It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration, to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism.
Trump's assault on American democracy. The most important article to read this week came from the NYT's Editorial Board: "Are We Losing Our Democracy?". It lists 12 traits of an autocratic regime, and details how Trump has achieved some and is making inroads on the others. Articles like this one make it clear that words like "autocrat", "fascist", etc. or not just insults or evidence of Trump derangement. They are clear assessments of where we are.
Climate change. I'm late to notice, but the rhetoric of climate denial has changed.
Gaza. Nominally there is still a ceasefire, but the killing continues: "On Tuesday, Israeli airstrikes killed more than 100 Palestinians, at least 66 of them women and children, in the deadliest day since Donald Trump declared the war was over. Israel said the bombings were in response to an attack in Rafah city that killed a soldier carrying out demolitions there."
Ukraine. Russia continues a slow and costly advance in the Donetsk region, while Ukrainian drones get increasingly effective inside Russia.
This week's developments
This week everybody was talking about the shutdown
A lapse in SNAP benefits and higher premiums on ObamaCare policies both kicked in on Saturday. That's the topic of one of the featured posts.
This week Trump floated his solution to the shutdown, which is the one I predicted two weeks ago: The Senate should do away with the filibuster so that he wouldn't have to negotiate with Democrats. So far, Senate Republicans don't seem interested.
and tariffs
The Senate voted three times this week to revoke the national emergencies Trump declared to raise tariffs on Canada, Brazil, and the broad range of countries in his "liberation day" tariffs. The votes will have no practical effect because the House will not concur and Trump would veto the resolution if they did, but they do mark the first stirrings of resistance in the Senate, at least among Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Rand Paul, and Mitch McConnell.
Friday the Supreme Court will hear arguments about whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 really works the way Trump says it does, and gives him the power to do whatever he wants with tariffs. Lower courts have said no, but that's because they were doing law; the Supreme Court may be doing something else.
The Brazil and Canada tariffs should be the biggest piece of evidence against Trump having the power he claims. Both seem to have less to do with national security and more with Trump's personal rages.
He imposed 50% tariffs on Brazil because that country prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned its former president, Jair Bolsonaro, for doing essentially the same thing Trump did on January 6. He recently raised tariffs on Canada because the province of Ontario produced an ad he didn't like.
and tomorrow's elections
Odd-numbered years are usually slow for elections, but there are a few: Tomorrow New York City will elect a new mayor, and Virginia and New Jersey will elect new governors.
In NYC, Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary, but the party establishment has not united around him. Former Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo is running as an independent. Mamdani is ahead in the polls.
Mamdani is a charismatic candidate who appeals to young voters. He is also Muslim, has been critical of Israel, and is part of the Democratic Socialist wing of the party. Big money is being spent to take him down, but it doesn't seem to be working.
and the White House
Three stories of Trump's abuses of power got attention these last two weeks:
tearing down the East Wing of the White House to build a massive gilded ballroom
filing claims against his own Justice Department asking for $230 million
The president insisted on Tuesday that the government owes him “a lot of money” for previous justice department investigations into his conduct, while at the same time asserting his personal authority over any potential payout.“
It’s interesting, ’cause I’m the one that makes the decision, right?” Trump said at the White House, responding to questions about administrative claims he filed seeking roughly $230m related to the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago and the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The New York Times had reported the claims on Tuesday.
Trump’s comment lays out a circular situation: Trump as president would in effect decide whether Trump as claimant receives taxpayer money for investigations into Trump as defendant.
The circularity is the only reason these claims might be paid. Both the Mar-a-Lago search and the Russia investigation were totally justified, and his claims otherwise would be laughed out of court. Trump says he would give the money to charity, but he's said things like that before.
You might wonder how Trump can spend $300 million on a ballroom without consulting Congress, but he says he's raising the money privately, from a list of individuals and corporations all of whom will likely want government favors at some point. In the long run, taxpayers would probably be better off paying for the ballroom themselves.
He also hasn't consulted the National Capital Planning Commission. Hillary Clinton made the key point: "It's not his house."
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Here's a typical story about how the Trump administration responds to corruption: Last Sunday, FBI Director Kash Patel began taking heat on social media for going to State College, PA on an FBI jet so that he could watch his girlfriend sing the national anthem at a wrestling match. The plane then went on to Nashville, where she lives.
Clearly somebody should be fired for this, and somebody was: the guy who oversees the FBI's jet fleet. Patel appears to blame him for the story getting out, despite the fact that his flights were trackable by the general public.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) also considers disinformation to be part of its mission, which is how they got interested in climate change. They put out a report about how climate denialists have changed their tactics in 2024. (But I just noticed it this week). They distinguish "old denial" (which says climate change either isn't happening or isn't caused by humans burning fossil fuels) from "new denial" (which creates doubt about what can or should be done).
They had an AI algorithm produce and examine transcripts from more than 12K YouTube videos posted by climate denialists between 2018 and 2023. This graphic explains what they found.
This "climate change," it’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion. All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people that have cost their countries fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success. If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail.
The PBS article I quoted this from debunks many of Trump's claims.
One big step towards the MAGA takeover of American media is faux-independent Bari Weiss becoming editor-in-chief of CBS News. How this happened is an instructive lesson in media consolidation: CBS was taken over by Viacom in 2000, spun off in 2005, then reacquired in 2019. Viacom took the name of its subsidiary Paramount, reflecting its entertainment-media focus.
The best intro to Bari Weiss comes from John Oliver, who focused on her three weeks ago.
Now Bari Weiss is choosing the next anchor of CBS Evening News, which was the most important job in news back when Walter Cronkite had it. Most of the names being kicked around are from Fox News.
You might wonder why Texas AG Ken Paxton would do this:
Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Johnson & Johnson and Kenvue for deceptively marketing Tylenol to pregnant mothers despite knowing that early exposure to acetaminophen, Tylenol’s only active ingredient, leads to a significantly increased risk of autism and other disorders.
I mean, it's not like anyone but RFK Jr. actually believes Tylenol significantly increases autism risk. So how can Paxton hope to win a suit claiming that Tylenol's makers "knew" something none of the experts in the field know today?
Amanda Marcotte explains: Paxton has lost his lead over incumbent Senator John Cornyn for the GOP senate nomination in Texas. He desperately needs Trump's endorsement, so he is demonstrating to the Mad King that he is willing to act on whatever nonsense the regime spits out.
Trump's assault on American democracy. The American People pushed back a little this week. That's the subject of the featured post.
Climate change. Lots of statistics get thrown around about climate change, but the most important one is the quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere. In 2024, atmospheric CO2 jumped by a record 3.5 parts per million, to reach a record 424 ppm.
Ukraine. Over the last few weeks, Trump did what he does so often: floated an idea to support Ukraine (by supplying it with long-range Tomahawk missiles), got a lot of positive headlines for it, but then backed down after talking to Vladimir Putin. Now he's planning to meet Putin in Budapest, a move that supports not just Putin, but Hungary's authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán, Putin's only ally in the EU. Trump likes to appear independent of Putin, but remains incapable of standing up to him.
This week's developments
This week's theme: resisting the regime
That's the topic of the featured post, which covers the No Kings rallies, the revolt of the Pentagon press corps, universities refusing to sign Trump's compact, Democrats standing firm on the budget, and an appeals court ruling keeping troops out of Chicago.
Yesterday the NYT published the most clueless article I've seen in some while: "It’s 2025, and Democrats Are Still Running Against Trump". Apparently, we're supposed to ignore the fascist takeover that's happening and talk about more normal political issues.
I also love the idea that we should take advice from "a veteran Republican admaker and political strategist" who says "If I were running a Democratic campaign, I would be attempting to broaden my coalition beyond a visceral hatred of Trump".
Maybe seeing democracy collapsing before their very eyes can change the minds of previously uncommitted voters. Anti-Trump might become a very broad coalition indeed.
and voting rights
John Roberts has been chipping away at the Voting Rights Act for years, enabling a great many voter suppression laws in red states. Now he seems ready to finish the job.
Basically, Roberts wants every government action to be color-blind. That sounds good if you don't think about it too hard. But when generations of racism has created a problem, how do you address that problem without mentioning race?
Wednesday, the Court heard arguments in Louisiana v Callais, and the issue in question is whether states can engage in racial gerrymandering -- the only kind of gerrymandering that current interpretations of the law bans.
Not only is this the kind of thing Roberts has wanted to do his whole career, it might have the side benefit of making it virtually impossible for Democrats to recapture the House in 2026, or maybe ever. An analysis in the NYT says that in some scenarios, Democrats would have to win the national popular vote by 5% or more in order to get a majority of House seats.
and the shutdown
Republicans are claiming that Democrats just didn't want to fold before the No Kings rallies, but that they will now that the rallies are over. I'm not seeing it.
At stake here is the narrative of Trump's invincibility: If he has to offer a concession, even a popular one, then resistance is productive. If Democrats cave without getting anything, then they're useless.
A local TV station suggests five dates that are pressure points for the shutdown: three paycheck dates, the open-enrollment starting date for the ObamaCare exchanges (November 1), and Thanksgiving, when millions of Americans will try to travel and air-traffic controllers would still be working without pay.
I hear a lot of speculation of the form: "They'll have to resolve this by X, because otherwise this painful thing will happen." But which side does the pain move? Either Trump makes a concession or he doesn't, so there's no obvious compromise on that.
The only way out I see is for Republicans to nuke the filibuster in the Senate. Then they can run over Democrats without giving up anything.
and the Navy murdering Venezuelan fishermen
From the beginning, I've been appalled by the policy of blowing up boats in the Caribbean because someone suspects they might be carrying drugs. Appalled, but also puzzled: What's the point here? Even if the suspicions are true, drug smuggling is not a capital offense, and the people on the boats have been denied due process, or any kind of process at all. The boats could have been stopped by the Coast Guard and the drugs confiscated. And boats from Venezuela are not the main avenue for drug smuggling anyway. So who is better off because the boats are destroyed and the people on it dead?
Well, it seems like the officer in charge has some of the same doubts. Admiral Alvin Holsey, the head of the U.S. Southern Command that oversees operations in the Caribbean, quit his job one year into a three-year assignment, and will retire after a 37-year career.
The strike, which President Donald Trump confirmed Friday, was the sixth known strike on a boat allegedly involved in drug trafficking. But it appeared to mark the first time an attack had not killed everyone on board.
The detention marks the first time that the Trump administration’s military campaign targeting drug traffickers has resulted in the US holding prisoners, and it sets up a complicated legal and policy situation for the administration. ... The men held by the US Navy could hypothetically petition the courts to rule on the legality of their detention in what’s known as a habeas corpus claim, Finucane noted — a pathway followed by a number of detainees in the past that could reveal more information about the Trump administration’s secretive legal rationale for the strikes.
We may also finally find out what evidence the regime has that these boats are smuggling drugs. It's a serious question whether these are actually drug smugglers, or just fishermen in the wrong place.
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Montana has come up with a creative proposal to get corporate money out of politics. Prior to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in 2010, governments controlled corporate contributions directly, by passing campaign-finance laws. Jay Kuo:
The High Court’s decision rested on the notion that corporations, long defined as “legal persons,” are entitled to First Amendment protections just like actual people. Therefore, they held, it is a violation of their “freedom of speech” to put restrictions on what their money can say and do, even in politics.
We know what happened next. Big corporations, through super PACs and outside groups, flooded the system, drowning out individuals’ voices. And there seemed no way to stop it, short of a constitutional amendment that would allow limits on corporate political spending.
Just this summer, a federal court citing Citizens United struck down a Maine law that limited contributions to political action committees to $5,000 per donor, whether that donor was an individual or a corporation.
But a new idea is being pushed in Montana: Even if corporations are people, they are still defined by the state that incorporates them, and only have the powers their charters give them. Organizers hope to have a ballot initiative in 2026 that revises Montana's corporate code to take away corporations' power to contribute to political campaigns. Further, it would allow corporations incorporated in other states to have only the same powers as Montana corporations when they operate in Montana.
Unless the Supreme Court comes up with some new oligarchic doctrine knocking this down, other states could imitate it.
Vox' Ian Milhiser lists the five safeguards we used to have against rogue government agencies like ICE, and how the Supreme Court has blocked them.
Is anyone really surprised to discover that when Young Republicans chat among themselves, the conversation turns racist and fascist?
One more reason why Pete Hegseth should never have been allowed anywhere near the SecDef office: He OK'd a plan to celebrate the birthday of the Marine Corps by firing live artillery shells over Interstate 5 in California.
Trump commuted the 7-year prison sentence of former congressman George Santos. There has never been any question about Santos' guilt, so I can only surmise two justifications: (1) Trump doesn't think Trump supporters should be punished for committing crimes. (2) Being a fraudster himself, Trump identifies with fraudsters.
Vox' Bryan Walsh writes an optimistic piece about cities becoming more bike-able. Grist has an article on the same topic.
and let's close with something unique
I don't normally do much sports coverage, but it's worth noting that in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series, Shohei Ohtani produced what is probably the greatest single-game performance in the history of baseball. Ohtani pitched six scoreless innings and hit three home runs in a 5-1 victory that sent the LA Dodgers to the World Series.
The only player comparable to Ohtani, Babe Ruth, had two 3-homer games in his career and also had scoreless pitching starts in the post-season, but never both in the same game.
Just over a year ago, President Joe Biden had proposed a similar deal to the one pitched by Trump, to no avail. Did Trump succeed by pressuring Netanyahu in a way that his predecessor refused to do? Or did Israel simply degrade Hamas so badly that the terrorist group had no choice but to agree? Both factors seem to have played a role. Did Arab countries sway Hamas, or did the monarchies push Trump to change his stance? Both, again, seem to have been factors, according to our conversations with 10 officials from the United States, Israel, Arab nations, and Europe, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing talks. Now the question is whether the swap of hostages for prisoners unfolds as planned, and whether this week’s diplomatic success will amount to anything more than a blip in the fighting.
and the ongoing invasion of Chicago
The semi-comic superhero Peacemaker once said: "I made a vow to have peace. No matter how many people I have to kill to get it." Trump's ICE raids and National Guard deployments are similar: He would have us believe that he is dead set on stopping crime, no matter how many laws he has to break to do it. And if armed men have to drag you and your family out of your home in the middle of the night and zip-tie you all in the back of a van in order to keep you safe, Trump's people are up to the job.
Here are just a few of the cases I ran into this week:
In Chicago, ICE shot a Presbyterian pastor the head with a pepper ball. ICE agents shot from the roof of their building. The pastor was among nonviolent protesters in the street.
A Delaware domestic violence victim with protected status and no criminal record was taken from her home in front of her children and flown to ICE's Louisiana concentration camp, where she was held for nearly a month before relatives and the Delaware attorney general were able to find her and negotiate her release.
A 13-year-old boy got arrested by police in Everett, Massachusetts. His mother was called to pick him up, but before she could get there ICE had wisked him away to Virginia. "The teen and his family, who are Brazilian nationals, have a pending asylum case and are authorized to work legally in the United States, [immigration lawyer Andrew] Lattarulo said."
And this: "Doctors at Adventist Health White Memorial hospital in Boyle Heights told LAist that hospital administrators are allowing federal immigration agents to interfere in medical decisions and block doctors from properly treating detainees who need emergency care."
I believe I could find large numbers of similar abuses if I looked harder. There is a crime wave in our cities, but it's not immigrants: It's ICE agents who pay no attention to the legal limits on their actions.
The big news this week mainly happened in court. The question to be resolved is how much deference courts owe a president who is either lying or completely deranged.
The laws that allow the President to federalize National Guard units and deploy them to American cities are all based on the existence of certain conditions, like "invasion" by a foreign nation, "rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States", or "the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States".
Ordinarily, if it's anything like a close call, courts defer to a president's judgment about whether such conditions exist. But if a president can make stuff up, then the conditions might as well not be in the law at all. If that's what Congress intended, the law should just say, "The President can take command of the National Guard whenever he wants."
Obviously, the law doesn't say that, so there is some limit to the deference a president is owed. Just as obviously, when Trump described Portland as "war ravaged", he passed that limit. His claims about Chicago are only somewhat more credible.
What Trump intends to do with the troops is also a factor. If the problem he intends to address is "crime" rather than rebellion or insurrection, that is better in one way and worse in another. All cities have crime, so he is at least not delusional when he refers to crime as a problem. But Posse Comitatus and other laws put firm limits on the conditions under which National Guard or regular military units can participate in law enforcement (which has long been a state and local responsibility). So he can call up units, but it's hard to see what they can do (legally) to solve a crime problem.
Here's where things stand at the moment. In Portland, a federal district judge barred Trump from sending National Guard troops -- either Oregon's or some other state's -- to Portland. However, a three-judge appeals court panel reviewing the matter has two Trump appointees, and they seemed skeptical of the lower-court's order. Portland's Channel 6 anticipates that Trump will be allowed to deploy the guard to protect ICE offices and other federal buildings, but not to do any law enforcement.
A Chicago-based federal appeals court has allowed National Guard troops (including 200 from Texas) to remain under federal control in Illinois, but not to deploy to Chicago.
This escalation of violence is targeted and intentional and premeditated. The Trump administration is following a playbook: cause chaos, create fear and confusion, make it seem like peaceful protestors are a mob, by firing gas pellets and teargas canisters at them. Why? To create the pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act, so that he can send military troops to our city. He wants to justify and normalize the presence of armed soldiers under his direct command.
Crowds that have gathered daily and nightly outside the immigration facility in Oregon’s largest city in recent days have embraced the absurd, donning inflatable frog, unicorn, axolotl and banana costumes as they face off with federal law enforcement who often deploy teargas and pepper balls.
Sunday, there was a naked bike ride to protest against troops deploying into the city. See the closing for more Portlandish absurdity.
and the shutdown
There is essentially no progress to report. Democrats are refusing to approve a continuing resolution unless it addresses Obamacare subsidies, which are lapsing and will cause huge increases in many families' health insurance premiums. Republicans are refusing any concessions, even though many of them realize their own constituents are being hurt.
This week the regime announced that it was using the excuse of the government shutdown to fire more federal workers. About 4600 were let go in all, which doesn't sound like a lot compared to the size of the federal government. But certain areas were hit particularly hard: about 100 were fired from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Because, it's not like substance abuse is a problem in America.
THE BIDEN FBI PLACED 274 AGENTS INTO THE CROWD ON JANUARY 6. If this is so, which it is, a lot of very good people will be owed big apologies. What a SCAM - DO SOMETHING!!! President DJT
Anybody see the problem? January 6 happened at the end of the first Trump administration. There was no "Biden FBI". Did Trump forget he was president then?
Under the deal, AstraZeneca agreed to sell its drugs to Medicaid, the health insurance program for lower-income Americans, at about the same prices that it offers to wealthy countries in Europe.
As with all Trump announcements, we'll have to wait and see whether this agreement has any actual effect. But I will guarantee you one thing: It won't have the effect Trump promised. Here's what he said:
Now drug prices are going to be going down 100 percent, 400 percent, 600 percent, 1,000 percent, in some cases. ... And as an example, one particular drug that's hot, very hot, 654 percent, on inhalers, COPD and asthma, as well as certain diabetics medications. They're going to be averaging about 654 percent reduction in price.
If math isn't your strong suit, let me interpret: Suppose a pill costs $1. A 100% price cut means that AstraZeneca gives you the pill for nothing. 1000% of $1 is $10. So a price reduction of 1000% means AstraZeneca will pay you $9 to take the pill. A 654% reduction means they'll pay you $5.54. Do you really believe that's going to happen?
This wasn't a slip of the tongue or a teleprompter screw-up. At the 5:20 mark in the White House video, the camera pulls back enough that you can see a poster on an easel. The poster claims that some drug has a 654% price reduction.
This raises two issues:
Does Trump's brain really work so badly these days that he believes price reductions over 100% are possible? (Seth Meyers would say yes.)
Think about the number of people who had to be involved in producing that poster and setting it up. None of them had the courage to push back and tell the Mad King "This doesn't make any sense."
And finally, let's look at the credulous press coverage Trump gets. The WaPo article on this event doesn't mention his laughable claims. The NYT mentions this dementia symptom in the 7th paragraph of its article:
He spoke of delivering seemingly impossible price reductions, such as a “654 percent discount” on Bevespi Aerosphere, an AstraZeneca inhaler for patients with respiratory problems.
Seemingly impossible? Compare this to the wall-to-wall coverage Biden would get whenever he flubbed something.
During the week that the Special Counsel’s report came out, we examined the top 20 articles on the Times’ landing page every four hours. In that time, they published 26 unique articles about Biden’s age, of which 1 of them explored the possibility that Trump’s age was of equal or more concern.
Now, Trump outright babbles and the WaPo ignores it while the NYT tells us he seems to have made a mistake. Apparently the NYT believes it is a matter of opinion whether drug prices are going down more than 100%.
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Don't forget the No Kings protests on Saturday. There's bound to be one in your area. You may not feel like you can do much to stop the Trump regime. But you can at least do this.
After a few months of relative peace, the trade war with China has restarted. China is restricting exports of rare-earth metals that are used in a wide variety of electronic devices. Trump is threatening 100% tariffs on imports from China. Investment markets crashed on Friday and have recovered somewhat today.
A new report says that the Earth's coral reefs are at a tipping point and have entered into a period of "long-term decline".
The report from scientists and conservationists warns the world is also “on the brink” of reaching other tipping points, including the dieback of the Amazon, the collapse of major ocean currents and the loss of ice sheets.
Back in May, Trump added a carrot to the stick he brandishes against undocumented immigrants: If they would self-deport, the US would fly them to any other country for free, and also give them an "exit bonus" cash payment. ProPublica followed up with immigrants who tried to take advantage of this offer. For many, it hasn't worked out the way Trump described.
Upon his arrival, he planted a majestic cross in a mighty act of devotion, dedicating the land to God and setting in motion America’s proud birthright of faith. ... Guided by steadfast prayer and unwavering fortitude and resolve, Columbus’s journey carried thousands of years of wisdom, philosophy, reason, and culture across the Atlantic into the Americas — paving the way for the ultimate triumph of Western civilization less than three centuries later on July 4, 1776.
Isn't it weird that the Native Americans aren't more grateful for the "thousands of years of wisdom, philosophy, reason, and culture" Columbus brought to them?
and let's close with something relevant
OK, normally the closing is supposed to get your mind off the news. But the most amusing video I've seen this week is this animated music video of Portland's dancing frogs.
A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive, will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence [against] foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.
Trump’s assault on American democracy. Chicago and perhaps Portland are now under attack.
Climate change.Pope Leo spoke out reaffirming his predecessor’s opposition to climate change, saying that it should not be a divisive issue.
Gaza. A new peace plan is on the table. Is this any more likely to take hold than the previous ones?
Ukraine. I’m hearing very little news about advances on the ground in either direction. It seems for now to be mainly a drone war.
This week’s developments
The Trump/Hegseth Quantico speeches
Before the meeting of 800 admirals and generals called to Virginia, speculation was rampant about what it was for. Now that it has happened, we’re still wondering what it was for. I try to unravel it in one of the featured posts.
and the war against blue cities
This week, Blackhawk helicopters attacked an apartment building on Chicago’s south shore. The reality is just as crazy as it sounds. This is the topic of the other featured post.
I forgot to mention this in that post: The Guardian’s Oliver Laughland wrote a long on-the-scene account of the protests against ICE in Chicago, including a long interview with congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh.
and the government shut-down
It’s been a week and neither side is budging. I’m not sure what resolves this eventually, or how long it might take. Trump needs to preserve his authoritarian narrative -- that you can’t resist him successfully, and if you try you’ll be punished. But it’s also hard to see how Democrats can give in without some kind of concession.
For what it’s worth, the public seems to be blaming Republicans more than Democrats: 39% blame the Republicans more, 30% Democrats more, and 31% both sides equally.
This is a situation where Trump-being-Trump works against his own interests. A number of congressional Republicans think they had a more persuasive blame-the-Democrats message: Let’s get a clean continuing resolution for a couple months while we work out the details, and not try to fight for policy changes yet.
But Trump keeps acting like a perpetrator rather than a victim. He wants to use the shutdown to fire more federal workers. He’s trolling Democratic leaders in insulting ways. He’s illegally using government websites and even out-of-office messages to make his political points.
Democrats, meanwhile, have a pretty good ask: Subsidies for ObamaCare healthcare policies are ending, and they want to get them re-funded. So they’re fighting to keep healthcare costs down for millions of Americans, including many Trump voters.
and Gaza
Trump put forward a peace proposal with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which Hamas gave qualified agreement to. Trump pounced on this as a win, making it hard for Netanyahu to back out.
I’m skeptical, though The New Yorker’s Ruth Margalit is less so: She considers it possible that the first step -- release of Hamas’ remaining hostages in exchange for a ceasefire and release of about 2000 of Israel’s Palestinian prisoners -- may go forward.
Speculation about Trump’s mental health has been ramping up lately for a number of reasons. His 70-minute ramble to the generals (see the featured post) was more muddled than usual, and he seemed tired. Governor Pritzker has raised the possibility that Trump’s bizarre posts about Portland and Chicago are demented. A judge Trump appointed himself said that his claims were “untethered to the facts“.
And why would Google need to put its thumb on the scale?
Henry Kissinger once lampooned Argentina’s strategic significance by calling it “a dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica”. Argentina’s economy (the 23rd largest in the world, just behind Belgium) is also not particularly important. But the Trump administration is willing to risk $20 billion of taxpayer money to shore up Argentina just before a major election.
Why? The current president Javier Milei, is a Trump flatterer and a mini-Trump himself. And like Trump, he is very unpopular.
Milei earned many admirers on the right for undertaking a blitz of free-market reforms. Those included slashing government subsidies and regulations, in addition to thinning public sector ranks by 50,000 employees. In return, Trump has referred to Milei as his “favorite president” and offered an endorsement for his re-election.
Also, some well-connected hedge funds have interests in Argentina.
“Donald Trump gets a two-fer here,” [Senator Elizabeth] Warren said. “He gets to bail out his political ally in Argentina, who is very unpopular and in big trouble, and his treasury secretary apparently gets to help his hedge fund buddies.”
Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshittifciation” to explain what has happened to all major internet platforms and services, such as Facebook and Twitter: They draw an audience by providing a convenient service, but then become profitable by abusing that audience after it gets locked in.
In this Guardian article, Doctorow explains in detail the enshittifcation of Amazon, which ensnared not just consumers, but the merchants who provide the products Amazon sells. He explains why the market itself will never fix Amazon, and how it has become impervious to individual action. Only regulation can solve the problem.
The path to a better Amazon doesn’t lie through consumer activism, or appeals to the its conscience. ... Systemic problems have systemic solutions, not individual ones. You can’t shop your way out of a monopoly.
and let’s close with something festive
If you’re not finding a lot to dance about these days, maybe you should look at this collection of the 20 greatest dance routines.
Trump's assault on American democracy. The assault accelerated, with violations of free speech, using the Justice Department to persecute enemies, and threats against the city of Portland.
Climate change. So much else happened in these three weeks, I could barely notice anything about the climate.
Ukraine.Trump apparently did an about-face on this war, suddenly appearing to support Ukraine. Personally, I don't know why anybody pays attention to what he says, since it so seldom leads to action. Currently, Trump is threatening major new sanctions on Russia, but only after Europe completely stops buying Russian oil. There will always be something somebody else has to do first, because Trump is incapable of standing up to Putin.
The new fiscal year starts Wednesday, and there's still no funding to keep the government open. The concessions Democrats are holding out for should be popular, but Trump seems to think a shutdown works to his advantage. So I think we'll just have to have one and see who's right.
I think we're about to find out what all those people do.
and ICE
Wednesday, a rooftop gunman later identified as Joshua Jahn fired down on an ICE facility in Dallas, killing two detainees and wounding another before killing himself. No ICE agents were harmed. The killed appear not to have been targeted directly, but were just in the line of fire as he raked the building with bullets.
Official speculation says that Jahn intended to attack ICE agents, though independent blogger Ken Klippenstein talked to Jahn's friends and described a more complex set of motives.
Both Jahn and Charlie Kirk's killer exemplify how different most shooters are from the rest of us. Most of us have murderous fantasies at one time or another, so we imagine that actual murderers are like us, but with less self-control. I don't think that's true. Look inside the mind of a sniper and you'll usually find a lot of weird stuff that has no parallel in your own mind. John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan to impress a movie star he was obsessed with; I can't find any motive like that in my own mind.
Trump regime spokespeople are trying to use the shooting to gain sympathy for ICE and exempt them from criticism. And while I'll grant that no one deserves to be shot at for doing their job, ICE itself does not deserve your sympathy and should be getting even more criticism.
Check out this video from New York, where an ICE agent physically attacks a woman who had been pleading with him for information about her husband, "who had been abducted by masked ICE agents who did not identify themselves, did not present a warrant, did not give any lawful grounds for his detention." (To their credit, ICE removed the agent from duty and put out a statement saying that his actions were "unacceptable". But I am left to wonder how many similar incidents pass without notice because no one turns them into viral videos.)
A Leominster family who has lived in the United States for more than 20 years said federal immigration agents held their 5-year-old daughter, who is a US-citizen and autistic, in custody outside their home in an effort to pressure the parents to turn themselves over to agents.
The family gave the Globe videos of the girl standing in the driveway, surrounded by armed agents. When the father told them not to touch her, one agent taunted back: "You’re more than welcome to come pick her up."
Ian Roberts is the superintendent of Iowa's largest school district. (Des Moines), and the first person of color to hold that position. Or at least he was until Friday morning when ICE arrested him. As of this weekend, he was in a county jail. Trump got elected pledging to round up violent criminals, but that's not at all what he's doing.
Here's what I say to those who accuse liberals of "demonizing" ICE: It's not demonization if your behavior is genuinely demonic.
A Reuters article notes that federal drug prosecutions are way down. That's a hidden cost of shifting law-enforcement resources to mass deportation. I also wonder about white-collar crime, which Trump has no interest in stopping. This ought to be a golden age for would-be Bernie Madoffs.
There's an ICE processing center in Burlington, MA, a few miles from where I live. Every Wednesday from 11 am to 1 pm, hundreds of people show up to protest. This week I went for the first time.
and corruption
Recent weeks have exposed corrupt acts of both omission and commission. The so-called Department of "Justice" has been using its shield to protect the guilty and its sword to attack the innocent.
In an undercover operation last year, the FBI recorded Tom Homan, now the White House border czar, accepting $50,000 in cash after indicating he could help the agents — who were posing as business executives — win government contracts in a second Trump administration, according to multiple people familiar with the probe and internal documents reviewed by MSNBC.
The FBI and the Justice Department planned to wait to see whether Homan would deliver on his alleged promise once he became the nation’s top immigration official. But the case indefinitely stalled soon after Donald Trump became president again in January, according to six sources familiar with the matter. In recent weeks, Trump appointees officially closed the investigation, after FBI Director Kash Patel requested a status update on the case, two of the people said.
Trump has gotten impatient with DoJ apparently dragging its feet about indicting and convicting his political enemies. Rather than call AG Pam Bondi on the phone, he posted to Truth Social:
Pam: I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, “same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.” ... We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!
[It's worth pointing out that the only one "guilty as hell" is Trump himself. On the merits, both impeachments should have resulted in conviction and removal. With the cooperation of the Supreme Court and a puppet district judge, Trump avoided trial on the most serious indictments. The only time a jury heard the evidence against him, he was convicted on all counts.]
For the most part, DoJ prosecutors have been trying to placate Trump without doing too much injury to their personal integrity. The result has been what LawFare's Benjamin Wittes calls "ghost investigations": DoJ announces that it is investigating Trump's enemies, allowing Fox News to tease its viewers with the anticipation of lurid show trials. But since these people have done nothing wrong other than antagonize Dear Leader, the investigations lead to "all talk, no action", just as Trump said.
Announcing such investigations is an ethical violation in itself -- DoJ should shut up until it has an indictment to file in court -- but people unwilling to compromise themselves at least that far don't survive in the Trump regime.
The most urgent enemy for Trump to indict was James Comey, because the statute of limitations was about to run out on his 2020 testimony to Congress. That effort at persecution had been running into roadblocks, mainly because professional prosecutors did not want to violate their integrity or ruin their reputation by pushing a phony indictment for political purposes.
To start with, Trump-appointed US Attorney Erik Siebert refused to try to indict Comey, believing there was no case. So Trump pushed him out and replaced him with his former personal lawyer (who has never prosecuted a case before) Lindsey Halligan. Halligan was met with a memo from her prosecutors more-or-less repeating that point.
It is unclear whether any career lawyers in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia agreed with the decision to seek charges against Comey or will be willing to help conduct the day-to-day work of the prosecution.
One of the points Halligan will have to defend against is malicious prosecution, for which a judge could throw the case out. To guard against that, you would expect the indictment itself to make a strong case, but the Comey indictment does not: It is a mere page-and-a-half, and just lists the charges without giving a hint as to why anybody should credit those charges. Reportedly, the grand jury refused to support a third count, and passed the other two with a bare 14-9 majority. That doesn't speak well for Halligan's ability to get a unanimous beyond-reasonable-doubt judgment from a trial jury.
But that seems to be beside the point: Halligan needs to please Trump, and Trump wants an indictment. So he got one.
and Portland
The latest American city Trump has chosen to invade for no legitimate reason is Portland.
At the request of Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, I am directing Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to provide all necessary Troops to protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists. I am also authorizing Full Force, if necessary.
Residents of Portland have no idea what he's talking about. The city is not "War ravaged". There have been a few small protests outside ICE offices (probably like the one I participated in Wednesday in Massachusetts), but they are not "under siege from attack by Antifa".
200 troops from the Oregon National Guard have been deployed over the objection of their usual commander, Governor Tina Kotek. Oregon and Portland have come together to file a lawsuit seeking to stop the deployment.
“When the president and I spoke yesterday, I told him in plain language that there is no insurrection or threat to public safety that necessitates military intervention in Portland or any other city in our state," Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek said in a news release Sunday. "Despite this — and all evidence to the contrary — he has chosen to disregard Oregonians’ safety and ability to govern ourselves. This is not necessary. And it is unlawful. And it will make Oregonians less safe."
and autism
The great thing about being a crank is that you're never wrong. Any bit of evidence that supports your view is reliable, while anything pointing the other way is fake. So as soon as Trump appointed well-known crank RFK Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services, you had to know what was coming: an announcement that a simple cause for rising numbers of autism diagnoses has been found, and that it has something to do with either a vaccine or a drug people take.
We got that predictable announcement Monday. Trump and RFK appeared together to announce that autism is caused by taking Tylenol late in pregnancy.
Trump kicked the meeting off by expressing the classic crank fantasy: I know way more than the experts and I always have.
It's probably 20 years ago, in New York. I was a developer, as you probably heard, and I always had very strong feelings about autism and how it happened and where it came from. ... It's turning out that we understood a lot more than a lot of people who studied it.
In a word: no. The best reference I found on this topic was in Stat News. The gist is that there is a (small) correlation between women taking Tylenol during pregnancy and autistic children. But this has been studied for years and nobody has found any causation.
[W]hat researchers debate is whether Tylenol might cause autism, or whether Tylenol is simply more often used by people who experience certain conditions during pregnancy, such as infections or migraines, which might also be linked to autism. This is a key problem in science. Ice cream consumption increases in the summer, as do sunburns and shark attacks. But ice cream does not cause sunburns or shark attacks — they all just happen more often during the summer.
Nothing in the science justifies Trump's unequivocal statement: "So taking Tylenol is not good. All right. I'll say it. It's not good."
And even if the entire correlation were due to Tylenol causing autism, it's way too small to explain the increase in autism diagnoses.
Oh, and there was a bunch of nonsense: Cuba and the Amish do indeed have autism, among other bits of misinformation.
The other headline from the announcement was an "exciting new therapy" for autism: leucovorin. This also is not new. There are some very small studies that show that leucovorin might help somewhat. The normal course of research would be to commission larger studies and see if the small-study result can be replicated -- not to announce an "exciting new therapy".
Finally, even though what they were presenting had nothing to do with vaccines, Trump just couldn't couldn't stop himself from babbling about them.
The other thing that I can tell you that I'll say that they will maybe say at a little bit later date. But I think when you go for the shot, you do it over a five-time period, take it over five times or four times, but you take it in smaller doses and you spread it out over a period of years. And they pump so much stuff into those beautiful little babies, it's a disgrace. I don't see it. I think it's very bad. They're pumping -- it looks like they're pumping into a horse. You have a little child, a little fragile child and you get a vat of 80 different vaccines, I guess, 80 different blends and they pump it in. So ideally, a woman won't take Tylenol. And on the vaccines, it would be good instead of one visit where they pump the baby, load it up with stuff, you'll do it over a period of four times or five times. I mean, I've been so into this issue for so many years just because I couldn't understand how a thing like this could happen and you know it's artificially induced. It's not like something that -- when you go from all of those, you know, healthy babies to a point where I don't even know structurally if a country can afford it and that's the least of the problems. To have families destroyed over this is just so, so terrible. I also -- and we've already done this. We want no mercury in the vaccine. We want no aluminum in the vaccine. The MMR, I think should be taken separately. This is based on what I feel. The mumps, measles and the three should be taken separately. And it seems to be that when you mix them, there could be a problem. So there's no downside in taking them separately. In fact, they think it's better.
A little over a week ago, I was flying back from a vacation in the Azores. (America and the Trump regime seemed very far away, thank you for asking.) My girl friend was sitting next to a doctor from Germany whose wife has a research job in the Boston area. The Azores seemed like a central point for the two to meet for a vacation, but they had to cut the vacation short due to an emergency.
The emergency had nothing to do with medical care, either needing it or needing to provide it. It had nothing to do with houses or kids or parents or any of the other emergencies we typically think of when we think of cutting short a foreign vacation. No, this was a political emergency. Trump has just signed an executive order saying:
entry into the United States of aliens as nonimmigrants to perform services in a specialty occupation under section 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b), is restricted, except for those aliens whose petitions are accompanied or supplemented by a payment of $100,000
That new policy would take effect at midnight on September 21. Our plane was landing around 8 p.m. on the 20th. Our seatmate's wife had one of those 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) (i.e. H1-B) visas, and was panicked that she'd owe $100K if she didn't get back to the US before midnight.
Eventually the Trump regime clarified its order; in fact they wouldn't have owed the money. The $100K is a one-time payment for new visas, not something H1-B holders owe every time they cross the border. But our doctor friend and his wife were not alone in his interpretation:
For a tense 24 hours, workers feared they could be locked out of the United States altogether. Tech companies and banks sent urgent memos advising employees not to leave the country. Bags were packed, tickets bought and families left behind as visa holders scrambled to beat what they believed was a looming deadline.
Video verified by NBC News showed chaos and confusion on a flight from San Francisco to Dubai after Trump’s announcement. The captain is heard citing “unprecedented” circumstances, saying, “There’s a number of passengers that do not wish to travel with us.”
Maybe your eyes glaze over when you see a bureaucratic phrase like "H1-B visa", and maybe sometimes you even succumb to the regime's dehumanization of H1-B holders as "immigrants" or "foreigners". But they're all real people. They have families, they take vacations, and sometimes they sit next to you on airplanes.
Here's a less technical way to think about "section 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b)": When most immigrants come to America, the impetus comes from them. They are either running from an unliveable situation somewhere else, or just seeking a better life here. Many Americans are afraid that if we let in everybody who wants to come, our society will be swamped. They'll drive down wages; we'll lose our unifying values, and so on. So we construct all sorts of legal hurdles people have to jump before they can come and stay for anything longer than a vacation.
But occasionally the impetus to bring someone to America comes from us. They have some rare (or even unique) talent that we need, so we want those people to be able to jump the line and come here quickly, without a bunch of barriers or hurdles. That's what the H1-B visas are for. Every year, we let in about 85K foreigners under this program. They get a three-year visa which they can extend to six years. Many use those six years to apply for a green card and stay permanently.
A variety of exemptions have stretched the numbers in recent years, to 265,777 in 2022. That might be too many. There aren't a quarter-million Einsteins trying to get into the country every year, and one reason entry-level jobs in technology are hard to find might be that companies are bringing in cheap programmers from India and other low-wage countries.
So the justifications given for Trump's executive order were not entirely wrong:
[A]buse of the H-1B visa program has made it even more challenging for college graduates trying to find IT jobs, allowing employers to hire foreign workers at a significant discount to American workers. ... Reports also indicate that many American tech companies have laid off their qualified and highly skilled American workers and simultaneously hired thousands of H-1B workers. ... American IT workers have reported they were forced to train the foreign workers who were taking their jobs and to sign nondisclosure agreements about this indignity as a condition of receiving any form of severance. This suggests H-1B visas are not being used to fill occupational shortages or obtain highly skilled workers who are unavailable in the United States.
So the program is ripe for reform, and it shouldn't be hard to build a bipartisan consensus around some simple changes. But why use a scalpel when you have a hatchet? Paul Krugman summarizes all the ways that Trump's new rule will hurt the US economy and our standing in the world.
But I keep thinking about our seatmate. How many foreigners like him and his wife are getting the impression that the US is bad news? Getting involved with the United States or American companies means giving an unstable autocrat permission to pull your strings.
which all leads to an overwhelming question
All my life, I've been taught to respect the law. But what should we do when the law stops being respectable? Vassar Professor Daniel Mendiola raises this in a Guardian column "The US government is facing a crisis of legitimacy".
Much of the blame for this lies with the Supreme Court, which decided to give Trump immunity for all official acts, whether they are legal or not. And through its shadow docket, it has repeatedly overturned injunctions that forced the Trump regime to obey the laws.
If courts can’t issue an injunction to stop the government from doing illegal things, then no matter how blatantly the government is violating people’s rights, it can keep doing it unimpeded so long as the case stays tied up in appeals – a process that often takes years. In this scenario, law exists in theory, but there are virtually no limits to what the government can do in practice.
At least four people were killed and eight others injured after a gunman opened fire at a Mormon church in Michigan and then set the building ablaze, authorities said. ... In North Carolina, another 40-year-old Marine veteran who served in Iraq was the suspect in a shooting that killed three people and wounded five others less than 14 hours before the Michigan incident. ... In Texas, about 12.15am on Sunday, two people died and five more were injured in a shooting at the Kickapoo Lucky Eagle casino in Eagle Pass, near the US-Mexico border, the local news outlet KSAT reported. ... Meanwhile, in New Orleans, on the first block of Bourbon Street, the well-known entertainment thoroughfare, a triple shooting killed one woman, wounded two other women and injured a man, local police said. According to Guardian reporting partner WWL Louisiana, the slain woman was pronounced dead at the scene while the other three who were wounded were taken to a hospital.
Wired asked hundreds of federal employees what it was like last spring to have DOGE overlords roaming about. The gist: A lot of trivial harassment resulting in no actual savings or efficiencies. An anonymous woman from FEMA tells this story:
The women’s restroom was out of toilet paper within a week or so of us coming back to the office. I brought this up to Facilities, like, "Hey, this is kind of a sanitation and dignity issue, can you hook us up with more toilet paper?" They were like, "We’d love to, but we can’t purchase anything until they unfreeze the cards, and we don’t even know what the process is, because they have them sort of indefinitely frozen." For five months we were instructed to bring in our own toilet paper. I literally kept two rolls at my desk. I wish I were joking.
Speaking of DOGE: We all remember hearing that DOGE shut down programs like USAID, cut a bunch of medical research grants, and fired lots of people. This was supposed to save money. But what happened to that money?
Across federal agencies, the Trump administration’s aggressive slash-and-burn approach to federal programs, grants and contracts has repeatedly challenged Congress’ power of the purse. The administration has claimed it has the discretion to redirect funds to programs aligned with Trump’s agenda — and Republican congressional leaders have largely let them do it.
The outcome: Billions in taxpayer dollars have become virtually untraceable — a level of opaqueness in government funds that’s raising questions around the legality of the administration’s actions.
Nobody is very good at predicting financial collapses, so you should always take economic doomsaying with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, one of the things pessimists look for is the possibility of a vicious cycle, where things briefly going bad (for any reason) might suddenly produce other reasons for things to go bad in a more serious way. The 2008 collapse was like that. Everything was fine as long as people kept bidding up house prices. But as soon as the housing boom faltered, banks started failing, causing more people to need to sell their houses.
The Guardian's Larry Elliott has identified such a potential cycle. He starts out by noting the oddity of the current moment: Stock markets are setting records at a time when the underlying economy doesn't look so good; growth stalling, inflation and unemployment both creeping up, and so on. If you're in the bottom half of the economy, you're probably worried about your future. But at the same time, things look pretty good for the wealthy.
The top 10% of earners account for almost half of consumer spending – the highest level since the late 1980s.
So if something made the well-to-do uneasy enough to cut back, they could start a recession all by themselves. What might make them do that? A drop in the stock market.
So we're in a situation where some shock -- say, an unexpected corporate bankruptcy or something -- could cause a short-term drop in the markets, which would then start a recession, which would then lead to a bigger drop.
and let's close with something out of this world
NASA and the European Space Agency regularly put videos on YouTube based on what they're seeing through they Hubble Space Telescope. HubbleCast is up to its 133rd episode. Here's Episode 1 to get you started.
