In an era in which there are so many major national news stories (the Epstein files, a U.S. President interfering with elections, nuclear brinkmanship in the Middle East, kidnapping of a foreign leader, the systematic building of concentration camps — the list goes on and on), local stories that might otherwise garner national attention tend to get lost behind the gravity of those other stories.

There’s an interesting court case being considered in the U.S. District Court here in Portland, Oregon, that falls squarely into that category. It’s a class action suit entitled Dickinson (a.k.a. "the Portland Chicken") et al. v. Trump et al. It’s a suit in which the plaintiffs are asking the Court to rule that ICE’s use of teargas and other crowd control measures have been excessive and should therefore be forbidden. The plaintiffs have already received a temporary injunction, as well as an extension of that injunction, while the case is being considered.

That’s a quick overview of the legal case, to date. But there’s much more to this story.

• There are effects on the neighborhood in which the overzealous ICE response to peaceful protests has taken place.

• There are the potential nationwide implications of the outcome of the case.

• Most especially, there is an outstanding question about ICE and the Department of Homeland Security providing false or misleading evidence to the Federal District Court.

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The “Evidence”

Let’s start with the last of those points.

A social media video of what appeared to be an altercation between ICE agents and protesters was among the evidence that DHS submitted to the court. The narration talks about how “Antifa terrorists” attacked the ICE building in Portland. The video shows in rapid fire some fairly wild skirmishes, with ICE deploying teargas.

ICE has consistently argued that their tactics have been 100% within the law because they’ve only been responding to the violence that has been perpetrated by the protesters.

But the video evidence they provided to the court of the purported violence in Portland was of a skirmish that happened in Broadview, Illinois. Additionally, someone at ICE or DHS blurred or deleted the watermarks on this video to obscure its source.

When it was learned that had used this falsified evidence, the judge in the case — in an abundance of fairness — asked them if they could provide video evidence of violence that had actually taken place outside or around the ICE facility in Portland. In response, they claimed that it would have been too burdensome to review the video footage on their security cameras.

This is not the first time the feds have used fraudulent video tactics, but it may be the first time they’ve attempted to use fraudulent video as evidence in a court proceeding.

I am by no means a legal expert, but that sounds like a pretty shabby excuse, particularly when virtually all reports are that the protests have been peaceful. It has also been reported that the small handful of violent incidents have been handled by the Portland Police Bureau, which has characterized them as having been nothing out of the ordinary for any kind of protest.

If there had been actual widespread violence perpetrated by protestors, security camera video of such violence would likely have been immediately saved by ICE. Additionally, if such violence occurred, the omnipresent local news media would have footage that could be subpoenaed.

The Neighborhood

There’s some relevant backstory on the neighborhood where the ICE building is located. It’s in the middle of a mix residential/business neighborhood, with a narrow one-way road leading from the main road (Route 43) past the ICE facility into the surrounding neighborhood that includes apartment buildings, businesses, and lots of medical offices.

Neighbors have had to seal themselves in their apartments for days on end because of the teargas. Some residents with medical conditions such as breathing difficulties have been forced to move out of their homes and into hotels for their own well-being. Others have reportedly slept in their bathtubs, with wet towels under the door to prevent the teargas from seeping in. Babies and children have become sick from the fumes.

This firing of explosive teargas canisters isn’t a singular incident. The use of teargas and other “crowd control” weapons has gone on for months not one or days of this here and there. It’s now been happening, on and off, for months — since October 2025. At least one ICE projectile was fired through the window of a unit in a nearby apartment building, allowing teargas to enter the apartment unimpeded.

It’s worth reiterating that there are numerous medical offices in the South Waterfront neighborhood. Medical practitioners associated with Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) maintain offices in that neighborhood, and the aerial tram that transports patients and providers to and from the main OHSU campus has its terminal there. So if you have an appointment with your oncologist or your otolaryngologist (ENT physician), for example, you may be forced to pass through a cloud of teargas to get to your appointment.

The Implications

It’s hard to know whether the ruling in this case will be limited to this specific set of circumstances or whether there will be implications for ICE as a whole. No matter what the decision of the court is, it will be newsworthy. It’s hard to imagine that a reasonable judge could deny relief to the plaintiffs. But this is 2026 in the United States, so all bets are off.

We can also be relatively sure that Trump et al. will challenge the result if they are ruled against. Filing endless challenges has been their modus operandi for just about every one of the countless legal cases the administration has been involved in. The fact that they’ve often been caught blatantly lying about ICE activities (including, most especially, regarding the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti) doesn’t seem to have slowed them down in the least. But it certainly seems like providing false evidence in a federal court sinks to a whole new depth.

Will there be any consequences? Will the person or people who provided or ordered to be provided the fake video be taken to task in any way? The consequences for any average citizen who attempted to deceive a court in this way would be “hell to pay.” But because the defendants in this matter are the President and his collaborators, the legal consequences are more likely to be one of those “when hell freezes over” situations.

In a somewhat related matter, Rep. Dan Goldman (D - NY-10) and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D - CA-14) recently introduced the ICE OUT (Oversight of Unchecked Tactics) Act, in Congress. This law, if passed, would “strip qualified immunity from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents who use excessive force and ensure that victims of excessive force can seek justice.”

It’s clear that the administration in general, and DHS and ICE in particular, want there to be no oversight and no limits to activities that ICE and CBP engage in. The ruling in this case may at last provide one such limitation.

The American Civil Liberties Union (specifically, the ACLU of Oregon) is representing the plaintiffs. The ACLU can always use your support as a member or a donor, either nationally or locally. The national offices are in New York and Washington, DC, but every state has its own organization, which you can find by doing an internet search for “ACLU” followed by your state name.

In November 1983, Rev. Jesse Jackson announced his candidacy for the U.S. Presidency. Shortly after that announcement, one day in early 1984 word spread around New York City that Jackson would be making an appearance in New York’s Greenwich Village on West 12th St. for a campaign event.

A crowd gathered in the street at the appointed time around a flatbed truck with a PA system and a few banners and campaign signs. It was a latter day facsimile of the whistle stop tour that Theodore Roosevelt had made popular many decades before — meeting the voters where they live. The location for Jackson’s appearance was only steps away from New York’s LGBT1 community center, and it was literally in the shadow of St. Vincent’s Hospital, one of the few medical facilities in New York City where people with AIDS were able to receive treatment.

With all of that as a backdrop, Jackson delivered a message of hope to a community that was facing a lot of hopelessness. Many of us were already in the throes of grief from losing friends, partners, associates, and community to this disease. We were also dealing with the additional indignity of a federal government that had refused to acknowledge publicly the existence of AIDS and had taken virtually no action to research the disease or prevent its spread. In fact, White House press briefings at the time regularly included laughter and uncomfortable homophobic taunts if a reporter even dared to bring up the subject. (I’ve included a link, but — trigger warning — the behavior of the press secretary and many in the press corps will turn your stomach.)

To say that addressing the concerns of the LGBT community at that time was unpopular is an understatement. But Jackson recognized there was a need. If anyone was familiar with speaking to disenfranchised populations, it was Jackson.

By early 1984, I had been somewhat politically active all of my adult life. I had participated in anti-war marches and rallies. I had organized local activities for the original Earth Day and attended environmental rallies. After I came out in 1973, the logical next step for me was to become politically active, participating in a gay liberation organization and marching in early gay rights marches (the precursors to today’s Pride parades). My activism impulse got focused almost exclusively in the direction of LGBT rights.

Despite being a serial protester, I had somehow never been exposed to quite such a message of hope as Jesse Jackson delivered that night. My perception of activism at the time was that it seemed to focus more on what we were against rather than what we were for. But Jackson introduced me to political activism from an entirely different perspective.

It’s not that I hadn’t felt surges of enthusiasm from previous events — protesting Nixon outside his hotel, hearing Pete Seeger sing at a Vietnam war protest for the first time, my first gay rights march. But those events were centered around opposition to the status quo and not necessarily focused on a vision for the future. Jackson’s speech was different, but what was made it different wasn’t apparent to me at the time. I understand it far better in retrospect than I did in the moment.

There were some at the time who were somewhat cynical about his appearance in what, at the time, was the gay neighborhood of New York City. Was he here merely to harvest votes from a segment of the population whose votes were valuable but whose lives were, shall we say, less than valued? That was a phenomenon that New Yorkers in that neighborhood and others were familiar with, and suspicion may have been at its peak in that era — and with good reason.

I think for most who were in attendance, if that cynicism were present at the outset, it had been largely dispelled by the end of the event. The reason? Hope.

I can’t quote any specific thing that Jackson said that night; it was, after all, more than forty years ago. But I can still remember the feeling that coursed through the crowd. It was hope. It was the excitement that there might just be some in the political realm who were possibly advocating for us.

It had been nearly six years since Harvey Milk, the LGBT community’s most notable purveyor of hope had been assassinated. We were now living in a time that our federal government — along with many of our religious institutions, our employers, and even our families — had completely kicked us to the curb.

So when Jesse Jackson awakened some sense of hope in many of us with that speech, it wasn’t just about that evening or that speech or even about his candidacy. In fact, few believed that he stood much of a chance of prevailing in the primary, no less in the general election. Rather, it was about the possibility that there might be a fork in the road of history that could lead all disenfranchised communities to a greater measure of equality, respect, and unity.

Jackson’s trademark chant — “Keep Hope Alive!” — did exactly what it was intended to do, on that night and likely thousands of other days and nights like it. Jackson’s candidacy and his unwavering belief in what was possible helped form the current day progressive movement. It paved the way, decades later, for a Black President of the United States — a President whose message also was centered around hope and around what was possible.

We’re currently undergoing some unfathomably dark and challenging times. But Jesse Jackson’s entreaty to keep hope alive is as important now as it ever has been. His passing is a reminder to keep our focus on what is possible, not on what is dragging us down.

R.I.P. Jesse Louis Jackson

Please note that I have written this from memory. I’ve tried to track down specifics of this event, and they’re scarce. Consequently, dates and details may be a bit fuzzy. Please feel free to help me fill in the blanks in the comments.

I don’t usually write about up-to-the-minute events here, choosing instead to give myself a bit of time to reflect and analyze before commenting. But today’s Congressional fiasco in the House Judiciary Committee was beyond any normal boundaries, so I’m choosing to break one of my own boundaries and post a few immediate thoughts.

Pam Bondi, the top law enforcement official in the nation, sat in front of a Congressional Committee with a literal book full of insults for her questioners. (This is not the first time she has done this, but merely a repeat tactic she used during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.) She repeatedly referred to that “burn book” multiple times because apparently she couldn’t even remember all the insults and accusations she had planned to hurl.

And hurl she did. She was combative, she was defensive, she was rude, and she was overtly hostile toward anyone who dared to question her. If this had been testimony in a court of law, she would have been held in contempt multiple times.

As someone who was a prosecutor, she knows this. But she still insisted on interrupting the members of Congress and giving them orders, telling them to allow her to waste their allotted time with rambling tangents that had nothing to do with the questions they asked. Those Congresspersons are there to represent the people in their districts and to provide oversight to ensure that the members of the Executive Branch are operating within the law. But this administration has been consistently operating as if it is above the law; Bondi is merely the most recent visible example.

In addition to disparaging and interrupting her questioners, she spent much of her time focusing on two subjects: the supposed failures of the Biden administration and the many supposed virtues and successes of the Trump administration. In a bizarre tangent, she even decided to quote the current numbers for the DJIA, the S&P500, and the Nasdaq.

I haven’t seen a word count yet, but I’d be willing to bet that she used more of her time sucking up to Trump than she did even mentioning Jeffrey Epstein or any of the survivors of his international pedophile ring.

When asked about failed redactions and failure to produce all of the files related to Epstein, she repeatedly tried to worm her way out of it by saying that the DOJ had (finally) released over 3,000,000 pages from the files. What she failed to acknowledge is that that number is less than half of the total number of pages.

Can you imagine any decent judge in any courtroom accepting that half compliance with a law is sufficient? (Well, perhaps a Trump-appointed judge would allow that deflection.)

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Bondi finally consented to this hearing after more than a year in office, despite the many outstanding questions that have gone unanswered by her department. But, despite the long wait, the hearing was fruitless. But worse than its lack of substance, it was downright shocking and cruel to the Epstein survivors, who have already faced decades of cruelty and inaction.

Bondi proved unequivocally that she has no basic human decency. How much would it have taken for her to stand up when asked, turn around, face those survivors, and simply say “I’m deeply sorry and, as Attorney General, I will do everything in my power to see that justice is done”? But she couldn’t. She is simply incapable of doing something like that.

The overwhelming irony in her failure to do so is that she could have walked away from this hearing with that kind of response being the headline of the day, even if she never intended to follow through on such a promise. Instead, she chose to debase herself further in service to the convicted felon and sex offender in the Oval Office. Consequently, those headlines are all likely to be about her horrific, unprofessional behavior in front of the committee.

As a result, she merely cemented her reputation as being an overly devoted Trump sycophant who will say or do anything to remain in (or return to) his good graces.

I had two thoughts after watching most of the multiple hours of the hearing. The first was that I couldn’t ever remember feeling such a level of disgust for a public official (with the notable exception being her boss). The second was, if I, as a mere observer, was feeling that level of disgust, what must the Epstein survivors be feeling?

Pam Bondi heads the Department of Justice. My wish is that she herself will face actual justice soon.

Even Donald Trump’s most vocal critics acknowledge his uncanny ability to manipulate the media. It’s hard to deny that particular skill. But it’s alarming when you evaluate his success not just at staying in front of the cameras to bolster his fragile ego but also his willingness to use the levers of power to bend the entire media landscape to his will. But that skill has already proven to be a serious threat to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

One of the most obvious recent breaches of the First Amendment is the arrest and malicious prosecution of Georgia Fort and Don Lemon, independent journalists who documented a protest in Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. The protest was newsworthy mostly because of the recent murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis but also because the pastor of said church works as an ICE agent.

Trump has now had sufficient political visibility for ten years to flex his media manipulation muscles, and he shows no hesitation to use the levers of government to impose his will on the media, either by taking outrageous actions that change what the media are looking at or by squelching or silencing the ability to report in an unbiased way. The arrests of Fort and Lemon are merely the latest hamfisted attempt at changing the narrative.

The net result of Trump’s media manipulation is that fewer and fewer Americans are getting unbiased information from their news sources.

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By the time Trump entered the White House in 2017, the media landscape was already vastly different than it was even a decade before. Since he’s been in office, Trump and the right wing have exerted their influence in ways previously unimaginable. Here’s a brief rundown of how Trump has flexed his power over our media in the last several years:

Television

• Fox News has gone from a right wing network to what has essentially been a propaganda arm of Donald Trump. Messaging from Fox News has aligned simultaneously with messaging from the White House and from Trump-worshiping Republicans. Profits at Fox News consequently have soared.

• ABC News capitulated and paid Trump $15 million in a specious defamation suit that Trump filed against the news organization, rather than fighting the lawsuit in court.

• Following suit, CBS News agreed to shell out $16 million to Trump because he didn’t like the way a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris was edited. It has been speculated that CBS chose not to defend itself because they didn’t want pending litigation to impede the imminent merger of ViacomCBS (CBS News’ parent company at the time) with Paramount-Skydance. Shortly thereafter, the Trump-supporting head of Paramount-Skydance, Chairman and CEO David Ellison, installed Bari Weiss as the new head of CBS News, ending decades of stellar broadcast journalism and turning the network news into another right-wing propaganda machine.

• Trump has even attempted to silence the BBC, with a $20 billion lawsuit claiming that their editing of his Jan. 6, 2021 “Stop the Steal” speech was somehow defamatory.

• Trump and the Republicans have successfully defunded and shut down the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), and are in a continuing fight to do the same with PBS.

• Fox News imitators have sprung up like weeds — Newsmax, OAN, RSBN — and they’re all purveyors of right-wing propaganda and conspiracy theories. Additionally, Sinclair Broadcasting continues its efforts to infiltrate local television news, requiring their stations to air right-wing features during their local broadcasts. (Sinclair has accumulated 185 local TV stations in 85 different markets.)

• Comcast spun off MSNBC and unhitched it from NBC News, forming the new MS NOW network, one of the few remaining left-leaning outlets on anyone’s dial.

Newspapers

• The first and favorite media target of Trump’s ire has been the New York Times. Trump continues to file a never-ending string of frivolous lawsuits against the Times whenever he believes they’re not deferential enough to his narrative.

• Shortly after the start of his second term, Trump banned Associated Press reporters from the White House press pool. The AP was founded in 1846 and has provided respected syndicated content to newspapers all over the country and the world for 180 years. Apparently that longevity doesn’t provide sufficient journalistic credibility for this administration, especially when their reporters ask questions that make anyone in the administration uncomfortable.

• Multi-billionaire and Trump minion Jeff Bezos (of Amazon fame) purchased the Washington Post and almost immediately started imposing his and Trump’s political views on the paper. A number of staffers resigned in protest of Bezos’ encroaching on the independence of the Post’s opinion writers, triggered by his refusal to allow an endorsement of Kamala Harris during her presidential campaign. Subscribers cancelled their subscriptions in droves. The once venerable news outlet is now facing layoffs of some 300 staffers, around 30% of their reporting staff. In Citizen Kane (1941), Orson Welles’ character casually writes to his trustee, “I think it would be fun to run a newspaper.” In Bezos’ case, he would have written “I think it would be fun to run a newspaper into the ground.”

• Unlike many of Trump’s efforts, when Trump tried to extort and muzzle The Guardian, his effort was swiftly shut down in a Florida circuit court.

Social Media

• When Elon Musk bought Twitter, he claimed it would be a bastion of free speech. Instead, in very short order, both by mismanagement and through intentional “enshittification,” it has become a cesspool of the worst kind of right-wing trolls who propagate misinformation and hate speech at an alarming pace.

• Virtually all of the heads of social media companies have bent the knee to Donald Trump, in the form of huge campaign contributions, gifts, fake trophies, and all manner of sycophantic adulation. Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Elon Musk (Twitter), Tim Cook (Apple), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), and Sundar Pichai (Google), and even Arvind Krishna (IBM) have all sucked up to the Trump administration in one form or another, giving themselves cover by claiming it’s their responsibility as CEOs of their respective companies. They’ve sacrificed any moral or ethical concerns they may have had in the interest of winning or maintaining contracts with the federal government.

• Meta (the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp) even went so far as to name Dina Powell McCormick, a former Trump advisor, as its President and Vice Chairperson. While that was happening, they’ve been in the process of laying off thousands of employees.

• Trump’s own social media platform, Truth Social, serves two purposes: It provides what has become the primary method of communication between the President and the American people, and it provides a steady stream of income for Trump himself. The added benefit to Trump is that he can post whatever lies, racist memes, and hate speech he chooses, and the rest of the nation’s (and the world’s) media republish is ravings on other platforms.

• Overshadowed by all of this and almost forgotten less than a year after it was struck down by Trump’s FCC is the widely accepted concept of net neutrality — the concept that internet service providers (ISPs) shouldn’t favor one content creator over another. Aside from the implications of the decision itself, some of those same ISPs have been large donors to Trump’s election campaigns — just another in a long list of conflicts of interest.

Radio

• During his first term, Trump signaled to the world exactly how extreme he was when he bestowed the Presidential Medal of Honor — an honor previously given to humanitarians, musicians, a cardiologist, poets, astronauts — to Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing hate radio blatherer. That further elevated Limbaugh and his brand of radio so that, in large swaths of the country, right-wing AM radio has achieved dominance and AM stations have become localized de facto propaganda arms of the Trump administration.

• Having convinced the Republicans in Congress to defund the CPB, Trump and the GOP are still working to defund National Public Radio (NPR). Any journalism that operates independent of Trump’s messaging desires is a tremendous threat to his administration, because they have been willing to speak the truth. So far, NPR has managed to survive, but its long term viability is still at severe risk.

• Speaking of journalists willing to speak the truth, Trump banned April Ryan of American Urban Radio Networks from the White House briefing room, because she asked uncomfortable questions. We can’t overlook the fact that there’s a racist overtone to this exclusion, particularly because Black women are especially triggering to Trump.

• SiriusXM, the subscription satellite radio service, is pretty much the only place to find progressive views on the radio, with a small handful of terrestrial radio stations being the exception. But even SiriusXM also features several right-wing stations.

Movie Studios

• Prior to Bezos’ purchase of the Washington Post, Amazon bought MGM, the historic movie studio. That purchase proved fruitful for Bezos because it has not only made him a lot of money, it recently became handy as a tool to suck up to Trump, with the producing of the “Melania” propaganda film. The movie has received universally dreadful reviews, but no matter. It helped Bezos cozy up to the administration, and it only cost Bezos around $75 million.

• Campaign financier Larry Ellison (of Oracle) purchased the Paramount conglomerate that includes Paramount Studios, CBS Television, and multiple cable television outlets. As mentioned earlier, Ellison appointed his son, David, as the head of the renamed Paramount-Skydance empire. But that wasn’t big enough. They’ve been in a battle with Netflix for the rights to purchase Warner Brothers Discovery (another media conglomerate). The First Amendment implications would be terrifying should they succeed.

• Another frightening facet to Paramount/Warner/Netflix battle is the fact that the Trump-zealot Heritage Foundation seems to think it has enough pull with the administration and with the corporate world that it should weigh in on the deal. Apparently, they’re not satisfied with all the damage that Project 2025 has already done; they want to make sure no other voices are heard. Not only is this administration in favor of monopolies, they’re very specific as to which monopolies should be allowed to exist.

In any administration, any one or two of these shifts in the media landscape would be a red flag. In their totality, they’re a serious threat to the freedom of the press that is guaranteed in the First Amendment.

The term “fake news” started as pushback against objectively untrue reporting by Fox News and other early adopters of right wing media tactics. But Donald Trump appropriated that phrase and turned it into criticism of any legitimate journalism that reported any story that he didn’t approve of. He particularly applied the term to any criticism of his policies and especially reporting of his many failures.

Trump’s tactic was nothing new. The Germans had a name for it: Lügenpresse. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

So here we are, approaching the Semiquincentennial, the 250th anniversary of the nation — a nation whose founders made certain that freedom of the press was among the freedoms included in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

But gone are the days when media and tech companies at least presented the illusion of independence and freedom. Journalists previously held on to their First Amendment right as if it were a lifeline, because it is. The tech revolution only a couple of decades ago brought to prominence groups of scrappy innovators who were the outsiders of society who cherished their freedom to innovate. Now, both the old school and new school have succumbed to the pressures from right-wing forces and have essentially given away both their innovation and their power.

There’s a quote that is attributed (or misattributed) to Mark Twain that kind of sums up the world we’ll be living in:

“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.”

The midterm elections in the fall might be a way to restore First Amendment rights and perhaps even prove that quote to be incorrect. But that will only occur if Democrats prevail in the election and, as important, if we keep pressure on elected Democrats once they’re in office.

For more than a decade, many of us have written and spoken about the complete lack of courage of Republican politicians. We’ve accounted the hypocrisies, we’ve tallied the countless lies, we’ve pointed out their abject immorality.

In so doing, there has always been at least some thought that there might be some redemption of the party. Liberal and progressive commentators have often provided constructive criticism as to how the GOP might get itself back on track as a viable political party. They have maintained that the two-party system has, in its own way, functioned by creating ballast so that fringe positions espoused by one party or the other would not overtake the mainstream.

That theoretical redemption, however, has been entirely dependent on one condition: holding their party’s leader accountable for his crimes and misdemeanors, both charged and yet to be charged. That, however, has been an endeavor that the GOP has been unwilling to undertake.

Even the most rudimentary assessment of the past year reveals that any remaining optimism about the party’s redemption, shaky though it may have been, has been entirely unwarranted, and the escalation of their leader’s fascist activities during the first month of this year has removed any doubt.

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The list of outrages that Republicans have implicitly or explicitly sanctioned in the past decade or so is seemingly limitless, any one of which would have brought to a conclusion any previous administration — Republican or Democratic alike. I’m including this summary not just to rattle off a list of horrors perpetrated by Trump but rather as a reminder that Congressional Republicans could have hopped off the Trump train (and gotten the nation back to some semblance of normalcy) at numerous times in the last decade:

• 2016 Republican candidates for president lambasted Trump when they were his primary rivals but kowtowed as soon as he insulted them. Several of them were sufficiently obsequious to agree to become members of his administration after having faced nationwide humiliation as the result of his ruthless scorn.

• Republican Congress members rarely, if ever, called out any of the more than 30,000 lies he told during his first term, many of which had extremely negative consequences. Those lies were often repeated by Congress members as if they were gospel.

• The biggest lie that Trump told (a/k/a “the Big Lie”) was that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Initially, a few Republicans quietly objected to this whopper but most circled back when the puppetmaster exerted even the slightest pressure.

• The Big Lie led to the January 6, 2021 insurrection and, in the immediate aftermath, Republicans condemned both the insurrection itself and Trump, as fomenter-in-chief. But they quickly retreated, characterizing the insurrection as peaceful protest or as a “tourist visit,” despite hundreds of hours of video to the contrary.

• Despite impeachment on two separate occasions, Senate Republicans — at Mitch McConnell’s direction — refused to convict Trump, despite the fact that the second impeachment was for the January 6th attack on the Capitol, during which those same Republican Senators’ lives were at risk, thanks to Trump’s incitement.

• Republicans voiced not a whisper of chagrin or embarrassment that the candidate they championed to return to the White House had been convicted of 34 felonies in the State of New York, instead choosing to call into question the validity of those convictions, instead characterizing those convictions by a jury as somehow being politically motivated and threatening (and later attempting and failing to prosecute) the prosecutor.

• Republicans have been all too willing to look the other way when Donald Trump has accepted multi-million dollar “gifts” from foreign governments, the most blatant of which was a jumbo jet from Qatar. He has received money from sources with business before the U.S. government to build his vanity project — the White House ballroom that apparently has a fluctuating budget and no accountability. It shouldn’t need to be said, but these are obvious violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution.

• Speaking of that ballroom, Republicans also willingly ignored the fact that we all woke up one day to learn that the East Wing of the White House — the so-called “peoples’ house” — was in the process of being demolished to make way for the unapproved, ill-conceived ballroom.

• DOGE randomly dismantled and destroyed multiple government agencies — agencies that have provided vital services to U.S. citizens. As predicted, the DOGE effort has been a complete failure in its stated mission of saving money, ending up costing taxpayers way more than it ever saved. Republicans have remained almost entirely mum about this fiasco, pretending that their silence will make the American people will simply forget this gigantic multi-billion dollar “oopsie.”

• One such casualty of DOGE — USAID — no longer exists and therefore can no longer fund long-standing successful programs to prevent disease. Millions of people will die from a signature program — President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) — of a previous Republican president being halted.

• The destruction and degradation of our cultural institutions like the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the Smithsonian Institution is perhaps a less blatant attempt at destroying our democracy. But Trump’s insistence on imposing his influence over these institutions is no less important, particularly where that influence comes in the form of rewriting our history.

• There are now millions of Americans who can no longer afford health insurance because of the systematic dismantling of the Affordable Care Act at the behest of Donald Trump, after many years of Republicans demonizing the ACA without providing any alternatives.

• Tariffs have become Trump’s all purpose tool to try to achieve almost any objective. Fix the economy? Randomly apply tariffs all over the world. Bending another nation to his will? Apply tariffs targeted at that country’s products and trade. Stop the flow of drugs into the U.S.? Implement tariffs. Protect national security? Apply tariffs.

• Just in case our allies haven’t been alienated enough by tariffs, Trump has ensured further alienation with rolling threats of war, illegal bombings of fishing boats, kidnapping another country’s president, and undermining the very treaty organization — NATO — that has helped keep America and the western world safe.

• One of Trump’s repeated vows during his re-election campaign was that his administration would get to the truth of those Epstein files. The reality of his time in office so far is that he has done everything in his power to obstruct the release of those files.

We’ve witnessed all the evidence of outright fascism — and then some — emanating from the White House, while Republicans publicly pretended they didn’t notice. They’ve either been on board with the fascist playbook or they have they’ve lacked the moral clarity and courage necessary to stand up to the fascists and fascist wannabes.

There comes a point at which it’s futile to keep framing the problem as solely Trump’s doing or holding out hope that Trump will somehow change his behavior. The only change in Trump’s behavior has been engaging in even worse behavior.

Because they control both houses of Congress, Republicans still have the ability to stop Trump through legislation, through impeachment and conviction, and through applying the process for removal from office codified in the 25th Amendment. But, either due to absolute cowardice or political self-interest (or both), they have consistently chosen to turn a blind eye to every horrific deed, every illegal action, and every broken promise.

Here’s one more grim reminder for the Republicans. Trump has always become worse, never better. So if he’s capable of this in early 2026, what will things be like by summer or fall?

Polling already predicts that the fall elections will not look good for Republicans. There’s a good chance they will lose their majorities in both houses of Congress. It will be up to voters to ensure Democrats gain some leverage in Congress so they can do the hard work of restoring our democracy.

Since her murder at the hands of ICE last week, decent people in the United States have been grieving the loss of Renee Nicole Good. Decent people have not been demonizing her or spreading lies about her or or blaming her for her own death. Decent people have been mourning her loss as if they knew her because, in a sense, they have known her. She was a mom who kept stuffed animals in her car to keep her kiddo occupied. She was a woman trying to make a life with her family in a city that was relatively new to her. She was relatable.

One thing that distinguished Good’s treatment by ICE from many others who have been the targets of ICE agents’ violence is that Good’s murder was captured on video from multiple angles. ICE has been as opaque and secretive in their statistics as they have been public and proud in their cruelty. As a result, there isn’t reliable comprehensive reporting on the actual number of deaths caused by ICE’s actions, either as a direct result of their activity in the streets or while the targets of their actions are in custody.

There have been other ICE shootings, there have been ICE-provoked altercations with protesters, there have been multiple injuries and deaths in custody. What little reporting there is always seems to hold ICE 100% blameless for any injury or death. So it’s no surprise that the instantaneous response by Kristi Noem was to blame Good’s death on Good. (Victim blaming is one of the only things ICE is good at.)

With a budget of $11+ billion this year and repeated solemn vows of complete transparency, wouldn’t you think that we’d have some accounting of these incidents?

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Renee Nicole Good’s death has spurred on anti-ICE activism, and an outgrowth of that activism is the drawing of attention to the systemic violence that ICE has unleashed on both immigrants and citizens. One physical manifestation of that activism is a grass roots memorial in New York City.

New York’s East Village has a long-standing reputation for being on the cutting edge. Music, art, writing, theatre, politics, activism — many people who are well known in each of those disciplines can point back to their East Village roots. So it’s no surprise that a memorial like the one pictured below would spring up in front of St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery.

The nation has been mourning the loss of Renee Nicole Good, and this makeshift memorial honors her, of course. But it adds a much needed dimension to the discussion of her death at the hands of ICE.

In that photograph, each one of those photos and signs is a memorial to someone else who has died either as the direct result of ICE’s actions or while in ICE custody. Many of those victims of ICE are black and brown people — folks who often get overlooked by our media, folks whose interactions with ICE didn’t take place in the eye of the storm they way that Good’s shooting did.

Spending a few minutes in front of this memorial cannot help but evoke a collapsing feeling in one’s chest, in much the same way those makeshift post-9/11 memorials that lined the streets of lower Manhattan did.

We can hope that the awareness displayed in that East Village memorial is being echoed and replicated across the country.

We cannot forget that there have already been shootings of unarmed civilians by ICE agents and by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents since the killing of Renee Nicole Good. A federal judge has ordered ICE agents not to take retaliatory actions against peaceful protesters, but we’ve seen how little regard for the law some of these agents have demonstrated. A judge’s order may not be enough to deter them once the adrenaline and testosterone get flowing.

In a functioning democracy, even a flawed but functioning democracy, we could expect that eventually justice will be done and those in law enforcement or government who abuse their authority and engage in criminal behavior will be held accountable in our justice system. It took a very long time and a lot of pressure before Derek Chauvin and his fellow officers finally faced punishment for killing George Floyd. But given today’s political environment that protects supporters of the regime and punishes detractors, no matter the circumstances or the evidence, the possibility of Jonathan Ross facing justice seems remote.

The systemic lack of self-control and absence of remorse makes it more important for citizens to record as much ICE activity on video as possible. We may not be able to force our justice system to function properly and in a timely manner, but we can do our best to capture the truth of these interactions on camera.

The more this bloodthirsty president and his eager accomplices flex their muscles and abuse their power, the larger the protests have become. It’s likely that pushback will continue to happen, especially as the public increases their awareness of how systemic and widespread the violence against immigrants and peaceful protesters has become. The killing of Renee Nicole Good has become a flashpoint that is raising both awareness and willingness to stand up for what is right.

While spending time at the East Village memorial, people spontaneously but quietly share their outrage with each other, in some attempt to make sense of it all. As I was about to leave, a woman I had chatted briefly with turned to walk away and ended our conversation with one truism. She gestured toward the signs and photographs, and said, “All this is because they thought they’d get cheaper eggs.”

The conventional wisdom is that a picture is worth a thousand words. This picture, though, is worth a thousand jaw drops.

It’s the flimsy makeshift war room that someone at Mar-a-Lago thought would be a fitting facility from which to initiate an international military invasion. Remember that military invasion of Venezuela that happened before they invaded Minnesota and before they threatened invading Iran and Denmark and Greenland and probably a few other sovereign nations?

(Of course, you may have been distracted by the ICE officer shooting a 37-year-old mother in the face, or by the subsequent spin by DHS, or perhaps by the resignation of civil rights attorneys and prosecutors in protest to the government’s determination to investigate the victim rather than the murderer, or maybe by the most recent malicious prosecution by the Trump/Bondi Department of “Justice.” It’s hard so to keep up these days.)

And, yes, I said military invasion. The Trump administration all got their stories straight and claimed it was law enforcement activity. But if it quacks like a war…

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I took a stab at the “what’s wrong with this picture” game, and I came up with this disturbing yet certainly incomplete list.

• Where was this picture taken? Is this some store room at Mar-A-Lago? Tru[mp couldn’t be bothered to return to Washington to the White House Situation Room for a matter of such gravity? The casualness with which he has approached the unlawful removal of the leader of a supposedly sovereign nation is shocking, even for Trump, who has single-handedly changed our collective understanding of what can shock us.

• With an operation that we’re learning has been in the works for weeks or months, was Trump just unwilling to spend time in Washington so the operation could be initiated from a secure location? He has become entirely accustomed to risking national security so that he can keep up his lifestyle.

• As noted above, Trump and his cronies keep saying their invasion of Venezuela wasn’t a military operation but rather a law enforcement operation. So why, then, is self-proclaimed “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth in the room and not Attorney General Pam Bondi? (Of course, declaring “not war” is a job for men, and Pam Bondi is just a woman, after all.)

• Where is Tulsi Gabbard? In fact, where has she been lately? Shouldn’t the Director of National Intelligence be a key player in this absurd venture? Or has she been “disappeared” from this administration since she has occasionally failed to march in lockstep? (She’s also just a woman, after all.)

• Why does the only screen big display X/Twitter? Are they measuring their success or failure by the responses on this now hijacked right-wing platform? If that’s the case, it’s kind of in keeping with the way they’ve been operating. They’ve created a broadcast and social media landscape that magnifies their own views and minimizes the views of their opposition, and then, having excluded anyone who disagrees with them, they refer to the support they receive on those outlets as an indicator of the complete mood of the nation. (More on this in an upcoming post.)

• What’s with the flimsy black cloth? Is that a new kind of security that no one else in the world has ever heard of? Or is it just as stupid, just as vulnerable, just as useless as it looks? (You know already the answers to those sarcastic rhetorical questions. Basically, Trump and his crony cabinet members are discussing military plans in a completely non-secure environment, with those plans able to be heard by any sous chef, towel boy, or swollen-lipped Mar-a-Lago damsel who happens to be passing by.)

What’s stunning about this picture is that it isn’t some secretly acquired picture made public by some “traitor” to the Trump regime to reveal how out of control this administration is. No. It was proudly published to social media by Trump himself. Not only that, even John Ratcliffe, the CIA Director, proudly and complicitly posted several pictures from the same series on Instagram. They’re either all oblivious to the fact that these photos aren’t doing them any favors, or their rubbing America’s nose in the fact that they have no compunction about their behavior. It could be both.

Feel free to post your own list of things that are wrong with this picture in the comments.

On Wednesday, January 7, 2026, a woman in a maroon SUV was shot and killed by an ICE officer in Minneapolis, MN.

On Thursday, January 8, 2026, two persons in a red pickup truck were shot by a Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officer and were subsequently hospitalized in Portland, OR, where they remain in custody.

DHS’s response to the first shooting, prior to any investigation of the incident and while the body was still warm, was to hold a press conference in which Kristi Noem created a narrative based not on facts, not on evidence, not on eyewitness testimony, not on video footage of the event, but rather on pure conjecture intended to support her corrupt administration’s existing messaging.

Video of the shooting from multiple angles, captured by bystanders, proves in numerous ways that her narrative is full of misstatements, alternate facts, prevarications — oh, hell, it was a bunch of lies. As the mayor of Minneapolis said so eloquently, “that was bullshit.”

The ICE agent who shot the victim is shown walking through the crime scene and leaving the scene. Other ICE agents left the scene in their vehicles, thereby tainting the crime scene — actions that bring into question any results of any investigation of the incident.

Newly surfaced video taken by the shooter himself shows the victim in a jovial, friendly mood, telling the shooter she wasn’t mad at him. Twenty seconds later, Renee Nicole Good is dead from bullets fired by the ICE agent.

Instead of partnering with local law enforcement to conduct a thorough investigation (which would be standard operating procedure in such an incident), the FBI immediately became territorial and refused to allow participation in the investigation by local law enforcement.

DHS’s response to the second shooting once again was to rush to identify the victims definitively as members of Tren de Aragua. They stated that CBP had been tracking them and that the driver of the truck “weaponized his vehicle and attempted to run over the law enforcement agents.” They claimed the targets of their tracking had been involved in sex trafficking.

To date, no video of the shooting or the arrest has surfaced. So the only narrative we have of that incident is that of the administration — the administration that only hours before lied repeatedly to the cameras about another shooting to spin the narrative in their favor.

The shooting victims in the Portland scenario may very well be Tren de Aragua members, or maybe they aren’t. Maybe they were sex traffickers, or maybe they weren’t. Maybe the woman in the truck was an accomplice, or maybe she was a victim. Maybe one day, we will learn the truth, or maybe we won’t.

Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield has stated that he and his office will investigate the victims on sex trafficking charges — an investigation that the federal government has no say in. But it’s entirely possible — perhaps even likely — that we will ever know the full story, given how much obfuscation has already happened in both these incidents.

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Trump and his cronies always manage to seem indignant when the media and the electorate don’t take their word at face value. But what have any of them ever done to engender the trust that would be necessary to take them at their word about anything?

In Trump’s first term, journalists documented well over 30,000 lies that Trump himself told — some small, some big, some whoppers (or should I say, “Big Macs”?).

In his second term, as in his first, they have regularly rewritten the “truth” to fit their own agenda. Some of their lies have been downright laughable (like the promise to lower prescription drug prices by 8000%).

There’s a slow, steady, quiet downward spiral happening here. It looks like this:

• Someone in the administration (usually but not always Trump himself) intentionally or inadvertently says or does something outrageous.

• The public objects and Trump’s approval numbers move downward.

• Thinking he can still bamboozle the public, Trump lashes out, lies, or blames someone else (or any combination of the three).

• His approval numbers move further downward as a result of the administration’s response.

• The next outrageous thing occurs, which displaces the current outrageous thing in the public consciousness, and the cycle starts again.

During his first term, we all witnessed this cycle repeat itself. But during that term, Trump still had enough support from GOP moderates that he could withstand it. There were also a few people in his administration who could temper his worst impulses. To some extent, Trump even got away with the cycle repeating during the first year of this term.

But the effect of a cycle like this endlessly repeating is that, over time, Trump has significantly eroded his own support. There’s no one left to blame it on, although he won’t cease trying. It’s not like there is an endless supply of untapped MAGA voters who are suddenly going to jump onboard; the “ride-or-die” MAGA supporters are already in his camp. His behavior only serves to chip away at the trust of his remaining marginally less zealous supporters.

Throughout his time in politics, Trump has surrounded himself with people who will do his bidding and defend him, no matter what. In this term, however, he has surrounded himself with people who are as defensive as he is. All cabinets are presumed to have a certain amount of loyalty to the president they serve. But this batch is reflexively hyper-defensive by proxy, no matter what the issue is.

Just watch Kristi Noem or Karoline Leavitt or Pete Hegseth the next time they’re in a position to answer questions from the now hand-picked press corps. Invariably, they will interrupt the reporter asking the question and talk over them before the question is finished being asked, if they even get a whiff that it might be an embarrassing question. They might be able to badger reporters into temporary silence but, over the long haul, they further diminish any remaining trust the public may have in their administration and its policies.

As they say in the news business, this is a developing story — both the stories of the shootings themselves and the administration’s response to them. But at least one thing seems pretty clear to me: the more Trump and his defenders obstruct the public’s desire to get to the truth, the more determined the public will be to seek out the truth. If the Epstein debacle has taught us anything, it’s exactly that.

At first, I thought it best to let the dust settle before posting anything that had even a whiff of optimism. But the more I think about it, we could all use a dose of optimism right now. The current dust might settle, but in this administration, there will always be more dust. So here’s the post I originally intended — with a few updates for timeliness.

In 1988, when Jesse Jackson delivered his speech to the Democratic National Convention, the nation had survived eight years of the Reagan presidency:

• The Iran-Contra scandal had rocked the nation and, aside from a random metaphorical slap on the hand here and there, there had been no consequences.

• The AIDS epidemic was in full bloom, and the Reagan administration’s response for several years was nothing more than making cruel jokes at press briefings, with Reagan himself only acknowledging the epidemic publicly years later, after thousands had died of the disease.

• At Reagan’s direction, the U.S. military invaded the island of Grenada, a sovereign nation, with no authorization from Congress. Margaret Thatcher may have publicly applauded the invasion of Grenada after the fact, but didn’t appreciate the fact that Reagan had invaded a former colony and Commonwealth nation without consulting her.

• HUD (the Department of Housing and Urban Development) was scandal plagued for Reagan’s entire presidency; the most heinous of those HUD scandals was a complex mortgage co-insurance scheme that left taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars worth of private debt.

So when Jackson repeated “Keep hope alive! Keep hope alive!” as his closing line to that speech, it was in the face of some pretty objectionable stuff. In fact, those words would have seemed pretty empty if there hadn’t been objectionable stuff going on.

Jackson’s optimism in the fact of darkness wasn’t denial of that darkness; rather it was defiance of that darkness, a determination to keep the arc of history bending toward justice.

Without knowing it, Jesse Jackson was modeling behavior and attitude for us almost four decades later, in a time when so many have lost their optimism.

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While politically and socially we’re in the throes of the darkest times of most of our lifetimes, I’m making a conscious effort not to be sucked down into the vortex of gloom and inaction. I’ve been attempting to compile a list of things that keep some positive thoughts in the mix:

• This isn’t permanent. The situation the nation is in cannot last forever. It is unsustainable. Eventually, dictators always fall. Will the world be changed as a result of Trump’s reign? Of course. We’re not going to return to the Obama years any more than the MAGA folks were ever going to force the country to return to whatever idealized whitewashed (accent on “white”) version of the United States they have been attempting to impose on us. It will be a new version of the United States, and that gives us all the more reason to stay sane and focused on the opportunity to make this a more perfect union.

• Donald Trump is failing and flailing. His health is failing, his mental acuity is failing, and his administration is failing. He’s regularly falling asleep in public. He has gone missing for days at a stretch. His hands are bruised from multiple infusions of … something. His gait is unsteady. Everything his inner circle is doing to try to control his public image cannot disguise his deterioration. He has been posting dozens and sometimes hundreds of posts on his social media site at all hours of the day and night. He is not governing so much as he is irrationally barking out orders, creating new and more extreme distractions, and changing course from one hour to the next.

• Trump’s poll numbers continue to plummet. Across the board, his approval ratings — the “numbers” he is so obsessed with — are the worst they have been during his entire time in political life. Additionally, they continue to decline. His ability to bamboozle his way out of unpopularity seems to be waning, with fewer and fewer people falling for his cons.

• There is no viable successor to Trump. Oh, there will be another person attempting to fill his shoes. But there’s truly no one in the Republican pipeline — not J.D. Vance, not Marco Rubio, not Hegseth or Bondi or any of the other miscreants in his inner circle — who can command the media the way Trump has done. I use the word “command” advisedly, because he’s really just groomed our mainstream media to bend to his will to avoid reprisals. We may end up with a Vance presidency, but he hasn’t an ounce of charisma or originality or decency. Should he ascend, it will be short-lived.

• Democrats have a deep bench. The longer the Trump regime goes on and the more extreme it becomes, the more Democratic alternatives seem to be rising to the surface — folks who are able to embody the sentiments of the majority of Americans, folks who will stay focused on the actual needs of the American people.

• The Epstein files are not going away. There is critical mass among the electorate to provide actual transparency, not pre-digested redacted faux transparency. Politicians of all political stripes have demanded accountability because they know their own political futures are at risk if this issue is not fully addressed. Voters seem to be savvy enough to see through the drip-drip-drip approach that Trump and Bondi have pretended to release the files — an approach that only creates more suspicion and more guilty behavior.

• The midterm elections look promising for Democrats. A number of Republicans have announced their departure due, in part at least, to the handwriting on the wall that they will likely no longer be in power. Off-year elections and special elections have swung strongly in favor of Democrats. Even in deep red districts that have been retained by a Republican, margins have been dramatically narrowed. Ideally, Democrats might take back both the House and the Senate. But even if only one of the chambers of Congress is restored to Democratic control, there is an opportunity to staunch the bleeding.

If you’re looking for inspiration for how to stay optimistic in the face of terrible times, look no further than the people of Ukraine. I can’t help but thinking of them huddled in train tunnels during attacks, only to emerge more defiant, more determined than ever to live their normal lives in spite of the atrocities being foisted upon them.

Stay strong. This is a marathon, not a sprint.

If you have additions to this list, please leave them in the comments.

Long before Donald Trump ever entered politics, lying was always his primary skill. Between his lies and an inner circle who were willing to prop him up, Trump has never fully faced the consequences of his behavior and his crimes.

But in recent weeks, Trump has been starting to show desperation. The lies he’s telling are less and less plausible, and he seems exasperated that fewer and fewer people are believing those implausible lies.

I sometimes wonder if he is intentionally doubling down on his lies out of habit or if, instead, he has been so protected from the truth by his lack of contact with reality that he has actually come to believe what he is saying. He has surrounded himself, as usual, with sycophants who tell him and the public only what he wants to hear.

Whether it’s the ever-grinning visage of Kevin Hassett or the hyper-aggressive rantings of Pete Hegseth or the shrill determination of Karoline Leavitt perpetually lying on Trump’s behalf, I’ve seen no reports of anyone in his immediate inner circle taking him aside and giving him a stern talking to. (By the way, has anyone heard word one from Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who was supposed to have been the calm, stabilizing influence on the second Trump administration?)

Enter Marjorie Taylor Greene, the probable canary in the MAGA coal mine. Her defection started gradually but has now devolved into an outright war of words between her and the tyrant she had previously supported. The verbal slap-fight reached its zenith (at least I hope that’s its zenith) with MTG publicly doing press-conference penance for her previous sins of creating the same political violence she now is bemoaning.

Greene’s recent actions have put renewed and intense focus on the Epstein files and on Trump’s refusal to release them. It seems like she’s has also created a permission structure for other Republicans to push back and try to uphold their promise to get to the bottom of the Epstein matter.

But Greene’s defection is hardly the only sign of the deterioration of Trump’s grasp. Despite trying to conceal his physical and mental decline, Trump himself has been unable to hide his swollen ankles and his further dysregulated speech patterns. He boasts about his supposed “beautiful” MRI results but claims to have no idea what the MRI was for. He has lashed out on social media in the middle of the night and fallen asleep in Oval Office events. More media outlets are willing to describe him as unwell and unhinged. That he has become an international embarrassment is a given.

All of this comes on the heels of an election cycle that proved how little value his endorsement now provides to Republican candidates, as well as a government shutdown that accomplished nothing other than damaging the lives of everyday Americans. (Well, he did break his own record for the length of a federal government shutdown, so he at least acquired some highly questionable bragging rights.) The shutdown also revealed a rift between Trump and the Republican-led Senate, when John Thune refused to change the filibuster rule so that the government could reopen.

Trump’s grip on the Republican party is slipping away, both with legislators and with Republican supporters.

So he reverts to what he knows best — lying. The more Trump doubles down on his lies, the more easily they seem to be disproved. He and his minions can tout lower inflation all they want, but average citizens know better from trips to the gas pump and the supermarket. Trump boasts about ending eight wars, but somehow no one else can find any evidence of either the eight wars or his uncanny ability to end them with the sheer force of his oratory. His delusions and his lies are indistinguishable from each other.

Recent judicial fiascos like those perpetrated by Lindsey Halligan and Jeanine Pirro have proved to the American public that his appointees are as incompetent as he is and that he is truly scraping the bottom of the barrel for members of his inner circle.

Trump’s lifelong modus operandi of pushing the envelope of the justice system may be backfiring as his lawsuits become more and more specious. The courts have been ruling against him in many more instances than they have ruled in his favor, including courts led by judges and justices that he himself has appointed.

Perhaps the most worrisome indicator, at least to Trump, is the abundance of anecdotal evidence in interviews, in polls, and in social media postings stating the disgruntlement of his most devoted supporters — the so-called MAGA base. He has broken virtually all of his campaign promises to them, and his irrational random tariffs have raised prices of everything for all citizens, not just his opposition. Many in the MAGA crowd are just now figuring out that his policies are detrimental to their own interests.

So far, he has convinced enough Republicans in Congress not to allow the extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidies, which will raise the cost of health care for those who are least able to afford it. But given the political pressure on Republicans in Congress from their constituents, that may be subject to change, particularly since the 15-year-old Republican “repeal and replace” pledge has netted absolutely nothing.

Is it any surprise that there are rumblings of defection among even the most faithful?

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One of Trump’s most motivating campaign promises among the MAGA crowd was his pledge to investigate the QAnon-concocted cabal of Democratic pedophiles. The sound of that promise backfiring reverberated through the halls of Congress on Tuesday when there was a near unanimous vote in the House and a unanimous vote in the Senate to release the Epstein files — well above the requirement of two-thirds of members to make the release veto-proof.

It hardly needs to be said that Trump’s long association with convicted pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein may not have been what the QAnon folks were referring. But the focus on the Trump/Epstein connection is certainly what the QAnon relentlessness unwittingly spawned.

Many in the media have been assuming that Trump, like many presidents before him, will be a lame duck president after the midterms. But now some reporters are speculating that this lack of support from his own party may already have condemned him to lame duck status. It’s possible that the Republicans in Congress — frightened by the off-year election results and the steady drumbeat of negative feedback they’ve received from their own constituents — have become emboldened by the success of their collective defiance with the vote on the Epstein files. Congress members may even be coming to terms with just how much of their own power they have surrendered to Trump, and they’re finally beginning to reclaim it.

Despite all this evidence, Trump’s bloated ego continues to tell him that he’s so brilliant that his latest brain flatulence will fix everything, or at least delay the inevitable.

Trump’s willy-nilly destruction of the East Wing of the White House is more than just a national travesty. It has become a symbol of the collapse of the Trump era. This administration may not be coming down as rapidly as the East Wing did, but it’s definitely showing signs of stress.

It’s truly a tragedy that those who oppose him look at the increasing destruction and chaos as a glimmer of hope that the demise of Trump may be near. But these days, we’ll take our hope where we can get it.

A year ago, the election had just happened. The incredulity that progressives felt at America voting for Donald Trump — now a convicted felon — as President for the second time had only begun to sink in.

I had been musing about what my grandparents — old-school Republicans — would have thought about the election and the state of the country generally. They would not have been able to imagine our reality then and, one year out, the state of our nation and of their political party would be even more unfathomable.

Here’s that post, in its entirety.

I am very fortunate to have had wonderful grandparents.

My grandfather was born in 1893. He was a WWI flyer, a Georgia Tech graduate, an electrical engineer, an avid reader (including sitting for what seemed like hours at a time reading the dictionary). He obsessively followed the hourly stock market reports on WOR radio out of New York City. He was a quiet man who valued his southern roots but who never felt a need to display a Confederate flag.

He was a Republican.

My grandmother was born in 1897. She graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1919. She was a suffragette, and she remained active in the League of Women Voters for her entire life. Family lore has it that the only job she ever had was during World War II, when she worked for a time in a factory that assembled fuses for bombs. Details are somewhat sparse. She recycled before there was a word for recycling. She, too, was an avid reader. She was a mother and grandmother.

She was a Republican.

They were members of the Audubon Society and they loved feeding and watching the birds that came to their feeders and suet cages. They regularly played bridge with their friends. They were Scrabble players and did crossword puzzles and, in so doing, instilled in me a love of words and language. They paid attention to current events via their local newspaper, the evening newscast, U.S. News and World Report, and the Wall Street Journal.

I loved them both dearly. They were lovely, gentle, kind, and compassionate people. Did I mention they were Republicans? Why, yes. Yes, I believe I did.

I remember them struggling to make sense of the Vietnam War — a war that our government was telling them was the right thing to do but that young people (myself included) were protesting in ways that the nation had never witnessed before. They grappled with the issue.

While I understood Woodstock only as “three days of peace and love and music,” they saw only monumental traffic jams and tens of thousands of wet, muddy young people. The reality, of course, was somewhere in between those two extremes or, perhaps more accurately, the sum of those two extremes.

When there was an issue that perplexed them, they didn’t rush to judgment. They stepped back and tried to learn about it in a measured way.

Both my grandparents died in the mid-1970s at a time when I was too young (or at least not adult enough) to have adult conversations with them. But, from time to time, I imagine sharing with them the events of my own life and discussing with them the affairs of the day.

Those imaginary conversations often have consisted of discussions of things that exist now that didn’t exist when they were alive — microwave ovens, bullet trains, Starbucks, bread machines, flat screen televisions, and such. I remember the look of awe on my grandmother’s face the first time she listened to my transistor radio using its earphone, and I imagine equivalent looks of wonder for these newfangled everyday objects.

Sometimes when I pick up my smartphone, I ponder what my grandfather — the electrical engineer who worked in telecommunications — would think of the ability to carry around all this technology in one’s pocket. I’m certain he would put his engineer’s mind to work and learn all about it.

But lately, I’ve been trying to imagine how I would explain to them what has happened to their beloved Republican Party. As open-minded as they were, as much as they sought to understand things, I cannot fathom them comprehending how their party of Teddy Roosevelt and Abe Lincoln and Dwight D. Eisenhower has morphed into this cult that unabashedly worships a convicted criminal — a lifelong con artist who somehow has risen to the highest office in the land, not once but twice.

Both my grandparents lived long enough to witness Richard Nixon’s demise, and they were disturbed and ashamed — not just because he was forced to leave office due to the threat of impeachment but also because they acknowledged what he did was morally, ethically, and legally wrong.

So how could they possibly understand the allure of Donald Trump? They were in their last years when Trump was charged with housing discrimination in 1973. That probably would have been their only exposure to him, if indeed they were aware of him at all. Those of us who are living through these terrible years can’t begin to explain his criminality coupled with his utter lack of a conscience, though we don’t stop trying.

It’s a difficult enough endeavor to explain his first term in office.

“Yeah, there’s this guy in your party who had no relevant experience, whose sole qualification was a sketchy real estate career in New York City, who leveraged his personal grievances and racism in his attempt to achieve elected office. Not only that, but there were recordings of him bragging about his sexual conquests. Oh, yeah. Did I tell you he won?”

The first term would be shocking enough to people of my grandparents’ generation — Republicans and Democrats alike. The fact that Donald Trump achieved a second term would be outside the realm of comprehension.

“Yeah, remember that Trump guy I was telling you about? He was impeached. Yes, twice, as a matter of fact — once for trying to extort one of our allies for personal political gain and once for an insurrection that he fomented. Yeah, I guess I forgot to tell you that part. He didn’t accept the results of the election that he lost, so he incited a violent mob to stop the peaceful transfer of power. He put the life of his own vice president at risk. But he also instilled enough fear of retribution in the members of his own party so that they didn’t convict him in the Senate. Yeah. He was re-elected.”

I cannot even imagine what my grandparents’ reaction would be.

There’s a logical chain of events between the first telephone and the iPhone. I’m pretty certain I could help them make sense of that evolution. But the chain of events between the Republican Party of my grandparents’ time and the Republican Party of today is not so obvious.

But it’s there. It’s there in the gradually increasing emphasis on attaining and retaining power within the party. It’s there in the subcutaneous racism that found a welcome home in the GOP as part of the Republicans’ southern strategy. It’s there in the “greed is good” mindset of the 1980s and in the infusion of massive amounts of cash into our politics, thanks in part to the Citizens United decision.

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I am now almost as old as my grandparents were when they died. Overall, I’ve had a pretty damn fortunate life, but one that has also had some significant struggles and challenges. I don’t think anyone reaches their seventies without struggles and challenges.

I don’t have children or grandchildren. I sometimes think I was born gay because of my complete lack of affinity for child-rearing. But I wonder if the kids who are the age of my non-existent grandchildren will reflect, in their senior years, on the Trump era as a dark and shameful anomaly in the nation’s history or if instead Trump’s personal and political behavior will have become so normalized that he and this time we’re in will not stand out.

I hope it’s the former, but I’m certain I will never know.

Democrats — including a Democratic Socialist — ran the table in Tuesday’s election. Progressives and Democrats (and really anyone who truly cares about democracy itself) can breathe a sigh of relief. It’s been a long time since Democrats and progressives have had reason to celebrate.

The sigh of relief, though, is a temporary one because, in truth, the election didn’t — and couldn’t — instantly solve any of the issues that we are facing as a nation. Instead, the election results were a primarily a barometer about the political mood of the nation.

We’ve recently seen multiple polls in which Trump’s behavior, Trump’s policies (such as they are), and Trump himself are all in negative territory. Trump and the MAGA crowd scoffed at those polls, claiming they were “fake news.” (Seriously, Trumpists, aren’t you tired of that flimsy, worn out excuse?) But the election removed any lingering doubt about the legitimacy of those polls:

• In New York City, Zohran Mamdani beat the Trump-endorsed Independent Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa, receiving more votes than his two opponents combined.

• In New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill outperformed expectations in a race against serial gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli, beating her Republican opponent by a 13-point margin.

• In Virginia, Abigail Spanberger will become the first female governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, beating devoted homophobe Republican Winsome Earle-Sears by a 15-point margin.

• In Maine, voters passed a “red flag” gun safety measure that enables families to petition a judge to temporarily remove a gun from the possession of a family member who may pose a threat to himself or others.

• In Pennsylvania, the three state Supreme Court justices who were instrumental in stopping the fake electors scheme in 2020 all won their retention votes to remain on the bench for another term.

• Also in Pennsylvania, every Republican on two Bucks County school boards was voted out of office and replaced by a Democrat.

• In California, Prop 50 — the initiative that enabled redistricting of state in response to gerrymandering in Texas — passed by almost a two-to-one majority, providing Democrats with the potential of five additional seats in the House of Representatives.

That last item — the victory of the Prop 50 ballot measure — isn’t the only good news for redistricting nationwide. The win there and the other Democratic party wins around the country indicate that, even if the Republicans keep redistricting other states, that Republican effort may be futile. More blue states may be inspired to do their own redistricting, encouraged by the results in California.

Even in those states that have been gerrymandered in favor of Republicans, there’s a possibility — perhaps even a likelihood — that those districts in which Republican majorities have been spread thin could go to the Democratic candidate because of Democratic party voter enthusiasm and distrust of Trump and the Republicans.

In races large and small, Democrats prevailed. Some races had national significance; others were far more local or regional. But the thing they had in common was that they were part of the anti-Trump/anti-authoritarian trend as a component of those wins.

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These wins are a certainly boost for Democrats. But in the next 12 months, every minute will count, in terms of identifying the right candidates and campaigning diligently for them. Any momentum gained in these off-year elections must be sustained if we hope to put the brakes on Trump in the 2026 midterms.

Going forward, we’ll need to strike the balance between experiencing the joy at this round of elections and planning and executing the work that’s left to do to defeat the forces at play here in the U.S.

These off-year elections following so closely on the heels of the second wildly successful No Kings march may seem like a one-two punch for Trump. Perhaps they are. But we still need the knockout punch. A potential by-product of these wins is that there may be some Republicans who see the handwriting on the wall and soften their support for Trump, both in Congress and among the population at large. But relying on Republicans to do the right thing is like Charlie Brown relying on Lucy not to yank the football away when he’s about to kick it.

At a minimum, we’ll need to do what we can to prevent any further damage and to undo some of the damage of the first ten months of this horrific administration.

Fortunately, there has been an intentional building of the infrastructure of peaceful resistance, and the products of that infrastructure (the “Hands Off!” and “No Kings” marches) have been consequential. The anti-Trump movement has also been growing commensurate with the degree of cruelty and dysfunction coming from the White House.

If past is prologue, Trump will become more irrational, more vengeful, more toddler-like in his behavior, although it hardly seems possible. His behavior of late has been decreasingly connected with reality and increasingly hostile. What that tells me is that the resistance has to keep the heat on and turn it up as high as we can.

Democratic politicians need to do everything in their power to wrest control of the media narrative away from the MAGA crowd and towards the resistance. It’s up to the rest of us to cajole and badger the Democratic politicians to do so.

Zohran Mamdani has made some big promises for the city of New York, some of which even his most ardent supporters are uncertain about their chances for success. It’s 100% guaranteed that the opposition will simultaneously do everything in their power to prevent him from keeping those promises and then criticize him for not keeping those promises. (We’ve seen all the plays in that Republican playbook for years.)

Moreover, whether it’s been intentional or not, Mamdani has found himself in the national spotlight, becoming an emblem of everything that is threatening and scary to those on the right and representing everything that is hopeful and forward-thinking to those on the left.

It’s up to his supporters to magnify his successes and to fight back against the propaganda that is already circulating, despite the fact that he hasn’t yet set foot in Gracie Mansion.

With Mamdani’s successes, his term(s) as mayor of New York can become a blueprint for other Democrats, not so much in the specific policies but rather in his willingness to speak unvarnished truth that appeals to both old school Democrats and to the next generation of Democrats whose lives will be the most affected by the progressive ideas that Mamdani is espousing.

An old U.S. Army recruiting advertisement attempted to inspire recruits to “be all that you can be.” It encouraged enlistees with the following tag line: “We do more before 9 a.m. than most people do all day.”

Our current administration merits a similar tag line: “We do more destruction in a single week than most people do in their lifetimes.”

Here’s a random sampling of what Trump and his sycophants “accomplished” just this past week:

• Trump posted an AI video of himself as a fighter pilot, literally shitting on Americans, in response to the millions of Americans who marched in the streets to protest his policies, his crimes, and — for some — his very existence. In precisely timed coordination with that, J.D. Vance posted his own AI video of Trump’s coronation as king, with his minions kneeling at his feet.

• Those videos were merely a precursor to the unannounced and unapproved tearing down of the entire East Wing of White House. The cost estimate of this fiasco also jumped from $250 million to $300 million to build his tacky vanity-fueled ballroom. Trump is claiming it will be paid for by private donations from donors — including Altria Group, Amazon, Apple, Booz Allen Hamilton, Caterpillar, Coinbase, Comcast, Hard Rock International, Google, HP, Lockheed Martin, Meta, Micron Technology, Microsoft, NextEra Energy, Palantir Technologies, Ripple, Reynolds American, T-Mobile, Tether, Union Pacific Railroad — many of whom have federal contracts and other business with the U.S. government. Conflicts of interest abound.

• Further destroying the firewall between charity and influence peddling, Trump took a private donation of $130 million from billionaire and anti-vax advocate Timothy Mellon to pay troops during the shutdown.

• A disgruntled Trump took it personally that the Province of Ontario has aired a video of Ronald Reagan on U.S. television, in which Reagan speaks about how much tariffs hurt Americans. Calling the ad “nasty,” Trump claimed he could be nastier and, for once, he kept his word. With a response worthy of a bratty pre-schooler, Trump added a 10% tariff to goods imported from Canada, making things even more expensive for U.S. citizens and further alienating one of our closest allies.

• Brutal ICE raids are continuing in cities and towns across the nation, and Trump is continuing to lie about the hell hole of Portland, calling it a “city on fire,” despite all evidence to the contrary, while the federal courts wrestle with the decision as to whether National Guard troops can be deployed in U.S. cities without question at the whim of a president, despite the objections of state and local leaders.

• The federal government shutdown continues, now putting SNAP benefits at risk even if the government reopens, because Trump’s minion, Mike Johnson, refuses to even bring the House into session. It’s particularly galling to the average American that Trump and the Republicans are shutting down the government thereby depriving food insecure people of their SNAP benefits so that they can prevent people from having affordable health insurance.

• The unauthorized the bombing of boats in the Caribbean and in the Pacific continues, with Trump presenting no evidence to the American people that boats are drug cartels or that, even if they are drug smugglers, smuggling rises to the level of an “act of war” that would justify bombing. When the Columbian president raised the issue that one of boats that was bombed included Columbian citizen, Trump cut off aid to Columbia. Meanwhile, the president who promised to get the U.S. out of interventionist foreign military engagement is now actively positioning warships in the Caribbean and off the coast of Columbia for unspecified reasons.

• Trump demanded $230 million — a calculation apparently based on nothing more than his own greed — from DOJ because of legitimate criminal investigations the Department had engaged in. DOJ seems to be acceding to his demand, despite the fact that no other criminal defendant has the right or ability to make such demands.

All that and much more, in a single week!

Trump escalated his irrationality and impulsivity from day one of this term — far more than during his first term. But in my view, this past week’s escalation of insane behavior is actually a sign of his weakness, not strength or increasing power or self-confidence.

He really, really, really doesn’t want the Epstein files released. This past week is a demonstration of his fear of the House coming back in session with newly elected member Adelita Grijalva being sworn in and providing the deciding vote to release all the information in the Epstein files. (My suspicion is that many Republican House members who aren’t true MAGA cultists would be secretly relieved to have the files released due to their hands being forced in this way, so that they don’t get blamed for the collapse of Trump’s house of cards.)

Trump is also clearly terrified after the nation saw millions of people protesting against him during the thousands of No Kings rallies around the country. Moreover, his poll numbers are weaker than ever, with his disapproval ratings somewhere around 63%. It’s clear that his own supporters are starting to turn against him, having themselves felt the direct effects of his decisions. His only response to his diminishing popularity is doing more and more things that alienate voters.

Speaking of voters, the upcoming off-year elections will also be an indicator of the diminishing popularity of the Republican party overall. The most prominent of these elections is the New York City mayoral election, in which Zohran Mamdani holds a commanding lead in the polls, despite all sorts of deal-making and finagling on the part of Trump and his acolytes. Ordinarily, national politicians don’t pay much attention to municipal elections. But this year is different. Yes, the Trumpists hate/fear Mamdani. But they’re more frightened of what he represents. If NYC can elect a progressive mayor that laughs in the face of the right-wing status quo, what will that mean for other races with candidates with similar progressive views, in 2026 and beyond?

Trump’s tariffs are also creating a double backfire. For consumers, inflation is very much on the rise. Additionally, allies are finding ways of circumventing trade with the United States to avoid Trump’s ever changing tariffs, and U.S. farmers, manufacturers, and consumers are feeling the results.

Trump is facing serious consequences of his arrogance, incompetence, and greed, perhaps for the first time in his entire life, with fewer and fewer escape routes for him. Ironically, all of these recent failures — every last one of them — are entirely his own doing. He is famous for blaming others for his failures, but any blame placed on others is becoming decreasingly plausible. Lacking a shred of humility, the only thing he is capable of doing is lashing out at others and creating chaos all around him (and around the world).

But all this chaos raises a fundamental question: Where are the objections to all this questionable activity? Why is everyone in his administration silently going along with the destruction of our government? Why are Republican members of Congress so terrified to do their constitutional duty and push back against this tyrant? Off-the-record conversations behind closed office doors and late night conversations in D.C. watering holes do not count as objections.

In any other administration, the checks and balances enshrined in our Constitution would not have allowed these illegal and immoral actions to have taken place. But those checks and balances rely on the honesty, integrity, and good will of members of our government — traits sorely lacking among the Republicans.

There’s another question that is perhaps even more disturbing: If all that can happen in a single week, what do next week and the following week and the week after that have in store? That kind of cliffhanger might be appropriate for a Netflix TV series but it’s pretty damn unsettling for our federal government.

Whenever Donald Trump does something that instinctively strikes us as shocking or offensive or boorish or (dare I say) un-American, three of his worst character traits are invariably involved — laziness, deception, and egotism. Sometimes it’s just one or two of those traits, but more often than not, it’s all three of them.

The most recent example is the unannounced demolition of the East Wing of the White House. Deception is perhaps the most blatant of those three traits because, even though he had previously announced the construction of his ego-inflating ballroom, he had promised the American people that there would be no effect on the existing structures of the White House — the so-called “people’s house.”

But scratch the surface of this affront to our senses, and his laziness becomes just as obvious.

For purposes of discussion, let’s pretend that this vanity project has a legitimate purpose. Let’s ignore the abject tackiness of the renovations that he’s done to the other parts of the White House and that he intends to impose on this ballroom of his. Let’s also stipulate for this discussion that there was a legitimate reason to engage in some demolition or renovation of the East Wing in order to accomplish his objective of constructing a ballroom and providing access to it from the existing structures. There are ways to accomplish those objectives that don’t involve lying to the American public and destroying a beloved landmark.

Did Trump work with historians and preservationists? Did he draw up detailed plans for review? Did the salesman-in-chief sell his vision to the American people?

Oh, hell, no. His inflated ego told him he didn’t have to do any of that. Those rules and norms are for other people. Instead, he first lied to the American people that the East Wing would remain intact. Almost immediately, excavators showed up and began demolition with no notice. Then — perhaps when it was already obvious — he announced that the entire East Wing is being destroyed.

While there is no historical precedent for this kind of destruction of federal government property, least of all the White House itself, Trump has previously used this modus operandi in the private sector, in the construction of the Trump Tower in New York.

Trump Tower was built on the site of the Bonwit Teller building, a fashionable department store on the corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue that was constructed in 1929. The façade of that building contained two art deco bas-relief stone sculptures of architectural and historic significance. Preservationists in New York City had an agreement with Donald Trump to save those sculptures; they were to be donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

But Donald Trump’s word, even in duly executed legal documents, was as worthless then as it is now. Despite his promises, the sculptures were destroyed by his construction crew on June 5, 1980. But John Baron, Trump’s imaginary friend/alter ego and fake VP of the Trump Organization, gave the New York Times the flimsy excuse that it would cost $32,000 of the $100 million budget for the Trump Tower itself to save them. (That $32K was probably pulled out of his backside, too.)

In both of these cases, Trump has been too lazy to do what is necessary to do things the right way. In both cases, he put his ego ahead of anyone else’s needs or expectations. And in both cases, he used deception to get away with it.

The wrecking ball is a perfect metaphor for the way Trump goes through his political and personal life.

Trump’s laziness, ego, and deception aren’t limited to his construction destruction endeavors. His efforts at curtailing illegal immigration are the most flagrant recent example where all of those character traits have been front and center.

Most Americans believe that undocumented immigrants who are violent criminals should be deported. There’s virtually no argument there. But Trump and his racist cronies have quickly morphed that belief into a violent, error-laden process that has literally separated families and torn communities apart.

Trump is too lazy to do the sometimes time-consuming work of distinguishing those who are truly dangerous criminals from hard-working people with families and legal immigration status. Hell, in many cases, his untrained, unqualified ICE goons haven’t even made the distinction between citizens and non-citizens.

Not surprisingly, Trump’s bait-and-switch fast talk on the campaign trail never included that he’d be illegally deporting legal residents to brutal foreign prisons with no due process. He never campaigned on tearing hard-working men and women away from their children and families. It was only going to be the “worst of the worst” (his words) who would be deported.

Instead of de-escalating the rhetoric and the deportations in the wake of his numerous failures to abide by legal deportation practices, he has instead waged war (again, his words) on blue cities and has empowered his ICE goons to meet quotas of thousands of deportations each week, all because his ego is too fragile to admit that his approach was wrong.

His slapdash tariff “plan”1 is yet another example of laziness, ego, and deception on full display. He has been willing to throw the nation’s and the world’s economy into chaos because he has long possessed some crackpot notion that tariffs would somehow be good for the U.S. economy. He and his spokespeople have deceitfully claimed that the nations whose goods were being exported to the U.S. would be the ones paying the tariffs when, in reality, it is the exact opposite. The cost of those tariffs are invariably passed on to U.S. consumers.

His ego was such that he thought he could get instant results. Instead, he got lawsuits, collapsing U.S. industries, alienated allies, and — in a delicious twist — his own voters turning against him, since they’re bearing the economic consequences along with the rest of us.

If there had been any economic benefits to be gained from an overhaul of our international trade policies, that would have involved the hard work of policy planning, diplomacy, and perhaps protracted negotiations — work that Trump is far too lazy to do.

It’s not hard to find examples of these traits throughout the Trump regime’s reign. That’s because he’s simply too lazy to do the hard work of governing — policy development, negotiating, compromising, strategizing, etc. His ego is too fragile to admit failure or defeat on any issue. Worst of all, his actions have demonstrated amorality when it comes to deceiving the nation and willfully hurting the citizens of the country whose flag he loves to hug.

While negotiating and working across the aisle might take time, what takes even more time (and money) is dealing with all the challenges and lawsuits. Even aside from the economic cost of his anti-social personality traits, the opportunity cost of defending all those lawsuits is overwhelming, when any other president would be using their time and energy to do the people’s business.

An ego the size and scope of Trump’s needs lots of fuel. So far, there have been enough sycophants and toadies at his disposal to provide that fuel.

To counteract that, most of the protests and legal action to date have been focused on one person — the convicted felon in the Oval Office.

But we’re reaching the point where protests need to bypass Trump altogether. He’s proven that any protests against him only force him to dig in deeper and indulge in his negative character traits with even more determination. Instead of aiming solely at Trump, the opposition must also be aimed directly at the people who have abdicated their responsibility to act as checks and balances against a president with authoritarian aspirations — namely, members of Congress.

The No Kings rallies and other actions demonstrate that there is massive widespread opposition to Trump, his behavior, and his policies. It’s time to refocus the majority of that opposition on the Congressional Republicans who are enabling Trump’s outrages.

There’s probably never been a better time to do so, since Mike Johnson has refused to bring Congress into session. Many of those Republicans are in their home districts, and they’re not doing the business of their constituents. Local actions that attract local media can put tremendous heat on those local representatives.

With enough pressure, they can be reminded that their jobs in Congress are increasingly at risk as we head toward the next election cycle. That may be enough for some of them to put pressure, in turn, on Johnson and on the GOP Senators in their states for Congress to do its Constitutional duty and prevent some of the worst outrages that are happening daily all across the country.

We’ve had a few days since the second No Kings march and, if the size mood of the marches around the country are any indication, it won’t be the last.

Here in Portland, the spirit of the day was evident long before the march itself. The Max Trains (Portland’s light rail public transit) were full to the Max starting early in the day, transporting marchers downtown in anticipation of the rally and march.

I should probably refer to them as “marches,” because there were several parade routes that converged in Waterfront Park and then marched through the city.

The overall crowd was estimated at 40,000 but that seemed to be a very conservative estimate. (I attended a speech from then candidate Obama in 2008 in the same location, and this weekend’s crowd not only took up much more space in Waterfront Park but also spread out all over different parts of downtown and of the city itself.

The iconic frog inflatable has clearly inspired lots of folks with lots of other kinds of inflatable creatures. We happened upon a staging area, where people could get themselves inflated:

Portland earned its “Bridgetown” nickname, with the bridges being used both as perches for spectators and as parade routes for the feeder marches:

Even the downtown parking garages served as viewing areas:

There was even enthusiasm in the lines to the Porta-Potties:

Even the late, great Darcelle found a place in the march, more than two years after her death:

So what’s next? More protests seem inevitable, of course.

But it feels like it’s time to bypass Trump with our protests and go directly and relentlessly after members of Congress. They’re the ones who have it in their power to affect change. They have just been too beholden to Trump to do so. But if we strategically target them one by one, there’s a good chance we can coerce Congress into putting the brakes on Trump.

There’s no shortage of talking points with which to convince members of Congress. Every member of Congress is representing a state or district that is suffering from the negative consequences of Trump’s slipshod and impulsive policies.

The fight won’t be over for a long time. But, as this weekend’s marches and rallies proved, the resistance is strong and ready to do what’s necessary to stave off budding fascism and return the nation’s most precious asset — democracy.

Kristi Noem, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and cosplay aficionado, made a visit this week to Portland, Oregon — a city that her boss has disparaged and mischaracterized for years. She was dispatched to prop up his most recent delusion — that Portland is a “war zone,” a “city on fire,” a “hell hole” — but she failed miserably.

The reason she failed is that there is no war and no war zone. There are no fires, except in some in the wood burning pizza ovens of certain restaurants. The most hellish thing about Portland these days is when the food co-op runs out of locally sourced chanterelles.

Social media has been full of photos taunting the so-called president with Portland’s natural beauty and glorious recent spell of weather. It’s not a difficult task. It’s a beautiful place with a long history of being laid back and progressive — traits that orange guy in D.C. despises.

There’s literally one city block, fairly removed from most of the city, where there have been mostly peaceful protests against ICE. The protests have consisted largely of a few people carrying signs and occasionally making some noise. With the exception of a few arrests handled by local law enforcement, the protests are nothing out of the ordinary.

There have been costumed characters. There has been a protest high tea, complete with formal tea service, in front of ICE headquarters. There’s been the omnipresent guy in the duck onesie. Let’s not forget the guy in the inflatable frog suit. (ICE’s response to ward off this evil, scary airbag amphibian? They sprayed pepper spray into his vent hole.)

Since Trump’s mandate to deport 3,000 people a week, there have been a handful of incidents that qualify as violence, some of which have been instigated by ICE agents themselves — i.e., spraying people in the eyes with pepper spray because they were shouting at them, shooting rubber bullets, tossing tear gas canisters into the crowd. They’ve even managed to pepper spray an 86-year-old woman for simply standing there. (With this regime, the word “violent” has been doing some pretty heavy lifting.)

Into the midst of all of this walks Kristi Noem, cosplaying her tough guy image to the max but avoiding any direct connection with what’s truly going on in Portland as a whole. She didn’t want her predetermined conclusions to be challenged in any way. Right-wing podcasters and influencers were allowed to accompany Noem during her visit, but members of local media were not. She even arrived into Portland safely sequestered in a private airport terminal, unable to get a glimpse of the recent magnificent renovation of the main airport terminal.

Her view from the ICE headquarters allowed her to put eyes on the edge of one section of the Interstate (I-5) to the west and The Old Spaghetti Factory chain restaurant to the east — not what anyone would consider a thorough or even representative view of Portland. The ICE facility is located at one of the lowest points in the city (about 25 feet above sea level) so, even on the roof, Noem didn’t have a sightline into anything other than the sides of the buildings that surrounded her — hardly a vantage point that would provide her with even the most basic ability to understand how minuscule the scope of the protests are in relation to the rest of the city and region.

Nevertheless, Noem got her made-for-TV footage, ominously shot from the street below, of her peering from the roof of the ICE building. She wasted no time hopping onto Fox “News” that evening to continue her boss’s insulting lie-filled narrative:

“One of the things I’ve been dealing with all day here in Portland is a bunch of pansies who were elected into political office who won’t make a decision to keep their citizens safe.”

— Kristi Noem, Oct. 7, Fox News (Jessie Watters show)

She continued her prevarication when she returned to D.C.:

Speaking Wednesday at a White House roundtable, Noem once again told the president that the city she observed from the ICE facility, where a person in a chicken suit and a handful of other people stood behind police barricades watching her on the building rooftop, needed intervention.

“I was in Portland yesterday and had the chance to visit with the governor of Oregon and the mayor there in town,” Noem said. “They are absolutely covering up the terrorism that is hitting their streets.”

— OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting), Oct. 8, 2025

These are not the words and actions of someone who is interested in working toward a common goal of reducing the supposed threats to her beloved ICE goons. This is someone who is intent on escalating the situation in any way she can in order to make the situation worse than it is so that she could provide her boss with an excuse to send in troops. Her primary goal is to continue Trump’s narrative of the “city on fire,” of the “war zone.”

Like so many in this regime, she’s speaking to an audience of one: the delusional blob who sits in the Oval Office.

On the one hand, Noem and the regime she represents are attempting to present their incursion into U.S. cities as a safety measure. On the other hand, they’re doing everything they can to inflame the situation. They’re eager to incite a violent response so that the Golfer-In-Chief can use the Insurrection Act to justify taking over “blue” U.S. cities militarily. As always, Robert Reich brings his usual clarity to the insurrection issue:

It’s crystal clear that Noem’s visit to Portland was in no way intended to collaborate with city officials to address an issue of mutual concern. It was a ham-fisted attempt to badger and intimidate and embarrass the city and state officials who have had the very small number of illegal incidents well under control using local resources.

The regime’s focus seems to be as much on preventing constitutionally protected protest as it is on solving any real or imagined criminal activity.

You can be forgiven if you have lost track why ICE is present in these cities in the first place, because the specter of military troops patrolling U.S. cities entirely overshadows their supposed reason for being there. DHS’s stated premise was to arrest the “worst of the worst” of undocumented immigrants — gang members, rapists, murderers. What we’ve witnessed, however, is heavily armed, masked ICE thugs rounding up farm workers, separating families, tearing apart communities, imprisoning immigrants who are legally showing up for their immigration hearings, mistakenly (or perhaps intentionally) arresting U.S. citizens.

It’s an understatement to say that the ICE approach to immigration enforcement and deportation in Portland and elsewhere is not at all commensurate with the actual number of criminal undocumented immigrants. Similarly, the proposed response to the protests — augmenting the ICE presence by sending in National Guard troops — is in no way commensurate with the handful of illegal incidents that are already being managed by local law enforcement.

As of this writing, we’re awaiting a ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit as to whether the deployment of National Guard troops in Portland will be allowed. There has already been a ruling in a similar case in federal court in Chicago preventing the deployment of National Guard troops in that city, at least temporarily.

It’s pretty clear that, no matter which way the courts rule in any of these cities, the Trump regime’s approach to immigration enforcement will continue to be one with an abundance of overzealous and outsized brute force and a complete lack of humanity.

Larry Flynt was probably best known as the publisher of Hustler, a “girlie magazine” that pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable content. Flynt was unapologetic for the content of his magazine and, if sales of his magazine were any indication, there was a huge market for what he was peddling. It made him a millionaire many times over.

But Larry Flynt is probably known most for becoming an unintentional First Amendment advocate. He found himself in court multiple times on obscenity charges. His First Amendment challenges culminated …

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For many years, Trump’s favorite excuse, when anyone took him to task about anything, was that it was a “witch hunt.” Rape charges? Witch hunt. Instigating an insurrection? Witch hunt. Anyone calling attention to one of his multiple failures as president? Witch hunt.

That’s clearly the lens (or at least one of the lenses) that Trump looks at life through. Someone is always on the hunt. Someone is always the predator and someone is always the prey. And if you’re not the predator, then you’re the prey.

It sure seems like he uses that mindset to turn himself into the ultimate predator. His most recent witch hunt is against the media. In reality, he’s been going after the media for years, but he’s been severely ratcheting up the rhetoric lately. He’s been using the power of his office to go after anyone he disagrees with or, more specifically, …

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Donald Trump loves to boast about how much work he does. Donald Trump’s children love to brag about how much work their father does. Donald Trump’s cabinet members love to suck up to Donald Trump by fawning over him for how much work he does — so much so, in fact, that their sycophancy is entirely indistinguishable from South Park’s satirical versions of themselves.

There’s certainly plenty of activity in the White House. But does Donald Trump really do so much work? It’s no coincidence that that activity, masquerading as work, has increased in both volume and visibility in the weeks since the Epstein scandal has re-emerged.

Trump is a master media manipulator, and he has been for many years. It’s one of his few actual skills. Manipulating the media is also his go-to move whenever there’s something he doesn’t want the American people to pay attention to. In his entire political life, there has never been anything he has wanted to distract from more than the Epstein files. The st…

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Never has the contrast between reality and Trump’s fantasy life been more vivid than it has been with Putin’s Alaska visit and his subsequent meeting with Zelenskyy and European leaders.

Virtually every reputable news organization (note that I used the word “reputable”) has been reporting that Putin dominated the meeting and Trump not only got nothing but also gave Putin legitimacy on the world stage.

For starters, they met on U.S. soil, on territory that was once Russian, land that Putin would love to get his expansionist hands on again. Second, despite Trump saying repeatedly prior to the summit he’d be very upset if no cease fire in Ukraine were agreed to, Putin not only didn’t agree to a cease fire but also received Trump’s buy-in that Ukrainian territory that Russian overtook during the war (and even some that they didn’t) would remain in Russia’s control.

After his visit to Alaska, Putin returned to Russia having attended only one of the two planned sessions. There was no need …

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