Tom Tyner

Trump's UN rant shone a harsh spotlight on his most alarming belief

During his speech to the United Nations in New York this week, President Donald Trump claimed many countries were “heading down a path of total destruction.”

In Europe, said Trump, “many countries [are] on the brink of destruction because of the green energy agenda.” Along with immigration, Trump said, “the high cost of so-called green renewable energy is destroying a large part of the free world.”

Trump went on: “Countries that cherish freedom are fading fast … the carbon footprint is a hoax made up by people with evil intentions, and they’re heading down a path of total destruction.”

Based on Trump’s assessment, it would be hard to imagine the abysmal conditions in countries who have bought into the carbon footprint hoax. They have invested heavily in clean-energy development and weaned themselves off of fossil fuels, the “traditional energy” sources Trump believes that every country needs to be great.

One country in particular has arguably gone farther down the path of total destruction Trump envisages than any other: Denmark.

Denmark has long relied heavily on clean, renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and bioenergy, which produce over 80 percent of its energy. Over 80 percent of its new car sales are electric vehicles. America’s sales total 8 percent. Denmark's reliance on fossil fuels for energy and vehicle fuel is among the lowest in the world. From Trump’s perspective, Denmark should be on the brink of collapse.

First, let’s take a look at Denmark’s economy.

The Independent Australia, which ranks all major economies on eight indicators, ranks Denmark as the best-performing economy in the world in 2025. The US economy ranks 24th. According to FocusEconomics, Denmark boasts one of the strongest and most resilient economies in Europe, with a high standard of living and strong fiscal management. The country has a diversified economy, with key industries including pharmaceuticals, renewable energy, advanced manufacturing, and shipping.

How about quality of life?

According to US News and World Report, Denmark has the number one quality of life among all nations based upon its broad access to food, housing, quality education, health care and employment, job security, political stability, individual freedom and environmental quality. The United States: 22nd.

What about average individual income?

According to a WorldData study, Denmark’s individual income ranks 13th in the world at $76,357 while the US’s average income ranks seventh at $83,660. According to World Population Review, Denmark has among the lowest income inequality among all nations while the US has among the highest. Therefore, the US income average is skewed towards higher-income individuals while Denmark’s individual income is spread more evenly.

How healthy are Denmark’s residents?

According to the World Population Review, Denmark is the 16th-healthiest country in the world to live based on the Global Health Index for 2024 while the US is ranked 65th. Denmark’s excellent quality of life, expansive social programs, good work-life balance, strong health-care system, and safe environment all contribute to a healthy citizenry.

How happy are people in Denmark?

The World Population Review’s World Happiness Report uses statistical analysis to determine the world’s happiest countries. Based on its findings, Denmark ranks as the second-happiest country in the world. The US isn’t among the top 12. Northern European countries, many of which are leaders in clean, renewable energy development, dominate the top countries in the happiness rankings.

Trump’s asinine assertion that clean energy development is destroying countries was delivered to an audience of UN representatives from countries committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions as members of the Paris Climate Accord.

It was delivered at an international organization committed to building a global system to fight climate change coming from greenhouse gas emissions. One can imagine how many minds were changed by Trump’s laughably false, anti-science claims.

Trump of course is dead wrong about everything related to climate change and green energy development. Increased production and usage of clean, renewal energy sources not only doesn’t destroy countries, it helps them to thrive economically and provide a superior quality of life to countries like the US which remain doggedly, ignorantly dependent on fossil fuels.

It was a welcome sight for Trump to embarrass himself beyond belief on a world stage so that every nation could hear the kind of outlandish malarky that Americans have to put up with every day. That Trump’s every remark was met with stone-faced silence by the UN’s international audience spoke volumes. They weren’t buying it.

Tom Tyner is a freelance editorialist, satirist, political analyst, blogger, author and retired English instructor

We're in danger of forgetting Trump's worst crime of all

Donald Trump’s ultimate presidential legacy will be one of the most shameful in US history. It will no doubt include his attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election, inciting the first violent attack on the Capitol since 1814, responding irresponsibly to the COVID-19 pandemic, dividing the country profoundly, creating a political climate that fosters violence, and disgracing the office of the presidency with his dishonesty and corruption.

One thing that may get lost in his abysmal legacy, however, could arguably have the most dire and long-term consequences: Trump’s record as an environmental criminal.

Trump is a climate-change denier at a time when man-made climate change is wreaking havoc across the globe.

Climate change is driven by global warming responsible for melting glaciers and ice caps, rising sea levels, abnormally high temperatures, and changes in wind and precipitation patterns.

The effects of climate change can be seen in more frequent and powerful hurricanes, unprecedented coastal flooding, longer, more frequent droughts, massive wildfires, and unprecedented heat waves.

The resulting harm caused by man-made climate change is devastating. In 2023, a record 2,300 Americans died from heat-related deaths. Since 2020, 400 Americans have died per year as a result of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods.

In 2024, 4.3 million Americans were displaced by hurricanes, flooding, tornadoes, and wildfires. In 2024, there were 27 confirmed climate disaster events with losses exceeding $1 billion each. In the 44 years from 1980 to 2024, 41 percent of the extreme climate events occurred during the last five years.

Water-dependent industries are the most affected by climate change. Agriculture is the hardest hit, as a result of water depletion in the western states caused by severe droughts, hotter temperatures and excessive drilling. Climate change’s impact on agriculture includes greater water scarcity, reduced productivity, the spread of insects, invasive weeds, and diseases affecting crop yields, reduced incomes for farmers, and greater health problems for agricultural workers.

There is no question among scientists that the handprint of man-made climate change is evident in the greater frequency and destructiveness of extreme climate disasters. There is also no question that the emission of greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere, chief among them CO2, is responsible for global warming and climate change.

Global reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is essential for reversing global warming and preventing the world from reaching the internationally agreed upon tipping point of 1.5 degrees Celsius. According to scientists, to prevent worsening and potentially irreversible effects of climate change, the world’s average temperature should not exceed that of preindustrial times by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Being the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, the US plays a major role in reducing emissions and at the very least, preventing the devastation of climate change from growing worse. However, not only is Trump doing nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, he is increasing their output.

By gutting federal regulations to reduce industrial emissions, creating greater US dependence on fossil fuel industries that are the largest CO2 emitters, and ending federal funding for alternative clean-energy development and electric vehicle-purchase rebates, Trump is doing everything possible to increase the US’s carbon footprint while the vast majority of countries are working to reduce theirs.

By ignoring climate change, Trump is complicit in every American life lost to climate change, the displacement of millions of Americans by extreme climate events, the billions of dollars of economic loss, and the increasingly unlivable conditions caused by severe heat in many regions, with lower income Americans the most severely affected.

Trump doesn’t care about the thousands of Americans dying from climate change, or being displaced from their homes, or in financial ruin. He is indifferent to the severe ecological degradation that is occurring globally. Trump has made his devil’s pact with Big Oil.

Trump was bought and paid for by millions of dollars of campaign contributions from the oil industry. His end of the devil’s deal was to repeal all emission-reduction regulations, support increased oil production, and impede the production of clean, less expensive energy sources that cut into Big Oil’s profits.

While Trump ignores climate change, 23 Blue states and Louisiana have established 100 percent clean energy goals with aggressive programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Trump and Big Oil aren’t happy.

Trump’s Department of Justice has sued New York and Vermont for laws making fossil fuel companies liable for costs dealing with climate change. It is suing Hawaii and Michigan over their climate-related lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. Trump is working to end California’s stringent motor vehicle emissions standards and its cap-and-trade program.

These states’ climate-change programs are keeping the US from having among the worst CO2-emissions’ record in the world, and Trump is doing all that he can to stifle theirs and America's progress.

In ignoring climate change, Trump is willing to risk leaving future generations with an apocalyptic environment and worldwide human suffering at an unimaginable level, all for the sake of political gain. That is far beyond irresponsible. That is far beyond criminal. That is pure evil.

Tom Tyner is a freelance editorialist, satirist, political analyst, blogger, author and retired English instructor

The Art of Criminality — and other ways Trump might make amends

Perhaps the wisdom of Trump voters has been greatly overlooked. What better way to fight crime in America than to put a convicted criminal in the White House? No one understands the criminal mind better than our current president, after all.

Donald Trump knows what lurks in the minds of his fellow felons. He understands their disdain for acting within the law and for refusing to live within the accepted norms of right and wrong on which our justice system is based.

Found by a civil jury to be liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll, Trump understands exploiters who forcefully take what they want — in his case, also including classified government material — without concern for those they harm.

He understands criminals who feel no guilt or remorse for their despicable acts and are stopped only when caught and prosecuted. He also, as the Carroll case shows, has direct experience of defamation and its perils.

Found civilly liable for massive bank fraud, and convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, Trump understands the minds of white-collar criminals whose moral turpitude and monumental greed lead them to commit acts of fraud, embezzlement, money laundering, tax evasion, and bribery.

Trump resides in a world where white-collar crime often goes undetected. With a lifetime's knowledge, he could educate banks, other corporations, and the Internal Revenue Service on how to detect the most common types of white-collar criminal activity.

Trump understands how violence in the criminally oriented can be triggered. He knew which buttons to push to unleash his most violent supporters on the Capitol on Jan. 6 2021, knowing that assaulting the undermanned Capitol police was necessary to breach the building.

Trump understands how potentially violent criminals can be goaded to action, whether by an MS-13 gang leader, a Mafia don, or a losing presidential candidate.

Trump understands political crime — the illegal schemes that destroyers of democracy employ to put themselves in power by ousting a country’s elected leaders — better than anyone. Trump knows everything political criminals will try to achieve their goal: violence, coercion, false claims of rigged elections, and enlisting corruptible federal and state officials to carry out their schemes. No one is in a better position than Trump to sniff out illegal, anti-democratic plots.

If Trump used his criminality for the good, he could help atone for his own crimes and rehabilitate his blackened image. Trump could become the law-and-order president he brazenly proclaims to be.

Up to now, though, Trump has personally contributed more to crime than he has to bringing it down. His forays into law and order have been chilling shows of authoritarian power.

He called out the National Guard in Los Angeles, unlawfully according to a federal judge, to quell predominantly peaceful protests. He called out the Guard in Washington, D.C., where the violent crime rate had dropped 35 percent, to its lowest level in 30 years.

In addition, it’s never a good look for a law-and-order president to pardon violent criminals convicted of assaulting police officers at the Capitol; to pardon husband-and-wife reality show stars convicted of massive bank fraud; and to refuse to rule out pardoning sexual predator Ghislaine Maxwell, who despicably lured young women into the evil clutches of Jeffrey Epstein, to whom the nature of the president’s connection remains undetermined.

But people can change, and plenty of terrible criminals have turned around their lives and contributed to society.

As Trump gets ever closer to meeting his maker, he may undergo a religious epiphany. A greater inducement, however, may be the lure of financial gain: The Art of Criminality, a sequel to The Art of the Deal, would be a potential bestseller that could also benefit the government, law-enforcement agencies, businesses, communities, and individual citizens.

Frank Abagnale, one of the greatest conmen and forgers of all time, was ultimately caught by the FBI and given the option of prison or working with his captors. Abagnale chose the FBI, examining suspicious checks and showing banks across the country how to spot forgeries. Working for the FBI for 36 years, the erstwhile criminal helped to catch thousands of forgers and saved banks hundreds of millions of dollars.

Donald Trump has the opportunity to be another Frank Abagnale, possessing a motherlode of knowledge that could help bring criminals to justice. Like Abagnale, Trump could reinvent himself by using his personal expertise to help make America a safer place. No people love a redemption story more than Americans. Trump’s would rank among the greatest.

This damning lesson would dump Trump on the ash heap of history

There is one thing that tens of millions of zealous Donald Trump detractors get wrong. We try to judge him through the lens of normal human behavior — which simply doesn’t apply.

We don’t need to be psychologists to understand that Trump suffers from overlapping disorders of sociopathy and megalomania accompanied by grandiose thinking. Behavior that to most people appears outrageously deviant is perfectly normal to a person in Trump’s mental state.

Trump lies as frequently and effortlessly as most people breathe, a common characteristic of sociopaths. Pathological liars often convince themselves they are telling the truth and completely ignore obvious evidence to the contrary.

In his demented state, Trump may actually believe that the 2020 election was stolen from him, that voter fraud among noncitizens was widespread, and that Democrats controlled voting machines. The consummate liar, Trump spreads these falsehoods with such adamant conviction that they take root among his followers.

Other characteristics of sociopaths include an inability to feel empathy, to feel guilt or remorse, or to distinguish right from wrong. During the COVID pandemic, Trump was less troubled by the over 1 million Americans who died, many due to his irresponsible, cavalier response to the virus, than by the pandemic’s economic impact and his approval ratings. He has greenlighted Israel’s assault on Palestinians in Gaza, unmoved by the wholesale slaughter of women and children and the massive starvation.

Don’t expect Trump to feel sorry for millions of poorer Americans struggling with rising consumer prices caused by his tariff wars or by 4.4 million American children who aren’t covered by health insurance. Trump reserves such empathy for himself, consumed by feelings of victimization common among sociopaths.

The inability of sociopaths to distinguish right from wrong is at the heart of their illness. For example, in separate trials, Trump was found civilly liable for sexual abuse and bank fraud, and found guilty on criminal charges related to his scheming to influence the 2016 election. He was indicted but never faced trial on further criminal charges, for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election results and absconding with classified documents.

In Trump’s warped mind, he did absolutely nothing wrong.

Lacking a moral compass, sociopaths are guided by their uninhibited desires to do whatever they want for personal gain, no matter how immoral or hurtful to others.

Megalomaniacs have a strong desire for power and control, which they are reluctant to share with anyone. They believe in their grandiose state that they are exceptional, above all others, singularly responsible for anything good that happens while blaming others for their failures.

Trump has little acquaintance with the pronoun “we.” He claims that he personally ended seven wars in seven months, that his tariffs are bringing great wealth to the country, and that he saved Los Angeles by calling in the National Guard.

In Trump’s grandiose projections, only one man holds the key to America’s future and the future of the world, despite mounting evidence that Trump often makes bad situations worse.

Trump disdains coalitions like NATO, the United Nations, and the Paris Climate Accord. Trump believes, deludedly, that he can accomplish more on his own than any coalition, and longs for the individual acclaim and admiration that megalomaniacs feel they deserve, including a Nobel Prize.

Megalomaniacs are insufferable braggarts. In Trumpworld, not a day passes that he doesn’t brag about greatly exaggerated or falsely claimed successes. At the apex of grandiose thinking, Trump often laughably characterizes his achievements as the greatest the world has ever seen. Of course, apologies, admittance of mistakes, and expressions of remorse never pass his lips.

So here we sit, with a mentally unhinged president whose outrageous behavior is difficult for normal people to comprehend.

Megalomaniacs are attracted to politics because of the power and control they can exert. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao rank among the most destructive in history. In the US, it took 240 years for Trump to come along and con a nation. Germans keep the horrific memory of Hitler’s reign alive today to make sure that German history never repeats itself. Americans must do the same.

It is every democratic-loving American’s responsibility to do everything within the law to hamstring Trump’s presidency before he causes irreparable harm to the country. In a democracy, only we the people can change the country through the awesome constitutional power of the ballot.

Tom Tyner is a freelance editorialist, satirist, political analyst, blogger, author and retired English instructor

Only one thing can stop Trump turning the US into Russia

Governor Gavin Newsom is doing exactly what he had to do with his redistricting plan in California: attempting to stop Donald Trump rigging the 2026 midterms election in Republicans’ favor.

When you have a president bent on maximizing his autocratic power and positioning his party to dominate federal elections and create virtual one-party rule, no response is too extreme.

Newsom didn’t choose to create five Democratic-leaning House districts out of territory currently held by Republican lawmakers. He threatened it as a tactic to get Trump and his obeisant Texas governor and lawmakers to back off their gerrymandering scheme to rig the election.

Since Texas went through with the redistricting, Newsom had the choice of allowing Trump’s attempt to steal the House to go unchallenged or to counterattack and re-level the playing field.

That Trump would attempt to rig the 2026 midterms should shock no one.

This is the guy who lied that the 2020 presidential election was stolen — who coerced governors, state legislatures, and election officials to change votes, who created fraudulent elector slates to cast fraudulent electoral votes, who tried to get Vice President Mike Pence to subvert the electoral certification process, and who incited a violent mob to attack the Capitol in an attempt to halt the presidential certification of Joe Biden.

It is also no coincidence that three of Trump’s most admired political pals – Vladimir Putin, Victor Orbán, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — enjoy virtual one-party rule, their parties having long-established strangleholds on election results and governmental power. Thinly veiled autocracies today, the erstwhile democracies of Russia, Hungary, and Turkey have been crushed.

This is exactly what Trump and his Project 2025 chums have in mind for the US.

Trump is attempting to kneecap the Democratic Party’s chances in all future elections through gerrymandering and voter suppression. Measures such as eliminating mail-in voting, disallowing voting machines, reducing the number of polling places, eliminating election-day registration, and requiring proof of citizenship are all aimed at suppressing the vote of minorities who traditionally support Democrats.

Trump’s successful ploy to add five Republican districts in Texas is part of a grander scheme to reshape America’s governance system and render the two-party democratic system defunct.

In virtual one-party systems, the ruling party controls all branches of government, Trump’s obvious goal.

In one-party rule autocracies, opposition parties and shows of public dissent are often suppressed through legal, political, or violent means. Power is centralized within the ruling party and its authoritarian leader, with no democratic system of checks and balances to restrain it. Constitutions are reinterpreted or rewritten to help the ruling party and its authoritarian leader remain in power indefinitely.

This is the direction the US is headed. We have an overreaching, power-grasping president and a rubber-stamp Republican Congress that obediently does his bidding. Atop the judicial system is a pliant Supreme Court filled with Trump appointees. Federal judges who rule against Trump’s unconstitutional executive orders are maligned and served with lawsuits.

Authoritarian bullying is rampant. Trump punishes universities and states that refuse to bend a knee to his demands. He calls out the national guard to militarize Democratic-controlled cities and launches sham investigations of Trump’s critics conducted by the servile heads of the DOJ and FBI. Trump signs executive orders that violate states’ and the federal legislature’s rights. These anti-democratic acts are just the beginning.

Trump may steal the 2026 House election by other red states following Texas’s gerrymandering lead coupled with repressive voting laws that disenfranchise traditional Democratic voters. Republicans’ one-party rule would then be given two more years to entrench itself in the manner of Putin’s, Orban’s, and Erdogan’s parties. Democracy as we have known it would no longer exist.

With his redistricting plan, Newsom is pushing back. Other Democratic states may follow suit. But Trump’s election scheme has created a chillingly dark day for American democracy. Thanks to Trump, the winning party in 2026 must out-manipulate the other, since winning fairly is no longer an option.

Democrats must win the House by hook or by crook in 2026 to save America from becoming an autocratic, one-party rule country. Every anti-democratic act that Trump commits provides more striking evidence of the intent.

Governor Newsom did not stand by and let Trump’s dirty election tricks go unchallenged. If other Democratic leaders and the vast majority of voters follow suit, Trump’s second attempt to destroy American democracy will be his last.

Tom Tyner is a freelance editorialist, satirist, political analyst, blogger, author and retired English instructor

Trump's worst outrage is close to being forgotten

Most of us humans have scant ability to hold in our minds things that seemed of tremendous importance not that long ago. We seldom hark back to an incident that at the time seemed momentous, only to be shoved to the back of our minds by a succession of more recent attention-grabbing events.

Thus, far too seldom do we think back on one of the most disturbing incidents in US political history: Donald Trump’s illegal scheme to destroy American democracy by attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and replace the duly elected president, Joe Biden, with the loser, Donald Trump.

Trump’s assault on democracy is something we must never forget.

The evidence of Trump’s criminality was such that the Department of Justice indicted him on four felony counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and witness tampering. If brought to trial and convicted, Trump would have faced serious prison time.

The indictment cites compelling evidence of Trump’s illegal activities:

Using knowingly false claims of election fraud to get state legislatures and election officials to change electoral votes
Organizing fraudulent slates of electors to cast fraudulent votes for Trump
Using the Justice Department to conduct sham election crime investigations
Using Vice-President Pence in the certification proceeding to fraudulently alter the election results
Inciting a Capitol insurrection to halt the certification process of electoral votes

If Trump’s illegal scheme had worked, he would have supplanted Biden as president and American democracy would have been crushed. The election of the US president in accordance with the Constitution would have been subverted, the American people would have been denied their constitutional right to elect their president, and the losing candidate would have pulled off a bloodless coup against the US government.

The American people cannot be reminded too often or strongly that the person who attempted to destroy our democracy is now sitting in the White House. Had he not been elected president, he would have stood trial and if convicted by a jury of his peers, could very well be sitting in prison today.

Trump’s first seven months in office shows that he is as disdainful of democracy as when he attempted to subvert it in 2020. He has attacked judges who have ruled his executive orders illegal or unconstitutional, run roughshod over the Constitution and rule of law, usurped the authority of a compliant legislature, and appointed servile loyalists to head the FBI, CIA, and DOJ and do his authoritarian bidding.

Attempting to skew the 2026 midterm elections in Republicans’ favor, Trump has vowed to enact an unconstitutional executive order to end mail-in voting and pressed Texas to add five Republican-dominated election districts through gerrymandering to try and maintain a House majority.

With still a year and a half before the election, Trump will assuredly devise other schemes to try and corrupt the mid-term election process as he did the 2020 presidential election results.

We must never forget that our current president poses the greatest internal threat to American democracy of any president in history. He has already proven that he was willing to destroy our democracy to stay in power. Every day that he remains as president is a reminder that no person has ever been less deserving of the office.

So much has gone on since Trump was reelected that his vile assault on democracy in 2020 is a fading memory: his tariff wars, his outrageous lusting to acquire Greenland and make Canada our 51st state, his treacherous attacks on universities and blue states, his using his presidential power to wreak vengeance on his “enemies,” his failed claim to end Russia’s war on Ukraine, his green-lighting Israel’s genocidal slaughter of Palestinian civilians, and his transparent, pathological lying that reveals an ever-growing state of delusion.

Each of Trump’s latest outrages pushes the 2020 election treachery farther into the recesses of memory.

So what happens now that we’ve elected a democratic-smashing authoritarian president? First, we make sure that we never again elect a person whose is not 100 percent committed to protecting and preserving American democracy. Lesson learned.

Next, we do everything possible to mitigate the damage that Trump can do as president.

As patriotic Americans, we can protest regularly en masse against Trump’s ongoing attempt to turn America into an autocracy like Russia or Hungary. We can elect Democratic majorities to the House and Senate in 2026 to rein in an overreaching, power-grasping president and ensure that no onerous, anti-democratic laws are passed.

We should strongly encourage the 2026-elected Congress to impeach Trump, shortening the amount of time he has to shred our democracy. If democracy is as precious and inviolable to us as to our forefathers, we will do everything within the law to remove the democratic annihilator from the White House as soon as possible.

Tom Tyner is a freelance editorialist, satirist, political analyst, blogger, author and retired English instructor

Here's the script for ending Trump’s grotesque reality show

Will a Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections free American democracy from the rapacious grasp of an authoritarian president bent on destroying it?

Will Americans finally be free of the helpless, gnawing dread that fills our waking days?

Will decency, goodness, and light prevail over the wickedness, corruption, and darkness that has infested the country?

To find out, tune in for every new episode of TV’s most exasperating reality show, It Can’t Get Any Worse, Can It?

If only we were living in a Truman Show fake reality that we could just turn off or not take seriously. Today’s real America has all of the trappings of bad TV: a president who lies so outrageously that he has turned orange; TV talking heads masquerading as cabinet members; all female appointees played by the same woman with lustrous hair and pouty lips; the National Guard showing up in the streets like the Royal Soldiers of Oz.

We are living in an upside-down America. We have a president who loves evil dictators and disdains democratic leaders; a Republican Party whose second-favorite politician is Victor Orbán, the autocratic leader of Hungary; a country where diversity, equity and inclusion are dirty words; where classic books like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Catcher in the Rye have been banned in school districts; where voter suppression is lauded as election reform; where the Supreme Court says it’s okay with them if the president breaks the law; and where the Constitution is being torn asunder rather than revered.

All of these terrible things are happening that we feel powerless to stop. We are gaining a little understanding of how it must feel to live under a dictatorship where the government does whatever the hell it wants, public opinion be damned.

People living under the weight of autocratic repression can begin to feel that their reality is inescapable and try hard to make the best of it. Is this fatalistic resignation already beginning to creep in with some Americans as we watch helplessly while the pillars of democratic governance are being smashed before our eyes?

When people in a democracy begin to feel powerless to affect change, they can lose hope, particularly when the cruel tyrant in the White House has another three-and-a-half years to amass power and hack away at constitutional constraints and the rule of law.

The 2026 midterm elections may seem a lifetime away, a light at the end of the tunnel too dim and distant to inspire hope.

But it’s what we have.

If we can elect a Democratic majority in the House (and the Senate if the stars align), we have struck a critical blow for democracy.

First, we will have provided a referendum on Trump’s first two years in the White House, sending the message that the majority of Americans oppose his anti-democratic, radical-right agenda.

Second, we would now have at least one legislative body committed to rebuilding our democracy by asserting critical checks and balances, playing a role in halting executive overreach. In addition, the impeachment of Trump would certainly be justified, a wealth of evidence to support it.

Third, the House could block all onerous legislation that Trump could have signed into law including measures to suppress voting rights, increase gun proliferation, increase global warming, weaken the judiciary branch, weaken or eliminate essential safety-net programs, and make the executive the towering, predominant branch of government.

The future of America truly hangs in the balance, and it could go one of two wildly disparate ways.

Will we go the way of Russia and Hungary by becoming a faux democracy with the legislative and judicial branches subservient to an authoritarian president and voter-suppression laws reducing the US to a virtual one-party system?

Or will we reclaim our democracy, restore the health of the three equal, independent branches of government, keep our two-party democratic system intact, and ensure that every US citizen is provided the greatest unfettered access to vote?

Stay tuned for every episode of It Can’t Get Any Worse, Can It?, shown 24/7 across the country. We have it in our power to help craft a terrific ending where American democracy is saved and strengthened, the actors are unceremoniously hustled off the set, and the show is mercifully cancelled. Forever.

Tom Tyner is a freelance editorialist, satirist, political analyst, blogger, author and retired English instructor.

One powerful remedy would rid us of Trump — and he's scrambling to hide it

It has become increasingly apparent that Donald Trump is turning his presidential administration into the most corrupt in U.S. history. Nothing that comes from the mouth of Trump or his loyalist appointees can ever be trusted.

Trump appointees John Radcliffe, Kash Patel, and Pete Hegseth, heads of the CIA, FBI, and Pentagon respectively, reiterated Trump’s lie that the U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities “obliterated” the country’s nuclear program.

Damage assessments by the Pentagon Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) proved the claim to be patently false.

Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, had testified to Congress that there was no evidence Iran was building a nuclear weapon. Since that assessment ran contrary to Trump’s reason for bombing Iran, Gabbard reversed course, lying that she had been wrong.

Trump’s Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, lied to the Senate Appropriations Committee that massive cuts in employee numbers are not intended to reduce the role or effectiveness of the DOE. In reality, McMahon is doing her intended job: to oversee the dismantling of the department at Trump's behest, to eliminate the federal government’s support for public education.

Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed months ago that she had the list of people associated with convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein sitting on her desk. Since such a list would embarrass Trump at the least or implicate him at the worst, she later contradicted herself and said that she was referring to all Epstein documents, not a specific associates list.

After releasing several monthly reports citing positive U.S. job growth, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported much slower growth for July. Since the report didn’t support Trump’s claims of a booming US economy, Trump attacked BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer, falsely claimed the numbers were rigged, and fired her. No doubt she will be replaced by a Trump loyalist, the veracity of the BLS jobs report never again to be trusted.

Trump’s consistent modus operandi is to attempt to alter reality whenever the truth doesn’t suit him and to get rid of anyone who doesn’t go along.

Trump continues to lie that the 2020 presidential election was fixed, that he had no role in inciting the violent January 6 Capitol riot, that he had no role in the fake presidential electors' scheme, that he didn’t attempt to coerce the governor of Georgia to “find votes,” and that he had the right to abscond with highly classified documents after leaving office in 2021.

His illegal acts earned him two DOJ indictments and potential prison time had he not been elected president.

Of course, Trump’s lying never ceases. To support his demand that the Fed lower interest rates, Trump lied that there is no inflation when the last report indicated a worrisome spike.

To humiliate Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell, Trump ambushed Powell on TV, lying that the Fed had grossly overrun its renovation costs by throwing in a building that was renovated five years ago. Powell called out Trump on the lie and reversed the humiliation, his days as board chair assuredly numbered.

The corruption at the core of Trump’s being has permeated the Republican-controlled federal government. The understood charge of all Trump appointees is to peddle his lies, gloss over his failures, and put their agencies and departments at his disposal. The vast majority of Republican congressmen share in the corruption, either by allowing Trump and his appointees’ lies to go unchallenged or by reinforcing them.

Think tariffs are a boon to Americans? That Trump has the gravitas to bend Putin and Netanyahu to his will? That greater consumer spending will reduce America’s gigantic deficit? That ICE is only going after immigrants with criminal records?

If so, the Trump administration’s perpetual lying machine along with a complicit Republican Congress is accomplishing its purpose.

When a democratic government loses the trust of the people, there is one powerful remedy: turning out the scoundrels who betray the American people with their every dishonesty. But Trump and his servile allies are banking on Americans being so dupable that we will continue swallowing their every deceit.

If they are right, we are fast approaching a totalitarian future where the truth is whatever guileful lie the government fabricates. If they are wrong, we the people will unceremoniously sweep them from office, beginning in 2026, and restore Americans’ trust in our democratic government.

Tom Tyner is a freelance editorialist, satirist, political analyst, blogger, author and retired English instructor.