is now calling on Noem to resign or face impeachment proceedings. It also seems to be bridging the gap between opposing factions within the party — between Democrats who believe they should pursue accountability and Democrats who believe they should pursue “affordability.”

I’m going to quote the full statement by Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar so you can see that, in their view, accountability and “affordability” seem to be the same.

Taxpayer dollars are being weaponized by the Trump administration to kill American citizens, brutalize communities and violently target law-abiding immigrant families. The country is disgusted by what the Department of Homeland Security has done.

Republicans are planning to shut large parts of the government down on Friday so that the DHS killing spree unleashed in Minnesota can continue throughout America. That is immoral.

Dramatic changes at the Department of Homeland Security are needed. Federal agents who have broken the law must be criminally prosecuted. The paramilitary tactics must cease and desist. Taxpayer dollars should be used to make life more affordable for everyday Americans, not kill them in cold blood.

The violence unleashed on the American people by the Department of Homeland Security must end forthwith. Kristi Noem should be fired immediately, or we will commence impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives.

We can do this the easy way or the hard way.

Personally, I have never seen Jeffries speak so aggressively.

Neither has Jill Lawrence.

She’s the author of The Art of the Political Deal and a contributor to The Bulwark. Jill used to be an opinion editor at USA Today.

“It's inspirational,” she told me.

“Jeffries is using their language (‘the easy way or the hard way’), making irrefutable points, and talking about impeachment from a position of strength, given the swell of Democrats who are co-sponsoring an impeachment resolution against Noem.”

She went on.

“If you want to talk about affordability, after the GOP let health insurance subsidies expire and passed nearly $1 billion in Medicaid cuts coming next year, this is a dramatic way to make the point: ‘Taxpayer dollars should be used to make life more affordable for everyday Americans, not kill them in cold blood.’”

“I think the statement generally is an acknowledgment that people really care deeply about these abuses of power,” Jill said.

The last time Jill and I discussed accountability was in May. Back then, she said talk of impeachment was premature. In a recent piece for The Bulwark, however, she changed her mind. The time is now, she told me, not only for Trump but for his cabinet, too.

The breaking point, she said, was murder.

Moderate Democrats take note.

JS: Last time we talked about impeachment, you said the key is timing. You were concerned about the Democrats moving too quickly, risking the appearance of playing politics. In a recent piece, you say the time has come. What changed your mind?

JL: The breaking point for me was the ICE killing of Renee Good, and the pile-up of impeachment articles filed against Trump and members of his cabinet. Impeachment talk was growing, and even as I was working on the piece, Illinois Congresswoman Robin Kelly announced she would file articles of impeachment against Kristi Noem.

In part, I thought it was time to stop ridiculing and dismissing people who, quite justifiably, thought Donald Trump should be impeached for any one of many, many reasons. In truth, I found those articles – against Trump and against several cabinet members – to be interesting and clarifying reading. I liked the idea of publicizing them in formal investigatory hearings, like January 6, and decided to make a public argument for that.

What do you say to those who say there's no point in impeaching Trump if he can't be convicted by the Senate?

I don't think Democrats should try to impeach Trump right now, and maybe not even this year. The idea would be to build up to it after making cases against several cabinet members who have earned impeachment by any objective standard. My thought was that Democrats should lay the groundwork for an impeachment proceeding against him next year, when they seem likely to control the House. And by then, who knows who will control the Senate, or how many Republicans will have had it.

I suggested starting out with Robert Kennedy Jr, because his policies are literally deadly, and he's nowhere near finished unspooling our progress on public health. But Noem seems more urgent at this point. It was reported that at least 145 Democrats have co-sponsored the impeachment resolution against her. And Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin says he will hold investigatory hearings to fill in and expand the articles.

I agree with your view that there's no need to pick between accountability and "affordability." That, however, is not the view of influential Democratic strategists. They believe winning means picking "a kitchen table issue." Yet there are people out there saying golf becomes political when an agent of the state can murder you. What are these strategists not getting?

I am as puzzled as you are. I don't think the strategists get how deeply these killings and tactics have penetrated into the public consciousness. Or how intensely people feel them. Or how it's obvious to the public that Trump is not prioritizing prices, he cares about Greenland and ICE and the ballroom and the Board of Peace charade. I wrote last year and still believe that the most important thing is for candidates to be true to themselves, their beliefs, their communities. There is no reason not to talk about the dangers we face now, as well as all the idiotic Trump policies that are raising prices, from food to health care to electricity.

The people of Minneapolis have proven something important — attention moves public opinion and public opinion moves the Democrats. Even Chuck Schumer seems to be growing a spine (threats to cut DHS funding). It seems to me impeachment hearings, whether official or not, can do the same thing.

I totally agree. And Raskin agrees as well. He just said today that unless Noem resigns or is fired, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan needs to launch impeachment proceedings against her. And if he doesn't, Raskin said he will do it to create a record of "fact-finding, public hearings, and committee reports."

One commenter on my original story suggested an interesting way Democrats could proceed: Work with legislators in a state Democrats control so the hearings can be part of an official record. Minnesota would be a perfect place to start.

I'm seeing a lot of talk among prominent liberals about how something deep is shifting. The suggestion is that the American people are moving away from Trump and toward something better. The skeptic in me says hold on. We said the same thing after George Floyd's murder. Then came the elite backlash. Then came Trump's reelection. What do you say to that?

First, I'll mention another suggestion from a commenter, who said House Democrats should start an impeachment website that publishes all the articles of impeachment filed against Trump and his administration to date. Other material could be added as necessary. The popularity of such a site would be one gauge of public interest. I think it would be high.

I think this could really be a hinge point for a few reasons. Tragedies breaking through. Trump's age and massive overreach. The lower federal courts. Younger Democrats in the Congress and White House pipeline. And one more thing.

I feel like I'm a pretty mainstream center-leftie, and fiscally conservative on debt, but I have changed. I am interested in a lot of fundamental change geared not only to guarding against a repeat of this awful period, but also to getting done some of the business that Americans want done on issues like health and gun safety.

So, curb the dependence on presidential character in our system, because it's a demonstrable and tragic failure. And end the legislative paralysis, in the Senate in particular. Sorry about the soapbox. You did ask!

Trumpism has reached its tipping point — even this hardcore conservative knows it

In today’s edition, I’m going to try something different. Instead of an essay or analysis or an interview, I’m going to offer diary-like entries. The reason is practical, but also artistic, if you will indulge the term. These diary entries reflect how my mind works — vestiges, observations, random thoughts — sometimes interconnected but more often not. I wrote them on Bluesky before they appeared here, but have expanded and modified nearly all of them in order to give the impression of a beginning, middle and end.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Saturday, Jan. 24, before Alex Pretti was murdered

  • I wish white Americans would connect the dots: between a cop murdering George Floyd and an ICE officer murdering Renee Good. Most white people didn’t believe they’d be subject to institutional evil. They ignored a racist backlash that reelected Donald Trump. Will they see and prevent the next backlash? I can’t say I’m hopeful about it.
  • White American should educate themselves on the meaning of “race traitor” and what white power has done, and is currently doing, to those of us who are disloyal to it. White power does not recognize a diversity of opinions and interests. You are a friend or an enemy. Even sympathy can be seen as an act of betrayal. I think liberals generally underestimate the role of “race traitors” in white supremacy.

Saturday, Jan. 24, after Alex Pretti was murdered

  • Key details: ICE shot Pretti in the back. He was on the ground, on his knees, restrained. He did not “brandish” his gun. He was unarmed. One of the ICE officers took it. (Pretti had a legal permit.) Another officer stood directly over him and shot him in the back. He was shot again and again after collapsing. Then one asked “Where’s the gun?”
  • In my view, the focus on the “poor training” overlooks intent. It’s said that if ICE officers had better training, they wouldn’t have killed Good and Pretti. That’s wrong morally and politically. They intend to kill. They are merely looking for opportunities. They must be forced to prove otherwise. Even George Will gets it. Why can’t some Democrats?
  • When moderates focus on training, they give ICE the benefit of the doubt. Why do that? What outcome do moderates hope for with “better training”? As of now, the murder and mayhem in Minneapolis is amateurish. With “better training,” it would become professional.
  • The worst thing about the "better training" criticism of ICE and Border Patrol is that it leaves a political opportunity unexplored. Moderate Democrats should accuse them of the worst intentions to force the regime to prove the allegations wrong. That would control the debate.

Sunday, Jan. 25, in the aftermath of Pretti’s murder

  • If ICE/CBP continues its campaign of violence without resistance from local law enforcement, all cops are going to be met with skepticism from the very people — white, middle-class, property-owning NIMBY types — who have stood by them every time one of them killed a Black man. There’s potential for state and local business elites to be in open revolt against their own police departments. That hasn’t been conceivable but it is now. No one knows what chaos would be in store.
  • This is an opportunity for liberals to push back against the “originally stated goal” of deporting only immigrants who have committed violent crimes. That was a lie. The murder and mayhem in Minneapolis is the evidence of that. It’s time to end the era of immigration understood as a matter of crime and punishment, and begin a new era in which immigration is understood as a matter of freedom and opportunity.
  • I think Noah Berlatsky is right. “Communities targeted by ICE should be granted citizenship immediately,” he said. “This is both a matter of justice and an imperative if we're going to crush fascism.” That should be the moderate position. These people want to be Americans. They want to work for it, even pay for it (indeed, they are paying for it with their taxes). Make them all Americans now to end this crisis.

Monday, Jan. 26

  • Economist Trevon Logan said: “I once asked my late uncle what he thought ended the legal Jim Crow era. He immediately responded that the murders of [civil rights workers] Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner in 1964 were the moment Jim Crow died. When I asked him why he said: “When white folks fight white folks, it changes everything. Enough was enough.’”
  • Historian Kevin Kruse said: “When I teach Vietnam, I explain that opposition to the war really grew in fits and starts. Some big rallies and visible protests, but also a steady stream of celebrities and ordinary folks breaking with their priors and taking a new stand. This last month, this last week, feels like a real shift.”
  • I don’t mean to be a killjoy but we all felt a shift after George Floyd was murdered and the whole country seemed to be waking up. That energy combined with anti-Trump energy to elect Joe Biden. Then came the racist backlash by elites, softening the ground for Trump’s revival.
  • The biggest difference between the Floyd era and now is that the murder victims are white, and white people won’t put up with being treated like George Floyd. I suppose something is shifting, but it won’t last if white people keep hoarding equality and justice. Can they make the connection between a cop killing Floyd and ICE and CBP killing Good and Pretti? Can they see the same evil affects them, too?

Tuesday, Jan. 27

  • Composer Frank Wilhoit in Crooked Timber in 2018: “As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny.”
  • Restated, Wilhoit says the law protects inpeople and punishes outpeople. That is the goal of conservatism. Inequality is not only good, but equality itself is against “natural law.” Once you understand that inequality is the goal of conservatism, it’s easy being a liberal.
  • Once you understand the goal of inequality is indefensible in a country founded on the principle of equality, you understand the importance of lying – or as Wilhoit put it, maintaining “the elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy.” With Good’s and Pretti’s death, many lies told to keep “respectable white people” in the GOP camp could fall to pieces.

Wednesday, Jan. 28

  • “Respectable white people” are white people who place the highest value on their social status and reputations for being respectable in the eyes of other respectable white people. More commonly known as swing voters or independent voters, they represent the great globular middle of American politics. They are essential to the long-term viability of the Republicans, but key to holding them is preventing them from being fully aware that the GOP is a white man’s party. This is why conservatives in the United States invest so much in lying.
  • We really should not underestimate the impact of two white people getting murdered by the state. The Republicans are recoiling. The Democrats are on a war footing. (In the Senate, threats of a government shutdown. In the House, threats of impeachment.) For God's sake, Trump suggested Pretti deserved death for possessing a gun. White people getting murdered by the state could upend a lot.
  • Respectable white people are now keenly aware that the logical conclusion of a decades' worth of anti-immigrant hatred includes murdering white people and they don't like it. They are shocked to discover that authoritarianism did not stop at the color line.

Vanquishing Trump means smashing this enemy first

I have previously said liberals should face the fact that the Democrats can’t do it alone. The viability of democracy requires some Republican buy-in. I said, “liberals have to work more to create conditions in which the Republicans choose to behave.”

About those conditions.

I didn’t mean taking a phony middle position on something like immigration to appear moderate compared to a blood-and-soil Republican. I have said before and will say again: accepting lies as if they are true is not centrism. It’s just another form of deceit. There’s no reward in it, because most voters can tell it’s fake.

What I had in mind was something Professor Matt Seyhold of Elmira College told me in my recent interview with him. We must expand the tent of freedom to beat “totalitarian kleptocracy,” he told me. To do that, we must include “a whole lot of dumba-----.”

Those are the conditions liberals should work to create.

How do we bring in the “dumba----”?

First, Professor Seybold said, by recognizing that nonvoters decided the election. About 90 million eligible voters stayed home on Election Day. He and his colleagues call that “couch.”

“Couch cannot be defeated on a Tuesday in November every couple of years unless couch is being defeated on the regular.”

And how do we do that?

Make community – “take a night course at a local college, join community theater, volunteer at soup kitchen, start a book club.”

“If more people are making community, that’s bad for any politics which depends on feelings of isolation, fear and powerlessness,” Professor Seybold told me. “A precondition to political empowerment is simply feeling seen and heard.”

He went on:

“If you want better electoral outcomes, but you don’t want to try to ‘convert Trump voters,’ just make community. My greatest hope for the 2020s has nothing to do with Donald Trump. My hope is that we all win a lot more days against couch. If that happens, our politics will start looking a lot more sane.”

Seybold is a professor of American literature. He’s also a Mark Twain scholar and the host of a Twain-inspired podcast called The American Vandal.

In the first part of our two-part conversation, Professor Seybold explained at length what he meant by “dumba----.” He meant Americans who just don’t know any better as well as Americans who do know better but can’t or won’t do anything about it.

In this second part, he focuses on a solution to each.

Your comment [about dumba----] speaks to the problem of hope. At least my problem. America saw Trump, didn't like him, threw him out. Then we put him back in. And the dumba---- were central to that. Why should I put my faith in them?

By Mark Twain’s definition, hope is precisely what “the facts refuse,” and it is the only remedy to suicidal depression - from which he himself suffered - in the face of the “incurable disease” of our mortality.

For my part, I will simply argue the dumba----- didn’t put Trump back in office nearly so much as the kleptocrats did.

And, so long as our system of free and fair elections holds, the project of making fewer dumba---- and defeating kleptocracy will be the same project. Intelligence is just access to information, the existence of expertise, and the time and wellbeing necessary to avail oneself of each.

So, if we turn our attention to supporting education, healthcare, journalism and libraries, the project of undumbing is underway.

It has been said that Trump's abuse of power — what I think of as the ongoing insurrection — is radicalizing people. It's snapping them out of their ignorance, complacency, apathy. Do you agree? If so, what can liberals do to take advantage of it?

Let’s forgo “taking advantage.” There’s that intrinsic criminality in the language of US party politics again.

I just saw a poll this morning in which the percentage of people in favor of “abolishing ICE,” which was a pretty fringe position under Joe Biden, is now higher than Trump’s approval rating.

If there are people being “radicalized,” we don’t have to worry about motivating them. They don’t need nudging. Being “radical,” whether you see that as a positive or negative, is not compatible with inaction. Your moral urgency compels you.

Hopefully, there are a rather large number of people who, though they will never be radicals, are being broken of their complacency by the events of the past year.

My friend, Anna Kornbluh, is fond of saying, “Donald Trump didn’t win the 2024 election. Couch did.”

Eighty-six million eligible voters decided the difference for them wasn’t great enough to get to the polls. That’s 9 million more than voted for Trump.

Couch cannot be defeated on a Tuesday in November every couple of years unless couch is being defeated on the regular.

If more people are touching grass, if more people are making community, that’s bad for any politics which depends on feelings of isolation, fear and powerlessness.

Getting people to rallies, phone-banks, marches, and explicitly political gatherings is great, but honestly, if they take a night course at the local college, join community theater, volunteer at soup kitchen, start a book club, I think that’s almost as good.

A precondition to political empowerment is simply feeling seen and heard. If you want better electoral outcomes, but you don’t want to try to “convert Trump voters,” just make community.

My greatest hope for the 2020s has nothing to do with Donald Trump. My hope is that we all win a lot more days against couch. If that happens, our politics will start looking a lot more sane.

The phrase "new deal" appears to have come from Twain. Liberals think they know what it means. What did Twain mean? What does his meaning of the word say to our moment?

I’ll just give people some context and they can interpret it for themselves.

FDR got “The New Deal” from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. The Yankee arrives in feudal Britain, and this is what he says after getting his lay of the land:

Here I was, in a country where a right to say how the country should be governed was restricted to six persons in each thousand of its population. For the 994 to express dissatisfaction with the system and propose to change it, would have made the whole six shudder as one man, it would have been so disloyal, so dishonorable, such putrid black treason. So to speak, I was become stockholder in a corporation where 994 of the members furnished all the money and did all the work, and the other six elected themselves a permanent board of directors and took all the dividends. It seems to me that what the 994 dupes needed was a new deal.

I wish I had said “dupes” instead of “dumba----.”

Twain’s still a helluva lot better at this than me.

We are living in a kind of dark ages in which fear, ignorance and superstition are encouraged by those in power. What can a regular person do? What do you tell your students?

I don’t talk about contemporary partisan politics barely at all. And not because of the recent witch-hunting of professors either. I never have. But two things have changed about my philosophy of instruction in recent years.

One, I teach as much history as I possibly can, supported by as much primary source documentation as I can, if possible getting students to lay hands on those primary sources, and to think about the media environments of previous eras in comparison to their own.

Two, I try to give students (and myself, frankly) a break from the surveillance. No phones. No laptops. Paper and ink. Chalk and slate. Human voices and human ears. Make community first.

Don’t take it for granted.

Learning will follow.

These morons are essential to beating Trump

I think one of the hard and inconvenient truths that liberals need to hear is that the Democratic Party cannot save democracy on its own. There is no future in which the Republican Party loses forever. That’s not realistic. That’s perhaps not even desirable.

Liberals have to work more to create conditions in which the Republicans choose to behave. Obviously, one way of doing that is defeating them as often as possible. But while that’s an immediate and necessary end, it can’t go on indefinitely. At some point, a Republican will be in the White House again. Then what?

But that’s only one hard and inconvenient truth. The other is about America itself. Fact is, there are a lot of people who are not that bright, who are not paying attention, who are not informed, who don’t care about politics, or who feel like democracy is a lie.

Put another way, I don’t think liberals, including myself, have thought enough about what we might call the paradox of liberal democracy. We need to expand the tent to fight tyranny and rebuild, but doing so means bringing in people who don’t know they need to be in the tent or who don’t care whether they are.

They’re “dumba----”

That’s Matt Seybold’s term. About three months ago, while liberals were flushed with the anti-imperial energy of the No Kings rallies, Seybold poured the following pitcher of ice water:

“Imperative to remember, any big tent, including one that defeats totalitarian kleptocracy, must have a whole lot of dumba---- inside it. To spurn the American dumba-- constituency is to lose.”

To which I responded: “Jesus, this feels true.”

Matt Seybold is a professor of American literature and media at Elmira College in upstate New York. He’s also a Mark Twain scholar and the host of a podcast called The American Vandal.

In an interview with me, Professor Seybold said that he might come to regret using the word “dumba----.” His answer to my first question was very long, he said, because he felt like he should explain himself better. That answer was so lengthy and illuminating I decided to break our interview into two parts.

Here’s part one.

But before I leave you with Professor Seybold’s thoughts, I think I should say one more thing about liberals. We tend to see the dumba---- as part of the problem. (I have said as much in various ways.) But perhaps they are the solution — or at least part of it.

After all, dumba---- don’t seek power. Only the insane do, Mark Twain believed. As Professor Seybold told me, Twain believed “the only people who … will ever stand for election to the executive or legislative branches at the federal or even the state level are sociopaths, narcissists, monomaniacs and greedheads.”

Professor Seybold added: “Those who, by choice, seek to put their hands on the levers of power cannot be trusted. They should be presumed to be criminals by temperament.”

Liberals tend to see the Democrats as the Good Guys.

But recent events should spur us into rethinking that.

JS: You have said the Democrats are going to be in trouble in the long term if they don't make room for "dumba----." Your word. I'm guessing you're drawing on your knowledge as a Twain scholar. What did you mean?

MS: You are right that I used the term “dumba----,” which I may come to regret (more on that in a moment), but first I want to quickly point out a term I didn’t use, which is “Democrats.”

While obviously Democrats remain practicably the sole opposition party in most elections, especially at the federal level, I’m pretty cynical about establishment Democrats’ plans (and even their intentions) to build the “big tent” coalition that will be necessary to defeat “totalitarian kleptocracy,” as I put it. I think the Abundance Bros, for instance, are giving lip-service to inclusive politics, but are actually building a veil for fascism Lite, which will obviously fail.

The project of defeating totalitarian kleptocracy cannot rely on the Democratic Party as it is currently comprised, but “big tent” coalitions are being formed at the grassroots level for the purpose of activism, protests, labor movements and local campaigns (see, for instance, Zohran Mamdani, who was rejected by the Democratic establishment, but backed by democratic socialists).

My rare moments of hope are based on things like the Debt Collective, Higher Ed Labor United and the litany of disperse municipal, neighborhood, professional and special interest groups whose successes are often premised on paying little or no heed to the binaries – liberal/conservative, progressive/centrist, red/blue, etc – which have become useless for anything beyond activating our lizard-brain tribalism.

Which brings me to the “dumba----,” a word-choice more befitting a 25-word skeet than a reasoned defense, but which I would divide into two categories.

The larger — as Twain puts it, “the ignorant are the chosen of God,” by which he means, the majority — are those who are stuck in information deserts, the victims of long-running attacks on education, libraries, local and public media, and are subjected perpetually to micro-targeted misinformation and parallel journalism. This constituency, sizable at every moment in US history, is arguably growing.

The other category of “dumba----” are those who do not lack for access to information or education, who possess the tools to see the dangers of totalitarian kleptocracy, but who lack the will. Perhaps they are cynically planning to go along to get along, or they are just placing too much faith in the incremental, business-as-usual of US governance, presuming a pendulum swing is inevitable. This is a smaller, more frustrating constituency, but also one that tends to be possessed of greater resources and position.

My view of U.S. political history and its theory of governance is, indeed, deeply influenced by Mark Twain (perhaps too much so!). Twain believed intensely in electoral democracy, although he also believed human nature was such that authoritarianism was always, inevitably lurking. He also supported labor unions, social justice activism and many varieties of secular organizing that expanded the conception of the democratic masses (to include women, for instance, and Blacks and Jews). In these respects, he’s not especially different from a left-liberal American of our time.

Where Twain is ingenious, I think, is in understanding the federal system as reflecting a misanthropic vision of human nature and society. Twain does not believe that any sane person will ever want anything to do with national government. The only people who he can imagine will ever stand for election to the executive or legislative branches at the federal or even the state level are sociopaths, narcissists, monomaniacs and greedheads. Those who, by choice, seek to put their hands on the levers of power cannot be trusted. They should be presumed to be criminals by temperament.

For Twain, the ingenuity of the American System is that it puts the most craven seekers of power in furious competition with one another, limiting the damage any one of them can do, forcing them into constantly shifting rivalries and alliances, reducing the likelihood that a true authoritarianism can emerge.

I’m not as down on humanity as Twain is, but I have a pretty hard time arguing against this vision of governance. Which is not to say that I cannot imagine a strong and egalitarian state, but rather to say that such a state is not arrived at by trusting those who seek its employ, but rather by being vigilantly suspicious of them, demanding extensive checks on their power, and strict accountability for violations of law and custom.

Trump's devotees are petrified about what's about to come

I confess. I don’t fully understand why anyone steeped in the culture of MAGA would be having doubts. Donald Trump is the same man he was the first time he was elected. Literally nothing about him has changed. If you didn’t mind what you saw after 2016, why would you mind what you’re seeing after 2024?

And yet it appears to be the case that MAGA is cracking. It hasn’t broken apart. It hasn’t crumbled. Not yet. But cracks are discernible not only in polling (Trump’s approval rating has been underwater for more than 300 days), but in the U.S. Congress.

The Republicans appear nervous about the fact that Trump is paying more attention to Venezuela’s problems than America’s. More importantly, they appear nervous about his broken promises. He said he’d bring down the cost of living on Day One. Nope. He said he’d release the Epstein files. Nope. He said he’d focus on America and leave the rest of the world alone. Nope.

In general, he said he’d make America great again, but even to his most devoted followers, America still doesn’t feel that great.

Republicans in Congress have reacted with a pace that seems to be increasing. First, it was the Epstein files. All but one voted for their release. Then it was health insurance. Seventeen House Republicans voted to renew ACA subsidies for three years. (That bill now goes to the Senate.) Then it was Greenland and Venezuela. The Senate is poised to vote on a war powers resolution aiming to restrain a president gone rogue.

Cracks, however, are just cracks. The edifice of MAGA stands firm for now. Trump can send his paramilitary (ICE, CBP) to execute frightened widowed mothers but still expect at least 33 percent of the population to back him. (The most recent Gallup survey that I have seen shows his approval rating to be 36 percent.)

And yet something is happening. Trump’s blatant abuse of power really does seem to be radicalizing moderates and causing Trumpers to experience cognitive dissonance (a mental collision of diametric beliefs). I haven’t seen Republicans this anxious since a mob sacked and looted the Capitol. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) voted for the war powers resolution faster than he ran away from insurgents.

If congressional Republicans are indeed scared, maybe there’s an opportunity. What that might be, exactly, I really don’t know. What I do know is that, in the long term, the Democrats cannot save democracy on their own. They need some Republicans to join them. Perhaps now is the time to help some MAGA voters step away from the edge, for their sakes and everyone’s sake.

This is the hope of Rich Logis. He’s the founder of a group that helps MAGA voters betrayed by Trump to come to their senses, though he doesn’t put it that way in this interview with me.

Instead, Rich told me that some issues, like the invasion of Venezuela and the kidnapping of its leader, are so contrary to the MAGA worldview (in this case, “America First”) that “over time, more and more in MAGA will realize that Trump's actions are not for the benefit of most Americans — including his supporters.”

I got in touch with Rich, because he himself reached out to liberals. In a piece for Salon in November, he explained his own indoctrination in MAGA, why it held him until about 2017, why it still holds millions more, and how liberals can help get them out.

I went fairly hard on Rich, as you will see. But I think his answers are strong. You might find them persuasive. Anyway, he’s right.

“If we are going to successfully fight back,” Rich told me, “against the administration's anti-democratic (lower-case d) and unconstitutional actions (defying court orders, apprehending and deporting without due process, among others), it will require unlikely, but necessary alliances.”

JS: Liberals believed the Epstein files are breaking MAGA. The president is struggling to regain the previously unconditional support of his base. Is that true? What signs are you seeing?

RL: I do think there are fissures within the MAGA community. Our organization, Leaving MAGA, has been approached by remorseful 2024 MAGA voters. It would seem from recent polling (even though I am somewhat skeptical of polls) that Trump is losing support among Latinos in particular. What is remarkable about the Epstein story is: in our current media environment, in which stories tend to come and go, the Epstein saga isn't going away. I believe many in MAGA are experiencing cognitive dissonance over the story, and are beginning to wonder if Trump has been lying to them.

In Salon, you said: "I believe most in MAGA are good people who have been led astray, exploited and manipulated." Trump hasn't changed. His first term showed who he is. Are you letting his supporters off the hook?

I will not defend my, or anyone else's, ignorance. I, like all MAGA Americans, support(ed) Trump of our own volition. None of us were coaxed or coerced into voting for Trump and defending him. One of the reasons MAGA is an extremist group is because vilifying, demonizing and dehumanizing those with whom we disagree is encouraged.

It is also important, however, to acknowledge that all of us are susceptible to being influenced. Personally speaking, I allowed myself to be inculcated into the MAGA black-and-white way of thinking, primarily because I consumed only MAGA-friendly media and spent most of my time with other MAGA supporters.

You say liberals must create conditions in which MAGA apostates are welcomed? You can understand that liberals often don't want to welcome those who can't or won't take responsibility for their actions. What's your advice?

Liberals are not wrong about the damage MAGA and Trump have wrought. I understand why liberals may be weary to befriend MAGA voters. Trump has traumatized America for more than a decade.

But if we are going to successfully fight back against the administration's anti-democratic (lower-case d) and unconstitutional actions (defying court orders, apprehending and deporting without due process, among others), it will require unlikely, but necessary alliances.

I don't ask that MAGA Americans be coddled. But if one believes all is not lost — after all, many of those in MAGA are our friends and family — then I would ask my fellow anti-MAGA countrymen and women: what is gained by publicly judging and ostracizing them? I guarantee that invective against MAGA supporters strengthens the already-strong tie that binds them to Trump.

You mention MAGA media. It is everywhere and it's on all the time. It is why otherwise decent and intelligent people believe lies. It is why MAGA adherents stay adhered to MAGA. There are rich Democrats who could create their own media universe. If you had five minutes of Warren Buffet's time (for example), what would you say to him?

I'm biased, since our organization features stories of those who left MAGA. What is needed is more content and media about those who have left, as well as those having doubts about their support for Trump.

If I started a well-funded media company, I would craft my content to find MAGA Americans who are feeling remorse over their past votes, not to censure them, but to give them a voice that legacy media doesn't seem much interested in providing. There are plenty of published reports focused on reasons Americans had for supporting Trump. But what about those who are now questioning their beliefs? They are among us and we need to get in front of them, and go to where they are.

MAGA media and MAGA influencers have a stranglehold on the national political discourse. Mis- and disinformation were the primary reasons Trump was reelected. To combat this, there need to be more efforts to engage the apolitical, who follow and consume very little political news.

Apoliticism is its own bubble, and effective pro-democracy media would seek to pop it.

Many liberals believe MAGA wants what its getting — a president who is trying to make America white again. And I think this is largely true. What you're saying is there are some MAGA who are reachable. How can they be reached if they didn't see the bigotry that was obvious to others? What kinds of policies are appealing? What values?

I have no problem with people enduring the consequences of their electoral choices. This is how the real world works. And, like any large group, there are some in MAGA who revel in bigotry and hatred. But I think for the balance of MAGA supporters, there are deeds and rhetoric of Trump's that have given them pause. In my case, one of the earliest such moments was Trump's response to Charlottesville.

For so many, MAGA is their identity, and they are heavily personally and politically invested in MAGA, which is why they justify the unjustifiable. I am not defending them, but I cannot emphasize enough how MAGA has shaped their being and personhood, and how frightening it is to admit that one erred in one's ways and allowed one's self to believe lies.

I understand why someone might say, "Trump voters are getting what they deserved" or "how could they not have known what Trump would do?" However, many MAGA voters didn't know much of what Trump would do because the information sources they consume didn't tell them.

MAGA media didn't tell them that American citizens would be kidnapped by ICE. Many didn't know that they would be personally and financially harmed by tariffs, as examples.

Having lived a MAGA life for seven years, I’m unsurprised by anything that has happened this year. Perhaps that is cynical of me to say. But I am still optimistic headed into 2026, because I believe that more and more people in the MAGA community are having doubts about their support for Trump and the movement.

It will take time, but please remember that epiphanies usually occur gradually, and then suddenly, all at once.

These lethal Trumpists may act with impunity now but it cannot last forever

There’s something we need to talk about before talking about anything else related to Renee Nicole Good’s murder.

The likelihood of convicting her killer is very low.

No matter how damning you may think the video evidence is — and it is damning — Jonathan Ross, the ICE officer who shot Good in the face, is still a cop.

Put that with another fact — this is America. Together, they paint a picture of the difficulty of bringing him to justice. Ross is a cop. America reveres cops. Convicting a cop of any wrongdoing, much less murder, is an enormous task.

“It’s like trying to convict Jesus,” Ken White said.

“If you think it is obvious that the videos prove murder and nobody can say otherwise, your view is based on how you want the system to be, not how it is,” he said. “It will be brutally hard, fighting inch by inch against what America is, to convict Jonathan Ross. Your feelings don’t enter into it.”

And that’s under normal circumstances.

These circumstances are not normal.

First, Ross fled the scene of the crime.

Second, the FBI barred state investigators from accessing evidence.

Third, there have been reports of federal agents entering the home of Jonathan Ross, in greater Minneapolis, and removing stuff.

Fourth, the US Department of Homeland Security has “shadow units” dedicated to destroying evidence of crimes committed by immigration officials.

That’s on top of relentless and malicious lying. As Stephen Colbert said, the message is only the administration has the authority to determine the truth. Well, it’s also going to try making sure there’s no evidence to prove them wrong.

Oh, and then there’s the misdirection.

That’s the point of the video of the shooting taken by Ross that he appears to have released to Alpha News. (See above.) Apparently, Ross believed it would show that he was forced to kill Good in self-defense. What it actually does is reinforce conclusions drawn from analyzing the original videos, including this key detail flagged by the Washington Post: “Ross crosses in front of the vehicle as it moves in reverse.”

From there, he took a stance, aimed and fired.

I don’t mean to be cynical. My intent is to be realistic. This is the country we have. Accountability for Ross is going to be as difficult as accountability for the man at the top, Donald Trump, who set this crime wave in motion.

That doesn’t mean good people shouldn’t try. Local prosecutors, though at a disadvantage without the aid and cooperation of the FBI, still opened an inquiry Friday, asking the wider public for any evidence it might have.

Meanwhile, back in Washington, moderate Democrats are experiencing something rare: a spine. Some are moving toward impeaching Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem. (Hakeem Jeffries called her “a stone-cold liar.” He did not endorse impeachment, but notably did not rule it out.) Others have raised the question of whether they’ll vote to fund ICE. On the margins are those wanting to abolish it.

For everyone else, there’s democratic politics. The most important thing right now is gathering and disseminating video evidence of abuses of power by ICE for the purpose of discrediting not only Trump but all federal authorities.

That won’t be hard, and not only because everyone has a smart phone. According to an editor at the Star-Tribune, locals feel like they’re under siege.

“Not an exaggeration at all to say that the feeling in Minneapolis is that the entire metro area is being treated as occupied territory by federal agents. Impossible to overstate how overwhelmingly people here do not like it. This does not feel sustainable.”

Indeed, something seems to be shifting.

Whereas the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, took weeks to grow into a national narrative, the murder of Renee Nicole Good, a widowed, white and blond-haired mother of three, who had stuffed animals in the glove box, whose wife wailed in despair and whose dog needed its leash, has triggered a virtually instantaneous backlash.

America is still a majority white country and a lot of those white people, especially white women, are apparently seeing themselves in Renee Nicole Good. It’s to the point that even respectable, middle-class white people are asking themselves if their local cops are going to protect them against ICE or if they’re going to take Trump’s side.

Those doubts and fears are deepened every time ICE is captured on video showing Americans what it believes is the true meaning of law and order: Comply or die.

Indeed, ICE officers appear to believe altogether that that’s the lesson it was teaching the American people with the murder of Renee Nicole Good — we can do whatever we want, to whomever we want, and the moment you object, we can deem you a criminal who’s deserving of whatever punishment we deem appropriate at that moment.

As this ICE officer tells a woman who is filming him:

“Have you not learned?”

(Then he grabs the woman’s phone.)

My point here is not to be cynical of the likelihood of Ross seeing justice. That could happen, but only if state prosecutors are careful and only if they are lucky. This is still America, even if many of us no longer recognize it.

My point is expanding the idea of accountability so that failure in one area doesn’t seem like failure everywhere. Obviously, it would be better if Renee Nicole Good were alive, but in death, she might finally show people who didn’t believe it, or were focused on their wallets, that Trump is an evil man, and that other evil men are drawn to him.

Evil might be the most important thing to emerge from the video that Ross leaked to Alpha News. In it, Renee Nicole Good can be heard saying to him: “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.” Seconds later, after he shoots her in the face three times, Ross can be heard saying: “F------ b----.”

We're missing this key detail about the killing of Renee Nicole Good

A small detail has stayed with me from the video of Renee Nicole Good being shot to death in Minneapolis by ICE officer Jonathan Ross.

In the video, she’s behind the wheel, signaling with her left hand to the driver of an ICE vehicle that she’s letting him go before she goes. Then out of that vehicle come two officers. One goes straight to her door.

“Get the f--- outta the car,” says the officer, who is not Ross.

Then he tries to open her door.

That’s the small detail I’m talking about and here’s the reason it has stayed with me. I have been pulled over a few times in my life — for speeding or turning right on a red light when I should not have. But I cannot recall a time when the police officer tried to open my door.

Forget about swearing at me. That’s never happened either. But no law enforcement officer has communicated to me a hint of physical aggression, even when I deserved it (a story for another time). I don’t mean speaking sternly. I mean with his body — like he intends to hurt me. That’s surely the message received by Renee Nicole Good.

There’s another thing about this detail worth dwelling on.

The fact that I have never experienced a police officer who has communicated to me a hint of physical aggression is due, at least in part, to the fact that I am white. I’m also a man. A white man in a country that was built for white men can live his whole life in blissful ignorance of state violence experienced by nonwhite counterparts.

I bring this up, because I wonder about the role of Renee Nicole Good’s race in her experience of the ICE officer acting like he’s gonna hurt her. As I said, he strides over to her, and tries to open her door. (It’s locked.)

What did she feel? It must have been a shock.

To even the wokest white person, violence by the state is still mostly theoretical. We might believe it’s true. We might trust Black people and other people of color are speaking truthfully about their experience. We might see videos online. But we don’t know what it feels like.

What I’m trying to say is that it makes sense to me if Renee Nicole Good experienced panic on two levels at the same time. Once, because here’s a “cop” trying to open her door, acting like he’s gonna hurt her. Twice, because the abstractions of white power were suddenly real.

I would have panicked, too.

She was right to be afraid. As she focused on the ICE officer cussing her out and trying to open her door, something that I’m pretty sure she had never experienced before, ICE officer Jonathan Ross took a position in front of her car, as she was backing up. Before moving forward, she turned the wheel to the right to avoid him. That’s when Ross crouched, aimed and fired, first through the windshield, then the open window.

Ross’s defenders want us to believe the fear felt by Renee Nicole Good doesn’t count. The only fear that counts is Ross’s. They say he believed she would have killed him. They say he was justified in killing her.

It’s that classic closed-circuit logic.

“It's so f------ convenient that they get to ‘fear for their lives’ anytime they want to absolve themselves of anything,” said writer Luke O’Neil, “and when we actually fear for our lives because of them and do anything a scared person would do it's justification for our death.”

It’s also ridiculous.

“The obvious critique I have not heard explicitly articulated is that the point of making a self-defense argument would be saying ‘but for’ his shooting her, she would have killed him,” said Jonathan Kahn, a law professor at Northeastern. “Clearly, had he not shot her, the outcome for him would have been just the same — ie, no threat to his life.”

The irony is that Renee Nicole Good did not seem afraid of Ross. That’s clear from the video that Ross took during the shooting and that he leaked afterward to a sympathetic media outlet. He released it in the apparent belief that it proves he acted in self-defense. It doesn’t.

In that video, Renee Nicole Good can be seen smiling at Ross. As he’s walking around her car, recording her, taking note of her out-of-state license plate, she tells him: “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.”

Everything changes when the other ICE officer, who can also be seen in Ross’s video, strides toward her vehicle, tries to open the door, cussing as he orders her to get out. She was evidently sensing danger. Ross was not justified in killing her. But she was justified in trying to get away.

Perhaps the most shocking thing, according to David Lurie, an attorney who writes for Public Notice, is what all this says about dissent.

Ross’s defenders argue that his video proves Renee Nicole Good and her spouse, Rebecca Good, were a threat in that they “were not fans of ICE and were in fact protesting the thugs’ activities,” David told me.

In other words, their dissent was a threat. If Ross and his defenders actually believe that, David told me, “that is also deeply creepy.”

“It is effectively a declaration that dissent merits death.”

Jonathan Ross leaked his video Friday. Afterward, I got in touch with David Lurie to discuss it. Here’s the rest of our conversation.

Jonathan Ross appears to believe that his video absolves him — that he killed Renee Nicole Good in self-defense. I don't see it. Do you?

First of all, how that video ended up being published is a major issue, which we can discuss. Second, it is not remotely exculpatory – and it takes a truly twisted mind to see it that way.

Why is it a major issue in your view?

It is yet another indication that the FBI investigation is entirely unreliable. The FBI should have control of all of the evidence, including and especially any recordings or other records created by the officers.

And, of course, it should not be releasing those materials piecemeal.

If the officer retains control of the recording, and is engaging in his own publicity campaign, then that necessarily means the FBI is not conducting a professional and reliable investigation.

And if the FBI is itself releasing items of evidence to favored press outlets piecemeal, while freezing out state law enforcement authorities from the investigation, then that is as bad or worse.

You have seen the video. You say it's not exculpatory. Is it damning? It seems to show her steering away from him.

What I focused on is that it confirmed that the victim was — including by her words — trying to deconflict the situation, which is what cops are supposed to do, while it was the ICE thugs who were escalating.

It was chilling.

There’s another disturbing insight.

Apparently, the perpetrator or others in the Trump regime think the video "justifies" the murder, presumably because it shows that the victim and her spouse were not fans of ICE and were in fact protesting the thugs’ activities.

That is also deeply creepy, because it is effectively a declaration that dissent merits death.

That's what I was thinking. If you do not immediately comply, that is justification enough for use of maximum force. And that would be a perversion of law and order, not its preservation. Thoughts?

Agree.

Also, in fact, she was not getting clear instructions from the menacing gang of masked thugs that appeared around her, and to the extent that some of the thugs were demanding to get access to her person, she had every reason not to freely comply.

The fact that the cameraman thug turned out to be a reckless and amoral murderer itself demonstrates that she was rightfully fearful of getting out of her car.

What now? The FBI is blocking state investigators, though local prosecutors are apparently gathering their own evidence.

You are ahead of me on news of the prosecutors, but that does not surprise me. They have the ability to gather a lot of probative evidence without the cooperation of the thugs and their bosses or the FBI.

But it is obviously problematic for state or local authorities to undertake a criminal investigation of the conduct of a federal law enforcement officer while the federal government is actively obstructing the investigation.

Assuming the (clearly wrongful) obstruction of the Minnesota investigation continues, it seems more than likely that the Minnesota authorities will seek judicial intervention to force the feds to give them access to the investigatory materials.

We shall see how that plays out.

If Ross is arrested and there's an indictment and so on, a big if, couldn't the feds just ask a judge to move the case to federal court, where they can have the charges dropped? If so, what then?

There is a lot to be said on that topic. But here are the basics. If there is a criminal case, it will be tried in a federal court, even if it is a state prosecution. Although it seems a bit odd, a state law criminal prosecution of a federal officer for state criminal violations is highly likely to be "removed" to federal court under applicable law.

But if it is removed, it will still be prosecuted by state officials, and state criminal laws will apply to the case, but before there is a trial, there will likely be a "Supremacy Clause immunity" issue to be resolved.

This sounds arcane, but is conceptually simple. While the constitutions define state and the federal governments as "sovereigns," with independent authority to enforce their respective laws, where there is a conflict between state and federal law, under the Constitution's Supremacy Clause, federal law prevails.

It follows that if the allegedly criminal conduct of a federal law enforcement officer was consistent with federal law, including governing law enforcement policies, then it is unconstitutional to permit a state law prosecution to proceed.

But it is not going to be enough for the officer to put Kristi Noem in front of the court and for her to make bogus claims about the facts and about federal law enforcement policies. The court will undertake its own independent review of those matters.

Of course Trump has no Venezuela plan — look what made him attack it

Why did Donald Trump invade Venezuela? His id made him.

Look at me, love me — every reason for doing anything is downstream from there.

I was telling you the other day that it’s not really clear why the president ordered the illegal and unconstitutional invasion of Venezuela and the kidnapping of its head of state. Regime officials provided reasons but were often contravened by Trump.

“Aren't We Tired of Trying to Interpret Trump's Foreign Policy Gibberish?” asked Marty Longman in the headline of a piece published after news of the attack. Indeed, we are, and I hasten to add that endless attempts to figure it all out are a form of oppression.

It isn’t normal.

Even if you disagreed with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, you understood the argument for it. George W Bush said Saddam Hussain had weapons of mass destruction. That was a lie, but at least the thinking above and below it was coherent.

In contrast, senior officials in the Trump regime are all over the place about why the US had to violate Venezuela’s sovereignty, giving the impression that no one above the level of military operations actually knows what they’re doing or why they’re doing it.

Meanwhile, critics can’t form a precise counterargument since the original “argument” is, well, no one really knows what it is. So, for the most part, liberals have decided to brush aside the confusion and incoherence to pinpoint two reasons that makes sense to them: Vladimir Putin and oil.

Don’t get me wrong. If you believe Trump is a tool of a Russian dictator, I’m with you. If you think Trump is a criminal president who is willing to use the awesome power of the United States military to commit international crimes, I’m with you.

But I also think these arguments tend to share a flaw.

They make more sense than Trump has ever made.

I’m reminded of that time Susie Wiles seemed to trash other people in the Trump regime. The White House chief of staff called Russ Vought “a rightwing absolute zealot,” for instance.

To savvy observers, she seemed to be looking for a scapegoat for her boss’s troubles. But in this White House, what you see is often what you get — if it looks like chaos, it probably is.

As I said at the time:

“There are no anchoring principles, no moral guideposts, no concept of national interest, no sense of the common good. It’s just mindless impulse and rationalizations after the fact.”

Set aside Putin and oil to consider something Trump values above everything else: “ratings.” He believes the more people watch him, the more they love him. What better way to get everyone’s attention than to be seen as a war president on TV?

Not just any war, though.

In a recent interview with me, the Secretary of Defense Rock (a pen name) said Trump “dislikes large, open-ended occupations that produce visible casualties and political backlash.”

(That’s almost certainly a result of watching coverage of the Iraq War in which images of death and destruction were common.)

Instead, he likes “coercive actions below the threshold of war — air strikes, sanctions, seizures, energy pressure, and threats that generate profit and leverage without requiring public buy-in.”

In other words, he likes one-and-done military ops. Venezuela was one of those. So was the bunker bombing of Iran last June. Though they look good on TV, they looked even better with Donald “War President” Trump at the center of it all.

That’s Trump’s id: look at me, love me.

Every reason for doing anything is downstream from there.

What does it all mean? That’s what everyone is asking, but the question itself is more dignified than the thing it’s questioning.

Trump got his made-for-TV war. He got everyone buzzing about what he’s going to do next about Greenland, Mexico, Canada, wherever.

Meanwhile, back in Venezuela, it looks like life is going to go on pretty much as it had been, the difference being that the new leader is even more tyrannical than the last one.

“The idea that she can't rig another election or the opposition will magically take over seems pretty far-fetched, especially because we don't have troops on the ground,” the Secretary of Defense Rock said.

The Secretary of Defense Rock doesn’t use his real name, because Trump is president. He’s the publisher of History Does Us, a newsletter about the intersection of military and civilian life. The last time we spoke, we discussed how the commander-in-chief undermines military discipline.

“The idea that we will launch more air strikes or raids or blockades if she doesn't play ball seems kind of dumb, given where the polling is,” he told me. “At this point, I kinda assume the status quo will hold, and that this entire episode will ultimately amount to little more than content-production and performative-posting.”

Here’s our conversation.

JS: The US now opposes democracies in Europe. We have invaded Venezuela. We are war-drumming about Greenland. Is Vladimir Putin's investment in Donald Trump finally bearing fruit?

SDR: I’d be careful with the phrase “investment bearing fruit,” because it implies command-and-control that we don’t have evidence for. What is clear is something more structural and, frankly, more troubling: Vladimir Putin doesn’t need to control Donald Trump to benefit from him. He benefits from Trump’s own instincts.

Putin’s core objective isn’t territorial conquest in the Cold War sense. It’s the erosion of Western cohesion, legitimacy and confidence. On that score, Trump has been extraordinarily useful without being directed. Attacking allies, casting doubt on democratic norms, treating sovereignty as transactional, and framing international politics as raw deal-making all weaken the post-1945 order that constrains Russia.

On Venezuela specifically, what you’re seeing isn’t a coherent imperial project so much as improvisational, performative power politics — noise that signals disregard for norms rather than a plan to replace them. That norm-breaking itself is the point. It tells allies that rules are optional and tells adversaries that the West no longer believes in its own system.

So no, this isn’t about Putin cashing in some secret investment. It’s about a global environment where authoritarian leaders benefit when the United States abandons restraint, consistency, and democratic solidarity—and Trump does that instinctively. The fruit isn’t conquest. It’s corrosion.

Most of the Democrats in the Congress seem to be pushing back against Trump's imperial overtures. Is that your perspective? If not, what do you think they should do?

There is meaningful pushback from a lot of Democrats (no matter what Democrats are complaining about on background on Axios), more quickly and more openly than during Trump’s first term.

You’re seeing sharper rhetoric and a greater willingness to use oversight, but they don't control any branch of government, so there isn't much they can do.

But with such tight margins, particularly in the House, I don't think it's crazy to shut down the government again (I believe funding expires at the end of the month?), or hold up an NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act). You have senior administration officials openly stating they want Greenland and would use military force, which is so insane that you might as well take extreme measures.

Sad to say, Stephen Miller might be right. 'Nobody is gonna fight the US militarily over the future of Greenland,' he said. If so, NATO could be a paper tiger. Is that what could happen?

I still can't believe this is a thing. Miller is probably right on the narrow, grim point that Denmark isn’t going to “fight the US military” in a conventional war over Greenland. But the leap from that to “NATO becomes a paper tiger” is not automatic — because NATO’s credibility isn’t just “can Denmark win a shooting war with the US.”

It’s whether the alliance remains a political commitment to mutual sovereignty. A US move to seize Greenland would be less a “test of NATO’s tanks” than a self-inflicted alliance-killer that destroys Atlanticism probably forever.

But it is a move that is so outrageous that I think there would be more alarm among congressional GOP's and the military.

Fighting foreign wars is as popular as Jeffrey Epstein's child-sex trafficking ring. Yet Trump continually takes the side of elite interests, in this case, oil companies. What is going on?

I think this is basically Marco Rubio.

I thought he would have very little influence because he came from the internationalist wing of the GOP, but being both secretary of state and national security advisor (and archivist if you care about that) clearly gives Rubio a lot of influence, and Venezuela has been a pet project of his for a while. Add support from Stephen Miller and this was probably an inevitability.

I'm not even sure a lot of the oil companies want anything to do with Venezuela, because of the security concerns, age of infrastructure, and the capital investment that would be required to get any meaningful profit. I also thought the US was supposed to be energy independent?

In addition, Trump’s “anti-war” image is real only in a very narrow sense. He dislikes large, open-ended occupations that produce visible casualties and political backlash. What he’s perfectly comfortable with are coercive actions below the threshold of war — air strikes, sanctions, seizures, energy pressure, and threats that generate profit and leverage without requiring public buy-in.

If a helo goes down, we're having a very different conversation.

There is no followup plan for Venezuela, is there? Trump is just winging it. He has no idea what he's doing. Every choice is made with how it looks on TV in his mind. Am I wrong?

Ya, this is why I never understood all the editorializing about how things have really changed and this is a really great success.

The structures and principals of the Venezuelan government that were set up by Maduro are still intact. From everything I have read, Delcy Rodriguez is a more ruthless political operator than Maduro was, so the idea that she can't rig another election or the opposition will magically take over seems pretty far-fetched, especially because we don't have troops on the ground.

The idea that we will launch more air strikes or raids or blockades if she doesn't play ball seems kind of dumb, given where the polling is. At this point, I kinda assume the status quo will hold, and that this entire episode will ultimately amount to little more than content-production and performative-posting.

This man nailed Trump — then elite conspirators helped him wriggle free

Tuesday was the five-year anniversary of the J6 insurrection. On Jan. 6, 2021, the then-president organized and led an attempted paramilitary takeover of the US government.

And Donald Trump got away with it.

He ran for president for a second time like a man who was trying to outrun a jail sentence. That’s because he was.

Special counsel Jack Smith, who investigated the events of that treasonous day, told lawmakers last month he could prove Trump’s guilt.

“Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power,” Smith said.

Trump stalled and obstructed and dragged his feet, abusing every judicial courtesy afforded to powerful men and every procedural loophole, all while campaigning as if his life depended on it. He turned himself into the “hero” in a grandiose narrative about the battle between good and evil (QAnon), and when justice came knocking, he made it seem like evidence of the conspiracy against him — and America.

Once safely back in power, Trump stopped all the criminal investigations. With damning proof in hand, Smith was forced to stand down. Trump claimed the authority of judge and jury. He saw no law that could stop him from doing what he wants, to whomever he wants, because his word is law.

But Trump couldn’t have gotten away with treason by himself. First, there were the Republicans who saved him from being held accountable by the same Congress that he attacked. Then there were the oligarchs who paid for a massive rightwing media complex that defended an unapologetic traitor and encouraged conspiratorial thinking among followers. Then there were the mainstream corporate leaders on Wall Street and beyond, who quickly understood that he really could get away with it, like all the other elites over the last 20 years who’d gotten away with their crimes.

Every single Trump ally already believed they were above the law, morality and tradition. That belief was validated by GOP justices on the Supreme Court, who manufactured legal immunity, and by Trump’s victory. Society is now at a point where one of the world’s biggest communications platforms, owned by one of the world’s richest men, can produce literal child pornography — and the elites of the world just shrug.

What began on Jan. 6, 2021, was continued the day Trump was sworn back into office. From there was a renewed push to unwind the political settlements of the previous century. The explicit goal was to loot the safety net; create a secret police force; suppress freedoms of speech, religion and movement; immiserate the property-owning middle classes; and reshape society so that rich white men like Trump could once again rule with impunity.

The never-ending insurrection applied to foreign affairs as well. Trump has sabotaged the lawful, international order that the US established after the atrocities of World War II. Bribery of the American president is now factored into the cost of global trade, a pattern of corruption that will no doubt deepen as heads of state realize that, in the wake of the kidnapping of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, Donald Trump will take what he wants if it is not given to him.

The institutions of democracy — in this, I include the courts, the media and universities as well as the American people — now face a never-ending insurrection, because they failed to hold a traitor, and the corrupt elites before him, accountable for their crimes. And as long as we keep failing, we can keep expecting more of the same.

As Trump said after the attack on Venezuela, “We can do it again, too. Nobody can stop us."

All that said, the truth about the J6 insurrection isn't going away, no matter how contested it is currently. Do you see a time in the future when justice will prevail? Or do you think injustice baked into the cake of the American republic?

These are some of the questions I asked Adam Cohen, a lawyer and activist with a large online following who commented thoroughly on Jack Smith’s deposition. (It was released on New Year’s Eve by Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee for absolute minimum exposure to it.)

Adam chose to be optimistic.

“Some people scoff at the concepts of American ingenuity and exceptionalism, but I think we're going to need some realistic, feasible ideas to fix our country,” Adam told me.

“I think we can, but it's going to take time, perhaps generations. I mean, we've been trying to get this right for 250 years. We just have to keep pressing forward, calling out the inequalities inherent in our system and look for ways to fix them. We've done it before. We can do it again.”

JS: Today is the anniversary of the J6 insurrection. Trump is president again. Jack Smith said last month that there is proof beyond doubt that he's responsible for the attempted takeover of the US government. Did he get away with it?

AC: The January 6 select committee extensively showed the depths that Trump went through to illegally steal the 2020 election — the lies, the extortion of election officials, the attempts to find 11,780 nonexistent votes, the fake electors, and the insurrection itself, which included incitement, threats against his own vice president, refusal — for hours — to do anything to stop it, and telling his supporters who had just bludgeoned 140 police officers that he loved them.

He was never prosecuted, and now he's president.

Unfortunately, the answer to your question is self-evident.

Smith said the attack could not have happened without Trump. It looks like those who said he was campaigning to stay out of jail were right. Even Joe Biden said that. What does that say about the system? What can reformers do?

I believe Smith's testimony showed that Trump announced he was running shortly after it was announced there was going to be a criminal investigation into the classified documents scandal and, potentially, January 6.

During his candidacy, Trump repeatedly attacked the investigation as an attempt to silence him. He then argued for — and received — immunity from a Supreme Court featuring three of nine justices chosen by him. Even the most cynical of us were shocked by that opinion. The whole affair exposed significant cracks in the system. We need to look at serious SCOTUS reform, then go on from there.

What was the most damning thing in Smith's deposition? What was the key detail that made you think this is the reason the Republicans released it on New Year's Eve.

Even though we've seen so much coverage of January 6, time has a frustrating way of dulling memory, doesn't it? So it was profoundly infuriating to be reminded that almost all of Trump’s co-conspirators were Republican officials. And they were willing to testify against him. You have to think he didn't want the world, and especially MAGA, to see how thoroughly they were duped, used and summarily discarded.

This president claims the right to kidnap leaders of foreign countries in order to try them in US courts. He also claims total immunity from US courts. Forget about whether he's above the law. He is. The question is whether and for how long Americans will tolerate a depraved president.

Oh boy, you're asking the wrong person. I was out in 2015 when he came down the escalator and called Mexicans criminals — and the campaign rhetoric devolved from there.

Then, four years after January 6th, he gets reelected?

It really shakes your faith in our politics.

The truth about J6 isn't going away, no matter how contested it is. Do you see a future in which justice will be done to future evil men, if not this president, who is 79? Or is injustice baked into the cake of the American republic?

The optimist in me says we will reform our government to stop this from happening in the future. The pessimist sees the Supreme Court greatly expanding executive power, which will be difficult if not impossible to overcome.

Some people scoff at the concepts of American ingenuity and exceptionalism, but I think we're going to need some realistic, feasible ideas to fix our country.

I think we can, but it's going to take time, perhaps generations. I mean, we've been trying to get this right for 250 years. We just have to keep pressing forward, calling out the inequalities inherent in our system and look for ways to fix them. We've done it before. We can do it again.

Trump lies show White House is terrified — rightly — of this victim's simple humanity

The first thing that should be said about the fatal shooting in Minneapolis is that the victim’s name was Renee Nicole Good.

Good, 37, was a mother, a wife, a poet and fervent Christian. Her mother, Donna Ganger, told the local newspaper her daughter and her partner were not involved in protests.

“She was probably terrified. Renee was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. She was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being,” Ganger said.

Good was a widow. Her husband, a veteran, died in 2023 at 36. They had a son. He’s 6. Good was with her partner when ICE shot her in the face, then dithered long enough for her to bleed out.

A video taken by a witness moments after the shooting shows Good’s partner sitting on the ground with her dog. There’s blood on the snow. Between sobs she can be heard saying, “They killed my wife. I don’t know what to do,” according to The Advocate.

"We stopped to videotape, and they shot her in the head."

“We have a 6-year-old at school.”

Good's former teacher, Kent Wascom, a professor at Old Dominion University, posted a memorial on Twitter.

“I held her baby,” Wascom said. “She was kind and talented, a working-class mom who put herself through school despite circumstances that would’ve crumpled the pathetic rich boy politicians who sadistically abetted her murder.”

He added: “God damn them all.”

Good’s humanity needs to be the first thing that’s said, because the regime that killed her started erasing her humanity from virtually the moment she was murdered last Wednesday morning.

US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said Good was an “agitator” who “weaponized” her vehicle in an act of “domestic terrorism.” The ICE officer, she said, acted in self-defense.

Vice President JD Vance blamed the victim.

“Don't illegally interfere in federal law enforcement operations and try to run over our officers with your car,” he said. “It's really that simple."

On his social media site, the president added his own smears.

“The woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting,” Donald Trump wrote. She “then violently, willfully and viciously ran over the ICE officer. ... It is hard to believe [the ICE officer] is alive but he is now recovering in the hospital."

Every single word is a lie.

I spent a lot of time yesterday watching and rewatching the video of the shooting (a different one from the video I reference above). And virtually nothing, perhaps literally nothing, the Trump regime is saying matches up with the reality of what happened.

Good was not “very disorderly, obstructing and resisting.” She did not “violently, willfully and viciously [run] over the ICE officer.” The officer in question was not injured in any visible way.

Indeed, after he shot Good three times, and after her SUV rammed into a parked car, the ICE officer checked her condition, then walked to his own vehicle and, moments later, drove away.

I’m not going to do a frame-by-frame analysis. There are pros out there who do that kind of thing better than me. For instance, Eliot Higgins, head of Bellingcat, an investigative reporting group.

“Bellingcat, the New York Times Visual Investigation Team and the Washington Post's Visual Forensic team have all published analysis showing the ICE shooter wasn't in the path of Renee Nicole Good’s vehicle when he shot her, contradicting statements by the president and his cronies,” Higgins said this morning.

Here’s the Times investigation.

I will add a small but telling detail.

The masked ICE officer, who has been identified as Jonathan Ross but whose whereabouts are unknown, was not in any danger.

Good was clearly steering around him, and because of that, Ross had time to position himself in front of the car, crouch, take aim, both arms straight out, and fire. Ross shoots once through the windshield, then twice more through the driver’s side window.

Hers was an act of self-defense, not terror.

His was an act of terror, not self-defense.

The difference between what happened to Renee Nicole Good and what administration officials say happened to her is so vast and obvious that the president is no longer taking any chances.

The FBI said the investigation would be done jointly by federal agents in coordination with the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA). Then the FBI changed its mind.

The BCA “would no longer have access to the case materials, scene evidence or investigative interviews necessary to complete a thorough and independent investigation,” a spokesman said.

Why would the FBI do this?

To cover up the crime in order to protect the president from the consequences of allowing his secret police to commit crimes.

The FBI is going to try hiding the ugly truth: ICE claims it can declare anyone “illegal” and that it can be the judge, jury and executioner of any accused criminal, including a white, blonde mother of a 6-year-old, who had stuffed animals on the dash and whose partner wailed in despair yards from her bloodied corpse.

But hiding the truth is only part of it. Trump must also erase Good in the same way he erased what happened five years ago, nearly to the day of her death, when he organized and led an attempted paramilitary takeover of the United States Congress.

There is a straight line of causation from Jan. 6, 2021, when Donald Trump launched an insurrection, to Jan. 7, 2026, when his insurgents not only shot an innocent woman but prevented a physician, a bystander, from trying to save her life.

As David Lurie noted, if the GOP cannot win by legitimate means in November, “they will return to the 1/6 strategy of seeking to remain in power with the use of intimidation and force.”

This time, David said, “they won't need to enlist an ad hoc group of thugs to serve as enforcers, because they are assembling a massive force of government-funded and armed thugs who are practicing, and honing, their violent repression skills and strategies on the citizens of cities across the country.”

We may think the evidence of our eyes is so damning that surely Good’s killer will be brought to justice. But we thought the same thing five years ago. Trump and his insurgents mounted a massive disinfo campaign to erase history. They succeeded.

Like last time, they are going to lie, but most of all, they’re going to make it seem like Renee Good’s humanity never existed, just as they made it seem like the J6 insurrection never happened.

Don’t believe me? See this video. After the morning’s shooting, locals set up an impromptu memorial that evening – chalk messages on the sidewalks, candles in solemn remembrance. In this video, an ICE officer literally kicks one of them over. He then taunts a bystander who’s visibly enraged by such disrespect.

‪They murdered her. They fled the scene of the crime. They stopped a doctor from rendering aid to her. And they lied to protect the man who did the killing. But that wasn’t enough.

They had to desecrate her, too.

This is why I said at the top that the first thing that needs to be said about all this is Renee Nicole Good’s name. The Trump regime is terrified of her humanity, because it puts flesh and bone on the consequences of autocracy — on what happens when a free society allows lawlessness to come straight from the top.

Trump's attack on Venezuela is linked to the Epstein files — but not the way you think

If you’re like me, it seems unclear why the president ordered the illegal and unconstitutional bombing of Venezuela, the kidnapping of its head of state, and the theft of its oil. As soon as we were given one reason, the White House came up with another, usually contradicting the first.

Ditto for what the US is going to do now. Donald Trump said we’re now going to run Venezuela, as if colonizing a foreign nation was something any of us voted for. Apparently, however, what he really meant is that Venezuela’s new leader, the former vice president, had better do what he tells her to do or face another illegal and unconstitutional attack.

In a sense, this extortionist attitude toward Venezuela is the same extortionist attitude that Trump has toward blue states: Do as I say, not for any particular or compelling reason, but because I said so — or else. The president believes his word is law. Foreign leaders can be held accountable for their crimes, but he can’t be for his. He also believes might makes right. “We have to do it again [in other countries],” he said. “We can do it again, too. Nobody can stop us."

On hearing news of the Venezuela attack, some liberals said it was to distract from the Epstein files. Some cited Trump’s own words. He once said Barack Obama was getting so unpopular that we should expect him to bomb the Middle East to boost his poll numbers.

But “distraction” assumes that one thing is worse than another, and the fact is, everything Trump does is corrupt, meaning everything is a potential liability. Withholding Epstein files is illegal. Invading a sovereign nation is illegal. (Impounding congressional funding to Democratically controlled states is illegal). It’s all illegal. And defenders of liberty don’t have to decide which is more corrupt.

I interviewed Noah Berlatsky about a recent piece of his arguing that Trump’s corrupt handling of the Epstein files could backfire on him. We discussed an array of things, including the seeming impossibility of holding Trump accountable. Our conversation took place before last weekend’s attack, but Noah connected the two subjects. He said MAGA infighting over Epstein eroded Trump’s polling. MAGA infighting over Venezuela — a betrayal of “America First” — could do the same.

That, among other things, offers hope for justice.

“War with Venezuela is about as unpopular as Trump's handling of the Epstein files!” said the publisher of Everything Is Horrible, a newsletter about politics and the arts. “I think the idea of ‘distraction’ in general isn't very helpful. Trump does lots and lots of horrible things; they're all horrible in themselves, and we should pay attention to and oppose them all. I don't think one horrible thing distracts from another.”

JS: In your piece for Public Notice, you say that Trump's corrupt handling of the Epstein files could backfire on him. He has escaped scandal before. What makes this different in your mind?

NB: I don't think he really does escape scandal. His rhetoric and actions do harm him in many ways. He's always been an extraordinarily unpopular president, and he's always suffered a lot of losses because of that, and because he's bad at his job. Partisanship is just a very powerful force, as is white supremacy and bigotry, so his many losses and failures, and his unpopularity, don't necessarily destroy him the way people often think they should, which leads to this myth of invulnerability — even though there's a lot of evidence that he's not invulnerable.

Having said that, I think the Epstein files are particularly dangerous for him because Epstein's real crimes became conflated with Qanon anti-Democratic conspiracy theories. A lot of people in Trump's base — like Dan Bongino, for example, or Marjorie Taylor Greene — have invested a lot of energy in the idea that exposing Epstein would bring down the Democratic Party, and so when Trump says that Epstein is a hoax, that seems to be targeted at them and they don't like it.

Basically, Trump's usual strategies to contain the damage, which is claiming it's an entirely partisan attack, are not very effective when the right is also very invested in this scandal. It's a case where Trump's interests are very much out of sync not just with the Republican mainstream, but with the far-right base. So that creates unusual dangers for him.

If there is accountability in the future for Trump, it will be because the Democrats insisted on it. But the Democrats have a lot of incentive to just move on once they regain power. That would set up future tyrants for success. How do we change that?

Yeah, it's a tough question.

I think that the Democrats have incentives to move on, because antifascist actions — expanding the Supreme Court, for example — are difficult and may not be super-popular with the electorate as a whole, which is often more focused on things like lowering inflation. This was Joe Biden's approach. He figured that a good economy would allow him to win the next election and that was the best way to fight fascism — just win elections. Electoral parties are hyper-focused on winning elections, so this is an appealing approach for Democrats.

However, Democrats, of course, lost in 2024, because you can't win every election or control the economy entirely. And you'd hope that would be a warning to Democrats and create some incentives the other way. And of course fascists actually want to arrest and murder the opposition, which you'd hope would encourage Democrats to be aggressive in containing and crushing fascism when they're in office.

I think there are some signs that some Democrats at least are thinking about this — and there's also evidence that you can move the party through advocacy. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — poster child for appeasement — moved from immediate capitulation in the first budget showdown to leading a very extended and in many ways successful budget shutdown at the end of the year. Impeachment votes have garnered more and more support in the House, and GOP leadership has moved from outright opposition to refusing to vote.

This is not enough, obviously, but it suggests that as Trump's approval craters and as people demand better, representatives do react.

I think continued pressure will help. I also think it would probably help if there were some high-profile mainstream losses to fighters in the midterms. Brad Lander beating Dan Goldman would be a big deal. Kat Abughazaleh winning in IL-9 would be a big deal. A couple more wins along those lines would help a lot.

Accountability will require sustained attention from the press corps, but the press corps allows its agenda to be set by the rightwing media complex, as I call it. Are the divisions we are seeing among MAGA media personalities the only hope we have?

Again, it's a tough question. I think that the current fissures on the right do help in terms of eroding Trump's approval and making it more difficult for the right to create sustained propaganda talking points. There hasn't been any consistent rightwing pushback on Epstein for example. The right has been notably unable to make a convincing sustained case for war in Venezuela; I think that's polling at 11 percent or something ridiculously low.

I think people can also underestimate the extent to which resistance can create effective propaganda. [Editor-in-chief of CBS News] Bari Weiss attempted to kill the story about El Salvador's horrific prison conditions for US deportees, but it got bootlegged and distributed by independent media and just interested people, and the result is it was seen I believe millions more times than it would have been if it just aired. Democratic politicians like Chris Murphy also talked about it. So I thought that was all pretty hopeful.

So I guess the answer is … yes. MAGA infighting helps, but I think we're able to take advantage of it in part because there's just a ton of resistance to the regime, and that creates opportunities for counter-messaging through both formal and informal channels.

Liberal hope is often rooted in belief in the American character, which is that we the people believe in liberty and justice for all. Trump has exposed that as problematic. He's also convinced people that such beliefs are fraudulent. What do liberals do?

Well, there's no one American character. The US has always been really racist and authoritarian. It's also fostered pioneering antiracist and liberatory movements. The "truth" of the country isn't one or the other. It's just what we choose to do.

I think that the belief in American exceptionalism and in some sort of inborn virtuous American character has always really been a tool for fascism and repression, so liberals are better off without it! I think that liberals and leftists and people of good will in general are best off acknowledging that the country has always had grotesque fascist traditions, but highlighting that there have also been people who have fought against those — Frederick Douglass, Ida B Wells-Barnett, MLK, Alice Wong, and on and on. The fight's the same as it ever was, which is grim, but hopefully a source of sustenance as well.

I have never seen a Democratic base as divided and disillusioned as I see it today. Not even the post-9/11 years were this bad. I suspect it's because of dashed hopes. There seemed to be so much promise in the wake of George Floyd's murder. America seemed to reject conservative orthodoxy. Then came the radical centrist backlash and Trump's reelection. Thoughts?

I think there's a lot of reason to be depressed for sure. And I think despair and a real uncertainty about tactics will lead to a certain amount of infighting. But, I mean, I don't exactly see the base as divided and disillusioned. There's a lot of coordinated and effective resistance. People are turning out to vote in massive numbers, and winning major victories everywhere from New Jersey to Miami to Oklahoma. Protests against ICE in the streets are ubiquitous and have been quite effective. The consumer boycott against Disney to restore Jimmy Kimmel was massive and victorious. I mentioned the circulation of the 60 Minutes segment in defiance of CBS.

I don't mean to say it's all good. Obviously, we're in a dire and ugly situation. But I think despite differences and understandable despair, a lot of people are pushing back in a lot of ways. I think that Trump's position, and the radical centrist position, is much, much more precarious than it was at the beginning of the year because of this pushback. Victory is very much not guaranteed, but I think there's reason to hope that continued resistance can continue to gain ground.

This mega MAGA mover saw it was all a fraud — soon voters will do too

Marjorie Taylor Greene has been blessed with a profile in the New York Times magazine. The headline — “‘I Was Just So Naïve’: Inside Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Break With Trump” — gives the impression that the Georgia congresswoman and MAGA zealot has seen the error of her ways.

Details from the interview appear to deepen that perception. When Greene threatened to go public with the names of men implicated in “the Epstein files,” the president reportedly told her on speaker phone that she can’t, because, according to Greene, “my friends will get hurt.”

I don’t know why a man who will throw anyone under the bus would protect anyone but himself. But I do know bad faith can take many forms. If anyone is a master of bad faith, it’s Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Greene spread the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. She defended the January 6 insurrection. She suggested support for executing Democrats. She once stalked a survivor of a shooting massacre to accuse him of being a fraud. Am I supposed to believe she’s had a change of heart?

Still, her break from Trump is politically significant. It suggests his hold on the Republican Party has limits. It also suggests that true believers are thinking about and preparing for a future without him. (Greene is resigning next month but appears to be positioning herself nonetheless.) MAGA might die or evolve into something new. Either way is an opportunity for the Democrats and liberal reformers generally.

I don’t think Greene is key to reviving the liberal tradition in America, as The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last suggested, but I do think, as he does, that she will play some kind of role in getting the Republicans to behave. Greene embodies MAGA's id. She appears to feel betrayed. If those feelings are real, and can be turned against the GOP, so be it.

In this second of a two-part interview with me, political historian Claire Potter, publisher of Political Junkie, touches on the meaning and importance of Greene’s “naivete,” the unlikelihood of accountability for Trump, and why the reaction to “the Epstein files” is more likely a reaction to authoritarians who fail to deliver on promises.

“The multiple fumbles and lies about the Epstein files have given some Republicans a valid reason to declare their independence,” Claire told me.

“Creating air between themselves and Trump will be critical to any Republican who wants a political career once maga starts to swirl the drain next year. We are seeing tremendous swings in districts Trump won in double digits, and that it is the Republicans’ failure to deliver that will, in the end, lead to their defeat, not just in 2026, but in 2028.”

JS: What do you make of recent news about Greene? Principled pariah or craven opportunist? What's the right reaction from Democrats?

CP: I think Greene is using the word "naive" not in the usual sense of a person being innocent and expecting the best of others, but in the sense that she had no idea about what being a politician required and that her devotion to Trump, which initially served her, turned out to be wildly misplaced. Back in 2020, a New Yorker profile described Greene as a kind of seeker who reincarnated herself periodically: as a wife and mother, as a businesswoman, as a QAnon devotee, as a charismatic Christian, and finally, as a MAGA true believer.

Remember, she ran for Congress having zero background as a politician, but a quite successful career in the construction industry — not unlike Trump. She inherited a family business, she did well with it, and then pivoted out of her marriage and into the CrossFit community, which she was also very successful at, both as a participant and as an entrepreneur. She had enough money to self-fund her own campaign, and once elected, realized that her media talents were ideally suited to the political world Trump made.

I think conspiracy theorists are idealists in a way. They see a world they don't like, and they want to know, specifically, who is responsible for it. In MAGA world, that can be Jews, pedophiles, trans people, the deep state or Nancy Pelosi, but the perpetrators of injustice are real, and they walk the earth.

I think Greene saw going to Washington as a way to be a warrior, to get to the bottom of things in the second Trump administration. What she didn't understand — and this is where the naivete comes in, I think — was that politics is a profession, she didn't know how to do it, and that only Trump can get away with pretending he knows how to do a job.

To the extent that Greene's Republican colleagues were willing to draft on her outrageousness and fundraising ability, which should have been a route to influence in Congress, she understood by the end of her first term that there was a Trumpian front stage and a more conventional backstage where Republicans who said they were MAGA functioned more or less conventionally. Trump was not only out of office, but disgraced, in 2021. Most elected Republicans did not see a way back for him after January 6, and were eager to move on. Greene acted as though the rudeness and brashness of MAGA could just continue, and her own party collaborated in putting her on the shelf for her whole first term.

There's an old saw about Trump: take him seriously, but not literally. Greene took Trump's language about loyalty both seriously and literally. She believed that his vows to release the Epstein files and get to the bottom of the conspiracy to protect Epstein were real, and she believed that he cared viscerally about white working people. Neither of these things were true, and combined with the lack of respect from her colleagues, and MIke Johnson stonewalling legislation, I think Greene began to see politics as a pointless and cynical exercise.

Andrew Tate, who has been accused child-sex crimes and is a leading figure in the so-called manosphere, was shamed in the boxing ring recently. An amateur beat and bloodied him. The Trump regime saved him from prosecution. Is public humiliation all the justice we can expect when criminals like Tate have powerful allies?

Let me start by saying that it was a real joy to see someone beat the c--- out of that monster of a man, and as I understand it, Tate and his brother are still facing charges in England. The Tates are also an interesting case, because as I understand it their real friends in the White House are Don Jr. and Barron Trump, and that the pardon really jolted Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, whose horrible traits do not happen to include sex crimes and battering women.

And while it is easy to imagine people like Doug Burgum and Marco Rubio simply turning away from this kind of thing while Trump is president, I don’t think they will forever. Here, I think, we will see another rift widening up in the Republican Party, one that intersects with the revulsion many in the MAGA movement have harbored for Bill Clinton for 35 years, and more recently, for Jeffrey Epstein. You don’t have to be a QAnon adherent to see the rot in the party when it comes to gross male sexual behavior.

But I get your point. It seems almost impossible to imagine accounting for this period in our nation’s history — the crimes against immigrants, women, trans people and the poor, to name a few — without a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Forget that our justice system is not functioning to rein in gross malfeasance, and that it seems designed to permit endless appeals and deferrals even when it does work.

It’s hard to imagine bringing Donald Trump, and the network of people activated by Donald Trump, to justice without bringing the rest of the government to a complete stop. It makes me understand why other countries just put their dictators on a plane to some warm, neutral country and tell them to just keep the money.

Perhaps no one pushed the story of "the Epstein files" as hard as former Trump advisor Steve Bannon. Now that he has been exposed as one of Epstein's pals, will it make a difference to followers?

Well, one of my favorite comments on Epstein was when Dan Bongino was asked why he took completely different positions on Epstein as a podcaster and as a top FBI official, he answered — as if it was perfectly obvious — that these were two different jobs with two different realities. I could practically hear J. Edgar Hoover spinning in his grave.

I think on some level, except for the very hardcore conspiracy types, MAGA people know the whole system is a fraud. Think of all the people who go to Disney World over and over again because it fulfills a fantasy about returning to childhood. They see someone in a Snow White suit who is in reality about to vomit from the heat and treat that person as if she is really Snow White.

Similarly, I suspect that Steve Bannon is not a real person to most MAGA adherents, and neither is Donald Trump. Bannon and Trump are characters in an entertainment called “politics,” and like reality shows or multiplayer games, the story evolves to accommodate contradictions. I would predict that if you follow the right subreddits, or Gab threads, you will see people promoting theories that Bannon was there spying on Epstein, or that he was sent by Q to rescue the girls, or whatever.

Honestly, I think none of this matters to actual voters in the end, although I do think the multiple fumbles and lies about the Epstein files have given some Republicans a valid reason to declare their independence. Creating air between themselves and Trump will be critical to any Republican who wants a political career once maga starts to swirl the drain next year. We are seeing tremendous swings in districts Trump won in double digits, and that it is the Republicans’ failure to deliver that will, in the end, lead to their defeat, not just in 2026, but in 2028. And Trump’s people — including Bannon — will have gotten what they wanted all along: to fleece the American public.

This is why MAGA will die when Trump is gone

As long as there was a Democrat in the White House, the rightwing media complex, which is global in scale, had something solid to push up against, allowing internal divisions to fade into the background.

Now that Joe Biden is gone, however, and now that his successor is slipping further into incompetence and incoherence, the MAGA media unity that vaulted Donald Trump to power seems to be coming apart.

The cracks looked especially apparent during the last gathering of Turning Point USA, the hate group co-founded by the late Charlie Kirk.

Ben Shapiro accused Tucker Carlson of befriending antisemites, like Nick Fuentes. Candace Owens had implied that Israel assassinated Kirk. JD Vance called for unity, saying that “in the United States of America, you don't have to apologize for being white anymore." (To be clear, not one American has been forced to apologize for being white.)

Such fractures, however, were always evident, according to political historian Claire Potter, publisher of Political Junkie.

“There has always been a broad streak of antisemitism in the MAGA movement and, at the same time, strong support for Israel among rightwing Christians like Mike Huckabee and Jewish media figures like Ben Shapiro,” she said.

Claire told me that this combination has meant the MAGA coalition was inherently unstable from the start. Kirk’s murder didn’t reveal cracks so much as “create a new focus for antisemitic conspiracy theories.”

If it’s true that rightwing media personalities are cannibalizing themselves, what does that say about the future of MAGA? Can it outlive Trump? Is JD Vance the heir apparent? Will the GOP quit pretending to believe in equality and openly embrace fascism?

In this first of a two-part interview, Claire explains that the GOP will probably evolve into something that echoes maga without actually being maga. As for the vice president, however, there is no future.

“He has real deficits, in the sense that he is interracially married, he has no charisma or stage presence, and he projects very little authority,” Claire said. “Also, frankly, he just isn’t mean enough.”

JS: The murder of demagogue Charlie Kirk appears to have divided MAGA media personalities. Do you think it's an opportunity for Donald Trump's opponents or is it just squabbling among siblings?

CP: I would start by pointing out that these siblings were always an uneasy coalition. There has always been a broad streak of antisemitism in the maga movement and, at the same time, strong support for Israel among rightwing Christians like Mike Huckabee and Jewish media figures like Ben Shapiro. Recall, for example, that Candace Owens has always trafficked in antisemitic conspiracies, and that hostilities came to a head in 2024, as she and Shapiro clashed over the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel launched from Gaza.

That resulted in Owens being fired by Shapiro’s Daily Wire, but it long predated Trump’s return to the White House or Charlie Kirk’s death. What Kirk’s murder did was create a new focus for antisemitic conspiracy theories: Owens, Milo Yiannopoulos, and others have floated false theories about Israel’s involvement with Kirk’s death, for example, while Tucker Carlson and groyper Nick Fuentes (who any number of people thought might really have been involved with the assassination) jumped into that space for their own clicks.

And now, the president of the Heritage Foundation’s support for Carlson — and refusal to condemn Fuentes — has sent prominent conservatives running off to Mike Pence’s project. So, while Kirk’s murder may have been the tipping point, these fractures were there already.

I also think that Charlie Kirk was probably more broadly liked in retrospect than he was during his lifetime. I knew several MAGA influencers who saw him as an opportunist, someone who was suddenly sucking down millions in donations that had previously gone elsewhere. Once the narrative of Saint Charlie was established however, you didn’t hear those criticisms.

What will be interesting to see is whether Erika Kirk’s power play in expanding the organization’s presence, particularly in Texas and Florida high schools, creates a possibility for a maga future without Trump, QAnon, and the fringier elements of the coalition — something more corporate, along the lines of the Campus Crusade for Christ or Young Americans for Freedom.

Vice President JD Vance seems to be positioning himself for a post-Trump future as heir to the MAGA movement. Is there a MAGA movement without Trump and if so, does Vance have the juice?

No, JD Vance will not be the next president. He has real deficits, in the sense that he is interracially married, he has no charisma or stage presence, and he projects very little authority. Also, frankly, he just isn’t mean enough. He tries to be mean on X, but just ends up sounding like a cluck, whereas Trump’s cruel and incoherent ravings have a kind of weird charm for the MAGA faithful.

I also think Vance is a terrible campaigner and a mediocre fundraiser, and working for Trump will not have made him more than marginally better at these things. He barely won the primary for his Senate seat, and only because Trump jumped in and pushed him over the top and Peter Thiel gave him millions of dollars.

But I don’t think there is a MAGA movement without Trump. It will be something else, something that bears a relationship to it, much as many of the rightwing or explicitly fascist parties in Europe have evolved out of the fascisms of the interwar period, coyly gesture to that history but also disown it. AfD, for example, bears a strong resemblance to Nazism, but of course, since Nazism is illegal in Germany, it has to gesture at it rather than be explicit about its genealogy. Georgia Meloni, the prime minister of Italy, was steeped in Italian postwar fascism. She is a fascist and she governs as a fascist, even though her party is euphemistically called the Brothers of Italy.

There’s another problem. Like all fascisms, MAGA is a nostalgic movement, imagining a nation that strayed from an “original” America that was white, virtuous and Christian. This produces two problems. One is the profound unease many magas have with the fact that Vance is married to a brown daughter of immigrants and that he has mixed-race children. The many photos of Vance embracing Erika Kirk, who I think is going to have real problems hanging on to the very male-centered TPUSA, have anointed her as a potential “office wife.”

But the second problem is that Trump’s nostalgia, when translated into economic policies, is driving the nation into debt at an accelerated pace, at the same time as he is cutting as many Americans loose from the social safety net as he can. This is going to drive the United States into a social crisis that the Republican Party will not survive in its current form. It’s why we see so many GOP office holders streaming for the exits. It’s not just the 2026 midterms: it’s that they understand that there is no Vance presidency in 2028 — nor a Rubio, DeSantis or Abbott presidency.

The rightwing media complex is vast and powerful. And it's getting bigger. Can you imagine a future in which Republicans shed all pretense to equality and outwardly embrace bigotry?

I think those tendencies were there from the beginning. Part of what is so startling about the maga movement is the reemergence of a variety of bigoted, authoritarian tendencies in American politics that for the first half of the 20th century expressed themselves in the Democratic Party as the Klan, the Anti-Immigration League and White Citizens Councils, and in the Republican Party as America First, McCarthyism, and conservative Catholicism. All of these tendencies had fused in the New Right by the 1970s — a movement that looks shockingly tolerant from our perspective, but it really wasn’t. It was just more polite. And those tendencies survived, not just in politics, but among ordinary Americans. People don’t start hanging Confederate flags in their 60s.

But it wasn’t until rightwing media — whether Fox or YouTube or major publishing houses marketing rightwing books — that these views go mainstream. Remember that the Tea Party was born, not just as a racist reaction to Obama that was willing to express itself in explicitly racist language, but as a movement designed to take over the GOP. Tea Partiers weren’t fringe — they understood themselves as “real” Americans, as opposed to the guy with the funny name born in Hawaii.

And that’s where the idea that America has been usurped really goes mainstream on the right. If you look at Ann Coulter’s 2015 book, ¡Adios, America! The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole, it’s all there. And remember that she breaks with Trump because he didn’t carry out the deportation agenda he promised, didn’t build the wall, didn’t eliminate birthright citizenship. If you listen to Coulter today, she says: “This is the President I voted for.”

This Epstein sideshow exposes elites' bad faith — and the ruin of our country

David Brooks, the conservative columnist who is beloved by liberals, wrote last month that the Democrats make too much of the Epstein story. He said they’re acting as conspiratorially as the Republicans.

Brooks said he was “especially startled” to see leading progressives characterizing all elites as part of “the Epstein class.” If he were a Democrat, he said, he’d be focused on “the truth”: “The elites didn’t betray you, but they did ignore you. They didn’t mean to harm you.”

Brooks went on to say: “If I were a Democratic politician … I’d add that America can’t get itself back on track if the culture is awash in distrust, cynicism, catastrophizing lies and conspiracy mongering. No governing majority will ever form if we’re locked in a permanent class war.”

Sounds noble, but he didn’t mean any of it.

Last week, it was discovered that Brooks palled around with Jeffrey Epstein. Pictures of him were part of a trove released by the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. It was deduced that they were taken at a 2011 “billionaires dinner.” A 2019 report by Buzzfeed identified Brooks, among others, along with Epstein, who had pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor for sex just three years prior.

Buzzfeed: “In 2011, after Epstein had been released from a Florida jail, it was an exclusive gathering, dominated by tech industry leadership. A gallery of photos taken at the event by Nathan Myhrvold, formerly Microsoft’s chief technology officer, named 20 guests, including just one media representative: New York Times columnist David Brooks.”

While defending Brooks, the Times inadvertently confirmed Epstein's presence at the dinner. “Mr. Brooks had no contact with [Epstein] before or after his single attendance at a widely-attended dinner.”

Sure, but Brooks knew Epstein was there. If he didn’t know about his crimes, which is doubtful, he still chose to write a column warning the Democrats against waging “permanent class war” without disclosing his non-trivial association with the namesake of “the Epstein class.”

It’s bad faith, up and down.

“I think that's what we get when (very) wealthy people are shaping opinion,” said Denny Carter, publisher of Bad Faith Times, a newsletter. “We can never really know the depths of their conflicts of interest, whether it's covering for a known pedophile ringleader or promoting a cause or politician or company that will benefit them financially.”

In 2023, Denny wrote a piece highlighting the importance of bad faith, which is to say, if you don’t put it at the center of your thinking about rightwing politics, you’re going to be very, very confused. He wrote:

“Republicans today support women’s sports (if it means barring trans folks from participating). They love a member of the Kennedy family. They’re skeptical of Big Pharma. They hate banks. None of it – not a single part of it – makes any sense unless you understand bad faith.”

They never mean what they say.

Denny brought my attention to that piece by reposting it. I immediately thought of Brooks. Scolding the Democrats about demonizing “the Epstein class” while fraternizing with “the Epstein class” (it was a “billionaires dinner,” for Christ’s sake) — that’s the kind of behavior you might expect from a man who’s ready to betray you.

“You see these op-eds about supporting the fossil fuel industry and continuing to accelerate climate collapse in the guise of electoral advice for Democrats without having any idea if the writer means what they're saying or has some financial stake in promoting Big Oil and its various subsidiaries,” Denny told me in a brief interview. “You assume good faith among these writers and influencers at your own peril.”

JS: In a 2023 piece you recently reposted, you said the world is upside down. The right loves Russia. The left hates Russia. This is confusing for those of us who remember 20 years ago. What happened?

DC: This one, I think, is pretty straightforward. The right despised the collectivism inherent in Soviet ideology and the left was curious about how it might look in action. The fall of the USSR (eventually) led to a totalitarian fascist Russian state ruled by a vicious dictator who used religion and "traditional values" as a weapon against his many enemies, or anyone who dared promote democracy in Russia.

Listen to Putin and you'll hear a Republican babbling about “woke” this and “woke” that and positioning himself as the last barrier between so-called traditional society and some kind of far-left hellscape.

It's the same script every modern fascist leader uses, and it appeals very much to Republican lawmakers and their voters. You sometimes read stories about Americans fleeing to Russia to escape the “woke” scourge, only to deeply regret it. That's always funny or tragic, depending on how you look at it.

You say bad faith explains the upside-downness, but you also suggest the center has not held — that social fragmentation brought us here. You even cite David Bowie. How did you come to that insight?

I've been a Bowie superfan for a while now, and like a lot of folks who spend too much time online, I've seen the viral clip of Bowie explaining the world-changing potential of the internet way back in 1999.

He was right on a few levels, but most of all he identified the internet's potential for destroying any sense of commonly held reality. Here we are today, a quarter century later, trying to operate in a political world in which there are a handful of different realities at any one time.

A traitorous right-wing mob tried to overthrow the US government in 2021. We all saw the footage. We all know what happened. Yet there are tens of millions of Americans who believe January 6 did not happen or was in fact a walking tour of the US Capitol.

We can't even agree that there was a coup attempt orchestrated by the outgoing president because social media took that event, broke it into a million pieces, and allowed bad actors to piece it back together to fit a politically convenient narrative. I wrote about it here.

You suggest that simply telling the truth won't fix things. Why?

I don't mean to sound cynical but if we've learned anything over the past decade of small-d democratic backsliding, it's that the truth doesn't mean anything anymore because of the societal fragmentation created by social media. There is no truth. We can choose our own adventure now because our phones will confirm our priors about what happened and why.

Pro-democracy folks in the US can't rely on facts and figures to win the day. They won't. The Harris campaign reached a highwater mark in August 2024 when they were ignoring facts and figures and coasting on vibes. It was a heady time because it seemed like Democrats had finally learned their lesson: good-faith “Leslie Knope” politics [facts will win the day] has no place in the modern world, if it ever did.

The right has a gigantic media complex and it's getting bigger. Twitter, CBS News and soon perhaps CNN — all are right-coded or soon could be. Are you seeing recognition among liberals and leftists that this imbalance is unsustainable? If so, what's the plan?

Look, there are plenty of pro-democracy folks in the world with more money than they could spend in 50 lifetimes. A little bit of that money could go a long way in establishing pro-democracy media outlets that operate as propaganda outlets for the kind of liberalism that has been washed away by the right's capture of the media. Democracy needs to be sold to Americans just as fascism was sold to them, first in the seedy corners of the internet, then on Elon Musk's hub for international fascism, then in mainstream outlets run by people cooking their brains daily on Musk's site.

I'm not sure of a specific plan. I'm just a blogger. But people are awash in fascist propaganda 24 hours a day on every major social media site. It has ruined a lot of relationships and radicalized Americans who spent most of their lives ignoring politics as the domain of nerds.

There has to be a flood of pro-democracy messaging in the media and that can't happen without billions being invested in a massive network of outlets that can effectively push back on the right's unreality.

I wrote about the selling of democracy here.

The meaning of "elites" is central to the fascist project. As defined by David Brooks, they are educated liberal-ish people who drive Teslas, or used to. With an affordability crisis underway, liberals and leftists have a chance to redefine "elites" for the long haul. Thoughts?

I think engaging the right on the meaning of "elites" is probably a road to nowhere. They will label as "elite" anyone who has ever read a book or graduated from college. I would say the left can and should point out the vast gulf between real populism and fake right-wing populism. Media outlets, of course, have conflated these two because the media assumes everyone in politics is operating in pristine good faith.

But pointing out that Zohran Mamdani and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are real populists while Trump and his lackeys talk a big populist game while selling the country for parts to their golf buddies and business associates could offer people real insight into what it means to be on the side of the working person. Barack Obama has toyed with the idea of rejecting Trump as a populist; I think every pro-democracy American needs to push back harder on that label because it's disingenuous and a powerful tool for fascist politicians who have nothing if they don't have at least some working-class support.

The Bari Weiss 60 Minutes scandal is just one sign of drastic media rot

In light of the scandal at 60 Minutes, it bears repeating that the primary crisis facing American democracy is about information. There are just too many ways for the rich and powerful to control the truth.

Over the weekend, news broke that the new head of CBS News, Bari Weiss, had spiked a highly revealing 60 Minutes investigation into the torture prison in El Salvador, where the president has sent deportees.

According to lead reporter Sharyn Alfonsi, the investigation had gone through all the levels that investigations go through at 60 Minutes, including lawyers. But at the last minute, Weiss yanked it, saying it couldn’t run without a reaction from the Trump administration.

For non-journalists, understand that this is not a valid reason. Alfonsi asked for a reaction. That’s what reporters do after they discover facts that those in power do not want to be made public. That she didn’t get one is a part of the story. In saying the story couldn’t air without one, Bari Weiss in effect gave Donald Trump control of editorial choices.

And hence control of the truth.

Non-journalists should also understand that this is what Weiss is being paid to do. Trump-aligned billionaires Larry and David Ellison, father and son, respectively, installed her after taking ownership of CBS. She’s best known as an “anti-woke” pundit. She has no experience in reporting or broadcasting.

But what Weiss does have is the “only qualification that matters,” said Jennifer Schulze, a Chicago journalist and publisher of Indistinct Chatter, a newsletter about the news.

“She embraces Trump/MAGA friendly content,” Jennifer told me.

“I thought the Erika Kirk townhall was a questionable move, but even that ratings/advertising disaster can’t compare with what she’s just done to 60 Minutes,” Jennifer went on to say. “To suggest that the piece on the El Salvador torture prison was somehow unfinished and need more work is a cover for, 'Trump won’t like it so it can’t run.’”

The 60 Minutes scandal is one example of the larger moral and professional corruption of the news by the rich and powerful. In this wide-ranging interview with me, Jennifer discusses courageous local coverage of ICE raids, the sacrilege of Olivia Nuzzi, the threat of media consolidation, Trump’s health and the apparent end of PBS in Arkansas.

“It's such a shame that Republicans turned PBS into a political issue,” Jennifer said. “It's been a valuable, free source of news and information for the entire country, but the future of PBS looks grim, especially in red states where there is little or no political will to keep it alive.”

JS: Let's start locally. Chicago news media has been covering ICE raids better than the national media. Is that a fair statement?

JS: Local Chicago media is on the story every single day 24/7. The coverage has been and continues to be really impressive, even inspiring. It's exactly what everyone should want from local, fact-based reporters and news outlets: timely, sustained, in-depth.

It's also deeply personal. These reporters and photographers live here. This is happening to their city and they are out there every day making sure the stories get told. With the help of vigilant residents and rapid response groups, Chicago journalists are holding ICE/CPB to account.

The videos of immigration incidents along with eyewitness on-the-ground accounts of how ICE rammed a car, not the other way around, or how ICE threw tear gas canisters at a peaceful crowd, are providing some powerful truth-telling. Many of these accounts gathered by our local press have also been used in federal court cases to show how and when Border Patrol head Greg Bovino, Kristi Noem and their federal agents are lying and behaving unlawfully. The national press dips in from time to time, then leaves. It is not lead story news for national newspapers or TV networks, but it should be!

Olivia Nuzzi's book, American Canto, is a sales dud. Yet here I am asking you about her. Why is she important, or a liability, to journalism? Why is that important to non-media folk?

The Nuzzi story is very much insider baseball for media types. It is at its heart a story about massive, ongoing failures by all involved, and that includes the magazines she worked for and the other journalists who continue to prop her up. I would want non-media people to be reminded that most journalists operate by a strict code of ethics that prohibit reporters from being romantically involved with a source and doing political work for a source. Nuzzi is apparently guilty of both.

The story of 21st-century news media is the story of 21st-century corporate consolidation. I'm thinking about the Ellisons controlling CBS and bidding for Warner. Why is that bad for democracy?

The last thing the country needs is Donald Trump running CNN. That's essentially what will happen if billionaire David Ellison succeeds in taking over the news network's parent company, WBD.

Ellison has apparently already promised Trump sweeping changes at CNN, including firing news anchors that Trump dislikes. We've already seen how Ellison is accommodating Trump at CBS with the hiring of rightwing pundit Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of the news division, naming a Trump ally as the network's “ombudsman,” and promises to shift news content to a more “fair, balanced” coverage, which in maga-speak means pro-Trump plus no fact-checking. It would be a big blow to fact-based journalism and democracy if the same pro-Trump sensibilities take hold at yet another news organization like CNN.

There was endless news about President Joe Biden's health. There was almost nothing but news about his cognitive decline after the June debate. Trump is clearly in decline. He falls asleep during televised cabinet meetings. Yet there’s nothing close to the media's treatment of Biden. Why and why is that imbalance important?

Ten-plus years in and the mainstream press still struggles with sticking to any one Trump story. Of course, that's part of Trump's plan — to flood the zone with endless stories so that nothing sticks. I think that's the main reason we don't see ongoing news coverage of Trump's age/cognitive ability/and plain ole bat---- crazy behavior.

Trump falls asleep in a cabinet meeting and it's a one- maybe two-day story, because here's another weird thing or another international crisis to cover. Sometimes I wonder if it's the press version of FOMO. We can't really dig into this topic because we'll miss that one over there. I also think we have to acknowledge that the White House press corps has changed dramatically since Trump came into office. This is not the same press corps that was chasing all those Biden age stories. Now there are dozens of rightwing media personalities taking up oxygen in every briefing, especially the Oval Office gaggles.

That has changed the number of questions and the nature of the questions being asked, so it has an impact on the coverage itself. I still contend that fact-based news outlets should send cameras to the White House and set their reporters loose to report. Look at the big stories that have come out about Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon ever since the Pentagon press corps left the building.

Finally, Arkansas appears to be the first state to sever ties with PBS. PBS came into existence amid the Great Society reforms of the early 1960s. Is this the end of an era or the beginning of something new?

Millions of people in Arkansas rely on the PBS programming they see on one of the six PBS stations in that state. There's no way that this new local Arkansas effort can come close to filling the gap, particularly with children's programming. It's such a shame that Republicans turned PBS into a political issue. For years, it's been a valuable, free source of news and information for the entire country, but the future of PBS looks grim, especially in red states where there is little or no political will to keep it alive.

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