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Florida Outright Refuses to Shut Down “Alligator Alcatraz” - 2025-08-25T21:25:27Z

Florida apparently has no intention of shutting down Alligator Alcatraz.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier revealed Monday that the state is planning to keep the ICE facility up and running, despite a court order demanding that it shut down within the next two months.

“We’re going to continue operating the facility,” Uthmeier told news outlet WINK over the phone, referring to the state-operated 3,000-person migrant detention center erected in a swamp and flood zone. “We believe that it’s a fully lawful facility. This is an effort by environmentalists, by the left, by Democrats and by honestly this judge, to stall our immigration enforcement efforts.”

“They do not like the deportations,” Uthmeier said, noting that he had filed a notice to appeal the court ruling.

Climate activists and the Miccosukee Tribe sued the government on the grounds that the immigration agency had violated a federal law by erecting the migrant detention center without conducting an adequate assessment of its potential impact on the Florida Everglades.

That proved to be a winning strategy last week, when U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams gave the government 60 days to dismantle the hastily constructed concentration camp, ordering the removal of the site’s lighting, fencing, and generators. Williams also ordered the facility to halt ongoing construction and to accept no new detainees.

The project, which has been described as having horrific living conditions by detainees and former employees alike, is projected to cost American taxpayers $450 million per year in operating fees. Florida’s state government is expected to front the costs, filing reimbursement claims through the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA, which the Trump administration has spent months trying to dismantle.

Trump Finally Admits the Truth About His Takeover of Blue Cities - 2025-08-25T21:01:39Z

President Donald Trump is so obsessed with punishing Democrats that he’s pretending red states don’t have a crime problem.

While speaking to reporters Monday, the president balked when asked whether he would consider sending National Guard troops to Republican-led cities and states that experience high rates of crime.

“Sure, but there aren’t that many of them,” Trump said. “If you look at the top twenty-five cities for crime, just about every one of those cities is run by Democrats.”

In Newsweek’s recent list of the 30 U.S. cities (with at least 100,000 residents) that had the highest number of violent crimes against people, 16—more than half—of those cities were in certifiably red states. These included Tennessee, Ohio, Arkansas, Texas, South Carolina, Missouri, Utah, Oklahoma, and Louisiana.

Four of those states were among the six to send National Guard troops to Washington D.C., which was notably absent from the recent list of the most crime-ridden cities.

But while a state like Ohio has a whopping four cities on the high-crime list—including Cleveland, Toledo, Dayton, and Akron—Trump has set his sights on another city, in Illinois: Chicago. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has been a vocal critic of Trump, and hasn’t flinched at the president’s previous attempts to intimidate the city.

Twenty-two out of 30 of the cities on Newsweek’s list were led by Democratic mayors. While mayors are not powerless to contribute to crime prevention, funding for public safety initiatives and other programs, the rates of violent crimes are primarily driven by gun violence, which is a state and federal issue.


Earlier this year, the Trump administration terminated 69 of the 145 community violence intervention grants awarded through the DOJ, cutting a whopping $158 million in grants.

Trump Pulls From Dictator Playbook and Hangs Giant Banner of His Face - 2025-08-25T20:46:24Z

On the same day that Donald Trump said many Americans yearn for a dictatorship, his administration took a page from the book of dictators everywhere and unfurled a giant banner of the president’s face on the facade of the Department of Labor.

The banner, which features Trump’s steely second inaugural portrait, as well as the logo for Trump’s America 250 programming and the motto “American Workers First,” currently drapes over the windows of three stories of the building, according to photos posted online. Beside it are an American flag and a portrait of Theodore Roosevelt with the same text.

X screenshot U.S. Department of Labor @USDOL: AMERICAN WORKERS FIRST! (photos of the giant Trump banner) 9:44 AM August 25, 2025 1.1M Views

The department on which the banner hangs, under Trump, has undergone drastic cuts and pursued an agenda hostile to unions and workers.

Remarkably, this is not the first time a government building has displayed Trump’s visage. A banner with the same Trump presidential portrait, alongside one of Abraham Lincoln, was hung on the Department of Agriculture building in the spring, drawing comparisons to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Un.

As Trump’s scowl looms, Big Brother–style, over Washington, D.C., the president continues his federal takeover of the nation’s capital, usurping local law enforcement and pushing a draconian military occupation, with no end in sight.

Trump Rants About “Comfort Women” While Meeting with Foreign President - 2025-08-25T20:29:11Z

President Donald Trump’s meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took an unexpected turn Monday when the U.S. leader decided to bring up the topic of forced prostitution.

The White House meeting spanned several geopolitical issues, including potential unification of South Korea and North Korea, economic partnerships between South Korea and the U.S., as well as South Korea’s political stability, which has been on shaky ground since former President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law in December.

But then Trump dropped a seemingly unrelated doozy into the afternoon conversation: Japan’s sex-based war crimes.

“The whole issue of the women. Comfort women,” Trump remarked, seated beside Lee. “Very specifically, we talked and that was a very big problem for Korea, not for Japan. Japan was, wanted to go, they want to get on. And—but Korea was very stuck on that, you understand.”

The term “comfort women” was a euphemism coined by the Japanese military to describe women or girls who were forced into sexual slavery by Japanese soldiers during World War II, according to the Association of Asian Studies. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of women were victimized by Japan and forced into military sex slavery during the war, which amounted to the largest case of government-sponsored human trafficking in modern history. The continued use of the phrase “comfort women” has been roundly criticized for minimizing the harm and gravity of Japan’s actions.

The topic is still a heavily charged political issue for the two nations, especially as surviving victims seek formal recognition of the atrocities by Tokyo.

But as Trump attempts to push his numerous ties to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein into the rearview, it’s no surprise that he doesn’t understand why South Korea would have a difficult time moving past the abuse. The president has, after all, been found liable for sexually abusing women in the past.

In 2015, Japan apologized to the South Korean victims and reached an agreement with the conservative leadership in South Korea at the time to give 1 billion yen—or $6.8 million—in reparations.

Regardless, Lee called the matter a “heartbreaking issue” for South Koreans last week, noting that the 2015 arrangement was “very difficult to accept” for many victims in the country, but that it was nonetheless “undesirable to overturn it.”

James Comer Officially Sends Subpoena to Jeffrey Epstein’s Estate - 2025-08-25T20:23:21Z

The Republican-led House Oversight Committee on Monday sent a to subpoena the estate of deceased serial sex predator Jeffrey Epstein.

“It is imperative that Congress conduct oversight of the federal government’s enforcement of sex trafficking laws generally and specifically its handling of the investigation and prosecution of Mr. Epstein and [his former partner Ghislaine] Maxwell,” Oversight Committee Chair James Comer wrote in a letter alongside the subpoena. “It is our understanding that the Estate of Jeffrey Epstein is in custody and control of documents that may further the Committee’s investigation and legislative goals.

The subpoena demands things like Epstein’s infamous 50th “birthday book” that includes a letter from Trump, flight logs, bank information, anything that “could be reasonably construed to be a potential list of clients,” and more. Comer’s committee has already spoken to William Barr, who was attorney general when the Justice Department indicted Epstein in 2019, and Alex Acosta, who as federal prosecutor in 2007 refused to press charges against Epstein, giving him the sweetheart plea deal that allowed him to continue his sex trafficking.

This subpoena has the potential to cede new information, an opportunity that hasn’t been raised since Trump’s Justice Department conveniently declared the case closed in July. Trump, who has spent all of his time trying to convince the public that none of this matters despite having a well-documented close friendship with the infamous serial abuser, has yet to comment on the Oversight Committee’s subpoena.

Trump’s Bruised Hand Seen Without Makeup—and It Looks Quite Bad - 2025-08-25T19:15:53Z

As questions swirl about recurrent bruising on the back of Donald Trump’s right hand, the 79-year-old president’s injury was clearly visible—without the daub of mismatched makeup with which it’s usually covered—during his public appearances early on Monday.

The bruising was spotted repeatedly during a Monday morning executive order–signing, and again during an afternoon meeting with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung. While Trump has previously sought to hide the mark with a (quite conspicuous) smear of concealer, observers noticed on Monday that it was exposed, despite apparent efforts by the president to hide his bruised hand from view.

X screenshot Spencer Hakimian @SpencerHakimian Donald Trump with very visible bruising on his right hand today. (photos of his bruised hand)

In Trump’s second term, the bruising has been spotted regularly, in at least February, April, June, and July, thus giving rise to speculations about the president’s health—including as to whether he is receiving undisclosed intravenous treatment.

Such concerns mounted in July, as images circulated of the hand bruise as well as of swelling in his ankles. At the time, the White House attributed the swollen ankles to “a benign and common condition,” chronic venous insufficiency.

As for the bruising, the White House cites “frequent hand shaking and the use of aspirin”—a dubious line, given that the mark appears on the part of the hand subjected to the least, if any, pressure during a handshake.

This can be seen in a video, posted by a communications staffer, of Trump greeting Lee Jae Myung outside of the White House. The South Korean president shakes Trump’s right hand, making contact only with the area around the bruise. When Myung goes to rest his left hand on the back of Trump’s right, he abruptly grabs the president’s sleeve instead, perhaps to deliberately avoid touching the empurpled part.

FEMA Employees Ring Every Alarm Bell: Katrina-Level Disaster Is Coming - 2025-08-25T18:15:05Z

More than 180 employees at the Federal Emergency Management Administration sent Congress a letter Monday, warning that President Donald Trump’s efforts to phase out the agency could make way for another Hurricane Katrina-level environmental disaster.

The letter argued that the Trump administration’s mismanagement of FEMA had undone critical emergency rules, gutted essential federal programs, and saddled the agency with insufficient and inexperienced leadership. “Our shared commitment to our country, our oaths of office, and our mission of helping people before, during, and after disasters compel us to warn Congress and the American people of the cascading effects of decisions made by the current administration,” the letter stated.

More than 150 FEMA employees signed the letter anonymously, while only 36 signed their names. The agency has already lost one-third of its workforce since Trump entered office, who either quit or were fired. FEMA’s former acting head Cameron Hamilton was fired in May after defending the agency Trump claimed he would like to “phase out.” The employees wrote that they wanted better protections from “politically motivated firings.”

“I think the unfortunate reality is that our agency is on such a dangerous trajectory and drastic action is needed,” said one FEMA employee behind the letter, who spoke to The Washington Post under the condition of anonymity. “Congress passed laws after Katrina to protect Americans and FEMA from inadequate leadership, inaction, and unpreparedness, but I don’t think Congress realizes how many of those laws have been broken, been violated.”

Signed into law in 2006, the Post-Katrina Emergency Reform Act granted FEMA with more power and responsibility—but in its efforts to dissolve the agency, the Trump administration has undone much of this legislation.

The letter advocated that FEMA be removed from the purview of the Department of Homeland Security, and made into an independent Cabinet-level agency. Trump has previously said that he would like DHS to take full control of disaster responses.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem however, was widely criticized for her pitifully delayed response to the deadly flooding in Texas earlier this summer. Noem severely botched FEMA’s Texas response by reportedly failing to renew contracts with companies staffing FEMA call centers, and instituting a policy that required her to personally sign off on all DHS expenditures exceeding $100,000.

Noem’s “review of contracts is superfluous, given that FEMA is already required to develop ‘pre-scripted mission assignments’” the letter stated. Noem has been charged with running the agency alongside David Richardson, who has no experience at all in emergency management, and didn’t even know that the United States had a hurricane season.

The Trump administration’s response to the deadly flooding in Texas “proved the inefficiencies, ineffectiveness, and dangers of the processes and decisions put forth by the current administration,” the letter stated. Noem, in denial of her own disastrous work, claimed that the federal response in Texas was a model for what’s to come.

The group of FEMA employees also wrote that the administration’s decision to scrap federal programs related to climate change were particularly dangerous.

“This administration’s decision to ignore and disregard the facts pertaining to climate science in disasters shows a blatant disregard for the safety and security of our Nation’s people and all American communities regardless of their geographic, economic or ethnic diversity,” they said.

Newsom Throws Down Over Trump’s New Threat in Redistricting War - 2025-08-25T17:27:47Z

California Governor Gavin Newsom is ready to throw down in court over his state’s upcoming redistricting referendum.

President Donald Trump vowed legal retaliation against the Golden State Monday, telling reporters during a White House press briefing that his administration would be filing a lawsuit against California “pretty soon” over its plan to put the state’s congressional lines to a vote.

“I think I’m going to be filing a lawsuit pretty soon and I think we’re going to be very successful in it. We’re going to be filing it through the Department of Justice, that’s going to happen,” Trump said in the Oval Office.

Trump also condemned the use of blue slips in the Senate, which allow home-state lawmakers to veto district court nominees as well as appointments to U.S. attorneys’ offices.

“We’re also going to be filing a lawsuit on blue slipping. You know, blue slips make it impossible for me as president to appoint a judge or a U.S. attorney because they have a gentleman’s agreement, nothing memorialized, it’s a gentleman’s agreement that’s about 100 years old, where if you have a president, like a Republican, and if you have a Democrat senator, that senator can stop you from appointing a judge or a U.S. attorney in particular, those two.”

But Newsom was already ready and willing to meet Trump at his level.

“BRING IT,” the governor wrote on X, in response to the president’s comments during the presser.

Newsom announced the Election Rigging Response Act earlier this month, a statewide Democratic gerrymandering plan intended to offset Republican efforts to strip liberal areas around the country of their electoral votes. California will invite residents to vote on whether or not to pursue redistricting in their own state, in reaction to the battle raging in Texas, on November 4.

In July, the president demanded that Texas Republicans create five more House seats by redrawing its congressional map, eliminating a handful of blue districts. The order, and Texas’s subsequent obedience, elicited shock and contempt from two of the country’s most populous regions—California and New York. Both states have launched their own redistricting wars in the wake of the vote.

“This is radical rigging of a midterm election,” Newsom told The Siren podcast Wednesday. “Radical rigging of an election. Destroying, vandalizing this democracy, the rule of law. So, I’m sorry. I know some peoples’ sensibilities. I respect and appreciate that. But right now, with all due respect, we’re walking down a damn different path. We’re fighting fire with fire. And we’re gonna punch these sons of bitches in the mouth.”

Transcript: Trump’s Treatment of Abrego Garcia Is Cruel and Lawless - 2025-08-25T17:14:59Z

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the August 25 episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon. (Due to technical difficulties, we don’t have a video of this conversation.)

Bacon: Let’s talk about your constituent [Kilmar Abrego Garcia] What happened this morning? I guess he’s been detained now. Talk about what you have heard about him specifically so far.

Rep. Glenn Ivey: Well, at this point we’re just following reports. That they’ve detained him and they’re going to deport him is our understanding. I haven’t heard any official confirmation on that, but that’s what we’re hearing.

Bacon: To Uganda or where? Or you don’t know?

Ivey: Uganda. Yeah.

Bacon: OK. Wow.

Ivey: Uganda. That’s what we’re hearing. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. We’ll have to wait for a tweet from the president, I suppose, ’cause that’s the only way he does official communications: on Twitter or X or whatever they call it now.

Bacon: Just for the average person, why is this so concerning?

Ivey: Well, because the Trump administration is doing everything it can to keep him from having his day in court. They’ve been accusing him of being MS-13. The secretary said he is a “monster.” They dropped all these federal charges on him. They’re doing everything they can to actually keep him from having a chance to get the day in court that the Supreme Court said he should get. So when they brought him to Tennessee after they charged him, the judge there looked at the charges to make a determination about whether he should be released or not and how the case should go forward now. They’ve charged him with human trafficking and all these serious felonies. The judge looked at the case and said, I don’t think he’s a threat to public safety. That’s one of the two things the judges have to look at when they make the bail of determinations. And the second was, I don’t think he’s a flight risk. I think he can go back to Maryland.

What that says to me is that this judge didn’t think this was such a strong case. And the fact that they’re trying to pressure him with this deportation to Uganda, a place that he’s never been and apparently the jail conditions over there are horrific—clearly they’re just trying to pressure him into taking a plea so they don’t have to come into court and prove the case that they said they could prove. They’re afraid to go to court. They’re afraid to have their case evaluated by a judge and a jury.

Bacon: You went to a rally this morning for him? Is that what you went to?

Ivey: Yeah, kind of a rally. It was right before he went into into the building into ICE. That’s the same building, ironically, that we went to meet our two senators and three other members a couple of weeks ago to try and get a chance to tour the detention facility, which they refused. So it’s a little ironic that it’s the same building.

Bacon: And basically what’s happened here is they do not have anything. He’s committed no crime, but they can’t concede that, right? He’s committed no crime, done nothing wrong, but they’d rather deport him than admit that they were wrong.

Ivey: Well, they’ve charged him with a crime.

Bacon: Yeah.

Ivey: So they would say he’s committed a crime—but he certainly hasn’t been convicted of a crime. And if you go back to the beginning of all of this, the deportation was illegal, which they had to acknowledge in court. But rather than just bring him back and fix the problem, they kept saying they couldn’t bring him back, they didn’t have the authority to bring him back. The Supreme Court said, You’ve got bring him back. The Fourth Circuit said, You’ve got to bring him back. He gets his day in court. So they trumped up these charges—pardon the pun—so they could bring him back and save face. But then they brought him back, and he’s like, OK, well, give me my day in court. Then they’re like, Geez, we don’t want to do that either, so let’s send him to a country where he’ll never be heard from again. That looks like what they’re trying to do.

Bacon: Talk about the National Guard. I know you’re in the suburbs above D.C., not D.C. proper, but talk about what that’s like and why we should be concerned about that.

Ivey: Yeah. I was in D.C. yesterday—two of my kids live in D.C., by the way; my grandson’s in D.C. and the like—and we were down on the wharf. And I saw, I don’t know, 30 or so of these guys walking around in groups of between three and five mainly. There was one time where it was a group of eight. First of all, I was with a guy who works in the restaurant business in D.C. and he says nobody’s here. This is shocking that there’s so few people here. And I know it’s been very damaging to the restaurants. They’ve had to extend the restaurant week, but seeing guys walking around on American streets in full camo—this looks like they just got pulled off the front line of some combat theater. And they’re carrying … I’m not a gun guy, but I would say either an M4 or an M16, military assault weapons. And some of them had 9mm handguns strapped on. I’m just not used to seeing that kind of firepower on American streets. That’s not what’s going on. That’s problem number one.

Problem number two is when I looked at their belts, they didn’t have anything other than firearms. So in a civilian police context where you have a force continuum, you don’t go right to shoot the guy. You go to—Well, we got tasers, we’ve got pepper spray, we’ve got other options. We’ve got nightstick that aren’t deadly force that we can use depending on the situation. And the firearm is the last resort. For these guys, it’s the only resort. That’s all they have. And then there’s the training issue. Now, you know the president—they’re saying they’re going to train them [on] how to deal with civilian contacts, but they haven’t trained them yet. And even if they had trained them, they don’t have the tools to do non–lethal force in most situations. And by the way, if you fire one of those assault weapons guns in a context like the wharf, the bullet goes right through the target and keeps going. So the chances of hitting some innocent bystander jump exponentially when you are using firearms with that kind of power in that kind of environment.

So for me, it was this is why we don’t have military policing our streets. And then the last point I’ll make on this one is, last time I checked, the wharf was not a hotspot.

Bacon: Yes.

Ivey: I’m seeing these guys—it looks like they’re tourists in town. They’re at the Washington Monument or Union Station or in front of the Supreme Court, all the iconic things that make for great photos and great political theater, I guess, for MAGA Republican America. But if you really want to try and help with the crime problem, that’s not where it is and those aren’t the right guys to do it. The guys to do that would be—I did see some DEA on the street. Although, again, they’re in camo outfits, street patrol is not what they’re trained to do and it’s not the highest and best use of their capabilities. Same with FBI agents. When I was a local prosecutor in D.C., when I was at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, we had task forces where you worked with the FBI and the DEA and the local police all the time. U.S. Marshals as well. And those can be great and very effective and very powerful. But let ’em have their role. It’s like, don’t let Michael Jordan inbound the ball. What are we doing here? Put ’em in a position where they can do the most good work for the community.

Bacon: Sounds like troops are now coming to potentially Chicago, Baltimore. What do you make of this general trend?

Ivey: Well, it’s a stupid abuse of the military power. It’s enormously expensive. The quote I heard was $1 million a day just for D.C. And let’s start with this. Crime’s gone down in the U.S. pretty significantly in the last few years, but we have a major crime problem. I was a prosecutor for 12 years of my career, state and federal. No question it’s an issue. How do you fix it? Well, more cops. This doesn’t help with that, especially D.C., ’cause instead of releasing the $1.1 billion that the mayor said she would use to hire cops at least in part, they’re hanging onto that. Number two, you’re not putting people on the street who can help with civilian policing to address the actual things you say are the problem—let’s say it’s murder, carjacking, or whatever. These are guys walking around as tourists, really doing nothing to address the situation. Number three, you’re not putting people on the types of task forces and teams that would be helpful to local police to actually target the violent criminal offenders.

And then number four, you need a comprehensive approach to violence reductions on the street. It’s not just enforcement. Intervention and prevention programs can be extraordinarily helpful with that. But instead of funding that, Trump got in office and the first thing he did was cut the Biden [administration’s] Office of Gun Violence Prevention. First thing he did was cut that. And then of course they won’t take any steps to address guns on the street. Take ghost guns. Last I looked, there were 180 sponsors for a ghost gun ban at the federal level. How many Republicans? Zero. And everybody know ghost guns. They’re made to help criminals evade being caught when they use the gun. You can’t even work to ban that—you can’t even work to get that off the street. I mean, come on.

And then, I forgot this part, I’m watching what these guys are doing and they’re grabbing—ICE is grabbing people off the streets. I guess apparently right now, they’re targeting pizza delivery guys. Yeah. Wow, we got some pizza delivery guys. City’s a lot safer now, isn’t it? You got the pepperoni off the streets. It’s ridiculous. It would be pathetic if it weren’t true. It is just incredible.

Bacon: Your staff told me you’ve got to go in 10. So the last question is what should we do about this? Like how crazy they’ve gone going after pizza delivery guys. What can—not just Democrats in Congress, but what should the country be trying to do to challenge this?

Ivey: Well, I think in part, the messages that they can send to their elected officials is a big step, especially if they’re in red states or have Republican representatives. Hey, Congressman or Senator so-and-so, this is a big waste of dollars. Get these guys back in the mission that they’re supposed to be carrying out—the National Guard. And it’s not civilian law enforcement patrol. If we want to do more, do that. Let’s take Tennessee for example. Tennessee sent National Guard troops up here, but Memphis apparently has a much worse capital murder problem than we do in Washington D.C. And if I recall correctly, Memphis was the place where they had the five guys that beat—I forget the man’s name, but beat him to death. So that police department’s in need a reform. But guess what Donald Trump did? He shut down DOJ intervention efforts to try and help with the consent decree reform for local police departments, including that one.

So all you can do is hope that people will finally see through the show that he’s trying to put on and say, OK, yeah, we want to reduce crime. We know this isn’t the way to do it. Let’s get back on track. I think the poll in the D.C. crowd was 80 percent, but he doesn’t really care about that ’cause D.C. doesn’t have a red influence on it. But we need our Republicans in Congress to stand up and say something about this just like the cuts to Medicaid. Just like the cuts to Obamacare. Just like the tariffs he’s put in place, just taking money out of their pockets. And if they won’t do it, they need to be replaced by Democrats.

Bacon: Congressman ...Thank you.

Police Chief Awards Trump Shiny Badge He Gives All Little Children - 2025-08-25T17:05:39Z

President Trump was given an honorary U.S. Marshals badge at his executive order press conference on Monday, once again displaying how easily impressed he is by meaningless gifts.

“I think Gady Serralta had something he wanted to give you on behalf of all of the law enforcement who are out there every single night,” Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump with a grin, speaking to the President of the United States like a kid on Christmas.

“Mr. President, thank you for putting me in charge of this search as the director of the United States Marshals Service,” Serralta said. “On behalf of all the federal law enforcement agencies that we’re working with, and those that have yet to join the team, we thought it was only appropriate to present you with [an] honorary United States Marshall service badge,” he told Trump.

He then handed the president the badge and a handcuff key, to Trump’s delight. “That’s very nice,” Trump said directly to the camera while smiling without his teeth.

“You continue, through your policies and your efforts with your staff to un-handcuff law enforcement officers all over this nation,” Serralta said. “And I can tell you personally that they thank you for that. You can continue un-handcuffing law enforcement.”

“That’s a very great honor,” Trump replied. “I’ll save that and put it some place up, which is important.”

An honorary service badge is something law enforcement officials hand out to just about anyone, even children. The most notable instance of this was DJ Daniel, the cancer-stricken child who attended the State of the Union earlier this year. Daniel was made an honorary Secret Service member for dressing up and pretending to be a police officer in his hometown. But from children’s badges, to golden paperweights, to a literal Diet Coke bottle, it doesn’t take much to flatter Trump.

Trump Vows More Corruption Is Coming in Unhinged Rant on Intel Deal - 2025-08-25T16:49:46Z

Asserting federal control over the private sector is as American as apple pie, according to Donald Trump.

The president apparently sees nothing wrong with his administration’s latest deal with Intel, the only chipmaker allowed to make the tech parts in the U.S.

Last week, the government took a 10 percent stake in the company, purchasing 433.3 million shares for a total price of $8.9 billion. In a press release Friday, Intel underscored that the exchange came at a “discount” to the company’s current stock rate. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also confirmed the deal.

The transaction has made the U.S. government Intel’s largest single shareholder, though Intel said that the White House would not have a board seat or hold any governing rights of the company. The terms of the deal do, however, allow the U.S. to buy an additional five percent of Intel’s market shares if the company is “no longer majority owner of its foundry business,” according to MSNBC.

But Trump’s recounting of the events has been remarkably different. By Monday morning, Trump still refused to acknowledge that the stock purchase came with a price, deriding his critics of the deal with simple insults.

“I PAID ZERO FOR INTEL, IT IS WORTH APPROXIMATELY 11 BILLION DOLLARS. All goes to the USA,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Why are ‘stupid’ people unhappy with that? I will make deals like that for our Country all day long. I will also help those companies that make such lucrative deals with the United States States.”

“I love seeing their stock price go up, making the USA RICHER, AND RICHER. More jobs for America!!! Who would not want to make deals like that?” he added.

Trump’s insistence that the White House’s involvement in private business is a good thing does not bode well for the rest of the private sector: The government is already looking to take equity stakes in other companies, according to one of Trump’s top economic advisers.

“I’m sure that at some point there’ll be more transactions, if not in this industry, in other industries,” National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CNBC Monday.

The deal with Intel followed several weeks of personal attacks by Trump against Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, in which the president openly questioned the Malaysian-born American business executive’s previous investments in Chinese tech firms. Since the deal was announced, however, the president has noticeably pulled back on his calls for Tan’s resignation.

Trump Adviser Vows Government Will Take Over More Businesses Soon - 2025-08-25T16:27:40Z

The Trump administration’s Intel deal represents only the first of more such interventions into the private sector, according to Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council.

Trump last week announced that the U.S. government will be taking a 10 percent passive ownership stake in the tech company Intel. The deal came just weeks after the president called for Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign after Senator Tom Cotton alleged the executive has problematic ties to China.

Trump made remarks Friday indicating that the move was something more of a shakedown than a deal, and that more such interventions may eventually be in the works. “[Tan] walked in wanting to keep his job, and he ended up giving us $10 billion for the United States,” the president told reporters. “So we picked up 10 billion. And we do a lot of deals like that. I’ll do more of them.”

On Monday, CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin asked Hassett about that prospect.

“So, we should expect the U.S. government to be taking more equity stakes in businesses around the country?” Sorkin asked. “That is something that if you’re a CEO, this morning, watching us, you should say, ‘OK, the sovereign wealth fund may be coming and trying to effectively buy in some kind of equity stake?’”

Hassett replied in the affirmative. “It’s possible, yeah,” he said. “That’s absolutely right.”

To allay fears of government meddling in business decisions, the adviser insisted that the government would only ever acquire non-voting stock.

But such assurances are likely to be met with skepticism, given that a major tenet of Trump’s agenda appears to be bending American businesses and institutions to his will. Take, for example, recent reports that the administration is keeping a scorecard of companies’ loyalty to the administration’s agenda.

Trump Goes Mask Off With Chilling Comment About Dictators - 2025-08-25T16:13:38Z

Donald Trump claimed the American people are asking for a dictator—and he seems more than happy to give them what they want.

While signing executive orders in the Oval Office Monday morning, Trump whined that people were up in arms after he suggested that he would deploy National Guard troops in Chicago, following his federal takeover of Washington D.C.

Not everyone in Chicago was unhappy with this plan, he claimed.

“A lot of people are saying ‘maybe we’d like a dictator,’” Trump said.

The president then attempted to course-correct. “I don’t like a dictator, I’m not a dictator,” he quickly said. “I’m a man with great common sense, and I’m a smart person.”

It’s not clear that there is any meaningful difference between a dictator, and a leader pleasing the people who are asking for one. What is apparent, however, is that Trump’s plan to move federal forces to other American cities is so unpopular that he’s concocting consent for tyranny as a means to justify it.

Crucially, Trump gets closer to becoming a dictator everyday. On Monday, he signed an executive order which would criminalize flag burning, an act of political expression protected by the First Amendment, claiming that it incited riots.

If Trump truly believed that inciting a riot earns you a year in prison, then the president himself is well overdue for a stint behind bars.

Trump Bans Flag Burning in Direct Threat to First Amendment - 2025-08-25T15:51:04Z

President Trump on Monday signed an executive order instructing the U.S. attorney general to pursue criminal charges against anyone caught burning the American flag, blatantly violating basic freedom of speech and expression laws.

“Flag burning. All over the country they’re burning flags. All over the world they burn the American flag,” Trump said at his press conference, where he signed another executive order revoking cashless bail in Washington, D.C. “What happens when you burn a flag is, the area goes crazy. If you have hundreds of people they go crazy…. When you burn the American flag it incites riots at levels that we’ve never seen before.”

“If you burn a flag, you get one year in jail, no early exits, no nothing. You get one year in jail,” Trump said. “You don’t get 10 years, you don’t get one month, you get one year in jail. And it goes on your record. And you will see flag burning stopping immediately.”

The president claimed the Department of Justice would “investigate instances of flag burning” in situations where “prosecution wouldn’t fall afoul to the First Amendment.” But the order does exactly that. In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that flag burning is a protected right under the Constitution.

Trump also made unsubstantiated claims that flag burning is a rampant practice in America right now (it is not) and that anyone doing it is being paid by the “radical left.”

It’s extremely unclear how exactly the administration can throw American citizens in jail for burning a piece of fabric without “running afoul” of the Constitution. This is a move that would be relentlessly vilified if someone like Russian President Vladimir Putin or North Korean leader Kim Jong Un did it. Instead, Trump is using this despotic tactic to crack down on protesters and further push his dark MAGA agenda.

Trump and RFK Jr. Plan to Scrap Covid Vaccine, Because Why Not - 2025-08-25T15:18:13Z



The Covid vaccine could be off the shelves in a matter of months.

Despite the coronavirus shot saving millions of lives during the pandemic, the Trump administration is planning to nix nationwide access to the vaccine “within months,” a close associate of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told the Daily Beast.

Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist who has repeatedly claimed, contrary to scientific evidence, that the vaccine has more ramifications than the disease it is intended to treat, told the Daily Beast that people around Kennedy “cannot understand” why the vaccine is still on the market. Malhotra noted that the administration intends to remove it from shelves even if it sows a “fear of chaos,” or sparks major legal consequences.

“It could [happen] in a number of stages, including learning more about the data,” said Malhotra. “But given the increased talk of vaccine injuries in the past few weeks among the administration, it could also come with one clean decision.”


The skepticism stems from a 2022 paper, published in the science journal Vaccine, that examined “serious adverse events” that occurred during clinical trials of Pfizer and Moderna mRNA Covid-19 vaccines. The widely dismissed study found that individuals who had gotten the jab were at a 16 percent higher risk of “excess serious adverse events” than those who did not.

Critics of the paper claimed that the researchers underestimated the benefits of the vaccine, overstated methodological risks, selectively chose data, and ignored the broader public health impacts of the vaccine.

It wouldn’t be the first vaccine that Kennedy has canceled on the grounds of his unscientific doubts. Earlier this month, the health secretary said his agency would divest $500 million from mRNA research, effectively axing 22 mRNA studies since—according to Kennedy—the vaccines “fail to protect” against “upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu.”

Instead, Kennedy said that his agency would shift the funding toward “safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate”—which apparently does not include the latest and greatest medical advances.

The problem with Kennedy’s approach is twofold: It will result in a sacrifice of time and money. Traditional vaccines injected a weakened or dead version of a virus, triggering the body’s immune response and the development of antibodies. Researching and developing these vaccines is a “lengthy and costly” process that becomes further complicated when researchers have to respond to mutations in the virus, according to Penn Medicine.

mRNA technology, meanwhile, employs a synthetic genetic code that instructs the body to produce proteins akin to the viral protein, training the body’s immune system without ever actually exposing the individual to the disease. Once the response is initiated, the synthetic genetic sequence breaks down in the body, according to Medline Plus. The result is a “plug-and-play” vaccine technology that offers rapid development times at a lower cost to traditional vaccines.

In the years since mRNA technology debuted on the U.S. market, biomedical researchers have also framed mRNA as a potential cancer treatment. But its sudden emergence in the U.S. prompted suspicion from anti-vaxxers, including Kennedy.

After Kennedy took the reins at HHS, he replaced independent medical experts on the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel with vaccine skeptics. He also warned against the use of the MMR vaccine during Texas’s historic measles outbreak, recommending that suffering patients instead take vitamins. And he founded his new directive for America’s health policy—the “Make America Healthy Again” report—on studies generated by AI that never existed in the real world.

Killing Medics and Journalists: What Impunity for Genocide Looks Like - 2025-08-25T15:11:06Z

It should be outrageous enough when the Israeli military, or any military for that matter, launches strikes on a hospital. The world has allowed that to become routine in Gaza, however, to our great shame. But what the Israeli military did Monday morning before the rolling cameras of Gaza’s heroic journalists somehow managed to reach a new depth of evil for the entire world to see.

Moments after the Israeli military struck the Nasser Medical Complex in southern Gaza, itself a war crime, heroic Palestinian first responders rushed to the scene as they have done day in and day out for two years of genocide to try to rescue victims of the strike and dig survivors out of the rubble. Heroic Palestinian journalists, putting their life on the line day in and day out as well, documented the scene, broadcasting the rescue operation live.

That is precisely when the second Israeli missile hit the same spot, killing the journalists, the medics, and others who may have survived the first strike. “Double-tap” strikes are designed for maximum killing and specifically aimed at wiping out not just those targeted by the first missile, but those that come to the rescue like medics and those who come to document it like journalists. Israel is no longer just carrying out war crimes in Gaza, but layers and layers of war crimes at a time.

The World Health Organization reported that there have been “735 attacks on health care in Gaza from 7 October 2023 to 11 June 2025, that have killed 917 persons and injured 1,411, affected 125 health facilities, and damaged 34 hospitals.” Earlier this month, when an Israeli strike killed Pulitzer-winning Al Jazeera journalists Anas al-Sharif and five of his colleagues, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that “192 journalists have been killed since the start of the Israeli-Gaza war on October 7, 2023. At least 184 of those journalists were Palestinians killed by Israel.” With the Israeli military’s murderous double-tap strike on the hospital complex this morning, these numbers would have to be revised upwards again. Several journalists were killed in the strike, which was caught on camera. Journalists Mohamad Salama, Mariam Abu Daqqa, Hussam al-Masri, and Moaz Abu Taha were killed.

This is, of course, not the first time that medics or journalists were killed in Gaza. In so many cases they have been targeted directly, as was the case with al-Sharif recently. In other cases, medics who have rushed to the rescue scene have been gunned down as well, like those dispatched to save the murdered child Hind Rajab only to face a similar fate at the hands of the Israeli military. Or the medics who were gunned down late at night and buried along with their ambulances by the Israeli military earlier this year, who dumped them in a mass grave.

Something about this strike seems different, though. The calculated and brazen nature of it all, to deliberately seek to murder first responders in broad daylight and on camera after striking a hospital, is the gruesome behavior of a military that simply fears no repercussions or limitations. Two years into this genocidal violence, the war crimes of the Israeli military only seem to be getting uglier, with even less regard for what the world might think about them.

This didn’t happen overnight, and there are many reasons why the Israeli military has become more brazen over time. There was a time when Israel swore it would never strike hospitals. Many will remember the al-Ahli Baptist hospital bloodbath in the fall of 2023. But as it found little pushback after hitting medical facilities, Israel began to shift toward attempting to justify such strikes by claiming hospitals were actually military command centers. Such claims rarely held up to scrutiny, but too few voices that actually mattered to Israel, especially here in the United States, were actually willing to scrutinize them. Seeing this, the Israelis realized that even attempts at justification weren’t really necessary.

With its most recent announcement to conquer Gaza city, a place that is largely decimated already, functioning mostly as a collection of tents for the forcibly displaced and starved who now live amid rubble of their former homes, the criminal intent has never been more clear. Israel has long passed the time when it could argue it was required to degrade its adversaries for self-defense.

Who could possibly believe this when the Israeli government has repeatedly obstructed exchange deals to buy more time to destroy Gaza and displace and kill its residents? Regardless of what the stated intent of the Israeli government is, its actions speak the loudest about what it seeks to do in Gaza: ethnically cleanse and kill the Palestinian population. It’s very hard to see how any objective observer can come to any other conclusion, given all we have seen the Israeli military do to not only destroy life in Gaza, but to, in the words of the Genocide Convention, “deliberately inflict on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.”

The international watchdog for food crises declared famine in Gaza last week, the vast majority of Gaza structures are destroyed, aid seekers are routinely shot and killed, the water is undrinkable; hospitals, medics, aid workers, and journalists are routinely targeted, all in a besieged territory where hundreds of thousands have already been killed or wounded. What other than the destruction of the Palestinian population could such conditions be calculated to produce?

Despite this painfully obvious reality, the world has done nothing to stop it and many governments, especially the one in Washington, are making sure it can continue unabated. For most people alive today, Israel’s genocide in Gaza will likely be the worse atrocity they have seen or will see in their lifetimes. Our children and grandchildren will ask us why we did not speak up at this moment. What will we tell them?

It Seems JD Vance Has No Idea How World War II Ended - 2025-08-25T14:44:49Z

Vice President JD Vance on Sunday botched World War II history in an attempt to support the Trump administration’s stance on Russia-Ukraine.

On Meet the Press, NBC host Kristen Welker asked Vance whether the administration’s plan to allow Russia to keep illegally seized Ukrainian territory as part of a negotiated resolution to end the war would embolden other countries to invade smaller powers.

Vance replied that territorial concessions would ultimately be up to Ukraine, before rewriting history to suit his narrative.

“Kristen, this is how wars ultimately get settled,” he said confidently. “If you go back to World War II, if you go back to World War I, if you go back to every major conflict in human history, they all end with some kind of negotiation.”

World War II ended with the unconditional surrender of the Axis Powers, following Adolf Hitler’s suicide in Berlin as Soviet forces advanced on the city, and the U.S. atomic bombings of Japan.

Vance’s historical illiteracy was roundly mocked online, with some social media users simply sharing images of historic newspaper headlines from V-E Day and V-J Day.

Vance: "If you go back to World War II, if you go back to World War I, if you go back to every major conflict in human history, they all end with some kind of negotiation." Washington Post, May 8, 1945: "Germany Surrenders Unconditionally." (screenshot of Washington Post front page on May 8, 1945)

“Imagine using as your example the biggest example of the exact opposite in the modern era,” wrote English journalist David Aaronovitch on X.

“Just wondering, who negotiated Hitler’s suicide,” tweeted Polish journalist Marek Magierowski.

On Bluesky, Tom Nichols of The Atlantic refuted Vance with iconic images of the execution of Benito Mussolini, the mushroom cloud over Nagasaki, and the Soviet victory in the Battle of Berlin.

“I assume he means this,” Nichols wrote. “Some negotiations are harder edged than others,” joked Josh Marshall of Talking Point Memo in response.

“This guy is the vice president, a venture capitalist, and a Yale Law grad,” journalist Mehdi Hasan said of Vance on X. “And completely ignorant about the basics of World War 2. Sheesh.”

Trump Scraps Cashless Bail in D.C. as Federal Takeover Intensifies - 2025-08-25T14:34:19Z

President Trump on Monday signed an executive order ending cashless bail for detained suspects in Washington, D.C. This is yet another aggressive move in his federal takeover of the nation’s capital.

Cashless bail allows people who are suspected of a crime to avoid spending time in a cage before they’ve actually been convicted just because they can’t meet bail. In states with cash bail, having money determines whether or not you’ll be behind bars.

Trump and U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro have framed a cashless bail system, which D.C. has had since 1992, as a “disaster” that leaves hardened criminals running rampant.

“Every place in the country where you have no cash bail is a disaster,” Trump said at his press conference earlier this month announcing the federal takeover of D.C. “That’s what started the problem in New York, and they don’t change it. They don’t want to change it. That’s what started it in Chicago … We’re gonna end that in Chicago. We’re gonna change the statute.”

Pirro echoed Trump’s sentiments.

“I see too much violent crime being committed by young punks who think that they can get together in gangs and crews and beat the [heck] out of you or anyone else,” she said at the same press conference. “We need to go after the D.C. Council and their absurd laws. We need to get rid of this concept of ‘no cash bail … We need to recognize that the people who matter are the law-abiding citizens.”

The numbers don’t support this framing. There is no significant documented increase in violent crimes among arrestees out on cashless bail.

Even still, Trump’s order threatens to revoke funding from D.C. city projects if it doesn’t eliminate cashless bail, and will “work to ensure” that those detained are kept in federal custody instead of local. Trump eventually wants to force this order upon the entire country, banning cashless bail in every single state. D.C. is just the testing ground for this show of federal force.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has yet to comment on the order.

Trump’s Hand Makeup Somehow Turns Worse in Leavitt Birthday Message - 2025-08-25T14:16:43Z

Donald Trump’s crudely covered wound is back in a birthday message to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

The Trump War Room account on X shared a photograph of Leavitt and the president walking through the White House to celebrate her 28th birthday Sunday. A large pale patch was visible on Trump’s right hand, even from a few feet away.

Reporters previously spotted the dismally disguised injury while speaking to the president outside of the White House last month. One reporter zoomed in on the president’s hand, giving the public the plainest view of the painted patch so far. Since taking office, Trump has been spotted with the bruise in at least February, April, June, and July.

It’s still unclear what exactly the makeup is covering. Leavitt has claimed multiple times this year that the president’s hand was simply bruised from all of his meet-and-greets, and taking a lot of aspirin.

“President Trump is a man of the people, and he meets more Americans and shakes their hands on a daily basis than any other president in history,” Leavitt told the Daily Beast in July. “His commitment is unwavering and he proves that every single day.”

But Trump was spotted on Saturday with yet another bruise, this time on his left hand.

79-year-old Trump was recently diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, which can cause swelling in the lower limbs when the legs fail to pump blood to the heart.

ICE Barbie Confirms Twisted Deportation Plan for Kilmar Abrego Garcia - 2025-08-25T13:53:44Z

Three days after Kilmar Abrego Garcia was freed from pre-trial detention, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained him once again at a Monday immigration check-in.

Shortly after his detention on Monday, the Department of Homeland Security announced on X that the Salvadoran immigrant “will be processed for removal to Uganda,” and repeated disputed, still-unproven accusations of ties to MS-13.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyer Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said that the Maryland resident had been told to report to an ICE office on Monday for a routine check-in.

“As he was leaving the jail in Tennessee on Friday, he was given a notice requiring him to check in at 8 a.m. this morning. The notice stated the reason was ‘interview.’ Clearly that was false,” Sandoval-Mosheberg said. “There was no need for them to take him into ICE detention. He was already on electronic monitoring from the U.S. Marshall Service and basically on house arrest. The only reason that they’ve chosen to take him into detention is to punish him. To punish him for exercising his constitutional rights.”

Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported to El Salvador in March, as the Trump administration scrambled to push allegations of MS-13 membership. After enduring harrowing conditions in a notorious prison, he was returned to the U.S. where he has been slapped with human smuggling charges and detained, with the Trump administration vowing that he’ll “never go free.”

But after a judge ordered Abrego Garcia’s release on bond, this weekend he experienced freedom and was reunited with his family in Maryland for the first time in more than 160 days.

His release Friday came with bad news, however: Immigration officials informed his lawyers that, after Abrego Garcia had rejected a deal to be deported to Costa Rica in exchange for a guilty plea and jail time, they now plan to deport him to Uganda. (Deportation to faraway and unfamiliar countries has become a grotesque hallmark of Trump’s deportation regime.) Monday’s news indicates that the administration is following through on this threat.

This story has been updated.

Jared Kushner’s Dad Suddenly in Trouble at His Cushy MAGA Job - 2025-08-25T13:24:03Z

Charles Kushner—U.S. ambassador to France, father of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, and convicted felon—has drawn the ire of French President Emmanuel Macron over his allegations of rampant antisemitism in France.

Kushner published “A Letter to Emmanuel Macron” in The Wall Street Journal on Sunday. 

“I write out of deep concern over the dramatic rise of antisemitism in France and the lack of sufficient action by your government to confront it,” Kushner wrote. “Antisemitism has long scarred French life, but it has exploded since Hamas’s barbaric assault on Oct. 7, 2023. Since then, pro-Hamas extremists and radical activists have waged a campaign of intimidation and violence across Europe. In France, not a day passes without Jews assaulted in the street, synagogues or schools defaced, or Jewish-owned businesses vandalized.”

Kushner continued, presenting Macron with a call to action. 

“In today’s world, anti-Zionism is antisemitism—plain and simple. President Trump and I have Jewish children and share Jewish grandchildren. I know how he feels about antisemitism, as do all Americans.... I urge you to act decisively: enforce hate-crime laws without exception; ensure the safety of Jewish schools, synagogues and businesses, prosecute offenders to the fullest extent; and abandon steps that give legitimacy to Hamas and its allies.” 

Kushner’s letter came just days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote a similar letter to Macron, condemning him for announcing that France would recognize Palestinian statehood. France refuted Kushner’s allegations just hours after his article was published—and summoned Kushner to appear before Macron and the French foreign ministry. 

“France firmly refutes these latest allegations,” the foreign ministry stated. “The Ambassador’s allegations are unacceptable.” 

Why is the U.S. ambassador to France more focused on lobbying on Israel’s behalf than the United States?  Does he think the so-called French “Hamas allies” are so obtuse that they can’t criticize Zionism two years into a genocide without condemning all Jewish people? Does he know that there are French anti-Zionist Jews who’ve been vocally supporting Palestine since the genocide began? 

Kushner shouldn’t even have this job to begin with—he’s a reverse nepo baby and criminal who spent two years in jail for tax evasion, illegal campaign donations to the Democratic Party, and witness tampering. He even retaliated against his own sister—who was a cooperating witness against him—by paying a sex worker to seduce her husband and film it, likely for blackmail material. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who investigated Charles Kushner as district attorney, described his case as “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes” he’d encountered. Kushner was pardoned by Trump in 2020. 

Kushner shouldn’t be here. He’s just lucky his son happened to marry Trump’s daughter. Now, Kushner’s blatant Israeli agitprop risks further fraying an already strained relationship between the United States and France.

Transcript: Gavin Newsom’s Harsh Trump Takedown Nails It: “Wake Up!” - 2025-08-25T11:02:37Z

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the August 25 episode of the
Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

California Governor Gavin Newsom is breaking through the noise in a way that no other Democrat is right now. Part of this is because he’s forging ahead with a plan to gerrymander California to net five extra Democratic House seats in order to counter President Trump’s effort to do the same in Texas. But we think there are deeper reasons Newsom is breaking through right now and that Democrats can learn from them. This was clearly on display when Newsom recently issued a stark warning about Trump’s long-term intentions. In so doing, he connected the dots in a way that Democrats rarely do. We’re talking about all this with Will Stancil, a policy researcher and attorney in Minneapolis who’s been a relentless online critic of the Democratic Party’s failure to rise to this moment. He’s developed an interesting set of arguments about what’s happening in our politics. Will, thanks for coming on.

Will Stancil: Glad to be here.

Sargent: So the California legislature has passed a plan to pave the way for redrawing the lines on the state’s House seats. Newsom signed it. Now it goes to the voters in a special election this November. What’s interesting to me is that there’s nothing mealy-mouthed about any of this. Newsom’s saying, You’re damn friggin’ right we’re going to gerrymander if the Republicans are. Dems don’t usually talk like this. What’s your overall take on where this all is?

Stancil: I think he’s doing the right thing. He is being honest about the moment. He’s being honest about what’s happening in Texas. He’s not beating around the bush or pretending that he’s advancing some lofty procedural goal. He’s saying we’re here to win. We can’t let these guys win, so we’re going to do what we can to try to win. And honestly, it kills me to say this—because I’ve not traditionally been a big Gavin Newsom fan—but I’ve been waiting a long time to hear Democrats talk like this.

Sargent: So have I, man. And I think that’s really the critical point. He’s not taking the procedural high road. He’s saying we have to win because if they win, we’re screwed.

Stancil: Yeah. He’s being very blunt about the potential risks of a Trump presidency. Obviously, we’ve seen a lot of those, but even greater ones lie ahead. And he is responding in the way that you would respond if you truly believed that these things lay in our future.

Sargent: In fact, what Gavin Newsom said—that I’m going to highlight here—gets at this. Listen to this. It’s from a podcast the other day.


Gavin Newsom (audio voiceover): I said that what’s happening in L.A. and the federalization of the National Guard, sending of the United States military, the Marines—700 of them, 4,700 in total—is a preview of things to come across this country. What you saw happen with the border patrol and ICE is a preview of things to come in front of voting booths. They’re going to try to suppress voting this November. This is existential, this moment. He’s trying to rig this one by literally shutting down mail-in voting. This is happening. Everyone, wake up. Wake up. He’s militarizing American cities. This is Putin’s playbook. This is authoritarianism. It’s happening.


Sargent: I think that’s striking stuff because Newsom is connecting all these different dots into a bigger story—like run through it. ICE will intimidate voters in the 2026 midterms. Trump will abuse presidential power to try to end vote by mail completely. He’s threatened to do that. He will do military maneuvers in our cities, probably in the run-up to 2026, to foment a crisis atmosphere that he thinks will help the GOP. And he’s linking all of that directly to the Texas gerrymander, which Trump is openly pushing in order to rig the elections. And critically, Newsom said explicitly that all of what Trump is doing now on these fronts is a preview of much worse to come in our elections. That’s what we need, Will: the big story being told. Your thoughts?

Stancil: I totally agree. I think that what Newsom is doing is he’s finally doing what Democrats should have been doing for a decade. There is a singular factor in American politics since probably 2015 or so, and that’s Donald Trump. He’s defined American politics since 2015. And what we have seen, especially since Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, is that Democrats have been afraid to talk about it directly. They beat around the bush. They talk about how they want to work with Trump. They talk about how they want to focus on kitchen-table issues, they want to lower prices. They’re afraid of being accused of having Trump derangement syndrome. They’ll be afraid of being accused of focusing on nothing else. They’re afraid of being accused of abandoning the working man.

In the meantime, in the country that I’ve lived in—in the real world—everything has revolved around Trump. Everything has been propelled forward by the choices he’s making, the things he’s done. Even when he’s out of office, this has largely been the case. And so finally, we have a Democrat who seems to have thrown those worries to the wind. He seems to be saying, I don’t care if you think I’m obsessed. It’s worth being obsessed. This is scary stuff. This is a scary man. He’s going to ruin our country. And I’m going to fight him as if I believe that was true. And it’s striking. And what I also think is interesting about it is that it’s working.

Sargent: When you say it’s working, what are you referring to?

Stancil: People are paying attention to him as a leader of the Democratic Party in a way that I don’t think anyone has achieved—other than Joe Biden by virtue of being elected president—since Trump entered politics. Right now, Gavin Newsom is seen, I would say, as Trump’s primary opponent in American politics. And he has put himself in that position by taking him on directly and talking directly about the threat he poses.

Sargent: I want to bear down on this thing you said a little earlier about how Newsom is not afraid to act as if Trump is at the very center of everything. Newsom’s own evolution is kind of interesting here. After Trump won, when Trump took over in January, Newsom started out in the wrong way, I think. He was really playing footsie with MAGA and playing footsie with Trumpism. He did all that podcasting with the right-wingers. I think there’s still a little bit of that going on, but less. And at the center of what Newsom was doing then was this media-friendly reading of Trump and the Trump phenomenon, which essentially said right-wing populism is a very durable force in our politics. It’s shaping everything right now. The only way for Democrats to succeed is to essentially feed that phenomenon in their own way, find their way to reconcile themselves to it. That was a disaster for Newsom, right? It’s only when he actually forgets about that and accepts this idea that MAGA is a singularly destructive force in American life through Donald Trump that he actually starts to succeed. What do you think of that?

Stancil: To be clear, I said at the start of this, I’m not a big Gavin Newsom fan traditionally. And part of that is this approach earlier in the year. I think Gavin Newsom has been fairly accused of being an opportunist. He’s looking for a way to gain attention, to fit himself to politics of the time. And one of the ways that this really profoundly demonstrated itself is what he did at beginning of the year when he was seemingly for the whole bit shifting to this conciliatory pose toward really awful people—people who are, frankly, white supremacists and racists and bigots and authoritarians. And then there were some policy positions as well on involving trans people and trans people in sports that I found personally quite offensive and things I wouldn’t think that any Democrats should ever compromise on, selling people’s rights out essentially. So I was pretty upset about that. And I thought Gavin Newsom is a slime ball and you can’t trust him. But I guess one of the advantages, it turns out, of being an opportunist who’s flexible is that you are iterating always to see what works. And he has iterated himself to something that does seem to work. And what that is is this intense anti-Trumpism.

Now I’m going to do a little self-promotion here because in some ways I’ve been writing on this for seven years now—

Sargent: Don’t worry Will, we’ll edit this part out.

Stancil: Yeah, go ahead [laughs]. No, but seven years ago I wrote an op-ed in The Atlantic saying that Democrats need to focus solely on opposing Trump. That the nature of American politics right now is about Trump. The largest coalition available to Democrats is the one that opposes Trump. An anti-Trump coalition unites all of the factions that the Democrats can conceivably get. And if you’re not in the anti-Trump coalition, you’ve got no chance of getting them anyway. And the Democrats need to stop worrying so much about being saying they’re obsessed with Trump and just understand this is the reality of the time. Focus on attacking him, on bringing Trump down, and then we’ll work it out after he’s gone.

And what I think has been striking about this to me personally is that while there have been people that have attempted this in dribs and drabs at various points, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone who has jumped in head first—especially with the platform that Newsom has right now. And to my eyes, it’s really working. You’re seeing people get on board. You’re seeing a lot of enthusiasm from Newsom for people that would not be inclined to support him. Even MAGA is starting to notice that something’s happening here, that this guy’s landing some hits and that it’s not all words too. He’s doing things like the redistricting. He’s really doing it. So I have to say that I’ve suspected for a long time that something like this was the way to go, but I am pleased to see that it does appear to be succeeding so far. I can’t think of anything that a Democrat is doing right now that is even coming close to working as well as this.

Sargent: It is working, and the media is taking notice. And in an irony, the media is actually coming up with a way to describe this that downplays the threat of Trump as well. They’re diagnosing why Newsom is breaking through right now by saying things like he’s tweeting in all caps, right, just like Trump does. They point to his trolling of Trump or his using of Trump-like memes. Brian Beutler, who to his great credit has been way out front on all this stuff, had a good piece arguing that Newsom is acting as an antidote to “the dead-enderism of liberal rectitude politics,” as he put it. I think that’s right.

The trolling and the social media stuff—that’s not what’s allowing Newsom to break through, although it probably helps. It’s that Newsom is saying two things. First, we’re not going to let Republicans play by different rules anymore. And second, we are going to use our power however we can, no matter what The New York Times editorial board says about it, to prevent Republicans from getting away with that anymore.

Stancil: He’s not saying he’s sorry. He’s not apologizing for anything. And I think that liberals sometimes apologize literally for the stuff they do when they push the boundary like that. Other times there’s just something apologetic in their demeanor. They’re embarrassed to be doing it. And I think that it is crippling. What Newsom has been doing, I would describe it as almost a kitchen-sink approach. He is taking aggressive procedural steps forward with the gerrymandering. He is also doing Twitter trolling and all-caps tweeting and whatever he can to go after Trump. He is also going out and talking directly, very bluntly about the threat the authoritarianism poses. He’s attacking Trump on every front they can think of. And when they think of a new one, they do it.

I’m sure that in the long run, if he keeps this up, there will be efforts—or with things he attempts to break through—which he doesn’t expect. There’s also going to be some stuff that falls flat. That’s just the nature of this. No one can predict in advance what’s going to work. But part of the reason that that energetic try-everything politics works is that you don’t know, and so you find stuff that is effective. Republicans do this relentlessly. This is the key, in my opinion, to a lot of their success, to a lot of MAGA’s success. MAGA does a lot of stuff that is unbelievably stupid and goes nowhere. Many of Trump’s more authoritarian efforts to procedurally game the system or overturn laws or destroy the federal government have fallen flat. But he has still gotten a long way down the field by just trying everything and finding things that are working out better than you might have expected. And so it is immense relief to finally see a Democrat who is erring on the side of action instead of erring on the side of caution.

Sargent: Right. And by the way, I think there’s another reason that Republicans do what you’re talking about, which is that they understand that shaping the info environment in some big sense is more important than whether you get judged for the unpopularity of a particular policy you stand for. There’s one example that I always keep coming back to. I’ve said it on the show before, so apologies to people who have heard this, but while back during the Biden presidency, MAGA and all their media sources hit on this really fucking dumb attack on Biden. It was that he was diverting baby formula to migrant babies. Do you remember that, Will?

Stancil: Vaguely. Yeah.

Sargent: It was the dumbest thing ever, right? But the thing that really left out to me was that every single Republican elected official and every one of their Twitter accounts and every one of their media people all blared it out. They didn’t give a shit if people thought it was stupid. The noise level was the thing they were going for. You know what I mean?

Stancil: The thing about being a Democrat is that dealing with Republicans operating like this is overwhelming. The stuff that they are saying coming out constantly, new fake scandals, new fake outrages every day—as a liberal, your response sometimes is, Let’s refute this line by line. But by the time you do that, there’s six new things. And the effect it has on the information environmental line—where it’s just this flood on one side and the other side is people so far behind trying to catch up and refute things point by point—really distorts how our politics functions. And there’s no reason we can’t do this ourselves. In fact, there are a lot more things to be legitimately outraged by on our side, [things] that Trump’s truly doing that are really outrageous, that are offenses to the entire American Constitution and our system and our laws. But we just don’t operate like this. We just don’t want to operate like this. For some reason, we’re afraid to try it. And I really think that if we try it, there is a lot of power here that we can potentially exploit to first win the public opinion, win hearts and minds, persuade people and ultimately win elections and take electoral power.

Sargent: Yeah. And I get the problem for Democrats. A lot of it has to do with a reluctance, which is understandable on the part of liberals to play these games and to degrade our politics and information world in that way. That’s an understandable concern. The point, though, that I think you’re getting at is that there’s enough real stuff, true stuff that Democrats could be going after hard to make that level of noise without doing what Republicans are doing, without degrading our politics in some sense, right?

Stancil: That’s correct. And I think that there was a time when you would say things like, Trump’s an authoritarian, Trump’s a fascist, and people would say, Calm down. Let’s not get overheated here. Let’s stick to the real things. He’s cutting taxes for the rich. But what’s interesting is that as those charges have become more demonstrated in the fact of what he’s doing, as he’s behaved in ways that are straightforwardly authoritarian and anyone would have said so 10 years ago, Democrats have not really upped their rhetoric to match. They stayed focused on these issues that they feel are safe to talk about. And sometimes they’ve even left those issues and retreated to even more boring issues when they felt like that the kitchen-table issues—taxes or crime, whatever—had become too controversial.

And so I think that what you see ultimately here is that Democrats—it’s not so much that they are making a tactical decision, it’s that they’re temperamentally conflict-averse. Liberals tend to be people who got where they are by following the rules and doing a good job and thinking things through and being detail-oriented. And they’re just temperamentally averse to an approach to politics in which you are winging it a lot and you are throwing things at the wall and you are being energetic and aggressive in chasing every lead. And I think that temperamental gap creates this rhetorical gap. And what we’re seeing now with Newsom is that he has closed a lot of that to significant success.

Sargent: And by the way, a lot of people might object to what we’re saying here by pointing out that, Well, don’t Democrats have to focus on what’s popular? What about moderate Democrats in difficult areas? I’m sensitive to all that. I think an approach like this can coexist with your typical swing district Democrat maybe wanting to do things a little differently. There just has to be some sense among all the institutional players in the party that they need to make more noise of the type that we’re talking about. And if moderates want to go in certain directions in their states or districts, I think that’s OK. Do you think that’s a hard balance to strike, Will?

Stancil: I don’t think it’s particularly difficult to strike. Most Democrats are not in swing districts. Most Democrats are not representing battleground districts. If you are a Democrat and you’re just in an ordinary Democratic district, if you’re winning by reasonable margins most of the time, there is no reason in the world that you should be weakening the brand of the Democratic Party by being weak on Trump. There’s no reason you should be avoiding Trump. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be talking about the most urgent issues in the country, the authoritarianism and Trump’s unfitness, all the time. If there’s someone in a district that is plus two points Republican and they have to really identify themselves as separate from the party and show their independence, fine, let them. I don’t care at all. That’s great. If they can win that election and they stay Democrat, that’s wonderful. But we don’t help them by being them. We help them by being us and letting them have the independence to do what they need.

Sargent: I agree 100 percent with that. And by the way, there’s one other objection we should probably deal with. This is something I think I’ve seen you tackle before, but there’s a sense out there that if a number of Democrats in safe areas do stuff like this, it taints the overall party in some sense and paints the party as a larger entity as not being in touch with what real people think about and feel on a daily basis. I feel like that’s a problematic way of thinking about politics. I just don’t really buy that there’s this real calculation on the part of voters, where they see that type of conduct from Democrats in non–swing districts and say, Well, the whole party isn’t interest in my pocketbook or my wallet. What do you think, Will? What do you think the answer to that is?

Stancil: Well, I’ve got two points. First off, Republicans have plenty of people, plenty of representatives, plenty of people who are affiliated with the party in very substantial ways up to and including their president and vice president acting in ways that are outright deranged. And if voters are really so sensitive to the slightest wobble from normal everyman behavior, they would never vote for a Republican ever again. Seriously, clearly it’s just not that bad to have some crazies in your party because the ruling party in the U.S. right now is the craziest party I’ve ever seen. The other thing I’d say is that Democrats have to remember what they’ve done to attract most of their voters. Most vote—there’s an obsessive interest, and I understand why from a tactical standpoint, on swing voters. But the vast majority of Democrats aren’t Democrats because they have been narrowly appeal to by what I would describe as swing-voter appeals, swing-voter kitchen-table issues.

The vast majority of Democrats are Democrats because the larger value set that Democrats represent: the rule of law, democracy, an open pluralistic country, economic prosperity, helping people in need. Those values appeal to Democrats.

Sargent: Let’s just close this out by looking at what I think is a core dimension to what Newsom’s doing here. It’s that he’s acting as if Donald Trump is using the specter of state-sponsored violence, military violence, law enforcement violence, and naked corruption to further entrench authoritarian rule and consolidate autocratic power behind himself. Newsom is proceeding as if that’s what Trump is doing—and that is what Trump actually is doing. Newsom is connecting all these dots to tell that story and say this reality is why we’ve got to really step up. And of course, other Democrats, although there are some exceptions, are not acting as if that’s happening. Can you talk about that fundamental thing that Newsom’s doing? That seems to me to be the key.

Stancil: Something that Democrats and liberals generally, and I think it even includes a lot of journalists, do when it comes to Republicans is they feel compelled to give them the benefit of the doubt. And so every story, every outrage, every scandal is framed in a way that is most favorable to the Republican—because they’re afraid of being accused of overreaching, of being biased. So Trump puts armed troops in D.C. and you see people say, Well, is this really the best crime fighting remedy? No, that is not the concern with putting armed troops in D.C. The concern is that it is an authoritarian outrage that would have been inconceivable in American politics even six months ago.

And when you say that, Republicans come back and say, Oh, well, it’s just about crime, and they don’t—so they feel compelled to give them the benefit of the doubt. What Newsom is doing is he is not giving them the benefit of the doubt. He is responding to the obvious implications of what Trump is doing rather than quibbling over whether or not that’s what he’s doing. He is just assuming the worst about Trump—which is safe because Trump is usually doing the worst thing that you can imagine—and going from there and not apologizing for it. This is how Republicans talk about Democrats. A Democrat does something that has any hint of corruption or scandal about it, Republicans just assume that’s true and then proceed from there. They don’t sit there and say, Well, let’s look at it the most favorable light. That’s crazy, and yet it’s been immensely difficult to find a Democrat or someone in media who’s not in progressive media that is willing to do that.

It’s really completely transformed his ability to talk about Trump. Suddenly, he doesn’t have these restrictions on how he talks. He can just describe it in plain language like a normal human being would do, and it’s been revelatory to see.

Sargent: And it’s revelatory for voters as well, I think. Revelatory for them to see that a Democrat can talk that way. Will Stancil, great to talk to you, man. Really fun. Thanks for coming on.

Stancil: Absolutely. Yeah, thank you.

Mothers Are Fleeing the Workforce—and That’s Just What Trump Wants - 2025-08-25T10:00:00Z

This year, mothers ages 20 to 44 with young children have been leaving the workforce at a steady clip, according to a new analysis published on Wednesday. By July, the most recent month for which we have data, these women’s workforce participation rate was 68 percent, down almost two percentage points since January; this figure peaked in August 2023 at 71 percent. Meanwhile, the participation rate for fathers in the same cohort has continued rising of late and now sits at 96 percent, roughly its historical average.

There are a lot of forces behind this trend, but the big takeaway is this: It’s as if Covid-19 never happened. And that’s probably just fine with the Trump administration, which is keen to boost masculine blue-collar jobs while urging women to stay home and make more babies.

At the beginning of the pandemic, employer and government policies combined to give many workers more flexibility in their schedules and the ability to work remotely, which made working easier and more rewarding for parents of young children, especially mothers. Those policies largely have been scaled back and eliminated entirely, and the numbers of mothers of young children able or willing to work have dropped.

“What the drop in 2025 shows, in my opinion, is that when we made the environment … of flexible work a normative experience, or a normative expectation, or a normative behavior within the labor market, moms were able to accelerate their labor force participation,” said Dr. Misty Heggeness, an economist who used to work at the Census Bureau and is now at the University of Kansas. As The Washington Post reported earlier this month, she has begun tracking the job-market participation of moms of young children by analyzing the data from the government’s monthly Current Population Survey, a joint effort of the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The drop in women in the workforce is a reversal of both recent and long-term trends. In the United States, more women have slowly been joining the workforce for decades, their numbers rising to almost meet the rates of working men. But those numbers mask important differences. Those most likely to be in the workforce have bachelor’s or advanced degrees, while those least likely to work are the least educated. Rates of participation for women with young children have also risen, but they spiked during the pandemic, as the analysis from Heggeness’s team shows.

At the beginning of the pandemic, many parents lost their jobs and school closures meant they had to adapt to online school overnight, but workplaces eventually learned how to accommodate the changes. Remote work rose to a height of 62 percent of paid workdays in May 2020. The job market too became especially tight, allowing many who’d been only remotely attached to the job market—from workers with disabilities to those who split caregiving duties with paid work—to take on more work. Higher wages, pandemic supports, and workers’ ability to negotiate for other benefits also made working more appealing.

Now many companies, as well as the federal government under President Trump, are instituting stricter return-to-office policies. “There’s less support for remote work, so there’s more stigma attached to it,” Heggeness said. “Employers are more critical about it, even though we’ve proven that it’s totally possible.” For Heggeness, this shows an unwillingness on the part of employers and managers to work harder to harness the talents of the working-age population at large.

It’s clear that the Trump administration is unlikely to address the declining numbers of working women, whether they’re mothers or not. Trump promotes the return of “manly” jobs, such coal mining and steel plant jobs, and his tariff policies are aiming—though most economists agree they’re unlikely to succeed—to bring back an era of manufacturing that has long since passed. The kinds of service jobs women are more likely to do are undervalued, and the federal jobs decimated by the Department of Government Efficiency and the elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies were disproportionately held by women, especially women of color.

Meanwhile, the administration says it wants women to have more children, and is investigating incentives to encourage them to. Floated policies include a $5,000 bonus for each newborn and a “Medal of Motherhood” to women with six or more children. The recent budget reconciliation bill included a $1,000 account for children born through 2028, along with tax incentives for families to save more in those accounts, although there are practical questions about how these will work. As many critics have pointed out, these amounts pale in comparison to the actual cost of having a child in the United States today.

Rhetorically, the administration and national politicians also promote a retrograde idea of American familyhood. Rather than investing in the kinds of childcare needs that would make it easier for women to work, Vice President JD Vance wants parents and grandmothers to stay home with children. He has famously derided Democratic women as “childless cat ladies,” but he’s also suggested that families with children deserve more votes and that women who want to work and don’t have children are miserable. “You have women that think that, truly, the liberationist path is to spend 90 hours a week working in a cubicle at McKinsey instead of starting a family and having children. What they don’t realize … is that that is actually a path to misery,” he said on a podcast in 2021.

Of course, all of this is unfolding as Republicans at the national and state levels are restricting reproductive health care. Twelve states have outright bans on abortion, and seven more ban abortions early in pregnancy, and religious ideas about life beginning at fertilization have endangered access to assisted reproductive technologies like in vitro fertilization. After promising on the campaign trail that health insurance companies would cover IVF, Trump never actually formed a plan to ensure this, and pronatalists are trying to promote unproven “natural” alternatives. In this MAGA view of the world, women should be expected to have more children without the right to an abortion or scientifically proven medical care, all while their ability to earn a living is increasingly compromised by less flexible workplaces.

These kinds of discussions are often framed as women’s choices, as if it’s purely up to them whether they stay at home to care for children or juggle parenthood with employment. And broader economic forces, like a labor-market slowdown and stubborn inflation, are also affecting families’ calculations about how to use their time, money, and professional skills. But women are often loosely attached to the labor market because care work falls more heavily on them. That explains why the labor force participation rate of fathers with young children has continued to rise amid the return of mandatory in-office work; it’s clear from the data who in these households has chosen childcare over work.

We as a country are letting working mothers leave the labor force without attempting to address their needs, and thus we’re tolerating an environment where everyone is a little worse off: Moms lose the income and fulfillment of a job, while the economy loses access to their talents—which, as Heggeness points out, are actually strengthened by the skills they pick up managing young children, household budgets, and home life in general. At the end of the day, we risk creating an economy that is not only less fair but less productive.

Abundance Cultists Don’t Get How Infrastructure Can Screw Black People - 2025-08-25T10:00:00Z

Let’s discuss a problem the Abundance movement is ill suited to address: the Trump administration’s elimination of programs that reduce burdens to low-income minority neighborhoods when the government builds highways and bridges.

Abundance-ism started out last fall as three treatises against the Not in My Back Yard, or NIMBY, liberal mindset. The books (which I reviewed here and here) were Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s bestselling Abundance, Yoni Appelbaum’s Stuck, and Mark Dunkelman’s Why Nothing Works. These took a small reformist point (local zoning can be abused by the wealthy to shore up privilege) and enlarged it into a supply-side liberal ideology that proved irresistible to conservatives. The newly libertarian Washington Post editorial page, for instance, weighed in that “progress, not redistribution, is the main determinant of living standards,” a conclusion that I doubt the authors of these books would endorse—but that, by setting aside questions of distribution, they didn’t exactly discourage.

In the blink of an eye, Abundance-ism became an industry. Tickets quickly sold out for Abundance 2025, a September 4–5 conference in Washington, D.C., that will feature, alongside the three books’ authors, David Brooks; Republican Representative Brett Guthrie of Kentucky; Republican Governor Spencer Cox of Utah; and Dean Ball, who until recently was a senior policy adviser on artificial intelligence in the Trump White House. There’s also a new “mission-driven” Abundance-ist online magazine called The Argument featuring columns by Thompson, Matthew Yglesias, and Matt Bruenig (who gave Abundance an only mildly contemptuous review and will presumably play the role of sparring partner).

The inadequacy of the Abundance-ist outlook became clearer to me after I read another book published this fall that received much less attention: Dividing Lines: How Transportation Infrastructure Reinforces Racial Inequality, by Deborah N. Archer, president of the American Civil Liberties Union. (I interviewed Archer in April for the Washington, D.C., bookstore Politics & Prose.) Archer’s book explains that the 1956 Interstate Highway Act, which was enacted one month after the Supreme Court handed down Brown v. Board of Education, proved a godsend for conservative Deep South politicians then frantic to find new ways to preserve racial segregation.

Construction of interstate highways, segregationists realized, could be used to obliterate or isolate Black neighborhoods, and Southern state and local governments proceeded to do so with little interference from Washington. Archer further documents that local planning regarding surface roads, sidewalks, and allowable bus routes were used for the same purpose, often in recent memory. Georgia Representative Newt Gingrich, for instance, sided with white residents in Georgia’s Cobb County who opposed Atlanta city buses stopping in their suburban neighborhood. “People in Cobb County don’t object to upper-middle-class neighbors who keep their lawn and move to avoid crime,” Gingrich said. He continued:

What people worry about is the bus line gradually destroying one apartment complex after another, bringing people out from public housing who have no middle-class values and whose kids as they become teenagers often are centers of robbery and where the schools collapse because the parents who live in the apartment complexes don’t care that the kids don’t do well in school.

That was in 1994. The following year, Gingrich was elected speaker of the House.

Archer neither condemns local zoning nor praises it, noting that it can be used either to help minority communities or to hurt them. The problem at hand isn’t some context-free tool called zoning; it’s the context-rich problem called racial discrimination, which can express itself in all sorts of ways to watch out for.

Don’t get me wrong. The Interstate Highway Act was in most respects a great advance, connecting different parts of the country, increasing commerce, and eliminating many safety hazards. But as we approach its 70th birthday, the United States has an opportunity to repair and rethink many now-decaying highways and bridges that the act built in a way that helps rather than hurts low-income minority communities.

To that end, the Biden administration and Congress imposed necessary and valuable restrictions on federal infrastructure spending. The 2021 infrastructure bill included something called the Reconnecting Communities pilot program to mitigate the isolating effects of previous bad transportation decisions; its grant-making gives priority to “economically disadvantaged” communities. Similarly, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act included a Neighborhood Access and Equity program to make transportation more safe, walkable, and affordable; its grant-making is targeted to “economically disadvantaged” or “underserved” communities. In neither case is the purpose to impose pettifogging regulations that slow the building process. Rather, it’s to send money where it’s most needed.

It won’t surprise you to learn that the Trump administration and congressional Republicans consider these programs so much woke nonsense. “The roads are racist,” Senator Ted Cruz sneered about the Reconnecting Communities pilot, shortly before it was enacted. “We must get rid of roads.”

In March, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy rescinded two memos by his predecessor, Pete Buttigieg, that said the department favored infrastructure spending “reconnecting communities and reflecting the inclusion of disadvantaged and under-represented groups in the planning, project selection, and design process.” Duffy said the memos “flouted Congress in an attempt to push a radical social and environmental agenda.” He also slammed the brakes on the Reconnecting Communities pilot program. According to the nonprofit Transportation for America, as of July 9 the Trump administration had spent none of the $100 million allocated this year for the program, and in July the House Appropriations Committee proposed zeroing it out.

The $3 billion Neighborhood Equity and Access program, meanwhile, is dead; the “big, beautiful bill” canceled $2.2 billion that hadn’t yet been spent, according to Politico’s Chris Marquette and Sam Ogozalek, who posted an excellent story last week about the resultant pain in Republican congressional districts:

In Bowling Green, Kentucky, the law canceled 93 percent of an $11 million grant meant to boost pedestrian safety on a roadway. In western Montana, it wiped out money aimed at improving a highway on the Flathead Indian Reservation and better connecting Missoula-area communities. And on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, the law ended more than $4 million in funding that would have gone toward addressing similar concerns in two municipalities.

These communities are represented in Congress by Republicans Brent Guthrie, Ryan Zinke, and Andy Harris. The first two declined Politico’s request for comment. Harris replied with a written statement that he’s “consistently demonstrated his commitment to providing appropriate constituent assistance while upholding fiscal responsibility.” Tell that to Zack Tyndall, mayor of Berlin, Maryland. Tyndall told Politico that he couldn’t get Harris’s office to call him back about the matter until its reporters asked a Harris spokesman to comment. The district director who finally called him, Tyndall told Politico, didn’t appear to know much about it. (Governing magazine’s Jared Brey also had a good article in July about Congress killing the Neighborhood Equity and Access grants.)

The programs that Trump is shutting down demonstrate the inadequacy of the Abundance narrative that Building Is Good. Building is often good, but it can sometimes be bad, and when it’s bad it might take more building to fix whatever problem it creates. Take Philadelphia’s Chinatown Stitch. In the 1970s, the city rammed an expressway through its 100-year-old Chinatown, nearly killing it off. In recent years, the city decided to reunite the neighborhood’s two halves by capping the expressway with a public park in a manner similar to the “Big Dig” rerouting of Boston’s Central Artery in the 1990s (though on a much smaller scale). To build the Chinatown Stitch, Philadelphia in 2024 secured a $158 million grant, but in July the “big, beautiful bill” clawed back 95 percent of the funding, leaving the project’s future in doubt.

The Chinatown Stitch, if it gets built, will show how new construction can shore up a minority community. But when the Philadelphia 76ers last year contemplated building a basketball arena that threatened to cut Chinatown off from the rest of the city, the neighborhood fought it and won. To the inhabitants of Philadelphia’s Chinatown, development is neither good nor bad; the question, rather, is how to direct development in ways that benefit the people who live there—or at least doesn’t screw them over. Answers to such questions don’t adhere to simpleminded formulas like NIMBY or YIMBY. The sensible approach is SIMBY—sometimes in my backyard. Circumstances matter, interests differ, and these need to be taken into account, preferably in an expedient manner. But nobody’s going to throw a conference to say that.

Missouri’s Bizarre Second Amendment Law Is Going to the Supreme Court - 2025-08-25T10:00:00Z

The Supreme Court will reconvene from its summer recess next month for what is often described as “the long conference.” The justices typically decide what they will do with pending petitions for review at their weekly conferences when in session. For their first session back in a few months, that process takes a little longer than usual.

Of the thousands of petitions that the justices will consider, perhaps none is as extreme as Missouri v. United States. The state is trying to defend a law that uses the threat of private lawsuits to dissuade state officials, including local police officers, from allowing the enforcement of federal gun laws.

The case centers on the Second Amendment Preservation Act, or SAPA. Missouri lawmakers first passed it in 2021 in response to what its proponents described as federal overreach. Representative Jered Taylor, who introduced the bill, compared the measure to other areas of the law where states can decline to help the federal government carry out its policy goals.

“The feds use us,” Taylor told a public radio station in St. Louis in 2021. “They rely on us to enforce their laws. Look at medical marijuana in the state of Missouri. This is exactly what we do with that. It’s exactly what sanctuary cities use.” The law said that almost any federal restrictions on gun ownership or possession “shall be considered infringements on the people’s right to keep and bear arms” within Missouri’s borders.

Those restrictions include any “registration or tracking” of “firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition,” as well any registration or tracking of their “law-abiding” owners. They also include “any tax, levy, fee, or stamp imposed” upon guns, accessories, or ammunition, aside from generally applicable sales taxes. Finally, they cover any law or regulation that orders the “confiscation” of any guns, accessories, or ammunition.

In short, SAPA holds virtually every federal gun regulation or restriction to be unconstitutional. The 2021 law declared that any such restrictions “shall be invalid to this state, shall not be recognized by this state, shall be specifically rejected by this state, and shall not be enforced by this state.”

This is not “exactly what sanctuary cities use,” as SAPA’s author had claimed. Federal immigration officials can still enforce immigration laws inside sanctuary jurisdictions; they just can’t get any help from state and local officials along the way. Instead, SAPA is a nullification law that rejects federal law altogether and punishes those who enforce it.

Nullification—the theory that states can override federal law—is hardly new. Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe first proclaimed it in 1798 to reject the Alien and Sedition Acts, to the horror of most of the other Founders. The two men argued that states could declare federal laws unconstitutional and interfere in their enforcement to “protect” their own citizens.

Past efforts to nullify federal laws have been met with failure. South Carolina said it would prevent enforcement of a controversial tariff in the early 1830s, only to back down when Congress authorized President Andrew Jackson to use the military to ensure federal law would be upheld. Southern states attempted to invoke nullification in the 1950s and 1960s to resist racial integration but were also brought to heel by federal power.

Unlike those confrontations, SAPA tries to nullify federal gun laws through indirect means. The law allows private individuals to sue “any political subdivision or law enforcement agency” that employs someone who infringed upon Second Amendment rights or employs someone who “gave material aid and support” to the federal government, including by working for it. For each violation, litigants can receive $50,000 in damages as well as lawyers’ fees.

In that sense, SAPA resembles the infamous Texas law that sought to circumvent Roe v. Wade by allowing private individuals to sue anyone who helped a woman obtain an abortion and receive damages if they prevailed. Lower courts blocked the bounty-style law at first, but the Supreme Court let it go into effect in 2021, foreshadowing Roe’s eventual demise the following year.

Missouri lawmakers may have hoped for similar success with this law. By confronting the federal government itself, however, they ran afoul of the Constitution’s supremacy clause and the various Supreme Court precedents that bar states from obstructing or interfering with federal authority. The Biden administration sued the state of Missouri in 2022 to block the law and prevailed in the lower courts.

When the state first asked the Supreme Court to intervene in 2023, the justices declined to lift the preliminary injunction. The consensus appeared to cross ideological lines. Justice Clarence Thomas was the only member of the court to publicly signal that he had voted in Missouri’s favor. Justices Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, the other two most conservative members of the court, only wrote briefly to explain that they voted to uphold the injunction because, in their view, it was narrowly tailored to the case at hand.

Last summer, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against SAPA on the merits as well. In a brief 10-page ruling, a three-judge panel held that the law was unconstitutional because it punished federal officials for enforcing federal laws. “The ‘Second Amendment Preservation Act’ states that certain federal laws are ‘invalid to this state,’ but a State cannot invalidate federal law to itself,” the court ruled. “Missouri does not seriously contest these bedrock principles of our constitutional structure.”

That is technically true. Instead, Missouri tried a few too-clever-by-half arguments. In asking to have the Eighth Circuit’s decision reversed, the state told the justices that the court had violated the Tenth Amendment—a vague provision that reserves unenumerated powers to the states—by second-guessing its reason for passing the law.

“Before this case, it appears no federal court had ever blocked a state from exercising Tenth Amendment authority simply because of the reason the state expressed for exercising that authority,” Missouri told the justices in its petition. “The Eighth Circuit did that here, striking down a state law solely because the Act said the legislature believes certain federal statutes are unconstitutional.”

Invoking the Tenth Amendment is something of a distraction. SAPA did not merely express an opinion about the unconstitutionality of federal laws; it created a legal mechanism by which people could use that opinion to pursue lawsuits and injunctions of their own in state courts. The law is clearly intended to deter and dissuade federal officials from enforcing federal law within the state’s borders. It is, at best, nullification with extra steps.

“Missouri has the power to withhold state assistance, but the means it uses to achieve its ends must be ‘consistent with the letter and spirit of the constitution,’” the panel wrote, quoting from the landmark 1819 decision McCulloch v. Maryland on the limits of state power. “Missouri’s assertion that federal laws regulating firearms are ‘invalid to this State’ is inconsistent with both.”

The Trump administration notably chose to continue the Biden administration’s lawsuit, perhaps because of the broader implications for sanctuary jurisdictions if SAPA were upheld in its entirety. While the Justice Department suggested that it was open to limiting the injunction on procedural grounds in court filings, it strenuously argued against SAPA’s constitutionality in general.

The department took particular issue with SAPA’s penalties for former federal employees who work for Missouri law enforcement agencies. “That provision violates intergovernmental immunity by discriminating against federal employees,” the Justice Department told the high court. “It also is preempted because it obstructs the specified federal laws by discouraging federal employees from enforcing them.”

There is little reason to believe the Supreme Court will uphold the Missouri law outright if it agrees to hear the case. While the justices allowed the Texas bounty law to take effect, that statute did not claim to actually nullify federal law—except, of course, for the court’s Roe decision, which the conservative majority was going to overturn anyway. It did not implicate federal officials or their rights.

How the court reacts to the case will still be an important signal to Missouri and the handful of other states that later enacted similar “Second Amendment Protection Acts.” If the justices somehow allow the law to take effect, Democratic-led states with sanctuary jurisdictions may be tempted to enact laws that punish federal immigration officials for their Trump-era abuses through similarly roundabout torts.

Some Missouri officials may also have good reason to rethink the law’s wisdom. Among the names on the state’s petition for review is Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, one of the most conservative state attorneys general in the country. President Donald Trump announced earlier this month that he would appoint him to serve as co-deputy director of the FBI.

Unless Bailey radically overhauls how the federal government enforces gun laws, he may find himself giving “material aid and comfort” to federal officials responsible for what SAPA defines as widespread violations of the Second Amendment. That could complicate his ability to go back to the Missouri state government in the future once his FBI tenure ends if SAPA is upheld—at least, not without facing a wave of lawsuits and $50,000 judgments along the way. Maybe government-by-bounty isn’t worth it after all.

Constantine Cavafy, Poetry’s Inadvertent Influencer - 2025-08-25T10:00:00Z

The great, early-twentieth-century Greek poet Constantine P. Cavafy much preferred writing about a culture’s end-times rather than all of the times that came before. This was largely because he preferred reflecting on past achievements to enduring the vicissitudes of producing or maintaining new ones. His short, abrupt, almost parable-like lyrics of historical figures and events—such as “The God Abandons Antony” or “Thermopylae”—don’t feature strong men achieving victories that will, after death, immortalize them but rather describe the slow, inevitable acceptance of whatever defeats may come next.

In “Thermopylae,” the central event is not a small, heroic band of Spartans standing against the uncountable Persian hordes; it’s about the “honor” that “still is due to them / when they foresee … /… that the Medes will eventually break through.” In much the same way, Cavafy’s personal poems often concern men growing old as they reflect on shimmering, partially recalled passions, as in “Since Nine—” when one of his many aging monologists sits alone in his dimly lit house recalling: 

The apparition of my body in its youth,
since nine o’clock when I first turned up the lamp,
has come and found me and reminded me
of shuttered perfumed rooms
and of pleasure spent—what wanton pleasure!

As the late Hellenistic scholar Peter Mackridge wrote, in his introduction to an Oxford collection of Cavafy’s poems, Cavafy was “often called a ‘poet of old age,’” but that statement might easily be rewritten to say he was a poet of “old age and old, half-remembered achievements.” Unlike his contemporary and admirer T.S. Eliot, he didn’t see history as ending “with a whimper” but rather with a long, subsiding, pleasurable sigh of recollection. For Cavafy, when life and history came close to their ending, poetry began.

It’s probably a good time to read (or reread) Cavafy, a poet who lived in an era similarly turbulent to our own but who always found time to indulge himself with the less turbulent and (for him) more lasting pleasures of poetry. In Constantine Cavafy: A New Biography, Gregory Jusdanis and Peter Jeffreys have taken many liberties with the normal chronological structure of narrative storytelling, and mostly it pays off. Structured thematically—which sometimes means the reader gets a bit lost in the often sedate, expanding uneventfulness of Cavafy’s life—the book features long chapters focusing on distinct aspects of the poet’s life and work: His relationship with family members comprises one chapter, while social relationships with other hedonistic, spoiled young men like Cavafy himself comprise another. And there’s one long, fascinating section that simply details a normal day of Cavafy’s rambles through Alexandria. In many ways, the authors seem to have found the perfect “form” for presenting the complex figure of Cavafy—a relatively solitary and self-determined man who intersected with the events of his time and the people in his life, while still establishing his own sense of time and history in a series of unique poetic reflections. He never seemed to achieve great things or earn literary fame so much as steadily generate, and enjoy, books and streets and poetry and lovers and friends. He lived his life, just as he wrote his poems, like a series of sweet secrets.


Cavafy was born in Alexandria in 1863, the youngest of seven brothers; his family “was above all else defined by a Victorian mercantile ethos stemming largely from the network of the Anglo-Greek community that operated out of Manchester, Liverpool, and London,” according to Jusdanis and Jeffreys. And from a young age, Cavafy grew accustomed to having empires vanish under his feet. His father died when he was still a child; a subsequent worldwide depression (1873) dismantled the family business; and various political conflicts (such as the Anglo-Egyptian War of 1882), sent Cavafy and his family scurrying from Liverpool to Constantinople and back, until Cavafy, with his devoted mother, Heracleia, settled permanently in his hometown of Alexandria, where he spent the remainder of his life. Cavafy wasn’t the type of young man born to wrest his family from economic misfortune; spoiled and dandyish, he preferred hanging around cafés, bars, and brothels, and reading books. Both Constantine and his older brother, Peter, began dabbling with poetry from a young age; but only Constantine, after many years of dilettantism, as if lifting himself up by his own aesthetic bootstraps, began to shape himself as a world-class poet by the early 1900s—and one both influential and unclassifiable in equal measure. His work (also collected in a two-volume English translation by Daniel Mendelssohn in 2012) seems to have been deeply significant to the reading lives of his contemporaries—such as W.H. Auden, Eliot, and D.J. Enright—even while it is hard to find his influence in their works: Nobody ever quite wrote poems like Cavafy. Nor would they.

One of his formative intellectual influences was Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but some of Cavafy’s deepest personal influences were the private pleasures he enjoyed with young men, whom he met during his flaneurish rambles through Alexandria. Leaving history behind is a major theme of his work, but leaving conventional daylight culture behind was the twilight pleasure he most enjoyed.

In “Waiting for the Barbarians,” for instance—perhaps his best-known work— the royalty, senators, and citizens of an unidentified kingdom prepare to surrender all their rites, finery, and institutions to an invasion of “barbarians” who will, the narrator expects, be “bored by eloquence and public speaking.” Cavafy’s poetic narratives are often like parables, rarely extending beyond 30 or 40 lines, and rather than depict history as a progress from one era to another, this one ironizes the idea of “progress,” depicting a civilization that seems readily prepared to exchange a little of what it has for a little of what it hasn’t—much like Cavafy’s wandering lovers, moving through the streets and markets of Alexandria from one affair to another. As the nameless narrator (most of Cavafy’s narrators lack names, ages, or physical details) concludes:

And now, what will become of us without barbarians.
Those people were a solution of a sort.

But Cavafy’s monologists never really achieve “solutions.” If they’re lucky, they move on from one interesting experience to another, and after many years, those experiences add to their rich storehouse of remembrances. Just as the narrator of “Ithaca” advises an unnamed, Odysseus-like figure: “Do not hurry your trip in any way. / Better that it last for many years; / that you drop anchor at the island an old man, / rich with all you’ve gotten on the way.” Cavafy’s sense of history isn’t ruled by heroes and kings; rather, it is an empire of memories established in the hearts of old men.

For Cavafy, life and poetry were entirely cut off from the conventional arcs of everyday life—working regular jobs, making money, and raising families. As a young man he managed to acquire a government job at the Department of Irrigation Service that didn’t make many demands on his attention and sent him home early every afternoon to think about nothing but his poems. Even his method of publishing and promoting his work was more of a closet industry than a writerly vocation; when he had enough poems (most of which he would work over for many years until he deemed them satisfactory), Cavafy would print them as broadsides at his own expense and distribute them freely to friends and families who, in turn, were expected to pass them on. Eventually, through these networks, Cavafy distributed small volumes of his collected poems, again at his own expense. Yet despite these slim beginnings, there was something about Cavafy’s work—and his personality—that eventually drew admirers from all over the world, many of whom journeyed to Alexandria to visit his home and share café meals and conversation—including writers such as Nikos Kazantzakis and E.M. Forster. Forster met Cavafy in 1916 and spent the next several years promoting his work in essays and by making personal introductions to the likes of T.E. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot, and Cavafy’s eventual English-language publisher, Leonard Woolf at Hogarth Press. Forster also composed one of the most memorable descriptions of the poet: “a Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe.”  

Even long after his death in 1933, Cavafy’s spirit haunted most modern literary visions of Alexandria, and it even circulates throughout Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, where Cavafy is referred to simply as “the old poet of the city,” as if there could be any other.


The later Greek poet, George Seferis, famously claimed: “Outside his poetry, Cavafy does not exist.” And it’s hard to think of another poet whose entire life was so devoted to, and even subsumed by, the written word: When Cavafy wasn’t writing, he was either reading or talking to friends about what he was writing and reading.

Cavafy was probably the least naturalistic poet of his generation—and while he shares some affinities with the symbolists, such as Ezra Pound and Paul Verlaine (two of his admitted major influences were Verlaine and Charles Baudelaire), his poems seem more anchored in basic human realities than theirs. Even when his poems focus on historic events—the assassination of Julius Caesar, say, or the contentious satrapies that succeeded Alexander the Great—the language is so simple, and the characters so generalized, that they read almost like a series of floating, disconnected memories of men that somehow persisted long after their bodies turned to dust. (Cavafy almost never wrote from the viewpoints of women.)

As Jusdanis and Jeffreys argue, Cavafy’s poems rarely examined the specific world he visited in his ramblings through Alexandria; what interested him more was the aesthetic world he fashioned from them. It’s hard to think of another poet who, like Cavafy, could spend a lifetime strolling by his home city’s port-side bars and restaurants and yet only once mention the ocean as a subject—“and then only as an absence”—as he does in “Morning Sea” (1916).

Here let me stop. Let me too look at Nature for a while.
The morning sea and cloudless sky
A brilliant blue, the yellow shore; all
Beautiful and grand in the light.

Here let me stop. Let me fool myself: that these are what I see
(I really saw them for a moment when I first stopped)
instead of seeing, even here, my fantasies,
my recollections, the ikons of pleasure.

Unlike the romantics, Cavafy is not drawn into the awesomeness of mountains and valleys; rather, he is quick to turn his eyes from them, preferring to wander absorbedly in the memories and impressions that nature has invoked, and always returning to the subjective realm where only he, Cavafy, reigned supreme. He might briefly appreciate nature’s beauties, but those visions are quickly supplanted by his “fantasies,” “recollections,” and “ikons of pleasure.”

There is something deeply self-absorbed and even solipsistic about Cavafy, and everything about his life seemed like a monument to itself. As Jusdanis and Jeffreys make clear, his apartment was both a writerly retreat and a monument to hoarding: He seemed incapable of throwing out anything that related, however incidentally, to any event or memory from his past—letters, photographs, books, recipes, printed menus, train tickets, receipts from hotels, inventories he kept of games he enjoyed playing (dominoes, roulette, tombola), and even his mother’s jewelry.

According to some friends, Cavafy’s sexual rambles continued well into old age, and while he was more forthcoming about his sexuality than, say, his contemporary, Wilfred Owen, he was not gregarious about relating his amorous adventures. In one poem, “That They Come—,” he describes that part of his life that was never a secret but was never brought forth shining into the daylight, either:

One candle is enough.       Its faint light
is more fitting,       will be more winsome
when come Love’s—       when its Shadows come.

One candle is enough.       Tonight the room
can’t have too much light.       In reverie complete,
and in suggestion’s power,       and with that little light—
in that reverie: thus       will I dream a vision
that there come Love’s—       that its Shadows come.

In Cavafy, the need for light is almost incidental; it only marks a space in the darkness where an individual can “dream a vision” and, with a single candle, energized by reverie, make the room “complete.”


This is the first major biography in English since Robert Liddell’s in 1974, and it is a much more substantial and devoted work than that previous one; it also comes at a time when poets as idiosyncratic as Cavafy might be easily forgotten for a variety of reasons. For while many different “schools” of critical attention have sought to appropriate Cavafy’s work and life, it is never possible to reduce him to the dimensions of either a “gay” poet or a “Greek” poet, a modernist or a symbolist. And in his preference for Hellenic Greece rather than the golden age of Athens, he treated the dispersion of Greek arts and literature after the Roman Empire as more significant than winning wars or conquering countries.

The most fascinating chapter, though, concerns two admirers who befriended the elderly Cavafy when they were barely 20 years old—Timos Malanos and Alekos Sengopoulos. Both were brought quickly into Cavafy’s closely cultivated entourage and spent their days socializing with the poet, reading the poet, and listening to the poet explain what they were reading and why other people should read it too. Alekos—the more devoted of the pair—went on to act as the poet’s heir and literary executor after his death in 1933; the more critical one, Malanos, eventually found himself shut out of the inner circle and began writing essays about Cavafy that weren’t entirely laudatory. He wrote the first book-length assessment of Cavafy’s career, in 1971, and in one anecdote, he recalled asking the older poet to read some of his apprentice work:

He read it, then going through it line by line he kept saying, “This is Cavafian; this is not Cavafian; this parenthesis is Cavafian; this word is not Cavafian.” Naturally what was not Cavafian he changed into Cavafian.… But he himself did not see (or perhaps he did not want to see) that in this way we had a parody. His main interest was in the pupil (any pupil) who would follow his footsteps.… I was 20 years old at the time … and I sensed that his soul, concentrated all in his glance, in the touch of his hands, was about to hazard a movement in my direction like that of a carnivorous plant.

While some have dismissed Malanos’s recollections as the bitter payback of the man not chosen to be the literary executor, his anecdote communicates one of the most memorable conclusions of this latest book—that the most important person in Cavafy’s life was always Cavafy.

Trump’s Next “Hellhole”: Chicago. Democrats, Get Ready for a Fight. - 2025-08-25T10:00:00Z

Okay, JB Pritzker, you’re up. Donald Trump is coming after Chicago next, now that he’s “solved crime” in Washington, D.C. And since the mayor of Chicago is kind of a joke—that’d be Brandon Johnson, whose approval rating is 26 percent, which (on the bright side) is up from the 7 percent approval he enjoyed earlier this year—most eyes will be focused on you, the governor of Illinois and a tier-one 2028 presidential contender, to take charge of the counter-argument.

First, let’s state some numbers. Crime in Chicago, like crime in nearly every major city, is down. Through the first half of 2025, the homicide rate is down 33 percent. There were 289 murders in the first half of 2024, and 192 in the first half of this year. Yes, 192 is still 192 dead people. No one celebrates that. But a 33 percent decrease? That is real, too—and really good. Overall crime complaints are down 14 percent as well. Certain categories of theft are up since the pandemic, but overall, Chicago is hardly out of control.

It’s been sickening to watch Trump tell lie after lie about the city he lives in most of the time but clearly knows nothing about. Yes, Washington went a week without a homicide since Trump’s National Guard deployment. Good. Great, even. But he talked about that as if it had never happened before. “That’s the first time in anybody’s memory that you haven’t had a murder in a week,” he said.

Well, that’s true—for people whose memories go back only to mid-May. If your memory goes back any further than that—like all the way back to January 1, say—then you might recall that this is the fifth week this year without a homicide. The others include February 25 to March 4, March 5 to March 12 (yep, that was two weeks in a row), April 11 to 18, and May 4 through 11. But the right-wing media repeat Trump’s garbage, and his idiot backers believe it.

Likewise, that toxic nonsense about how nobody ever went out to a restaurant out of sheer terror, but now, his friends tell him they’ve gone out four nights in a row. (Must be nice! For most people, prices are going up.) I don’t doubt that his sycophantic courtiers did that and made sure to tell him about it. In fact, however, restaurant bookings in the District are down since Trump’s police hit town, and dramatically so year-over-year: more than 30 percent. He’s constitutionally incapable of telling the truth about anything.

But it’s worse than his fudging of numbers, because at the heart of Trump’s lies is his unswerving and poisonous racism. He’s not really trying to solve crime in the District of Columbia or anywhere else. He’s trying to scare white people. To divide the country; to make people in suburban, exurban, and rural America believe that the places where lots of nonwhite people live are war zones.

Also, he’s trying to demonize places with “Democrat” mayors and governors. The city with the highest crime rate in America is Memphis. The mayor of Memphis, Paul Young, is a Democrat (although elections are nonpartisan), but the governor and both senators and eight of its nine House members are Republican, and Trump carried the state by 30 points last fall. So, what do we think the odds are that Trump will declare Memphis a “hellhole,” which is what he called Washington last week?

The National Guard incursion into the nation’s capital also provides cover for what ICE agents are doing there, which is getting less attention. Crime is down only moderately since the National Guard hit town. Meanwhile, ICE has rounded up more than 300 immigrants since August 7. If we could be sure that all of them had arrived in the United States illegally and had criminal records beyond their method of entry, even I might applaud that. But ICE’s track record this year gives us every reason to think that such is not the case, and as we’ve seen in numerous polls, the American public does not support rounding up people who may be undocumented but who’ve otherwise lived blameless lives.

So, back to Chicago. Pritzker has already come out swinging, having tweeted on Saturday: “There is no emergency that warrants the President of the United States federalizing the @IL_Natl_Guard, deploying the National Guard from other states, or sending active-duty military within our own borders.” Good. I hope he keeps at it. Gavin Newsom’s social media fusillade these last couple weeks should have taught Democrats something. You must—must!—take the fight to Trump. Don’t wait for Trump to attack and then respond. No matter how clever or cutting, a response is always just that: a response. Newsom turned the tables and attacked first. That had Trumpworld reacting and certain Fox News hosts freaking out, trying to pretend that Newsom wasn’t being effective.

Everything with Trump is the law of the jungle. It’s hit or be hit. It’s amazing that it’s taken the Democrats a decade to figure out something that was obvious back when Trump was steamrolling his way through Jeb (or Jeb!), Ted, Little Marco, and the rest of his hapless Republican primary opponents who stood by thunderstruck waiting for some referee to call foul on the marauder in their midst.

Well, for one Democrat to figure it out, anyway. Newsom, after a sketchy spring when he had some right-wingers on his podcast and used one of those broadcasts to pander to a right-wing talking point on transgender athletes, has raised his stock price these last two weeks by taking the fight to Trump. Pritzker—who has been far less cuddly with MAGA right-wingers and their talking points—will now have a chance to do the same.

This is not going away. The American people believe that Trump probably wants to send the Guard to a number of cities. And now we learn that most of the 2,200 Guard troops in Washington are armed, as of Sunday evening. This was Pete Hegseth’s great idea. That’s exactly what America needs, for a white Guard member from a Trumpy-red state to shoot a Black kid. What are these people thinking?

Crime is still too high in American cities, sure, and anyone who’s a victim of a carjacking or armed robbery doesn’t care about the impressive statistics. But it should not be hard for Democrats to say that and still point out what Trump is really doing here. Where D.C. officials have been making progress after a woeful 2023, Trump is only scaring and dividing people with his lies and his noxious, and completely gratuitous, rhetoric. So come on, Chicago. You’re a city of both Bears and Cubs. Show us your claws.

Gavin Newsom’s Harsh New Trump Takedown Should Alarm Dems: “Wake Up!” - 2025-08-25T09:00:00Z

California Governor Gavin Newsom is breaking through like no other Democrat. This is partly because he’s forging ahead with a state gerrymander to add five Democratic House seats, countering President Donald Trump’s rigging of Texas. But we think there are deeper reasons Newsom is cutting through the noise. These were on display when Newsom recently issued a stark warning about Trump’s long-term intentions. Newsom connected numerous dots to offer a takedown of Trump that laid bare the full scope of his ongoing authoritarian takeover in a way other Democrats rarely do. We talked to Will Stancil, a policy researcher and attorney who has developed an interesting analysis of the Democratic Party on social media. We discussed what makes Newsom’s approach different, how he’s attempting to solve the party’s struggles in the information wars, and why it offers the beginnings of an approach for the party to adopt amid Trump’s imposition of authoritarian rule. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.

Stopping Trump’s Dictatorship Is a Vital Message—and a Winning One - 2025-08-24T10:00:00Z

CNN and MSNBC with a constant “The Trump Dictatorship” chyron on-screen. How Democracies Die authors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt writing weekly columns in The New York Times, The Washington Post, or The Wall Street Journal. Reporters at major news outlets specifically assigned to cover authoritarianism, occasionally traveling abroad to study other autocrats and compare their moves to Trump’s. A special committee of congressional Democrats doing daily hearings and press conferences on Trump’s antidemocratic actions.  Anti-authoritarianism events held constantly across the country, including in pro-Trump areas.

That’s what should be happening in the United States today. There is plenty of coverage of the various Trump outrages, from the deployment of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., to his aides pushing the Smithsonian’s Museum of African American History and Culture to focus less on slavery. What’s missing and desperately needed is these events being connected to one another and presented collectively and aggressively by the media, the Democratic Party, and other prominent institutions as one megastory: Trump’s attempt to become America’s dictator. 

I find myself at times struggling to remember important things that Trump did even a few weeks ago, such as firing the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s in part because Trump is attacking so many American institutions and values at once. But that’s also because the mainstream media and even Democratic politicians and other Trump critics don’t do a great job tying his moves together. Firing the person who manages the collection of employment data obviously isn’t the same as micromanaging how museum historians explain slavery. But it’s the same broader story of one man trying to put all independent authorities and decision-making under his rule. 

The liberal group Indivisible has come the closest to consistently telling this story. They helped put together the  “No Kings” protests over the summer and have continued to use that term. (I prefer casting Trump as dictator to king, because I think of kings as being part of hereditary monarchies.) But the media, nonpartisan experts, and most Democratic Party officials haven’t consistently adopted the king rhetoric, either. 

Why does it matter if Trump is constantly described as a dictator? Because storytelling and narrative help change events. It was easier for George W. Bush to build support for the war in Iraq in the fall of 2002 because essentially every news event for the previous year was connected to the September 11 attacks and fighting terrorism. The intense focus on George Floyd’s killing in the summer of 2020 may have pushed people and institutions toward decisions they would not have made otherwise: corporations increasing their diversity initiatives, moderate Democrats embracing aggressive police reform, Joe Biden picking Kamala Harris as his running mate. 

I am not suggesting that Trump and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party will be defeated simply by more people using the word dictator or a Times reporter writing a series of stories on how many of Trump’s moves were first undertaken by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.

But I do think it will be easier to stop Trump from acting like a dictator if everyday Americans think of him as the American equivalent of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Putin. 

And we can take this step. Well, let me narrow “we.” Mainstream media organizations such as the Times, The Washington Post, and CNN are deeply committed to a neutral approach to covering American politics. They aren’t going to change, even though that’s very shortsighted. (If Trump gains enough power, he will end independent journalism in the U.S.) Many billionaires and business leaders are aligned with Trump, in the way that oligarchs in Russia positioned themselves to benefit from Putin’s autocratic rule, so we sure can’t count on them. 

But those of us in the anti-Trump camp must do a better job of collectively telling a single story. The Democratic Party should name members who specifically focus on Trump’s dictatorial tendencies. I would love to see a well-respected figure not formally associated with the Democratic Party designated as a lead spokesperson for the anti-authoritarian movement, amplifying all the great work activists are doing to confront Trump. (Sherrilynn Ifill, former president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Found, would be an ideal choice.) 

News outlets not committed to a both-sides approach can orient their coverage around the potential of dictatorship in America. I worry that MSNBC, which is now separating from NBC, is missing an opportunity to remake itself into the kind of news outlet that the United States needs in 2025. The network seems to be leaning into covering incremental events and breaking news without much context (its new name will be MS Now) and is creating a traditional D.C. bureau that seems fairly similar to those of outlets like CNN. It would be better if the network put a set of reporters on the authoritarianism beat in addition to the ones covering Capitol Hill and the White House. 

“Journalism is a curriculum of everything that happens in the world on a single day or in an hour,” said Kathy Roberts Forde, a journalism historian at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in a recent episode of TNR’s Right Now, the Substack video series I host. “What’s often missed are these kinds of syntheses and putting them together and telling us, ‘We reported on these 25 things that happened this week in Washington, these 25 things that happened at the state level.… Let’s put this together for you and show you a pattern.’ We need that ambition in our journalism.” 

I worry that too many in the anti-Trump camp view the 2024 election as a referendum on authoritarianism. Harris lost while casting Trump as a dictator, hence that message should never be repeated again. 

“Persuading people is not the work of 5,000-word treatises on the importance of liberal democracy or lectures about how bad the post-liberal world order is (we get it and no one cares; see the 2024 election!),” journalist Jerusalem Demsas said in a press release for the launch of a new publication she is running called The Argument.

I disagree. (Well, I agree with her on the need for shorter pieces.) It is probably the case that Democratic candidates in swing districts and states should talk about the economy and other issues in addition to preserving democracy. But those of us not campaigning in swing areas should highlight the most pressing issues. And right now, Trump running America like a dictator is simply more important than creating jobs or expanding health care.  

Also, we didn’t actually have a referendum on dictatorship in America in 2024. Harris was an unpopular candidate tied to an even more unpopular president at a time of worldwide anti-incumbent sentiment. Trump did not really campaign on defunding colleges, eliminating the Department of Education, making the Smithsonian less anti-slavery, putting Elon Musk in charge of the federal workforce, sending the National Guard into Los Angeles and D.C., firing people in charge of government statistics, dismissing basically any Black person from any prominent role in the federal government, and so much else he has done. 

Yes, Trump was an autocratic president the first time around, and you could have assumed he would take these steps if you listened closely to his speeches or read Project 2025. But I have been surprised at how authoritarian Trump has been. And I suspect millions of other Americans didn’t expect this, either. 

And they don’t like it. Trump is one of the most unpopular first-year presidents ever. And that’s not because of the Democrats’ hyper-focus on the economy—voters hate the Democrats too. 

There is no electoral risk to emphasizing that Trump is behaving like an autocrat. And there’s a huge risk in not emphasizing it—choosing that route means he becomes a dictator without much of a fight. So say it loud, say it proud, and most importantly, say it every day: Donald Trump wants to be America’s dictator, and we can’t let that happen on our watch. 

The Useful Idiots in the Media Abetting Trump’s D.C. Takeover - 2025-08-23T10:00:00Z

Less than a fortnight into President Trump’s federal takeover of D.C. by the National Guard and an alphabet soup of federal law enforcement agents, Washingtonians have rendered an unsurprising verdict on the president’s latest display of authoritarian corruption: They hate it, in large numbers. And they’re organizing against it: A “Free D.C.” movement has taken root—and taken to the streets—to resist the president’s latest power grab.

The response from political and media elites to this militarized takeover of our capital, however, has been rather limp. As The New Republic’s Monica Potts reports, Democrats apparently have been caught flat-footed by Trump’s maneuver; to the extent that they’ve said anything about it, they’ve largely dismissed it as a manufactured “distraction” rather than loudly calling it what it is: a fascist occupation—and a prelude to worse.

But Trump is getting plumped by some in the media as well: The Atlantic’s Michael Powell idly handwaves the fact that D.C. brought the violent crime rate to a 30-year low in 2024 to admonish Democrats for “downplaying crime.” (In this case, “downplaying crime” means “marshaling statistics demonstrating that the crime rate is trending in the right direction.”) Charles Fain Lehman, also in The Atlantic, goes to similar lengths to dismiss the actual facts to assert that “the reality is more complicated” and that some “deliberate intervention”—atop the one that brought the crime rate to a 30-year-low, presumably—is warranted.

These authors and others are making a profound error from the jump in assuming that Trump sincerely desires to lower the crime rate in D.C. Trump is actually a “blank, sucking nullity” who wants to see himself on television and has decided that his second term in office will be about self-enrichment and revenge. He is inventing a crisis of crime as a pretext for further consolidating his power; this is authoritarianism 101.

Personally, I think downplaying crime in the nation’s capital is not nearly as irresponsible as downplaying Trump’s authoritarianism. But if we must pretend that Trump’s efforts are sincere, then I’d challenge the proponents of his militarized deployments to approach their work with more rigor, and less vibes. Trump has proposed a thesis: Crime in D.C. will go down if masked paramilitaries flood the city and amble about the streets. The task, then, is to see if his theory stands up to the test—to take this seriously.

Trump’s critics do take this seriously, and they have a thesis of their own backed up by data. The District of Columbia had a miserable year in 2023; as crime rates were dropping across the country, D.C.’s were spiking. The New Republic’s Grace Segers took an in-depth look into the phenomenon and reported that the city’s woes stemmed from an interlocking array of local failures, structural problems, and lack of investment. But city officials got busy in 2024 and reversed the trend, achieving a 35 percent reduction in violent crime and the aforementioned 30-year low in the violent crime rate. (Trump is now contending that the city lied about these results. As always, the safe harbor for journalists is to treat every Trump claim as a probable lie—unless, for example, you relish being the type of dummy who reported that Trump had “disavowed Project 2025.”)

As the city pulled off this feat without unleashing goon platoons into the streets, Trump’s challenge is to somehow demonstrate that his way of doing things is more effective. While it’s early days, I’m not sure that we’re getting much bang for what I’m guessing will be a lot of bucks taken from taxpayers. What statistics the administration has put forth are scant: The White House told Axios that “212 people have been arrested for various [non–immigration related] crimes” between August 8 and August 18, 101 of which were from Wards 7 and 8.

That sounds fine, but there’s a lot I don’t know about these numbers and no one at Axios bothered to do much in the way of scrutinizing Trump’s claim. Which agency is reporting these numbers? Is this a coordinated data dump from multiple agencies? Are these adult arrests, juvenile arrests, or both? Do these figures include the Metropolitan Police Department’s own arrest tallies during that period? Does “212” reflect the number of defendants or the number of arrest charges? Because that’s how the MPD tabulates its own arrest statistics. Speaking of, in the same time period in 2024, the MPD made 596 adult arrests.

Crime statistics can be treacherous waters in which to wade; in my experience the lack of consistency and the eminent cherry-pick-ability of them is fodder for crime fearmongers to beat their drum. Moreover, as my colleague Matt Ford pointed out to me, arrest statistics can be unreliable because they are more reflective of law enforcement priorities than they are of actual criminal activity. But that suggests there is a ripe avenue for curious reporters: Find out from the administration what their priorities are. Make them stake a specific claim about what they want to achieve and then hold them accountable.

By all outward appearances, Trump’s crime crackdown priorities seem odd. As The New York Times reported this week, most of the troops that have been sent to D.C. are aimlessly wandering around “the National Mall, large monuments and other tourist-heavy areas,” as well as “metro stations, most of which are also near tourist and entertainment sites.” These patrols aren’t exactly taking place in the mean streets, folks.

The big accomplishment of this deployment seems to be a big uptick in the number of selfies tourists are taking with troops. The other achievement is public displays of ridiculousness: My former New Republic colleague Prem Thakker spent Wednesday morning at the Columbia Heights metro station witnessing a farce as various troops and cops rode the escalators up and down and back again, only to eventually nab a single alleged fare evader. Those who think Trump is in the right should probably explain how these activities will achieve a lower crime rate than city officials were managing themselves.

But it’s not all so benign. Gangs of vaguely identified pseudo-cops are brazenly beating up people in the street, in a manner that The New Republics Melissa Gira Grant likens to the violent exploits of the Proud Boys. The occupying forces are carrying out a sadistic campaign against the city’s homeless population. And beneath it all, the city is being subjected to the mother of all ICE raids, with unidentifiable agents snatching food deliverers off the street (one GrubHub driver was rammed by a police car while making a delivery on his moped) and swarming local churches, grocery stores, and daycare centers. That’s certainly a lot of activity, but those who’ve criticized the city’s own approach to law and order should explain what’s being achieved.

Proponents of Trump’s intervention should also explain whether or not what D.C. needed was a swift kick to the local hospitality economy. While the Trump administration has recently tried to claim that restaurant reservations are “up 30 percent” since the takeover, this is a lie. As The Washington Post reported this week, “Restaurant reservations have dropped in the city by as much as 31 percent year over year for a single day,” since Trump kicked off his military takeover, and “business owners are concerned that the continued surge in law enforcement could impact their revenue during a vital period of the summer.” For everyone who pooh-poohed the Democrats who wielded actual facts about crime in D.C., please enlighten me: Is this good? Are these the results we wanted?

You can absolutely mark me down as extremely skeptical that Trump’s interventions are going to reduce crime in D.C. As always, I’m prepared to be wrong. Can the same be said of the pundits who’ve criticized anyone who dares use facts to question Trump’s fearmongering on crime?

This article first appeared in Power Mad, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Jason Linkins. Sign up here.

Transcript: The Media Should Be Biased—Against Authoritarianism - 2025-08-22T22:14:38Z

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the August 22 episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch this interview here.

Perry Bacon: I’m Perry Bacon. I’m from The New Republic. I’m the host of Right Now. Today I am excited to be to joined by Kathy Roberts Forde. She’s a professor of journalism at UMass Amherst and also a journalism historian. And so I want to talk to her about both the past and the present, maybe the future of how journalism should be thinking about its role in democracy. So Kathy, thanks for joining me.

Kathy Forde: It’s so great to be here, Perry.

Bacon: Let me start by, you wrote this book, or you were editor of this book, which is a book of essays called Journalism and Jim Crow. I want you to talk about that book a little bit for the audience if you don’t mind.

Forde: Oh yeah, I’m happy to. This is a book that came out several years ago. I co-edited it with a colleague and we recruited some really tremendous thinkers about the role of journalism in building subnational, authoritarian regimes in the U.S. South and what came during and after Reconstruction. And what came of that, of course, was Jim Crow, which was more than segregation of groups of Americans based on race. It was also this authoritarian regimes, one party political rule maintained through business and court and politico and politician and newspaper collaborations. So this book tries to intervene into the ways we often think about the role of U.S. news media as these having been always great contributors and protectors of democracy. Because the story in reality is actually much more complicated. It’s not that our news media haven’t served these roles, but it’s also that they have, for very long periods of time, been deeply involved in anti-democratic projects.

Bacon: So talk about that in this post–Civil War period. A lot of the white-owned papers in this time did what? They legitimize the backlash against Reconstruction on some level. So talk about what they did.

Forde: Yeah. So they not only legitimize through the soft power of storytelling—for example, normalizing lynching as a tool of social control in the South and of demeaning and degrading Black opportunity, Black citizenship, and Black humanity. They propagated the story of “the Lost Cause,” this notion that the South and its goals during the Civil War were noble somehow. They did a lot more. They were also political actors. These newspaper editors and publishers worked collaboratively with business leaders and political leaders and industrial giants and the court systems in actively promoting all kinds of policies and systems that built an exclusionary governmental regime. So you wind up having post-Reconstruction, one party rule in the South. So one party, the Democratic Party, which then was the party of white supremacy. You have rigged elections; you have election fraud; you have stochastic terror used as a way to frighten and control not only Black citizens but also white citizens who might want to ally and build populist fusionist movements with their Black neighbors and fellow citizens.

And so when you put all that together, you see that you have these elite triads, or even more angles in that, collaboration to build these. What Robert Mickey has written about in Paths Out of Dixie is these authoritarian enclaves all over the South, and they lasted for generations.

Bacon: And your argument is newspapers were part of it. In some ways, newspapers help entrench Jim Crow. I don’t think I fully understood that until the book.

Forde: Yeah. They not only entrenched Jim Crow; they built authoritarian regime. And they were political actors. They worked collaboratively with politicians to help politicians stay in power, to get elected in the first place. Henry Grady actually helped with the Tilden-Hayes presidential election in 1876. It actually brought an end to Reconstruction in the South. Henry Grady was the managing editor of The Atlanta Constitution. They helped defend and protect and even participated in some of the convict leasing system, which was a way in which so many Black Americans in the U.S. South were were caught up in this really terrible system of mass incarceration.

Vagrancy, for example, was criminalized. And so Black folk could get caught up in the system where they were then arrested, convicted. And instead of being housed in prisons, they were leased out to private industrial corporations and worked to death in many instances and brutalized in order to build profits and build so much of the civic infrastructure as the South was rebuilding after the Civil War. These kinds of cooperative regimes among elites in the South were ways of building the racial hierarchy right into the political system. And make no doubt about it, these media leaders and their newspapers were political actors too. And I think that’s something that far too many political scientists, scholars of democracy, journalism historians, and the press itself today does not understand and has yet to reckon with.

So when we look at what’s happening in the U.S. today with the rise of authoritarianism and democratic erosion and backsliding, this history has something to teach us. It can help us think about paths not taken, and it can also help us explain where we are in certain ways through path dependence.

Bacon: I’m going to come back to the future, and I’m going to come back to the present in a little bit. But let me ask a couple more questions about back then. These were not the only journalists operating, of course, these white-owned pro. Talk about Ida B. Wells and the other tradition that’s happening at the same time in this Jim Crow period.

Forde: What happens post–Civil War is the Black press, which was born earlier in the nineteenth century right as the slavery question was becoming a huge national question of debate. By the time we get to the end of the Civil War, the Black press all over the country explodes because Black Americans understand fully that their citizenship rights, which are gained through the Fourteenth Amendment, their voting rights through the Fifteenth Amendment, [have] to be maintained and protected and defended. And the Black press and leaders and activists are—every Black activist almost is also a newspaper editor. During this period, the two go hand in glove.

Bacon: Your book mentions Du Bois as a journalist at this point.

Forde: Yeah, all of them. Every single one of them. And they understand that they need to use the press as a forum for Black organizing to mobilize Black publics, as a forum where Black Americans can reach across geographical distance and work across all kinds of class lines, geographical lines to talk with one another and collaborate together to try to figure the way forward when the federal government has turned its back on the South’s efforts—or Black efforts in the South—to build biracial government during that period of Reconstruction. So the Black press is working actively from the Civil War on under incredibly difficult circumstances due to just resources to be part of a movement to build Black political power and agency and economic opportunity.

The whole time you have these white newspapers in the South—and some outside the South—working on these anti-democratic projects, you also had the Black press very actively trying to push and cajole and lead and demand for Black inclusion in the democratic project. They’re working consistently toward a pluralist, multiracial, democratic project. And this goes on. This is a battle that takes place well across the twentieth century.

Bacon: I was going to move there exactly. Let’s move to the 1950s, ’60s. So the Black press, we know what it’s doing. And at this point, talk about—the story I think I knew before was along the lines [of] The New York Times, Time magazine, Life, the East Coast liberal press or East Coast press, Northern press to some extent help the Civil Rights Movement. They covered King fairly favorably, but there’s more nuances. So talk about the role the press plays in the ’50s and ’60s.

Forde: I think what’s incredibly important for everyone listening to this podcast and all Americans to understand is that it was the Black press that empowered and pushed the white press to cover the Civil Rights Movement with some degree of sympathy and empathy and recognition of what the Civil Rights Movement was trying to do. And there were all kinds of fissures too. There was not this monolithic white savior press in The New York Times or Time magazine, etc., acting all gung ho behind the Civil Rights Movement activists. They had to be persuaded, and they made lots of missteps along the way. And I think that they learned—I know that they learned—so much from the Black reporters who they worked with and depended on—with Jet and Ebony and other Black publications—Black newspapers at the time in order to understand what the stakes were and what was being demanded by Black civil rights activists in the South and their allies in the North.

Bacon: But in the ’60s period is this idea that the media is an actor and it plays a role in democracy. In that period, the media as a whole was maybe pro–civil rights to some extent, and they helped legitimize the Voting Rights Act, Civil Rights Act. The media was an actor in this period, right?

Forde: There’s no doubt. In fact, that was very much part of the Civil Rights Movement strategy with Andrew Young and Dr. King. They had a media strategy and their goal was to get as much publicity through the white mainstream powerful press in the country as possible to expose what was happening in the South: the violence, the political control, the economic control, the authoritarian work that was happening all over the South, and the brutality that was part of this system in the South. And so part of it was their very clear understanding of how they needed to get cameras on and newspapers on and broadcast news on to showcase for all of America the moral injury that the American democratic project was—and certainly all over the South—inflicting on [not only] Black Americans but also all of America.

Bacon: Let me move to the—I’m going to call the period 1980 to 2020, and you’ll understand why I’ve said it that way. There’s been two things, I think, going on in the press. This is something I’ve experienced by being in the press too. One, there’s a big push—more and more news organizations are owned by these megacorporations. There’s a big push for “objectivity.” This is the new thing. Most of American history, you had Hamilton and Jefferson having their own paper. Most American history had partisan newspaper. But these last—really—50 years, there’s been a very big focus on news organizations must be objective between the two parties and not have any values. You have, too, the simultaneous push for more diversity in the media, more racial diversity, particularly more inclusion of African Americans specifically. So talk about those. And those two things, I think, have some obvious tension, right?

Forde: Do they ever? So objectivity, we think of it—actually Walter Lippmann, who’s a founder of The New Republic, was one of the great proponents of objectivity as a professional news standard back in the 1920s and ’30s. And this grows throughout the twentieth century as this God standard in professional journalism. And it involved being fact-centered using evidence, using rational thought to understand the news—a process of verification, a way to make sure that the news that’s being purveyed is based on an expert collection of facts and evidence and is accurate and is somehow neutral, is somehow divorced from values. And so if that is what objectivity means.… And then at the same time, there’s this recognition that we need in newsrooms not just white control and white men controlling what news decisions are made, what editorial judgements are made, being the ultimate arbiters of what counts as news and how new should be analyzed and interpreted and opinion-formed. Once we get away from that notion that white men should have control over all of this, women enter, people of color enter into the space of professional journalism in more numbers than ever. And that is sought after in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement at the same time.

And what that suggests is diversity of perspective, diversity of experience, diversity of ways of thinking and making sense of the democratic project. And yet objectivity suggests that there are no values. There should not be values attached to the way we think about producing the news. So they’re in obvious tension. And in fact, there’s this great new book—and I need to disclaim, I edit the book series this book came out in. It’s called Racializing Objectivity by a terrific scholar by the name of Gwyneth Mellinger. And she demonstrates how in the South in the ’50s and ’60s, white newspaper editors and publishers actually used objectivity as this weapon, as this cudgel and as this veil to hide behind as they were very, very actively behind the scenes working to maintain segregation and to maintain Jim Crow. And they were very publicly using—she brings the receipts—objectivity as this justification and a veil for what they were actually doing.

Bacon: So as a Black journalist, I feel like we’re in a whiplash period where from 2014 to 2020, it was cover race. This is an important part of policy. Lean into the idea that we’re defending democracy. Democracy dies in darkness, you know that slogan, [but] let me not get into that too much. And now I feel like we’re in a period where you can see news orgs when they lay off—often they have excuse for it, but often the Black people are the first people who are leaving. A lot of these race beats are going away. A lot of the democracy beats are less focused on. Is that what you’re seeing, too, [that] we had a period—from 2014 to 2020, there was a shift in the media to a more multiracial democracy form, and now we’re going back again?

Forde: Yes. And I think it’s led by elites—elites on the right. It’s a really frightening—I find this moment we’re in of the rise of authoritarianism in the federal government, this move to the national level, of all kinds of techniques and stratagems that were developed in many of these Southern states generations before have been nationalized. And in the process, one of the things we’re seeing today is a federal government that is attacking the press in all kinds of way and has been during the two Trump administrations. The idea of the press as enemy of the people, the fact that there’s a Trump crony in charge of the FCC and that Trump crony as head of FCC is investigating all kinds of news media outlets. You have this revolving door among certain right-wing news media outlets and this administration, with some of the people who have been significant personalities, I’ll call them, on Fox News and other places either holding positions of power within the Trump administration or somehow providing extraordinary levels of access to them. We see Fox personalities involved in CPAC.

We see some right-wing outlets—sometimes they provide factual information, but they’ve often been involved in misinformation at best and disinformation at worst. We’ve seen the White House Correspondents’ Association disbanded. The Trump administration now has its own propaganda channel through Rumble. We have the AP disinvited from the White House and Air Force One. We have lawsuits against ABC and CBS in efforts to control their thought. We have Jeff Bezos at The Washington Post turning the editorial side of the newspaper into a free market zone with a conservative editor. There’s just a lot happening where you see elites on the right aligning together to reshape not only the news media space but also the information environment—because, of course, we’ve got these social media platforms that complicate things entirely. You’ve got lots of media influencers that are supplanting what had been the function of news.

Bacon: So the parallel now that I’m seeing that you’re seeing between the period of 1870 to 1920 and today is that again, you have these rich elites who are using their economic power to also shape the media in an anti-democratic way.

Forde: Yeah. And it’s an effort to consolidate power in their interests.

Bacon: And so what would a media look like that was trying to defend democracy? What would that look like right now?

Forde: That is such a good question. I’ve been thinking about this so much. I need a think tank of folks to think about this with me so my ideas are better than what it is I’m able to share with you today. But one of the things I think would be really helpful is just structural. We need much—we’ve had PBS And NPR defunded, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting totally ripped up. We need public funding of media. The First Amendment, so important in this country, but it does not mean we cannot have public funding of media set up in a way that safeguards the importance of a news media being fact-based, evidence-based and nonpartisan and oriented toward not only serving the common good but toward reporting on how democracy works and calling the shots. So that’s another thing I would like to see: I would like to see news media that don’t both-sides anything that has to do with democratic rules and regulations and laws and courts and norms. That is, we can’t both-side these things.

Bacon: Let me stop you because you said you want public media that’s nonpartisan. You also said we should have media that doesn’t both-sides. Those goals are, right now—you said you want media that’s nonpartisan, doesn’t do both-sides, but also promotes democracy, right?

Forde: Yes.

Bacon: And promotes democratic norms. How does I think that’s what NPR is struggling with. You can tell—whenever the head of NPR speaks, I can tell she’s like, Democracy is good. I don’t want to be a Democrat. So when one party is doing anti-democratic things daily, how do you maintain a nonpartisan media?

Forde: Wow. I think probably everyone listening to this podcast right now wants the answer to that question. So do I. I think there’s going to be all kinds of blurry and gray space in between the ideals of that. I don’t think there’s a way to police that boundary very well when we have one party in this country—the Republican Party—that’s been somewhat captured by the right-wing MAGA movement. I’m not sure that all conservatives are MAGA, and I’m not sure that all people who identify as MAGA want authoritarianism either. I think the terrain is really complicated. There’s no way to take the politics out because so many news media institutions are operating as straight-out political actors, and others are operating within that political sphere because that’s what they have to do even though they’re not involving themselves in an administrative positions or they’re not going to political rallies as participants and speakers. I think being pro-democracy and anti-authoritarianism is something different from being pro–Democratic Party and anti–Republican Party.

Bacon: I agree with that concept. I’m trying to think of what those in reality—is there a news outlet or a reporter [who is] pro-democracy anti-authoritarianism without being pro–Democratic Party? I agree with what you’re saying.

Forde: I don’t know.

Bacon: … Going to read that way in this current moment, if you’re pro-democracy, you’re anti-Trump. But it’s hard to reconcile those things.

Forde: It is very hard to reconcile those things and I don’t have a great, I wish I did. I hope some of the listeners have some good ideas.

Bacon: I think ProPublica is a good example of being a watchdog, doing stories that are investigative, and talking about democratic norms. They don’t necessarily go into a lot of politics. They don’t have an op-ed section. And I think op-eds can be good, but that’s a good model of something useful there.

Forde: I agree with you completely. ProPublica has been just a tremendous asset in democratic life for quite a while now.

Bacon: At the beginning you talked about the media has power, whether we like it or not, on some level, I think is what it is. Journalists can be fact-based with the idea that inherently in journalism, you are choosing which stories to cover and which ones not to. So talk about objectivity as a goal—period. Is that neutrality—or can you talk about how do you think about that? Is that a goal, is there a different principle we should look for?

Forde: I think we should be committed to evidence, to facts, to critical thought, to thinking together collectively. The newspaper in the first half of the nineteenth century, during the great debate in this country about the institution of slavery and what to do about it, it operated like the very best papers, like William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator and Frederick Douglass’s many wonderful newspapers. They operated as forums like where people would write in, and there would be this incredibly robust debate happening in the pages of the newspaper where people would collectively working out and talking and trying to come to some consensus. And we need more of that. We do have reader commentary on a lot of sites now, but far too often they devolve into something else. But sometimes, they can be really—in some places you see just some great reader commentary where people are coming together.

The problem is we’re so polarized right now. Of course, that was true in the early nineteenth century as well. We’re so polarized that we’re often not talking except in a choir. We may not see things the same way, but we’re also not talking across major differences, which I think is really important. And I lost my train of thought. What are we talking about now, Perry?

Bacon: I asked about what ideas you had for the media for today—for the media to support democracy and also reach people. You said, We need public media, which I then stopped. What do we do, though, because we just had public media defunded, or they’re trying to defund. What does it look like to have public media? How do you build support for public media if one party is against public media?

Forde: So first of all, states can pass legislation that funds public media in their states. And there can be workarounds that is—there can be coalitions among different states to build different kinds of public media that reach beyond the state level and local level. So I think that those are important things that we need to consider during this moment. I would love to see more news outlets have a democracy beat desk. You see little things like that happening—

Bacon: Came up and died a little bit because I think that desk often produces stuff that Republicans don’t like. That’s part of the problem. You have to be OK with that, yeah.

Forde: Yeah. But then have an authoritarianism watch, right? Do more reporting that actually looks at the systems and structures and puts together the patterns of what’s happening at state levels and at the national level in terms of consolidating authoritarian power. It’s really hard. Journalism is a curriculum of everything that happens in the world on a single day or in an hour. It does, in all of its responsibilities, report the world to us and to bring us some representation and knowledge about what’s happening. What’s often missed are these kinds of syntheses and these putting together and telling us all the—we reported on these 25 things that happened this week in Washington or these 25 things that happened at the state level (let’s say we’re in a red state) or in the last month or in the last year. Let us put this together for you and show you a pattern and let’s have some experts in to discuss evidence-based and interpretations of how we can think about this. I think it’s really hard for journalism to do a good job like that, but I think we need that ambition in our journalism.

Bacon: The thing I’ve struck by is you’ve said two things. One barrier to pro-democracy journalism is that a lot of people support the regime or support authoritarianism—or that’s one group. The second group—when people on Bluesky debate New York Times headline X, sometimes I’m like, That headline was probably written at 7:30 p.m. by somebody on a Saturday shift.

Forde: But we know how that works. Not everyone does.

Bacon: Not everyone does, and every headline is not written by the writer. We can get into that, but I think that’s where I want to finish this. I think The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post news operation—forget about the opinions thing—the AP, the CNN, these organizations that are not.… The New Republic is more left of center explicitly. And so is MSNBC. And then you have Fox and so on. But the middle of the news—the things that are trying to reach a broad audience—that’s where I think the hard part is. What should they—when Trump brings in the National Guard to D.C., what should the coverage look like?

Forde: It should explain that as one tactic in an authoritarian playbook, one of many, many, many to consolidate authoritarian power. And maybe this makes me sound like a real lefty partisan—

Bacon: You’re going to sound—you sound like Hakeem Jeffries, but maybe that’s the truth in this case, right? That’s the problem.

Forde: I think if we look to people who study how authoritarianism gets built, how authoritarian power gets consolidated, if we look to history for our understanding of how this works and how democracy erodes and democracy backslides, it’s piecemeal. There’s small actions that when they’re all taken together add up to a lot, and those small actions become bigger actions in a certain zone or sector. Right now, we are living in a space where all the institutions of accountability are under attack. Journalism, universities, law firms, the courts. These are patterns that need to be surfaced and discussed and understood for what they are. And in the midst, I’m painting a pretty stark picture and I’m working on the edges where things are really clear. There are all kinds of things in the dark, murky, middle that it’s hard to make sense of and who knows and what’s being done.

We should also know what is being done to protect democracy. Where are the successes? Who are those actors? What are the networks? How can we understand all the political players and networks and think tanks and foundations.

Bacon: But just to zone in, if you’re covering the National Guard being deployed in D.C., if you call experts on authoritarianism, it’s not like that’s your opinion. That’s a reported story. You can call authors, you can call scholars, you can call people who worked in Turkey or people who worked in Hungary or people who worked in Russia. This is not just opinions. It is like this is an authoritarian tactic according to this.… There’s a journalism project here that would involve the going beyond saying Trump is a meanie.

Forde: Absolutely. You got it. You said it better than I managed to say it, Perry, as always. But I wanna say one more thing about what journalists can be doing. Journalists need to cover and news outlets need to cover the media environment and the information environment better than they do. They need to explain news institutions: how they’re owned, who owns them, how these ownership structures put pressures and constraints on the kinds of reporting that they do. I think news organizations owe it to readers to really surface and make clear the ways in which news organizations are themselves in many instances operating as political actors too—sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. You cannot have an effective, rise in consolidation of authoritarian power without some type of news media mobilization in support of that project. It just doesn’t work.

Bacon: I’m going to ask three short questions and then we’re going to end there. First, you’re doing some research on Ida B. Wells. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Forde: Yeah. I worked with this amazing team out of the University of Maryland—I’m at UMass Amherst—and a colleague of mine, Rob Wells, who did this massive computational analysis of lynching newspaper coverage from the 1700s up through the twentieth century. And what we found in that was this incredibly surprising finding, which was that in the 1890s suddenly newspaper coverage, which had been lagging incidences of lynching up through the 1890s; lynching really becomes this huge problem in the 1880s and grows into the 1890s—suddenly newspaper coverage explodes. And what our findings tell us is that’s when Ida B. Wells begins covering lynching. Her coverage becomes well known across this country and, in fact, around the world very, very quickly. And so she sets the agenda and puts lynching on the public agenda in a way it never had been. Now, was she able to—

Bacon: End lynching? Of course not.

Forde: My God we couldn’t in this country even get federal anti-lynching legislation passed. That was first passed not too many years ago. It’s extraordinary. But she played this really important role in helping us understand why lynching happened—that it was not for reasons that white people were saying it was happening. Lynching was happening as a form of social and economic and political quashing of Black opportunity.

Bacon: You’re a journalism professor there. You’re also, I think, a dean, and maybe your title includes the word “inclusion” in it. I don’t want to get title wrong, but can you talk about what you do in terms of inclusion and why we should defend those things as opposed to surrendering them?

Forde: I am so worried about this in the world of every space that matters in public life—universities, civic institutions, and higher ed—because of all these anti DEI efforts at state level and also at the federal level what. I am an associate dean in my college, at UMass Amherst, for equity and inclusion. And for all the grotesque caricatures of what DEI means, at the end of the day, what it means is creating space, at least in my world, in university life where we are examining any kinds of structural or policy or programmatic matters that aren’t fully inclusive, that don’t open the doors of access to the good that higher education is to people across all identities and all socioeconomic statuses.

And so that seems to me, it’s all about access. It’s all about including everyone in the democratic project. It’s about widening the circle of “we” that get to participate and get to enjoy the amazing resources of freedom and dignity and opportunity that democracy and higher ed and in other areas of our public life give us. That’s what we do. This woke indoctrination and all these culture tropes that demonize DEI, I find to be just truly offensive and I see it as a form of backlash. We’ve lived—we continue in this country’s history to have backlash at once where there is progress made. I see it in some ways, some forms, a backlash to not only to Black Lives Matter and its many successes—but to some degree that.

Bacon: You are working on a project around higher education and defending higher education. Talk about that a little bit.

Forde: Thank you so much for asking, Perry. This is a project that’s keeping me sane during these really dark and troubled times. I co-founded with a colleague at UMass Amherst—and now our former chancellor at UMass Amherst has joined us—an organization called Stand Together for Higher Ed. And what we are is a nonprofit that is trying to support a grassroots movement of faculty and staff across the thousands and thousands of higher ed institutions across this country to reclaim the public narrative, to ask policy makers and everyday citizens to demand protections for federal funding for higher ed that has done so much to open the doors for access for everyday Americans, including me, to get a college education.

I grew up disadvantaged in rural East Tennessee. I don’t want the doors to close. They cannot close. And we also need federal funding for open inquiry and research that then gets taken up by corporations and fuels the economy but also saves lives consistently and makes life better. We’re doing that work. You can find us if anybody’s interested. We really need faculty and staff to join StandTogetherHigherEd.org.

Bacon: Great. And can you say it one more time because somebody is asking?

Forde: Stand Together for Higher Ed is the name of the nonprofit, and we are www.standtogetherhighered.org. All right, great. Kathy, it’s a great conversation. Thanks for joining me.

Forde: Yeah, it was great.

Bacon: And thanks everybody for watching, and we’ll be back next week.

Pete Hegseth Just Fired a Top General Who Pissed Off Trump - 2025-08-22T20:36:52Z

Inconvenient truths don’t go unpunished in the Trump administration.

It’s a lesson that Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse learned the hard way on Friday, as The Washington Post reported that he’s been fired from his position as chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The DIA under Kruse was responsible for the classified preliminary report about America’s June strike on Iran, which gave President Donald Trump much grief once it leaked to the press, as it painted a starkly different picture of the attack than his administration had.

Though the report expressly acknowledged its preliminary nature, its findings—that the strike set Iran’s alleged nuclear program back by only a few months, at most—put a damper on Hegseth’s and Trump’s insistence that they had totally decimated their targets. The president had referred to the attack as “one of the most successful military strikes in history,” comparable to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Hegseth axed Kruse for “loss of confidence,” per the Post.

The ouster is just the latest example of the Trump administration shooting the messenger. After the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued a troubling July jobs report, the president fired BLS chief Erika McEntarfer, appointing in her place a MAGA partisan who just happened to have been at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Russia Bombed a U.S. Factory in Ukraine. Here’s How Trump Responded. - 2025-08-22T20:02:36Z

If another country were to bomb an American-owned factory on foreign soil, one might expect—at the very least—harsh condemnation from the sitting U.S. president.

The anticipated response from a president who enjoys a reputation as both a champion of American business and a tough guy on the world stage would be even fiercer.

But President Donald Trump fell far short of such expectations on Friday, when he was asked about Russia’s strike on the Ukrainian branch of the American electronics manufacturer Flex.

The president mustered only five words—and none very forceful.

“I told [Putin], ‘I’m not happy about it,’” the president said, before immediately changing the subject. “I’m not happy about anything having to do with that war.”

Overnight, Russia hit the factory with two missiles, injuring at least 15, according to Ukraine. About 600 workers had reportedly been at work but took cover prior to impact as air raid sirens sounded. An estimated third of the plant burned down, per the Ukrainian military.

In a statement on X, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Russia had “practically burned down an American company producing electronics—home appliances, nothing military. The Russians knew exactly where they lobbed the missiles. We believe this was a deliberate attack against American property and investments in Ukraine.”

Andy Hunter, the president of the Ukrainian affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, described the strike as “not only an attack on Ukraine” but “an attack on American business,” which he said is being “destroy[ed] and humiliat[ed]” by Russia.

As Trump quickly changed the subject Friday, he resorted to his oft-repeated lie about having ended several wars during his second term. The president had previously said he ended six of them. Recently, he added a mysterious seventh conflict to that claim.

“I settled seven wars,” Trump continued Friday, before loosening the criteria for the tally in order to bolster the figure. “Actually, if you think about pre-wars, add three more, so it would be 10.”

Trump Seems to Want to Turn D.C. Into a Resort - 2025-08-22T19:30:34Z

President Donald Trump doesn’t just want federal control of Washington, D.C., he wants aesthetic control as well—and knowing the president’s garish style, it probably won’t be pretty.

On Friday, Trump said the administration was “looking at doing something very exciting” to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, a part of the White House campus that was constructed in the late 1800s. “It’s such a beautiful building, but it doesn’t look it,” Trump said. “I think it’s just incredible, but you have to get past the color, because the stone they used was a really bad color.”

And it won’t stop at the White House: Trump also said that he’s giving out a contract to “beautify” the city, repaving streets and updating lampposts within a three-mile radius of the Capitol Building. “It’s gonna be beautiful, all those lightbulbs—you see the poles, they’re rusting and they’ve got different lenses on top, if you look.… We’re going to have this place beautified,” he said.

This redecoration would require about $2 billion from Congress, according to the president.

Meanwhile, House Republicans still haven’t restored the $1 billion in city funding they blocked earlier this year, holding taxpayer dollars hostage unless the new bill prohibits D.C. residents from spending their own money on things that don’t align with the conservative agenda, like abortion services or reparations.

But gold lampposts (which, if the past is any evidence, could conceivably be part of Trump’s plan) are definitely worth the money! On Thursday, as well, Trump said he wants D.C.’s parks to look like his golf courses.

“I’m very good at grass because I have a lot of golf courses all over the place,” he bragged. “I know more about grass than any human being, I think, anywhere in the world, and we’re going to be re-grassing all of your parks … it’ll look like Augusta. It’ll look like, more importantly, Trump National Golf Club—that’s even better,” he said, referring to Augusta, Georgia, where the Masters Tournament is held.

It seems that the president won’t stop until the whole District has been transformed into Mar-a-Lago.

DOJ Releases Ghislaine Maxwell Transcript in Rush to Appease MAGA Base - 2025-08-22T19:25:56Z

The Justice Department released transcripts of its interviews with Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell on Friday, the Associated Press reported.

The DOJ interviewed Maxwell as part of its scramble to regain the public’s trust after botching the rollout of the Epstein files. After Attorney General Pam Bondi promised the release of Epstein’s so-called “client list,” she then went on to say the list did not exist.

In the interview, Maxwell reportedly recalled meeting Donald Trump in the early 1990s, when her father, Robert Maxwell, owned the New York Daily News.

“I may have met Donald Trump at that time, because my father was friendly with him and liked him very much,” Maxwell said, according to the transcript.

In the interview, Maxwell did not incriminate anyone, including former President Bill Clinton, Trump, or any other high-level officials. She also maintained that Epstein’s so-called “client list” did not exist.

“There is no list. We’ll start with that,” Maxwell said.

Maxwell’s interview aligns with what Bondi and the Trump administration have claimed about the list, but may disappoint those who expected a bombshell about Epstein’s supposed ties to influential politicians and decision-makers.

Maxwell also took the opportunity to heap praise on Trump. “President Trump was always very cordial and kind to me,” she said. “I just want to say that I find—I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the president now. And I like him, and I’ve liked him.”

She also said she “loved going” to Mar-a-Lago.

Of Trump’s relationship with Epstein, she described it as mainly a social one, saying she’d never seen Trump at Epstein’s home or in a private setting. And certainly not getting a massage.

“I actually never saw the president in any sort of massage setting. I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way. The president was never inappropriate with anybody,” she said.

Maxwell also said she had never recruited a masseuse from Mar-a-Lago, contrary to what Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s accusers, said about how she was trafficked by Maxwell in 2000. At 16, Giuffre worked as a spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago, where she was approached by Maxwell to work as a traveling masseuse, which led to her abuse by Epstein, Maxwell, and their associates, she said. Giuffre died by suicide this year.

Trump, however, has told a different story. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One last month, Trump claimed that Epstein “stole” several of the president’s underage resort employees—including Giuffre.

Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for helping Epstein traffic underage girls, isn’t necessarily the most trustworthy of sources. She’s angling for a pardon from the president and so would have every reason to downplay any ties between Trump and Epstein, who had a documented multidecade relationship.

It’s yet to be seen whether the transcripts will quiet MAGA’s uproar about the administration’s lack of transparency on the infamous sex trafficker.

This story has been updated.

The Media Should Be Biased—Against Authoritarianism - 2025-08-22T18:09:27Z

The news media has a powerful role in democracy, even if it often doesn’t acknowledge that, says Kathy Roberts Forde, a journalism historian who teaches at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. As she explained in a recent episode of TNR’s Right Now With Perry Bacon, in the Jim Crow era, many white-owned newspapers in the South helped legitimize and entrench Jim Crow, while Black papers and journalists told the stories of lynchings. In the 1950s and ’60s, Black reporters detailed the horrors of segregation and favorably covered the Civil Rights Movement, helping lead white-owned outlets to do the same. Forde argues that today’s Republican Party is using some of the authoritarian tactics that were employed in the American South in the twentieth century and by autocratic leaders abroad today. So she argues journalists can and should make those connections, even if that leads to Republicans attacking them as biased. Ford, who also is a dean of inclusion and equity, condemned the recent backlash against diversity efforts. She explained her new initiative organizing students and professors to defend against the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education. You can watch this episode here.

ICE Used So Much Tear Gas, a Public School Fled Its Campus - 2025-08-22T17:34:56Z

In Portland, Oregon, Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s use of chemical weapons has chased away a K-8 school just weeks before the start of the academic year, Rolling Stone reports.

The Cottonwood School, a publicly funded charter school, was, until this month, located adjacent to the city’s ICE facility. But in recent months, as protests against Trump’s mass deportations ramped up around the facility, ICE agents began to deploy tear gas against demonstrators.

According to the school’s executive director, Laura Cartwright, chemical munitions began to stray onto school grounds.

“At the end of the school year, we started noticing more activity at the ICE building, and there were chemicals being used on a regular basis and munitions being found on our playground,” she told local NBC affiliate KGW.

Cartwright also told Portland’s ABC affiliate that they were finding the munitions on a daily basis.“We were getting footage in the evenings of green gases, and gases being used near our gardens and enveloping our area,” she said.

As Rolling Stone reported, in June, the fence of the school’s play area displayed a laminated message. Its reported content, which matches a statement Cottonwood posted to Facebook, denounced the “harm being inflicted on our neighbors, ecosystem, students and school” and called on ICE to cease using weapons such as tear gas, “‘green’ gas, pepper balls, and rubber bullets reported near our campus.”

This isn’t the first time they’ve experienced this, Cartwright told Rolling Stone. The school, after all, weathered protests against police brutality in Portland in 2020. (Per KGW, the school emerged from that summer relatively unscathed.)

Historically, the Cottonwood School has operated “harmoniously with the protesters,” Cartwright explained to Rolling Stone. “Our issue is the chemical weapons being used against them that were impacting our space.… We can’t have children picking up a plastic tear-gas ball that’s going to pop.”

As enrollment began to take a hit and it became clear that remaining in place was untenable, the school ultimately decamped to another Portland neighborhood.

Alina Habba Melts Down After Losing Her Job (Again) - 2025-08-22T16:57:03Z

Alina Habba is whining that federal judges aren’t respecting the president after one ruled that she’d been unlawfully serving as acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey for over a month.

“I am the pick of the president, I am the pick of Pam Bondi our attorney general, and I will serve this country like I have for the last several years in any capacity,” Habba said about the challenges to her appointment during an appearance on Fox News Thursday night.

“It’s disturbing what we’re seeing. It’s not surprising, but it’s disturbing,” she continued. “They think they have a voice for five minutes, they try to be activists.

“And Pam Bondi called it like it is. The attorney general said it today: We will not fall to rogue judges. We will not fall to people trying to be political when they should just be doing their job, respecting the president,” Trump’s former lawyer said.

But what Habba and Bondi don’t seem to get is that a judge’s job is to uphold the law, not bend to the president’s every whim.

Last month, New Jersey federal judges ousted Habba, refusing to vote to extend her 120-day appointment as U.S. attorney for New Jersey. But the Trump administration found a loophole to keep its thoughtless foot soldier in place without Senate confirmation. After Bondi fired the first assistant U.S. attorney who was approved to replace her, and then appointed Habba to that position, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer found herself as acting U.S. attorney once again.

A federal judge Thursday ruled that Habba had been illegally serving as U.S. attorney for New Jersey since July 1 and blocked her from prosecuting two criminal cases where defendants had challenged her appointment.

Fed Chair Warns the Economy Is Even Worse Than We Realized - 2025-08-22T16:47:08Z

The combination of tariff-driven inflation and a downturn in hiring has posed a “challenging situation” for the U.S. economy, according to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.

Delivering an annual address in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Friday morning, Powell underscored that the economy was engaged in a “curious kind of balance” from a slowdown in both the supply and demand for workers.

“This unusual situation suggests that downside risks to employment are rising. And if those risks materialize, they can do so quickly in the form of sharply higher layoffs and rising unemployment,” Powell warned.

Powell pointed to the July jobs report, which revised employment data from the previous two months. The updated numbers moved the three-month growth average to 35,000, the lowest three-month period since 2010 (other than the pandemic). It was a stark contrast from the growth felt during 2024, when the measure showed an increase of 168,000 jobs per month. The July report’s downsizing also suggested that while some sectors, such as health care and social assistance, gained jobs, the vast majority of the market lost employment.

“This slowdown is much larger than assessed just a month ago, as the earlier figures for May and June were revised down substantially,” Powell continued. “But it does not appear that the slowdown in job growth has opened up a large margin of slack in the labor market—an outcome we want to avoid.

“Indeed, labor force growth has slowed considerably this year with the sharp falloff in immigration, and the labor force participation rate has edged down in recent months,” Powell said.

The Federal Reserve chair also noted that the effects of Trump’s tariffs on consumer prices are “now clearly visible,” and that the country’s central bank expects the price increases to “accumulate over the coming months.”

Trump’s FBI Raid of John Bolton’s Home Looks Like a “Five-Alarm Fire” - 2025-08-22T16:05:38Z

Whatever we end up learning about the rationale for the FBI’s early-morning raid on former national security adviser John Bolton’s Bethesda, Maryland, home on Friday, there’s plainly a major escalation underway in President Donald Trump’s use of law enforcement to persecute his perceived enemies and entrench his authoritarian power. Consider the pattern:

  • The targeting of Bolton, a major critic of Trump, appears to have been personally authorized by Kash Patel. An apparently official leak to the New York Post deliberately underscored Patel’s involvement, probably to make sure it’s understood by Trump’s other enemies. Remember: Trump installed Patel as FBI director for this very purpose. Patel had openly declared in 2023 that “the conspirators,” that is enemies of Trump and MAGA, must be prosecuted, and also that more loyalists with the resolve to see this through would be recruited to carry this out. Bolton was on Patel’s enemies list.
  • Trump is now targeting Fed governor Lisa Cook, another proclaimed enemy, and he’s escalating the use of law enforcement and the manipulation of the bureaucracy to do so. Trump loyalist William Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, is alleging that Cook committed mortgage fraud, and this has been referred to the Justice Department. Whether or not there’s anything to the fraud claims, they’re minor at best, and it’s already highly suspect that Pulte, an agency head, has taken such an active interest in investigations into individual mortgages that happen to belong to Trump’s highest-profile enemies. Given that Trump personally promoted an article about the referral of the Cook matter to DOJ, Pulte’s move looks even more suspect.
  • Tellingly, Trump also heavily promoted the news of another supposedly fraudulent mortgage held by an enemy, Senator Adam Schiff. Schiff flatly denies the charges, yet DOJ is now criminally investigating them. Here again, Trump loyalist Pulte was directly involved in the manufacturing of the pretext for this, and experts say the process employed was dubiously manipulated. The same tactic has been used against New York Attorney General Letitia James, another major Trump foe. The question now is whether the White House is directing Pulte to rummage through the mortgages of Trump enemies for material that can serve as a pretext for potential DOJ prosecutions. It’s hard to imagine something of this magnitude proceeding without the White House’s blessing.
  • After protests broke out over Trump’s attempted takeover of the Washington, D.C. police force and his deployment of the National Guard there—which is itself a major escalation—White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller expressly declared that protests would be met with a surge of additional law enforcement and/or military resources. Notably, there’s been no serious effort to reassure Americans that Trump’s militarization of the city, or of Los Angeles, is rooted in benign intentions. In fact, this week Trump suggested he would personally ride through the city with the National Guard. Though he scrapped the plan, that was probably for logistical reasons, and he plainly wants all this military activity in urban centers to be seen as affirmative confirmation of his ongoing consolidation of power.
  • Longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon explicitly declared the other day that ICE officers will indeed be employed during the 2026 midterm elections in large numbers to monitor voting booths, again floating undocumented voters as the bullshit pretext to justify it. Bannon is not in a position to compel this, of course, but it’s clear the MAGA movement now sees Trump’s militarization of cities as a precursor to the use of law enforcement and/or the military to intimidate voters in large numbers, or foment a crisis atmosphere designed to help the GOP, or both.
  • Last but not least, as we reported, a recent internal Department of Homeland Security memo outlines the hopes of senior DHS officials for substantially escalated military involvement in domestic law enforcement going forward. It even declares that military operations like the one in L.A. may be needed “for years to come.”

The raid of Bolton’s home was authorized by a court, and it is seeking to “determine whether he illegally shared or possessed classified information,” according to The New York Times. Trump told reporters Friday that he’d been unaware of the raid, but responded to it ominously.

“He could be a very unpatriotic guy,” Trump said. “We’re gonna find out.” That suggests a thin basis for the raid, raising the possibility that it might be expressly meant to “find” something on Bolton. Indeed, while Trump also claimed he didn’t direct this action, he suggested that he told Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi that “you have to do what you have to do.”

It’s all pure mobspeak: They know exactly what he wants them to do. And this raid was it.

National security lawyer Bradley Moss says we can’t judge the full significance of the action until we know whether Bolton committed some kind of offense—even a minor, inadvertent one—that could be the basis for a preliminary FBI effort to recoup documents in his possession. In this scenario, says Moss, it would be legitimate for the FBI to seek them.

But Moss also notes that it’s not clear why the FBI didn’t arrange with Bolton’s lawyer to collect any documents in a far less dramatic way. Did Bolton refuse to turn over classified documents, as (you may recall) Trump did? Maybe. But if not, Moss says, then the dramatic raid could constitute a serious abuse of power even if there’s some basis for action. (Obviously if there’s no basis at all then it’s even worse, but the court authorization suggests there may be something here.)

“If this is all just a political show to embarrass Bolton on something he would otherwise have cooperated on, it’s a rank abuse of power and one more step toward complete capture of law enforcement by Trump,” Moss told me. “This is pretty darn close to a five-alarm fire if it’s what we fear it is.”

Whatever happens with Bolton, we should keep focused on the unmistakable broader pattern. Trump is dramatically escalating his use of law enforcement and the military on many fronts to target critics and consolidate power. He’s vowing to dispatch the military into more U.S. cities. Internal administration memos are charting out plans for more militarization within the homeland. MAGA movement leaders are openly declaring that the specter of state violence will be used to intimidate voters in urban strongholds. And Trump’s manufacturing of fake pretexts for all of it is growing bolder and more unconstrained. Do we get to call it fascism yet?

Did Trump Know About Bolton Raid or Not? - 2025-08-22T16:05:07Z

On Friday, President Donald Trump delivered a series of confusing comments about that morning’s FBI raid on the home of his onetime national security adviser John Bolton.

The president told reporters that he was not yet briefed on the raid on the Maryland residence of Bolton, who is a vocal critic of the president’s decision-making, character, and mental acuity.

“I saw it on television this morning,” Trump said, quickly adding: “I’m not a fan of John Bolton. He’s a real, sort of a low life.… He’s not a smart guy. He could be a very unpatriotic guy.”

Since his contentious 17-month stint in Trump’s first administration, Bolton has repeatedly drawn his former boss’s ire—including for publishing a 2020 tell-all, In the Room Where It Happened, which described Trump as incompetent and unfit for office. Trump’s first-term Justice Department investigated Bolton over the book, claiming it contained classified information. Similarly, Friday’s raid, per NBC, was part of a “national security investigation in search of classified records.”

During his remarks about Bolton, Trump also made a point to assert that he “could” have hypothetically been the one who ordered the search but insisted this was done by Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Justice Department.

In doing so, the president sounded not unlike a Mafia boss describing how he insulates himself from misdeeds.

“I tell Pam [Bondi], and I tell the group, ‘I don’t want to know, but just—you have to do what you have to do.’ I don’t want to know about it. It’s not necessary,” Trump said, adding, “I could know about it. I could be the one starting it. I’m actually the chief law enforcement officer, but I feel that it’s better this way.”

Here, Trump all but admitted to borrowing a page from England’s King Henry II, who is said to have uttered, regarding the archbishop of Canterbury, “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”—and thereby enjoyed plausible deniability when his underlings killed the man vexing him.

It’s not the first time Trump has sounded like a mob boss or a monarch. And it surely won’t be the last time the administration seemingly wields the government against those deemed guilty of lèse-majesté against him.

Laura Loomer Is Now Setting State Department Policy - 2025-08-22T15:50:18Z

Far-right influencer Laura Loomer complained to State Secretary Marco Rubio about U.S. support for injured Gazan children. Then the aid stopped.

The self-appointed “loyalty enforcer” has had enormous success influencing the Trump administration from the safety of her X account: At least 16 individuals have been fired from the federal government after Loomer singled them out as covert Democratic agents. But the unelected provocateur’s reach apparently extends far beyond snipping federal payrolls and into crafting and implementing foreign policy.

Over the last several weeks, Loomer had become fixated on a small number of injured Palestinian children who had arrived in the United States by way of a charity called Heal Palestine for medical treatment related to their injuries of war. The wounded kids suffered from missing limbs, severe burns, and other dire medical needs, but the McCarthy-esque agitator was unsympathetic.

Loomer openly vilified them on social media, referring to the children as “Islamic invaders” and their presence in the U.S. as a “national security threat.” She called on the White House to fire the State Department employee who authorized the children’s visas.

Last Friday, Loomer claimed that she had elevated her concerns to the agency by speaking directly with Rubio. The next day, the State Department paused all visitor visas from Gaza.

“All visitor visas for individuals from Gaza are being stopped while we conduct a full and thorough review of the process and procedures used to issue a small number of temporary medical-humanitarian visas in recent days,” the agency’s official X account announced.

Rubio defended the decision the following day.

“First of all, it’s not just kids,” Rubio told CBS News’s Margaret Brennan. “It’s a bunch of adults that are accompanying them. Second, we had outreach from multiple congressional offices asking questions about it, and so we’re going to reevaluate how those visas are being granted.”

Loomer, an apparently proud bigot, has often used her social media influence to flaunt and advance her racist and Islamaphobic viewpoints. But her recent proximity to Donald Trump—which she describes as a “friendship”—has hoisted her intolerant and hateful ideologies into the throng of the federal government, contorting critical national and international decisions as little more than a private citizen.

Remember Springfield, Ohio? Trump’s Racist Haiti Lies Are Killing It. - 2025-08-22T15:14:23Z

It’s been almost a year since President Donald Trump targeted Springfield, Ohio, with racist lies that Haitian immigrants had begun eating their neighbors’ pets in order to stir up his voter base. Now, the city’s Haitian immigrants, who helped revive Springfield’s struggling economy, are being chased out by Trump’s anti-immigrant policies.

Springfield is currently home to an estimated 10,000-15,000 Haitian immigrants, but The New York Times reported Friday that dozens have already fled the city—and more are sure to follow.

The wave of Haitian immigration had helped Springfield, a town of just 60,000, rebound, the Times reported. Now, all that could go away.

The Trump administration has already ended some humanitarian programs that allowed Haitians to live and work legally in the United States, leaving local employers with no choice but to dismiss scores of workers. A nearby Amazon warehouse, a major employer in the area, was forced to dismiss hundreds of employees in June. The Times reported that a local food pantry at the local nonprofit St. Vincent de Paul had received twice as many Haitians families as usual on a recent Tuesday.

Thousands more Haitians are expected to lose work in February 2026, when the administration plans to end Temporary Protected Status, which prevents their deportation.

And the more Haitian immigrants are forced to lean on social services, or fill up emergency rooms because they lack access to health insurance, the more likely it is that politicians will use these changes to stoke the same issues that Trump preyed upon: scarcity and sickness.

Vice President JD Vance pushed rumors on the campaign trail that the city’s new arrivals had contributed to the spread of communicable diseases, though local health officials said there had been no discernable increase in those illnesses.

In July, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, who’d refuted but refused to condemn Trump’s racist lies last year, said that “suddenly losing a large number” of workers would have a “significant impact” on businesses. “It’s not going to be good,” he said.

Now, Haitian immigrants face three options. They could go back to Haiti, which is still plagued by widespread violence, or attempt to gain asylum elsewhere, such as Canada. Or they could remain without lawful status, facing steep economic hurdles, as targets for Trump’s massive deportation scheme.

Yep—Trump Is Still the Most Racist President of the Last 100 Years - 2025-08-22T14:41:54Z

You may not know the name Lindsey Halligan. She’s not a scholar. Not a Ph.D. She hasn’t written any books on history. She has, however, worked as an insurance claims lawyer. Her most celebrated achievement, apparently, was defeating a 2019 claim seeking $500,000 in damages from her client over a damaged roof. How she managed to join Trump’s defense team remains unclear, but she was called to Mar-a-Lago the day the FBI came in with its warrant to collect those classified documents. Once on the team, she did what they all do, namely, grovel—she made an appearance on Steve Bannon’s podcast where she vowed to sue CNN for claiming that Trump was lying about the 2020 election results. Trump sought $475 million in damages in that case, but in July 2023, a federal judge dismissed it.

Today, Halligan holds something few others in government probably do: a very fancy title that runs to a full 19 words (Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy and the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Associate Staff Secretary). She is overseeing the … what’s the right word here? There are so many to choose from … “reimagining” of the Smithsonian Institution. That’s right. An insurance claims lawyer is now in charge of making sure that the Smithsonian’s 21 museums, 21 libraries, 14 research centers, one zoo, and 157 million items and artifacts are brought into line with the wishes of the Mad King.

I see, looking back over them, that the tone of the above two paragraphs is a bit jocular. But this is no laughing matter. Forget Halligan. Maybe she’s smarter than I think, maybe she’s not. Maybe she’s a hardcore racist, maybe she’s not. But she’s not the point. The point here is Trump. He is not smarter than I think. I suspect he’s never read a history book in his life, and chances are pretty decent he’s never been to a museum, except to galas Ivana dragged him to back when. And about his hardcore racism, there is utterly no question.

But we don’t talk about it enough. Trump long ago established to the satisfaction of everyone outside of MAGA world that he’s a racist to the bone. He and his father wouldn’t rent to Black people. He said those sick things about the defendants in the Central Park jogger case (they weren’t guilty). He said, “Laziness is a trait in Blacks.” He said some white supremacists in Charlottesville were “very fine people.” I could go on and on.

Being long-established, Trump’s racism is not “news.” Regular readers of mine will know this is one of my longtime complaints about the nature and structure of the media. There are lots of things that aren’t “news,” per se, but are true, important, and defining of our reality. Trump’s racism is one of those things. It hovers over everything. It defines nearly everything he does. And it is making the United States of America a cruel, sick, mean place.

His racism is what’s propelling this edict over the Smithsonian. “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was,” he whined Tuesday on Truth Social. When he talks this way, he’s sending a much broader message that is widely understood, by both his political foes and (especially) his supporters. Each group knows it’s part of a broader attack that is designed to keep certain Americans “in their place.” It’s just that the latter group approves.

His racism is what’s driving the presence of these National Guard troops in Washington, D.C. His motorcade, traveling from the White House to his Virginia golf club, passes a small greensward along what’s called the E Street Expressway where there are (or were) a few tents, and that’s probably how he got his entire impression of D.C. crime, along with the background knowledge that D.C. is a heavily Black city (Black residents are no longer a majority, but still a plurality). The troops aren’t even fighting actual crime. They’re mostly around the National Mall, where it’s as safe as Mayberry in the 1960s. The troops are just a symbol for white MAGA world that he’s cracking some Black heads.

His racism is behind this sick redistricting madness in Texas. Nonwhite people make up 60 percent of the state’s population. By the time the Texas legislature is finished, the Texas congressional delegation will likely be more than 70 percent white and Republican. In Missouri, the redistricting under consideration would slice a Black Democratic district in Kansas City into maybe three different pieces. Republicans have done this sort of thing long before Trump, but under Trump, of course, it’s being taken to extremes because Republicans now know that anti-Black extremism on such matters is the only thing that gets the boss’s attention.

His racism is behind his talk about mail-in ballots and early voting and all his phony allegations about fraudulent voting. Everybody knows very well what, and whom, he’s talking about when he talks about such things. He means Black and, to a slightly lesser extent, Latino people.

His racism is the fundamental reason for these mass detentions. Would Trump, and the right wing in general, be this worked up about illegal border crossings if it was mostly white people doing it? Of course they wouldn’t. There would be no rhetoric about immigrants “poisoning the blood” of the nation.

Finally—although surely there’s more—it’s racism that animates a lot of his rhetorical attacks on individual Americans. It’s no accident that his recent targets prominently include Oprah Winfrey, Gayle King (her close friend), Beyoncé, Al Sharpton, Letitia James, and Charlamagne tha God. He goes after lots of people of all races, but Black people are disproportionately targeted, and it’s not an accident.

I have no idea where Lindsey Halligan fits in here. She’s spent most of her adult life thinking about hurricanes. She’s interchangeable with any other Mar-a-Lago sycophant who happened to be in the right place at the right time.

But the fact that Trump put someone in charge of remaking the Smithsonian who’s totally unqualified is what’s important here because it tells us that the person is there solely to follow his orders. Trump’s orders will be based on his worldview. And his worldview is the most blatantly and openly racist worldview that’s been held by an American president since Woodrow Wilson. We need to remember this—even, or especially, when the media forgets.

This article first appeared in Fighting Words, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by editor Michael Tomasky. Sign up here.

Trump’s FBI Just Raided the Home of One of His Most Prominent Critics - 2025-08-22T14:39:39Z

John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser turned vocal Trump critic, is the latest target of the president’s weaponization of the government against his political adversaries.

On Friday morning, the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the Maryland home of Bolton, whose 17-month stint under the president was characterized by stark foreign policy disagreements until it abruptly ended.

NBC News reports that the raid is part of a “national security investigation in search of classified records”—accusations that echo Trump’s previous attempts to wield the government to silence and punish Bolton for supposedly sharing classified information in his 2020 tell-all book, The Room Where It Happened, which described Trump as incompetent and unfit for the presidency.

Bolton frequently issues scathing criticisms of Trump. In March 2024, he said the then candidate “hasn’t got the brains” to be a dictator. Months later, he said that, while Trump “falls into the general definition of fascist,” he lacks the thoughtfulness to fit the bill: “To be a fascist, you have to have a philosophy. Trump’s not capable of that,” he said.

Last August, Bolton said Trump doesn’t lie a lot, “because to lie, you have to do it consciously. He just can’t tell the difference.” This February, he told CNN the president’s “mind is full of mush.”

He also regularly lays into the president for his perceived friendliness toward Russia in its war against Ukraine. In 2022, he called Trump a “useful idiot” for Putin.

And just last week, Bolton incensed the president by saying he had, in arranging his Alaska summit with Vladimir Putin, handed the Russian president a victory.

Bolton’s barbs have, of course, not been ignored.

Trump, for example, called the ex–national security adviser “really dumb” and a loser for his latest criticisms. And after meeting with Putin, Trump blamed “stupid people like” Bolton for “mak[ing] it much harder” to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

On Friday, top Trump officials, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, seemed to gloat about the FBI raid in oblique posts on X.

This latest instance of lawfare comes as the Trump administration escalates its attacks against other political opponents—most recently training its sights on Democratic Senator Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James. This is not to mention Trump’s threats to launch even more retributive legal attacks against his perceived foe Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, among others.

Marco Rubio Gleefully Celebrates Kneecapping an Entire Industry - 2025-08-22T14:18:00Z

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Friday that the Trump administration would stop issuing work visas for commercial truck drivers.

“The increasing number of foreign drivers operating large tractor-trailer trucks on U.S. roads is endangering American lives and undercutting the livelihoods of American truckers,” Rubio wrote in a post on X, announcing the new policy. 

The decision appears to be spurred by a recent traffic accident in Florida that officials have described as an alleged “vehicular homicide.” A commercial truck driver was arrested earlier this month after allegedly attempting to make an unauthorized U-turn, resulting in a crash that killed three people. Because the driver, Harjinder Singh, was an undocumented immigrant from India, Republicans have been quick to politicize the accident. 

Florida Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins blamed California Governor Gavin Newsom for the crash on Thursday, because Singh had received his commercial driver’s license in California after illegally entering the United States from Mexico. “Three lives lost because of Gavin Newsom, because of California’s failed policies,” Collins said, according to Fox News. “We’re done with that shit.”

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin was also quick to point the finger at Newsom, writing on X Monday, “How many more innocent people have to die before @GavinNewsom stops playing games with the safety of the American public?”  

It’s not clear what Singh’s country of origin or immigration status could possibly have to do with his driving abilities, but that’s not stopping the Trump administration from using the fatal accident in Florida as justification to punish all immigrants. 

Rubio’s decision comes amid a national shortage of commercial truck drivers. The industry is struggling with a shortage of about 60,000 drivers, according to trade group the American Trucking Association. 

Foreign-born drivers make up about 18 percent of the total commercial truck driver workforce as of October 2024, according to the National Association of Truck Stop Owners, citing Labor Department data.

Trump Warns He’s Not Done Torturing Washington, D.C., Yet - 2025-08-22T13:45:20Z

Donald Trump’s vision of the nation’s capital does not appear to be attuned to reality.

Nearly two hours after midnight, the president claimed that the federalization of Washington’s law enforcement had brought peace to the city, apparently ignoring the citywide protests rejecting the White House occupation. But Trump’s self-praise came part and parcel with an ominous threat: that a “complete and federal takeover” of Washington was still a possibility.

“Washington, D.C. is SAFE AGAIN!” Trump announced on Truth Social. “The crowds are coming back, the spirit is high, and our D.C. National Guard and Police are doing a fantastic job.”

In the first week of the operation, Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed that the administration had made nearly 400 arrests across the capital. At least 160 of those arrests were undocumented immigrants, reported ABC News.

“They are out in force, and are NOT PLAYING GAMES!!!” Trump continued. “As bad as it sounds to say, there were no murders this week for the first time in memory. Mayor Muriel Bowser must immediately stop giving false and highly inaccurate crime figures, or bad things will happen, including a complete and total Federal takeover of the City! Washington D.C. will soon be great again!!!”

Trump deployed 800 National Guard members to Washington and federalized the capital’s police department last week to combat what he described as a crime-riddled hellscape. To justify the government infringement, the president pointed to rising crime rates, immigrant populations, and homelessness—though the figures he used were from 2023, before violent crime plummeted across the country.

More recent numbers from the Metropolitan Police Department told a remarkably different story: Crime in the nation’s capital was actually down 35 percent in 2024 compared to the year prior. But the administration is apparently not satisfied with the narrative of that data. On Tuesday, the Justice Department announced a criminal investigation into the Washington police department to determine whether the law enforcement bureau had manipulated data to make crime in the city seem lower than officers have claimed.

Judge Gives Trump Just 2 Months to Shut Down Alligator Alcatraz - 2025-08-22T13:19:04Z

A federal judge ruled Thursday night that the government could no longer send people to Alligator Alcatraz and that the ramshackle detention facility must be dismantled, Politico reported.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams gave the government 60 days to remove the facility’s fencing, lighting, and generators—rendering the facility unusable and forcing it to clear out its detainee population.

The ruling was in response to a lawsuit from Friends of the Everglades, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Miccosukee Tribe alleging that construction on the new facility was greenlit without providing time for public notice and comment, or conducting proper environmental reviews required by the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and state and local land-use laws. The facility was built on a defunct Miami-Dade airstrip adjacent to the Big Cypress National Preserve and several tribal villages.

“Every Florida governor, every Florida senator, and countless local and national political figures, including presidents, have publicly pledged their unequivocal support for the restoration, conservation and protection of the Everglades,” Williams wrote. “This order does nothing more than uphold the basic requirements of legislation designed to fulfill those promises.”

Earlier this month, Williams had ordered Florida to halt construction at the Trump administration’s premier wetland-themed concentration camp, where both detainees and former employees have alleged horrific living conditions.

The judge also weighed a long-standing question about the hastily constructed facility: Who exactly runs it? Williams rejected the federal and state government’s claim that Alligator Alcatraz was run by the state of Florida and was therefore not subject to NEPA’s requirements.

“That the deputized officers’ regular salaries are paid, required uniforms are bought, and standard work hours are controlled by their state agency supervisors is not germane because their status there as deputized officers and their activities at the camp are controlled by ICE,” she wrote.

The purposeful ambiguity about whether the facility is managed by ICE has resulted in an erosion of detainee rights, as immigration attorneys watch their clients disappear from the ICE detainee tracker and have no idea how to contact them once they’re inside the camp.

Transcript: Vance Scamming of MAGA Voters Takes Ugly Turn in Vile Rant - 2025-08-22T11:35:11Z

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the August 22 episode of the
Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

JD Vance just delivered a speech in Georgia that has been widely billed as a reset in the battle over President Trump’s abysmally unpopular budget bill—the big, ugly bill enshrining Trump’s agenda. Vance lied ham-handedly about the bill’s health care cuts, tried to distract his audience with crude demagoguery about undocumented immigrants, and viciously attacked a nonpartisan agency for telling the truth about the bill’s true intentions. This comes as local headlines from many states are showing that people deep in MAGA country know they’re going to get royally screwed by this bill. The level of scamming of Trump voters that Vance attempted here is remarkable, even for him. So how is the battle over this bill going to unfold? Do Democrats have a strategy for keeping the public focused on its horrors all the way through Election Day 2026? Today we’re talking about all this with Michael Linden, an economist and Democratic strategist who is organizing against the bill and understands the pitfalls that lie ahead. Thanks for coming on, Michael.

Michael Linden: Thank you very much for having me, Greg.

Sargent: So just to recap, the top line of the big, ugly bill is that it’s going to knock at least 10 million people off Medicaid to fund a huge tax cut for the rich. During his speech, JD Vance addressed the health care cuts. Listen to this.


JD Vance (audio voiceover): We know that the president United States made a promise, a sacred promise, that the only people who are going to lose access to health care are illegal aliens who shouldn’t be in this country to begin with. Because I happen to believe that Medicaid belongs to American workers and American families. I happen to believe that when you are struggling in this country, we’re generous people and we want to help you. But we want to help the people who have the legal right to be in the United States of America. So it’s not about kicking people off the health care. It’s about kicking illegal aliens the hell out of this country so that we can preserve health care for the American families who need it.


Sargent: Michael, as you know, that’s complete nonsense. The bill cuts $1 trillion from Medicaid and cuts more on top of that. Can you quickly recap for us what the bill does overall on health care?

Linden: Yes. And it’s important to understand that what the vice president said was completely false, just straight-up false. The bill cuts, as you said, $1 trillion from Medicaid. It does so in a couple of very specific ways. The most important ones are it imposes new requirements for existing recipients on how to remake themselves eligible every six months based on a whole set of new requirements, new paperwork. That’s going to kick millions of eligible Americans off the bill. It also limits the ways that states can finance Medicaid. Medicaid is a federal and state partnership. Both the states and federal government put money into Medicaid. This bill actually makes it harder for states to do that and shifts more of the costs onto states at the same time.

So the overall impact of those things is about 10 million people will lose their Medicaid coverage. And that’s to say nothing of the five million people who are going to get priced out of Affordable Care Act coverage because the benefits for them are going to be dramatically reduced. So 15 million people total. And to be very, very clear, none of that has anything to do with illegal immigrants.

Sargent: We will get to that in a second. I want to talk about the rural hospitals component of this. A big part of this bill is going to be the impact it has on those. They’re already in very rough shape. Let’s recap what some local newscasts are saying. One in Kentucky says that 35 hospitals could close. One in Mississippi says the bill’s cuts are putting 11 nursing homes at risk of closing. One in Louisiana says … food stamp programs feeding half a million poor families are facing cuts. In Texas, more rural hospitals are at risk of closing. There’s just tons more like that. Can you give us the overview of why that particular thing is happening and what the human toll of that is really going to be going forward?

Linden: Yeah, it’s actually quite simple. Medicaid is the primary payer of health care for a lot of rural hospitals and for many nursing homes. In fact, Medicaid pays for half of all nursing home coverage in the country. So when fewer people are eligible for Medicaid, that means fewer hospitals and nursing homes are able to get reimbursed for the care they provide to those people. And therefore the economics of running those hospitals and those nursing homes goes to zero. Basically, they can’t do it and they have to close. What that means in very plain terms is that people will not be able to find a hospital that’s nearby them because hospitals [have] to close. Nursing homes will close and people will have to find either new care for their parents or maybe no care at all. This is a very bad situation for the vast majority of Americans.

Sargent: And in rural America in particular, right? Can you talk a little bit about why that’s important? One of the big reasons rural America is suffering right now is the state of their rural hospitals. So this goes directly to the jugular here on something that’s already making life hard in these places and makes it worse, doesn’t it? People are going to die, right?

Linden: Yeah, that’s right. You’ve got lots of places in America where there’s one hospital within 100 miles or 150 miles. It’s very tough for those hospitals to stay afloat as it is, and a huge amount of their revenue comes from Medicaid. It’s the federal government and the state governments reimbursing them for care provided to people who are eligible for Medicaid. And if those people are no longer eligible for Medicaid, those hospitals cannot survive and everybody who relies on that hospital is going to pay the price—not just the people who’ve lost their Medicaid. This is particularly acute, as you said, for people in rural areas where there’s only one, maybe two hospitals in a three-county area.

Sargent: So in his speech, JD Vance addresses the bills threats to rural hospitals. Listen to this.


Vance (audio voiceover): So what we did is we put a lot of resources and a lot of changes in regulations to make it possible for our rural hospitals to stay open despite what the Biden administration did to them for four years. So our policy is very simple. Whether you’re in a big city or a small town, we’re going to fight for your access to health care. Whether you’re an American citizen who’s been here for 70 years or an American citizen who’s been here for two years, we’re going to fight for your access to a government that serves you. But if you’re an illegal alien, you do not deserve government-paid health care benefits. You need to get out of our country. And that’s as simple as that.


Sargent: Note again the ugly demagoguery about undocumented immigrants. He’s actually saying pretty much straight out, Hey, Trump voters, don’t think about what you’re hearing about this bill’s impact on you. Think instead about how many undocumented immigrants are going to get hurt. It’s just beyond disgusting. Your thoughts on that part of it?

Linden: Yes, it’s beyond disgusting; it’s also just straight-up false. The bill includes a $50 billion fund for rural hospitals. But if you give hospitals $50 billion on the one hand and you take away $250 billion on the other, which is what the bill does, they’re $200 billion down. The vice president is treating people like they’re stupid, and they’re not stupid: They understand that when you take with one hand and give a little bit back on the other, they’re worse off. And that’s actually a great metaphor for the whole bill: You take a ton away from working people on the one hand and then give a tiny little bit and hope the people thank you for it. American people are not fooled by this. That’s why the bill is so unbelievably unpopular.

Sargent: Let’s talk about the distributive consequences because I think that’s what you’re getting at there. The benefits, such as they are, that will go to working people will be in the form of pretty minuscule tax cut, which gets extended for those people. But at the same time, the bill cuts taxes enormously for people at the very top of the income spectrum. And then on top of that, if you put together all the features—the health care cuts, the cuts to food stamps and other safety-net programs, plus the array of tax cuts mostly benefiting the wealthy—what you get overall is a large redistribution of wealth upward. Can you talk about that?

Linden: Yeah, very simply, people in the bottom will pay more, people at the very top will pay less. That’s what this bill does. It’s exactly for the reasons you said. There are tax cuts mostly for people at the top, very small tax cuts for people in the middle, almost no tax cuts for people at the bottom. And then on top of that, you have increases in costs like health care, food, energy, and education for the vast majority of low- and middle-income people. You put it all together, most Americans are going to actually end up paying more or be no better off, and people at the very top will pay a lot less in taxes. And on top of that, Republicans are going to come back and say, Oh my God, the debt is so high. How did the debt get so high? Never mind that we just spent $4.5 trillion on tax cuts. We have to cut even more from middle-income people. They’ve got to pay more in state taxes. They’ve got to pay more in energy prices because the debt’s too big, even though they are the ones who caused it to rise. So you put all that together, it’s a tax cut for rich people paid for by everybody else.

And that is, by the way, the way that most Americans see it. And it is the reason why JD Vance is out there lying about the bill, because they know this is a massive vulnerability for them. This is the worst thing that could happen for them: that the American people understand that they’ve been betrayed.

Sargent: Well, Vance, in fact, was asked specifically about an analysis that actually found exactly what we’re saying here, that there’s a large upward redistribution of resources. Here’s what Vance said in that exchange.


Reporter (audio voiceover): There was a nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office report that came out last week showing that the bottom 10 percent, the poorest Americans, would lose about $1,200 a year on their income while the top 10 percent would add about $13,000 annually to their income. Can you justify for those poorest Americans those differences?

Vance (audio voiceover): Well, first of all, the Congressional Budget Office, sometimes they put out reports that are absolutely atrocious, and I think this is a good example of a very atrocious report. The most important thing for people who are living at the bottom of the income ladder is that they not pay taxes on their income sources. So if you’re working hard and you’re working overtime, you’re to get a big fat tax cut.


Sargent: This is the thing. They can’t paper over the basic distributive consequences of this bill. They can’t paper over what the purpose of the bill actually is. And I think the almost desperate-sounding floating of weird tropes about undocumented immigrants really gets at the core of that. They really, really need an argument to distract their own voters from what this bill is actually going to do to them.

Linden: That’s exactly right. Cutting Medicaid is overwhelmingly unpopular, including among Republican voters. Cutting taxes for rich people is overwhelmingly unpopular, including among Republican voters. So obviously they can’t talk about that. So they have to pretend that these cuts are to some scary immigrants or to the people who are undeserving. But the fundamental problem is exactly what you said. There are $1 trillion of cuts to Medicaid. There’s $500 billion of cuts to food assistance. There’s cuts to clean energy. There’s cuts to education. You don’t get those kinds of magnitudes of cuts and you’re only limiting it to the vanishingly small number of illegal immigrants who maybe in one or two states got once a reimbursement from Medicaid. You get those “savings” by kicking people off Medicaid. That’s where it comes from. And so, like you said, you can’t paper over that. That just is what it is.

Sargent: That’s such a good point, especially this idea that you get this enormous amount of money from just cutting benefits to a few undocumented immigrants. That’s what really shows how insultingly stupid the lies are here.

Linden: It’s incredibly insulting. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for Medicaid. They’re not eligible for food stamps. Cutting them off does not save any money, but the bill “saves”—I’m using quote fingers here—$1.5 trillion by cutting off Americans from these programs. And that’s just the truth. And it’s not—of course they have to blame the referees. Of course they have to criticize the CBO, but CBO is not doing anything special here. If you know who benefits from Medicaid (low- and middle-income people); who benefits from food stamps (low-income people); who benefits from assistance sending their kids to college (low- and middle-income people); who benefits from tax cuts for high-income capital gains, estates, corporate income (rich people), you don’t need to be CBO to figure this out.

It’s very difficult to understand why Donald Trump and JD Vance and the Republican Party decided after an election that was all about the cost of living—and where, as you said, they won working-class people by some metrics—they would decide to directly attack those same people and raise their costs in the service of tax cuts for billionaires. But that is what they did. And it is the long-standing Republican policy of cutting taxes for rich people and paying for it by making everybody else pay more. The so-called populist wing of the Republican Party was nowhere to be seen in this particular fight. And I think they’re going to pay the price for it.

Sargent: It’s an extraordinary scam. Now onto the difficult part here involving Democrats. The polling on this bill has obviously been terrible for Trump and Vance. The polling shows very clearly that majorities of Americans see the bill the way we’ve described it here. They understand the basics of what it does, the distributive basics. So there are two models for thinking about this. One is the Trump tax cuts of 2017. Democrats successfully ran on that in 2018 and they won something like 40 seats—and the Trump tax cut for the rich was a huge part of that. People forget that. The second model for this is maybe what happened after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, in which the ACA passed in 2010 and then Democrats lost even more seats that fall. How do you see this one unfolding? Are there lessons to be drawn both from those two past fights and also from what you’ve been through over the last six months or so?

Linden: Absolutely. I think what you’re going to see is a combination of both of those things where Democrats will point to every failure of the health care system that we are about to see over the next year and attribute it, correctly in my view, to this bill. At the end of the day, this was a health care reform bill. Dr. Oz said it: They bought it, they broke it, they own it. And so if the American people are unhappy with the cost of health care over the next year, if they lose their coverage, if their hospital closes, if a clinic shuts down or has fewer hours, all of that is attributable to the Republican tax scam. Plus, we have an incredibly unpopular set of tax policies that overwhelmingly help the rich when everybody else is feeling really strapped. So you put those two things together, and that’s got to be the core argument over the next year.

And look, that has been the core argument over the last eight months. And it’s why the bill is so unpopular. As you said, Republicans wanted this to be about undocumented immigrants or waste, fraud, and abuse and a middle-class tax cut. But it wasn’t about that. The American people saw through that. They saw through to the core of it, which was that it’s higher costs for everyday people to pay for tax cuts for rich people. That’s going to become real over the next year: higher health care premiums this fall, hospitals and clinics closing, food banks overstretched over the course of the next year. Next year, Donald Trump is going around promising people the world’s largest tax cut. Most Americans in the bottom 60 percent will see no change to their taxes next year relative to what they paid this year. They’re going to be asking rightly, Where’s my giant tax cut that I’ve been promised?

They have a huge vulnerability. So Democrats do need to keep talking about it. The biggest challenge that we have—we know this—is that most Americans have busy lives and they’re just trying to make it one day at a time. And they need to hear about this bill. The dots need to be connected.

Sargent: What is going to be the direct life impact for a lot of voters going from this bill next fall—in the fall of 2026? What will voters be feeling from the bill right then?

Linden: Right. So as soon as this fall, 20 million people who get their health insurance through the exchanges are going to see higher premiums because this bill made changes to the Affordable Care Act and deliberately allowed an expansion of the tax credits for that health insurance to expire. So 20 million Americans are going to see their premiums go up this fall as they renew their health care for next year. So that’s a pretty big impact right away. That’s just your costs go up. Hospitals and clinics, as you’ve already said, are going to start closing even in advance of those Medicaid changes. These are businesses that have to look several years in the future. They’re not looking just in the next three days. They’re looking next three months, three years. So that’s going to start happening. And there are going to be effects on the health care system that we can’t predict. You pull $ 1 trillion out of the health care system, people are going to make changes that we can’t exactly predict now. So I think there’s going to be a lot of upheaval.

But it’s also worth remembering the 2010 example is a good one, in some ways—and it’s instructive—because the American people punished the Democrats that year for passing the Affordable Care Act. And there had been no changes to the health care system by the time the election rolled around, right? The bill was passed in the beginning of 2010, and the election was later that year. Nothing had changed by then, but people were angry about the ideas that had been part of that bill, rightly or wrongly, and they took it out on Democrats. And I think that’s what’s going to happen here too. People are going to be angry about the idea that Republicans cut Medicaid despite the fact that the American people were very clearly saying, Don’t do that. So even if Medicaid cuts start right after the election, I think the voters are going to hold Republicans accountable for cutting that program.

Sargent: A lot will be on Democrats here to make sure aloof voters are focused on that.

Linden: That’s exactly right. Democrats have to make that the issue. They have to talk about it. They have to remind voters that Republicans did it. They can’t let it drop to the tenth-most-important thing. It’s got to be in the top three, no matter what else is going on. It is a winning issue. It’s an issue that has 80 percent support. Eighty percent of Americans did not want to cut Medicaid. So you just got to keep talking about that and pair it with those tax cuts for rich people—because, man, if there’s one thing less popular than cutting Medicaid, it’s cutting Medicaid to pay for tax cuts for rich people.

Sargent: Well, that’s exactly the most important component of this that has to be nailed down. And Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia actually took a stab at saying something like this before JD Vance’s speech. Listen to this.


Jon Ossoff (audio voiceover): Vance is being sent on this little errand to come and play defense in Georgia, defending a bill they can’t defend, trying to sell the unsellable. And let me just say this about JD Vance, because he was supposed to be this avatar of a new GOP that was for working-class people in the U.S. His legacy forever now is casting the decisive vote to throw millions of Americans off health care, throw seniors out of their nursing home beds—all to serve the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country. He has zero credibility as a champion for America’s working class, and the damage control he’s trying to do in Georgia this week is going to fall flat. And Georgians have already rejected this policy.


Sargent: That was pretty strong stuff, Michael. What do you think? It seems almost like that’s a pretty good template for how to do this.

Linden: Spot-on. Exactly right. Has the benefit of being true. That’s always useful when the facts are on your side; not always enough, but it is the truth in this case. And I think he’s exactly right. Look, JD Vance and Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress talked a big game about being for workers these days. And when push came to shove, what did they do? They took health care away from workers. They took food away from workers. They cut education aid for workers. They raised costs for workers, and they gave a tax cut to billionaires and corporations. And that is the fact of the matter. It’s what the American people believe, and they can’t run away from it. And if we’re having this back and forth where JD Vance’s argument is: something, something … undocumented immigrants and John Ossoff’s argument is: They cut taxes for rich people, and they did it by taking money out of your pocket, I think Ossoff’s going to win every day and twice on Sunday.

Sargent: Well, Democrats have a very good argument. Now they just have to make it. Michael Linden, fascinating stuff, man. Thanks so much for coming on.

Linden: Thank you.

Honey Don’t! Is All Dressed Up With No Place to Go - 2025-08-22T10:00:00Z

As the eponymous heroine of Honey Don’t!, Margaret Qualley has a catch in her voice, a twinkle in her eye, and a bounce in her step: Her self-styled private eye, Honey O’Donoghue, is all about the legwork. The title of Ethan Coen’s pleasingly pulpy new comedy offers a cautionary imperative that goes unheeded by its namesake. As a spiritual descendant of female shamuses like Kinsey Millhone and V.I. Warshawski, the only way Honey knows is forward and into the fray. Her reputation precedes her in shabby, sun-baked Bakersfield as surely as the sound of her footwear across a marble floor. “Love those click-clacking heels,” observes an admirer as Honey sashays away from the evidence locker.

Honey loves them too, and the delight of Qualley’s performance in Honey Don’t! lies in its witty, vivid revision of a vintage noir archetype. Cruising through town in a series of neatly tailored ’40s-style ensembles, Honey is a throwback with progressive tendencies: the femme fatale as life force. She’s also an out lesbian who wears her orientation proudly on her blouse’s crisp white sleeves. Not only has Honey gotten good at living without attachments—she’s a serial dater who sometimes swoops in to assist her kid-infested older sister (Kristen Connolly)—but she excels at deflecting men’s attention without overtly emasculating them. The latter is a daily mandate: Pestered for a date by a smitten local detective, she tells him sweetly that she has her book club that night. It would seem that Honey has her book club most nights.

Star turns are only as good as their star, and Qualley is in fine form here. The arguably premature “it” girl status conferred on the actress after her breakthrough role as a glassy-eyed Mansonite in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood has aged well—that, and she’s clearly got discerning taste in directors. Over the past five years, Qualley has largely eschewed Hollywood dross, working instead with the sharp-elbowed likes of Claire Denis, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Coralie Fargeat. In the process, she’s staked a convincing claim as the decade’s reigning malleable auteur poppet—a trouper who never met a demanding director for whom she would not bend over backward. In The Substance, Qualley’s naturally airbrushed, statuesque presence was like its own special effect, embodying—and elongating—the myriad insecurities of Demi Moore’s fading A-lister like a sinister showbiz tulpa. Her uncanny-valley-girl affect is real; the question is whether the hypnotic qualities Qualley possesses as a camera subject ultimately disguise or enhance her acting chops.

Honey Don’t! is Qualley’s second go-around with director Coen. The first, 2024’s Drive-Away Dolls, was a screwball road-trip romance, with Qualley styling herself—impressively, if also a bit exhaustingly—as a live-action Looney Tune, a distaff Daffy Duck with a Southern drawl. The film was small (petite, really), but nevertheless became the subject of outsize media attention owing both to the Coen brothers’ much-publicized creative separation following 2018’s Western anthology The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and the very public discussion around its co-writer-producer Tricia Cooke’s queer identity and the ways that her “nontraditional” marriage to Ethan led to the creation of a film that explicitly—in every sense of the word—foregrounded lesbian protagonists, relationships, and community.

The narrative was that Cooke, who had previously worked as an editor on several of the Coens’ features, was working as the driving force in a his-and-hers collaboration. Still, her husband’s influence on the material was obvious. The plot of Drive-Away Dolls, about a pair of doting platonic pals—played by Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan—who fall in love (and into bed) while dodging some low-rent hoodlums bent on what Marge Gunderson would call malfeasance, didn’t just channel the noirish metaphysics of the Coens’ other caper films; it clarified, beyond a shadow of a doubt, which brother had pushed for the proliferation of dildo jokes in Burn After Reading.

For many nonplussed (or downright dismissive) critics, the loose, borderline-careless construction and psychedelic interludes of Drive-Away Dolls suggested a kind of low-stakes throwaway. But the film’s good-natured carnality was also its own reward: It offered a welcome wrinkle in the neat-freak Coen canon, like a well-used set of sheets left crumpled on a motel bed. Meanwhile, the script’s strident Bush-era satire—centered on a closeted Republican politician (an uncredited Matt Damon) anxiously pushing family values in the midst of various indiscretions—is filtered through a recognizably Coen-esque critique of empty suits sweating their own dubious potency.

The proudly partisan stridency resurfaces in Honey Don’t! in a close-up of a vulgar bumper sticker being pasted over a MAGA logo while Damon’s glad-handing hypocrite is mirrored, this time with a beatific smirk, in the form of Reverend Drew (Chris Evans), the fatuous pastor whose startup, Four-Way Temple (the name is its own form of innuendo), preys systematically upon wayward girls. In a crumbling California town with a higher-than-average population of deadbeat dads (including Honey’s, a guy who lurks around the edges of the movie as one of several poster boys for sniveling male weakness), such parishioners are a growth industry.

When he’s not giving sermons rationalizing submission as self-actualization, Father Drew is tending to members of his flock one-on-one (and sometimes via threesomes), spreading his seed and his wisdom (such as it is) simultaneously. Mocking religious zealots is easy, but Evans inhabits the role with the callowness of an obvious nonbeliever, a quality made funnier in the context of Evans’s former day job as Captain America. Confronted by Honey over the death by car crash of a young female follower—one of several fatalities tied in some way to his church, an unfortunate set of events that gives the film its shape—Father Drew tries to use Christianity as a come-on, insisting that a little piety might “open [her] right up.” “I’ll stick with my dildo,” Honey replies with a practiced deadpan. “It opens me up and there isn’t a creep attached to it.”

OK, so that one is overtly emasculating; it’s also very funny, and Honey Don’t! has more good dialogue per capita than Drive-Away Dolls, from hard-boiled one-liners to offhand epigrams to left-field non sequiturs. The same esoteric sensibility that prompted the deathless utterance of the word “unguent” in Fargo and a mid-film dissertation on Frankfurt School dialectics in Hail, Caesar! now accounts for a casual name-drop of Touko Valio Laaksonen, a.k.a Tom of Finland—the Scandinavian painter and libertine whose output deeply influenced twentieth-century gay pornography. (Maude Lebowski, whose art was commended for being “strongly vaginal,” would surely recognize his work.) It helps that the film has assembled a cast of actors capable of putting some topspin on their banter, including and especially Aubrey Plaza, who plays Honey’s love interest, MG, a cop who doubles as the movie’s wary, bruised conscience. Where Honey merely perceives the myriad flaws of Bakersfield’s male population, MG seethes with a righteous, white-hot misandry, and Plaza is steely enough to almost get the film’s final act over the top—which is where Coen and Cooke are attempting to send it.

That “almost” is important: For all its very real charms—not least of which is the frank, fleshy tenor of its sex scenes—Honey Don’t! doesn’t fully work, even on its own scaled-back terms. If anything, the sub-90-minute run time doesn’t allow for enough local color or scenic detours; in tightening up their storytelling after Drive-Away Dolls, Coen and Cooke have come up with something more mechanical, in which the tail wags the shaggy dog. There’s also something uncalibrated and off-putting about the violence doled out in the home stretch—an ugliness meant, perhaps, to evoke the blood simplicity of Ethan’s salad days—and also some pretty heavy, literal-minded symbolism involving a caged bird that smacks up against its own obviousness. The point has to do with the enduring constraints of patriarchy—the flip side to the film’s more seductive (and successful) avatar of freedom, a nameless, mob-connected European seductress (Lera Abova) who rocks a leopard-print bikini, packs heat, and rides in and out of the story on a Vespa. As a putative muse and obscure object of desire, Abova’s character resembles the woman on the beach in Barton Fink and the dancer in the red dress in The Hudsucker Proxy; her peregrinations make a case for following one’s muse. With Qualley to appear in the third installment of Coen and Cooke’s proposed “lesbian B-movie trilogy” (tentatively and promisingly titled Go, Beavers!), Honey Don’t! looks set to join its predecessor as a movie worth enjoying more for the journey rather than the destination—a klutzy, click-clacking step in the right direction.

Tenant Organizers Have a New Game Plan for the Trump Era - 2025-08-22T10:00:00Z

Younger Americans are struggling to afford homes. Many families are stuck paying exorbitant prices for rent while also juggling high utility bills and groceries they can’t afford. So it’s no surprise that as people look at their housing expenses, which are typically their biggest budget-buster, they are simultaneously looking for ways to fight these rising costs instead of just accepting that high prices and poor housing conditions are inevitable.

Tenant unions, large and small, are one of the ways those seeking relief from these conditions can protect themselves against the power of landlords to evict them, push them out through “renoevictions” (banishing them under the guise of renovating a property), or force them to endure long-term neglect and simply subject tenants to abuse.

Although the Biden administration and Democratic presidential campaigns arguably did too little, too late to acknowledge the plight of renters, tenants now find themselves grappling with how to organize in the face of a more hostile federal government bent on making it harder for lower-income renters to keep their housing.

Tenant groups, which experts and advocates say have been growing and strengthening in recent years, may be the best tool for renters to keep their housing in the current political environment—and do more than merely survive an increasingly bleak economy. The NYS Tenant Bloc, United Tenant Federation, and other tenant-focused groups say they have been thinking about how best to approach tenant organizing at this crucial time, to both build political power and empower tenants to take proactive steps to help themselves.

Juan Pablo Garnham, communication and policy engagement manager at Eviction Lab at Princeton University, said he’s seen more tenant organizing spread outside of the largest cities.

“They’ve been much more active in specific cities on the West Coast and liberal cities, like L.A. or San Francisco or New York or Chicago,” he said. “But we’re starting to see more tenant unions that are more consistent and maybe more professionalized in cities that maybe you didn’t expect to see before.”

These new-look tenant unions include such organizations as the Kansas City Tenants Union, or KC Tenants, which worked with the Louisville Tenants Union and Bozeman Tenants United to form the Tenant Union Federation. Together, they have successfully pushed renters’ issues to the forefront of federal policymaking, as well as won material victories for tenants. Tenant groups associated with Housing Justice for All created the New York State Tenant Bloc in January to push for more political solutions to the issues renters face.

Garnham said that despite the high cost of rent in New York City, there are lessons to be learned from robust tenant organizing. There are hopeful trends emerging, as well: The eviction filing rate in New York City has been much lower in every borough except the Bronx compared to the national average, according to a January Eviction Lab analysis, a decline that’s likely been aided by organizer-driven reforms over the years, such as a city law guaranteeing counsel for tenants in housing court.

Tara Raghuveer, director of the Tenant Union Federation, said it doesn’t take much to empower tenants to fight for housing access.

“More often than not, we encounter in tenants a kind of intuitive militancy, and what I mean by that is like, a lot of the people we talked to are, ‘The worst thing that the landlord could do to me he’s already doing, and so I have nothing left to lose,’ like I might as well try for this new kind of power,” she said.

Renters have a stronger motivation to stand up to landlords these days. Although rent price growth has slowed down, people are still paying much more for housing than they did before the pandemic, and without new construction of rental units, the trend may reverse. The high cost of housing in America was a persistent plague on both the Biden administration and the Trump administration—nearly half of renters spent more than 30 percent of their income on housing in 2023.

But much of the Trump administration’s agenda will make life even harder for renters. Trump’s big spending law is great for higher-income homebuyers and investors, but it doesn’t benefit lower-income renters and first-time homebuyers in nearly the same way. Trump’s tariffs also threaten the economy, and the rising prices of household goods are going to hit renters’ incomes hard. Tenant groups say that landlords are also using the immigration crackdown to threaten tenants out of their homes.

Until very recently, eviction filings for 2023 and 2024 were lower for most of the first half of this year, according to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University. In July, eviction filings ticked up a bit in comparison to June and previous filing years at the same time. Despite the lack of dramatic changes in eviction filings, Garnham said you have to look beyond the surface of those numbers and look at Phoenix, Minneapolis, and other cities with higher rates; in addition, eviction rates are much lower in Canada and parts of Europe.

Whitney Airgood-Obrycki, senior research associate at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, said that because homeownership is increasingly out of reach, more people are turning to the rental market, and renter mobility is lower than it once was. All of this makes the market tougher for renters.

“We are at a point where markets are tightening again, so there are fewer vacant units if you are out searching,” she said.

Raghuveer said that while the Tenant Union Federation “succeeded in a massive way” by putting tenant rights on the radar in the last years of the Biden White House, there was still so much more to be done. Although the Biden administration made big steps forward on tenant rights, the proverbial rent was still too damn high when Democrats were in charge. The Biden, and later Harris, campaign waited too long to address issues facing renters, and even when it did, it failed to talk about them in a way that showed it understood the urgency of the issue, she said.

“In some ways our project remains the same. On this question of power, the landlords currently have all the power and the tenants have none, and our intervention as ever is to organize tenants into powerful collectives, a.k.a. tenant unions, to exercise both economic and political power,” she said.

But these organizations plan on changing things up, she says. First and foremost, the rent strike will be more central to organizing plans.

“Even with the Democratic administration, it’s not as though we were winning, right?” she said. “Our assessment is we’re losing in part because tenants aren’t yet serious enough about our ultimate power, which is our rent, right? Our rent is what pays the landlords. Our rent is what settles the debts with the federal government. Our rent is really at the core of not only the American economy but the global economy.”

She said that means more national campaigning this year will be focused on organizing supermajority strike-ready unions in as many places as possible.

Tenant groups are also flexing their political muscle in influential political races. Cea Weaver, director of the NYS Tenant Bloc, explained in a July webinar on building tenant power that the housing organizers realized they needed more political heft at a time when political leaders prioritize the perspective of homeowners and the real estate industry above that of renters.

“What we decided … is we needed to reduce the turnout gap between tenants and homeowners in local and state elections; we needed to turn the tenant majority into a tenant voting majority,” she said.

Weaver said the plan was for the 501(c)(3) group Housing Justice for All not to advocate for a particular New York City mayoral candidate but to push for tenants to vote and for candidates to support a rent freeze. The group knocked on doors to send voters the message that they should support a rent-freeze candidate. She said that when it became clear Zohran Mamdani was a “rent-stabilized candidate running for election on an insurgent base, putting renters front and center in his platform,” the group invited everyone who signed the rent-freeze petition to a 501(c)(4)-friendly space to vote on endorsing him.

Weaver said she believes the work of turning tenants into a voting bloc helped shift the messaging about an election that was supposed to be about crime and scapegoating immigrants and unhoused people into an election about the affordability of the city itself.

“I always like to remind people that Trump is a New York City landlord,” Weaver told The New Republic. “No one knows how to fight him better than we do. Tenant organizations have to do something different under the rise of far-right authoritarianism in the U.S. It’s clear that organized tenants cannot sit out the electoral arena. We know that high housing costs drive voters to the far right.”

Johanna Heyer, member of the Sacramento Valley Tenants Union, the current iteration of which was formed in 2024, said tenant groups are facing “another moment of crisis” with the Trump administration’s attacks on housing programs and ICE crackdowns, which have resulted in immigrant tenants being afraid to go to work. The group is focused on building up the base of the union with working-class tenants to make the organization stronger and less prone to organizer burnout. But Heyer said it’s difficult not to be reactive and respond to crises as they come up with tenants being harassed by landlords who are asking about their immigration status or threatening to call ICE on them.

“Both of the cases that pop into my head of recent calls we’ve gotten from people who are being targeted because of their immigration status or their perceived immigration status … those are both small mom-and-pop landlords,” Heyer said. “We had one who physically assaulted the tenant to the point where she’s just terrified for her own physical safety.”

Other California tenant groups have recognized how interconnected the fight against mass deportation and housing access is. The Los Angeles Tenants Union organized anti-ICE protests in L.A. in July.

Heyer said that she’s seeing more tenant unions looking at ways to organize across a landlord’s entire housing portfolio and sees potential in more networking and coordination among unions in different parts of a state to work together against a particular landlord.

“There are common experiences that we’re all going through in our own unique local variations, so I think that would be a really interesting thing to look at in terms of where the movement is headed right now,” she said.

JD Vance’s Scamming of Trump Voters Takes Ugly Turn in Vile New Rants - 2025-08-22T09:00:00Z

On Thursday, JD Vance delivered a speech designed to reset the political battle over President Trump’s abysmally unpopular budget bill. But Vance’s speech devolved into a series of rants that seemed to ape Trump’s style. Vance lied about the bill’s health care cuts and dissembled wildly about its expected impact on rural hospitals—both times smearing undocumented immigrants with vile Trumpian dishonesty. He also baselessly attacked a nonpartisan agency whose analysis displeased him. All this comes as news outlets in many states are showing that people deep in MAGA country know they’re set to get royally screwed. Vance’s scamming of Trump voters here was extraordinary. But Democrats have work to do. We talked to Michael Linden, an economist and Democratic strategist organizing against the bill. He dissects Vance’s lies about it, explains how badly it will shaft Trump voters and the working class, and discusses how Democrats can keep the focus on it through Election Day 2026. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.

Elon Musk Faces Lawsuit for Phony Election Sweepstakes - 2025-08-21T21:41:40Z

Elon Musk will face a lawsuit accusing him of defrauding voters with his shady, pre-2024 election lottery—in which the billionaire dangled a chance for a million-dollar payday over voters who signed a pro-Constitution petition by his America PAC.

“We are going to be awarding $1 million randomly to people who have signed the petition, every day, from now until the election,” Musk told a Pennsylvania crowd in October. But amid a failed attempt by Philadelphia’s district attorney to halt the giveaway, America PAC revealed that the $1 million recipients were not chosen by chance but handpicked, with their personal stories being a factor in the selection process.

This was news to Jacqueline McAferty of Arizona, who had signed the petition and, on Election Day, proposed a class action, claiming that Musk and America PAC had defrauded voters. Musk, McAferty said, induced voters with false statements to sign the petition and submit “personal, private information” in the process.

Musk in January sought to get the case dismissed, insisting that people who signed up for the chance to win $1 million weren’t harmed by sharing their personal information and were told—despite his apparent statements to the contrary—that America PAC staffers would review their cases rather than leave their selection up to chance.

But on Wednesday, a federal judge in Texas ordered Musk to face the lawsuit.

“It is plausible that plaintiff justifiably relied on those statements to believe that defendants were objectively offering her the chance to enter a random lottery—even if that is not what they subjectively intended to do,” wrote U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman, per Reuters.

Pitman also suggested that a political data expert could testify and help determine the value of the information that McAferty and other signatories provided to Musk.

Musk’s presence in the political sphere has shrunk in recent months. He funneled millions into the Trump campaign and led the president’s efforts to gut the federal government before the two had a very public falling out over the administration’s sweeping tax and spending plan.

But the world’s richest man remains interested in politics: When The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Musk had given up on his plans to start a political party, which he first cooked up during his feud with Trump, Musk suggested that this wasn’t true.

JD Vance Torches Report Showing How Bad Trump’s Budget Is - 2025-08-21T20:53:41Z

Vice President JD Vance on Thursday baselessly dismissed a recent report that exposed the regressive nature of the administration’s economic agenda.

During a Thursday visit to Georgia, a reporter with Atlanta News First asked the vice president to justify the fact that, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Trump’s spending plan will exacerbate the wealth gap.

According to the report, the so-called One, Big Beautiful Bill Act will cost the poorest Americans an estimated $1,200 per year from 2026 to 2034, while furnishing the richest with an extra $13,600.

Vance’s reply?

Sometimes, he said, the CBO’s reports are “absolutely atrocious, and I think this is a good example of a very atrocious report.”

To defend the claim, he pointed to the bill’s temporary no-tax-on-tips and no-tax-on-overtime provisions (which were, according to the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, “designed in ways that limit their benefits for less affluent taxpayers”).

Most importantly, Vance said, Trump’s policies will keep jobs in the United States. But rather than explain how, he provided a quite circular argument: “That is the very best thing for the people at the bottom of the income ladder, and that’s why we have the economic policies that we do.”

The vice president went on to tout the president’s mass deportation campaign.

Last month, when Vance was rallying for the bill’s passage, he described its impact on the federal budget (as measured by the CBO) and its historic cuts to the social safety net (“the minutiae of the Medicaid policy,” as he put it) as “immaterial,” in light of the billions it puts toward Trump’s draconian immigration agenda.

Far-Right GOP Representative joins Texas A.G. Race - 2025-08-21T20:31:20Z

Far-right Freedom Caucus member Chip Roy—whom President Donald Trump once described as “weak and ineffective”—is now running for Texas Attorney General.

Roy adds his name to a large group of conservatives looking to replace current Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is now running for Senate. Roy and Paxton were close, with Roy even working as assistant attorney general for Paxton in 2014.

That all changed when Roy called on Paxton to resign in 2020 on allegations of bribery and abuse of office.

Roy has also been a constant agitator within the GOP, as he most recently opposed Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” on fiscal grounds. But Roy chose to leave the past conflict out of his campaign announcement ad.

“Today, we draw a line in the sand. Texans’ next attorney general must have a proven record of fighting to preserve, protect, and defend our legacy—an attorney general unafraid to fight, unafraid to win,” Roy said. “That’s why I fought to secure our border and help President Trump deliver results.”

Roy will be running against state Senators Mayes Middleton and Joan Huffman, and former Paxton aide Aaron Reitz.

Gavin Newsom’s Redistricting Plan Is Pissing Off California GOP - 2025-08-21T19:57:38Z

California’s Supreme Court has struck down the state GOP’s attempt to delay Governor Gavin Newsom’s redistricting plan, clearing the runway for the measure to reach the November referendum vote. 

The GOP lawmakers who filed the challenge argued that Newsom had moved forward too quickly, and violated the state’s independent redistricting commission. 

On Wednesday, the justices disagreed.

Newsom’s plan, which is contingent upon Texas passing its initial redistricting effort, has some California Republicans incensed.

“We have a governor, we have political insiders, we have legislators who are breaking California’s Constitution by drawing congressional maps behind closed doors, with no transparency,” California state Senator Suzette Martinez Valladares told CNN’s Brianna Keilar on Wednesday. 

“The new maps that Democrats in your state want to pass … they include a trigger, that they would only go into effect if Texas’s redistricted maps go into effect.… Do you hold Texas Republicans at all responsible for what you’re facing in your state?” Keilar asked. 

“Well, that actually—Governor Newsom said that this would only happen if Texas redrew their maps, however that’s not what the bill language they presented said,” Vallardares said. “It says if any state redraws their maps, that this would go into an effect.” 

“OK. But that’s the effect of this. There is a trigger. This isn’t happening in a vacuum. There’s a contingency. And in this case, it is Texas. So let’s just be clear. If it says other states, well, it’s Texas,” Keilar said. “So do you have any criticism from members of your own party in Texas?” 

Vallardares avoided the question, instead insisting that what Newsom was doing was wholly illegal.

“If you can’t criticize Republicans in Texas for their approach, which is so different from the one that you’re advocating for in California, how should voters see California Republicans … opposed to a move like this only when it doesn’t favor them?” the CNN reporter asked.

“Listen, I was elected, and the 120 legislators that were elected this past November in California, to uphold the California Constitution. This isn’t a Republican issue. This isn’t a Democrat issue. This is an issue of political elitists in California silencing and taking the power away from California voters,” Valladares said, once again avoiding Keilar’s question. 

California’s redistricting referendum is set for November 4.  

Trump’s Dumbest Lawyer Is About to Be Out of a Job—Again - 2025-08-21T19:56:58Z

A federal judge ruled Thursday that Alina Habba has been illegally serving as U.S. attorney for New Jersey and blocked her from prosecuting two criminal defendants who’d challenged her appointment.

“Faced with the question of whether Ms. Habba is lawfully performing the functions and duties of the office of the United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey, I conclude that she is not,” wrote U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann in a 77-page court filing. Brann wrote that Habba has been acting unlawfully as the U.S. attorney for New Jersey since July 1.

Last month, New Jersey federal judges decided to fire Habba, refusing to vote to extend her 120-day appointment as U.S. attorney for New Jersey, but the Trump administration found a loophole to keep its thoughtless foot soldier in place without Senate confirmation. After it fired the first assistant U.S. attorney who was approved to replace her, and then appointed Habba to that position, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer found herself as acting U.S. attorney once again.

Brann’s decision was a response to a motion from defendants Julien Giraud Jr., Julien Giraud III, and Ceasar Humberto Pina.

The Girauds were indicted on three counts, including drug and firearm charges, in November, and Pina was indicted in a separate case in July on six counts, including charges for wire fraud, bribery, and money laundering. The Girauds and Pina had submitted motions arguing that Habba’s appointment was illegal.

The judge granted the Girauds’ motion to disqualify Habba from participating in their prosecution, and Pina won his plea, in part. Brann wrote that because Habba had signed Pina’s indictment on July 7, the indictment was “presumptively defective”—though the indictment would not be dismissed.

“The Court will stay this decision and its effects pending the resolution of any appellate Proceedings,” Brann concluded, meaning that Habba would stay in her position while the government appealed the decision. The Department of Justice is expected to appeal the ruling in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

JD Vance Makes Ominous Threat About What D.C. Takeover Really Means - 2025-08-21T19:45:30Z

Washington is just the beginning of the Trump administration’s broader plan to occupy American cities.

Vice President JD Vance casually revealed Thursday that the White House “hopes” that cities across the country will follow the capital’s lead—that is to say, hand over the reins of their local law enforcement and welcome the National Guard into their city limits.

“Do you see the administration putting soldiers in the city of Atlanta?” asked a reporter from WABE radio in Atlanta.

“Well look, what we’ve done is we have focused on Washington, D.C., because it’s a federal city under our jurisdiction,” Vance said. “But we certainly hope that whether it’s Atlanta or anywhere else, people are going to look around and say, ‘We don’t have to live like this.’”

The vice president then framed the nation’s capital as a city overrun by violent crime, projecting an image of America in which authorities would effectively be allowed to snatch “bad guys” off the streets without protest. In actuality, many of the undocumented targets of the Trump administration have not been criminals, and have been forced into deportation proceedings without systemic consideration of their constitutional rights.

On Monday, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the administration had made nearly 400 arrests in Washington since the beginning of the operation. At least 160 of those arrests were undocumented immigrants, reported ABC News.

“We hope the people see what we’re doing in Washington, D.C., and follow our example all across the country,” Vance added.

The Ohio-born politico then boasted about Washington’s supposedly new low crime rate, disregarding the fact that violent crime in the nation’s capital has been on a downward trend since 2024. Confusingly, FBI Director Kash Patel used the accurate data to pat the Trump administration on the back during a press conference last week, claiming that the “plummeting” homicide numbers were thanks to the president’s policies.

Trump deployed 800 National Guard members to Washington and federalized the capital’s police department last week to combat what he described as a crime-riddled hellscape. To justify the government infringement, the president pointed to rising crime rates, immigrant populations, and homelessness—though the figures he used were from 2023, before violent crime plummeted across the country.

How Jeanine Pirro Became Trump’s Most Loyal—and Rabid—Attack Dog - 2025-08-21T19:19:15Z

It’s easy to forget, given the decade-plus she spent shouting and slurring her words on Fox News, that Jeanine Pirro was once a real jurist. She spent years going after criminals—and courting controversy—as a judge, and later the district attorney, in Westchester County, New York. We’re now seeing the value of that experience, particularly to President Trump’s authoritarian goals. Since Pirro took over as the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., in late May—and especially since Trump launched a federal takeover of the nation’s capital in response to a nonexistent crime wave earlier this month—it’s become clear that she’s not just a partisan hack who yells on television: She knows what a prosecutor’s office does, and over the last three weeks she has emerged as one of the most ruthless and genuinely scary figures in the administration.

That is in sharp contrast to her predecessor, Ed Martin, who served as the interim U.S. attorney before Trump dropped his nomination because of a backlash from Republicans. Like Pirro, Martin is a dyed-in-the-wool partisan and lawyer. But Martin had no real prosecutorial experience, having spent most of his legal career working on behalf of conservative causes. He had courted controversy by attempting to wield the U.S. attorney’s office against Trump’s enemies and on behalf of his allies, notably by dismissing pending charges related to the January 6, 2021, insurrection against hundreds of defendants. But he didn’t actually know what he was doing, and his nomination faltered in large part because he kept doing and saying stupid things, often on television. (These included praising an avowed Nazi who stormed the Capitol on January 6.)

Pirro would seem an odd choice to replace a man best known for putting his foot in his mouth. Anyone who has glimpsed “Judge Jeanine” on Fox News over the last 15 years—or, for that matter, encountered Cecily Strong’s alcohol-fueled impression—knows that she’s also quite familiar with the taste of her own feet. Watching her on television was like being cornered by the groom’s wine-drunk aunt at a wedding. But she was nevertheless fully confirmed on August 3 in a party-line vote—with her ties to Fox News and her experience as a prosecutor seemingly playing equally pivotal roles for the Republicans who backed her nomination.

Since losing the “interim” tag she had held since May, Pirro has been a staunch backer of the president’s crackdown on D.C. Asked on August 13 to justify the presence of National Guard troops and mine-resistant military vehicles on the streets of D.C., given that violent crime is at a 30-year low in the District, Pirro launched into a lengthy soliloquy. “It’s never enough. This changed. This changed,” Pirro said, as she pointed to a series of photographs of D.C. crime victims. “It’s never enough. You tell these families, ‘Crime has dropped.’

“You tell the mother of the intern who was shot going out for McDonald’s near the Washington Convention Center, ‘Oh, crime is down,’” she continued, referring to a 21-year-old intern for a Kansas Republican who was killed as a bystander during a shooting earlier in the summer. “You tell the kid who was just beat the hell and back with a severe concussion and a broken nose, ‘Crime is down,’” Pirro added, referring to the assault of a Department of Government Efficiency employee known as “Big Balls” on the streets of D.C. “No, that falls on deaf ears, and my ears are deaf to that, and that’s why I fight the fight.”

It was an answer that sounded a lot like the “Judge Jeanine” on Fox but with distinct authoritarian overtones. Pirro didn’t acknowledge that crime was going down; she instead suggested that the existence of any violent crime at all necessitated combat vehicles and troops armed with AR-15s in the streets of the capital.

Displays like that are, of course, a big reason why she’s in the job. Television experience is a prized asset in the second Trump administration, and experience on Fox News is especially important. Pete Hegseth is secretary of defense because Trump liked watching him on television. Pirro is no different. And, like Hegseth, Trump wants important positions filled with people who can appear on television and deliver performances he likes. It also helped that Pirro was one of the president’s most steadfast backers before she joined the administration. A Washington Post report published earlier this week found that Pirro had told Republican officials she was determined to aid Trump, even though she was prohibited from doing so by Fox News. “I’m the Number 1 watched show on all news cable all weekend,” Pirro told Ronna McDaniel when McDaniel was head of the Republican National Committee. “I work so hard for the president and party.”

Back then, most of that work was yapping on TV. But Trump and his cronies want results too, and Pirro is there to deliver them. She is there to back the occupation of D.C., which appears as though it will go on indefinitely. And she has already begun to use her powers in disturbing ways. She has directed prosecutors to seek the maximum penalty for anyone arrested during the crackdown. Like others in the administration, she is turning these arrests into a spectacle. After a small mob of heavily armed officers arrested a man who threw a Subway sandwich at a federal agent, Pirro announced in a video on X that the perpetrator had been charged with a felony. “So there!” she said. “Stick your Subway sandwich somewhere else.”

At the same time, she has directed her office to stop charging residents caught in possession of rifles and shotguns with felonies. Her office claims this reversal was in response to recent Supreme Court decisions, but the timing is curious, as it directly contradicts the administration’s insistence that the city is in the midst of a massive crime wave that requires the deployment of heavily armed federal troops. The decision, like the federal takeover broadly, has been met with criticism from local residents, and yet the administration continues to wrongly claim that Washingtonians are welcoming all of the camouflaged troops and masked agents as liberators.

Pirro has been waiting for this moment her whole professional life. She was an ambitious prosecutor and judge—elected, in both cases—who aspired to higher political office, only to lose time and again at the polls. New York voters did not want her as lieutenant governor, U.S. senator, or attorney general. But she spun those failed campaigns into a lucrative, successful TV career that eventually brought her to the attention of the most powerful politician of our era. She herself is now more powerful than she’s ever been, and she didn’t need voters to get there. She just needed to flatter the right people, from the right perch. Rest assured, she’ll now do anything Trump wants—no matter how authoritarian and lawless—in order to keep her newfound power. There might even be a promotion in it for her.

New Sheriff in Town! Trump to Join National Guard Patrolling D.C. - 2025-08-21T19:05:26Z

Donald Trump’s authoritarian takeover is looking more and more like a senseless stunt made for television.

While speaking to conservative radio host Todd Starnes Thursday, Trump claimed that he planned to do a ride-along with law enforcement in Washington, D.C., as they carried out his crackdown on crime in the nation’s capital.

“I’m going to be going out tonight, I think, with the police and with the military, of course. So we’re going to do a job,” Trump said. “The National Guard is great. They’ve done a fantastic job.”

The White House said Thursday that Trump was expected to travel by motorcade to the district’s neighborhoods, where he would meet with police officers and National Guard troops play-acting at the Herculean task of bringing crime down in a city where it’s already dropping.

Last week, Trump invoked Section 740 of the D.C. Home Rule Act of 1973 to federalize the Metropolitan Police Department, and deployed scores of federal forces and National Guardsmen to the city, giving them license to do “whatever the hell they want.” Six Republican-led states are sending even more troops—even though their states’ crime rates aren’t much better.

So far, it seems the results of Trump’s crackdown have been almost laughable—unless you count Fox News Bret Baier being pulled over by police as a success.

And the Trump administration’s attempts to sell its fascist takeover have been similarly lame. Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller were practically booed out of Washington’s Union Station Wednesday while visiting with National Guardsmen who were stationed there. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on shiny new Trump-ified vehicles that they showcased in a weird recruitment video. And the White House posted a dramatic video documenting the arrest of a man who threw a sandwich at a federal officer. This is what our tax dollars are going toward now—making good TV.

While Trump’s takeover may be massive, there is speculation from law enforcement and residents alike that it won’t make anyone safer. But in Trump’s world, it only matters how something looks, not how it actually is. This ride-along, if it does happen, would surely be no exception.

This story has been updated.

Trump Celebrates New York Fraud Win by Lying His Butt Off - 2025-08-21T18:12:22Z

Donald Trump declared “total victory” over New York Attorney General Letitia James Thursday after a state appeals court tossed his bank fraud disgorgement.

In several lengthy Truth Social posts, the president incorrectly claimed that the court had voted “5 to 0” in his favor (it did not) and that “every single dollar was thrown out” (which is also untrue).

Trump also inanely suggested that the civil trial was yet another example of election interference, and that the attorney general’s case was the brainchild of former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris.

“It was a Political Witch Hunt, in a business sense, the likes of which no one has ever seen before,” the president wrote in a lengthy Truth Social post. “This was a Case of Election Interference by the City and State trying to show, illegally, that I did things that were wrong when, in fact, everything I did was absolutely CORRECT and, even, PERFECT.”

The president also posted a video of a still image of himself in court, set to DJ Khaled’s song “All I Do Is Win.”

What actually happened in the New York appeals court was, nonetheless, a major coup for Trump. Three judges on a five-judge panel voted to throw out Trump’s $500 million disgorgement Thursday, claiming the resulting penalty for the Trump Organization’s bank fraud case was an “excessive fine.”

At least two judges on the court agreed with the original ruling that found Trump and his codefendants liable for fraud, noting that the injunctive relief ordered by the presiding judge was “well crafted to curb defendants’ business culture.” However, the final page of the order stated that “three out of the five members of this panel clearly believe that the judgment should be vacated,” on the basis that the “attorney general has not yet proven her case.”

In her own statement, James underscored that the court had still affirmed that “Trump, his company, and two of his children are liable for fraud,” and that her office would appeal the ruling.

“The court upheld the injunctive relief we won, limiting Donald Trump and the Trump Organization officers’ ability to do business in New York,” she said. “It should not be lost to history: Yet another court has ruled that the president violated the law, and that our case has merit.”

IDF’s Own Database Confirms Majority Civilian Casualties in Gaza - 2025-08-21T17:57:03Z

The Israeli Defense Force’s own database has confirmed what has been obvious for almost two years now: The overwhelming majority of Palestinians killed in Israel’s war on Gaza are civilians, not Hamas fighters, as Israel has claimed.

On Thursday, +972 Magazine reported that recently declassified documents reveal five in six people killed in the genocide in Gaza were noncombatant civilians—around 83 percent. Israel has stated that it killed or “probably killed” 8,900 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters.

The total reported death toll in Gaza is around 62,000, although the true number is thought to be much higher.

While the IDF did not object to +972’s report when it came out, it told The Guardian that “figures presented in the article are incorrect.”

These numbers, though, appear to accurately reflect the indiscriminate killing campaign that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched on Gaza after the attacks of October 7, 2023. Israel had occupied Gaza and subjected Palestinians to violence for many decades before the war began.

Even the IDF’s own soldiers admit to exaggerating the number of Hamas deaths in the war.

“People are promoted to the rank of terrorist after their death,” one source on the ground told The Guardian. “If I had listened to the brigade, I would have come to the conclusion that we had killed 200% of Hamas operatives in the area.”

Israel has always claimed it was killing militants in order to justify the bombings, aid-drop assassinations, targeted killings of more than 250 journalists, and a brutal famine.

It’s worth noting that nearly 20,000 of the Palestinians killed in Gaza have been children.

Itzhak Brik, a retired Israeli general, said serving Israeli soldiers were aware that politicians exaggerated the Hamas toll.

Brik advised Prime Minister Netanyahu at the start of the war, and is now among his most strident critics. “There is absolutely no connection between the numbers that are announced and what is actually happening,” Brik told The Guardian. “It is just one big bluff.”

Here’s One Smithsonian Painting the White House Wants to Censor - 2025-08-21T17:32:33Z

Escalating its mission to eliminate so-called “woke” content from the Smithsonian, Trump’s team has just publicly identified artwork it hopes to censor.

On Thursday, the White House’s official rapid response X account shared a post casting aspersions on a Rigoberto A. Gonzalez painting titled Refugees Crossing the Border Wall Into South Texas.

The piece depicts a family of four in Baroque style: two parents with a young boy and a baby, at a ladder leaning against the southern border wall. A finalist for the National Portrait Gallery’s 2022 Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, the piece appeared in that Smithsonian Museum from 2022 to 2023, according to the competition’s website.

The White House social team, seemingly irked by this humanizing portrayal of people demonized by the Trump administration, accused the work of “commemorating the act of illegally crossing the ‘exclusionary’ border.”

“This is what President Trump means when he says the Smithsonian is ‘OUT OF CONTROL,’” the post says—quoting from a recent Truth Social post in which the president lamented that the Smithsonian overemphasizes negative aspects of America, such as “how bad Slavery was.”

In a Thursday press release, the White House listed Gonzalez’s painting with other supposedly damning proof that the institution is in the grip of wokeness, including an American History Museum collection on LGBTQ+ history.

Tulsi Gabbard Just Exposed U.S. to Foreign Threats With Job Cuts - 2025-08-21T16:29:39Z

National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, who was previously criticized for acting like a Russian asset, is planning to gut the agency responsible for monitoring influence from foreign governments.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence published a fact sheet saying it would begin “refocusing functions” within the supposedly “redundant” Foreign Malign Influence Center, alleging that it had been used by the Biden administration to “justify the suppression of free speech and to censor political opposition.”

ODNI cited FMIC coordinating with Twitter, Facebook, and Google on the companies’ responses to the 2020 New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop, which was removed from several platforms over government concerns that it was part of a Russian disinformation operation. Since it was first reported on, the laptop has been proven to be authentic, but many of Republicans’ allegations that it tied the Bidens to corrupt foreign business dealings have not been.

ODNI claimed that FMIC had developed a “hyper-focus” on election-related issues after a 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin had “aspired” to see Donald Trump enter the White House. In the last month, Gabbard has launched a campaign to discredit this report, claiming that the Obama administration had sown a false narrative about Putin supporting Trump, even though Putin has openly admitted that he’d preferred Trump over Hillary Clinton.

ODNI’s efforts to “refocus” FMIC are particularly ironic considering that Gabbard has a history of foisting foreign misinformation on the American public herself. Gabbard previously defended Russia’s incursion into Ukraine, claiming that the U.S. had provoked Russian aggression, and that Ukraine housed U.S.-funded biolabs that were developing secret bioweapons—a piece of foreign state propaganda that earned her the reputation of being a Russian asset.

More recently, she parroted the conclusions of Russian spies during a White House press briefing, claiming that Clinton had experienced “psycho-emotional problems, uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression, and cheerfulness,” a rumor that was based on debunked Russian intelligence.

ODNI’s fact sheet claimed that “refocusing FMIC’s mission” would save taxpayers at least $7 million per year. The massive restructuring would also refocus the National Counterproliferation and Biosecurity Center and the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center. Gabbard has announced plans to cut her department’s staff by 50 percent and reduce its annual budget by $700 million.

Trump A.G. Pam Bondi Is Boasting About … What Exactly? - 2025-08-21T16:22:40Z

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi is boasting about—well, not doing much of anything in regard to gun seizures in Washington, D.C.

“We’ve now made a total of 630 arrests and seized 86 illegal guns in DC. 53 arrests were made yesterday, plus 24 ICE arrests and 10 guns taken off the streets. Our incredible US Marshals even helped recover a missing child,” Bondi wrote Thursday morning on X. “Our mission to make DC safe again isn’t slowing down.”

Bondi’s right about one thing: The mission isn’t “slowing down.” It’s not moving anywhere at all. Law enforcement is taking guns off the street at around the same rate it was last year, even with the increased show of force from the federal government.

“DC police records show they recovered 2,895 firearms in 2024—works out to an average of about 8 per day & ~100 over two weeks,” wrote Courthouse News’s Benjamin S. Weiss. “Federal gun seizures on track to be more or less the same in roughly that same period, per AG.”

This kind of blatant posturing has become commonplace in the past few weeks. The federal government wants so badly for us to believe that its influx of police has made the nation’s capital much safer, when in fact, it’s been a lot more show than substance.

Trump Finds Way to Blame Biden for Ukraine War - 2025-08-21T15:57:03Z

President Donald Trump’s stance on Russia-Ukraine is as volatile and tricky to pin down as his stance on most other issues—which is to say, very.

The president took to Truth Social Thursday to chastise former President Joe Biden for, by his reckoning, holding Ukraine back in its war against Russia’s invasion.

“It is very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invaders country,” Trump wrote, likening Ukraine to a sports team that has “fantastic defense” but is “not allowed to play offense.”

“Crooked and grossly incompetent Joe Biden would not let Ukraine FIGHT BACK, only DEFEND,” the president continued. “How did that work out?”

The sentiment is a bit rich coming from someone who’s repeatedly threatened to withdraw support for the beleaguered U.S. ally.

The post also fails to mention Biden’s November 2024 decision to allow Ukraine to use American-made long-range ATACMS missiles to strike deeper into Russia—as well as Trump’s own response to the move: The then–president elect called it “very stupid” and “a big mistake.”

“I wouldn’t have had him do that,” Trump said during a December press conference. His eldest son, Donald Jr., accused Biden of ushering in World War III.

Last month, Trump reportedly asked President Volodymyr Zelenskiy whether he could strike Russia’s two largest cities if provided long-range weaponry by the United States. He even considered providing such munitions, according to The Washington Post. But on July 15, he told reporters he was not willing to do so.

As the Center for Strategic and International Studies put it last month, military aid to Ukraine under Trump “has been on and off, then partially on, then on again, and then increased further.” And his rhetoric has been even more erratic than his actions.

Trump concluded the post with his favorite speculative, counterfactual boast: that the war would never have happened if he were president. “Interesting times ahead!!!” he added, before signing off.

Trump Avoids Accountability Yet Again as Civil Fraud Ruling Tossed - 2025-08-21T15:24:51Z

Donald Trump might not have to pay the piper after all.

A New York appeals court threw out the president’s $500 million civil fraud fine Thursday, claiming the resulting penalty for the Trump Organization’s bank fraud case was an “excessive fine.”

“The court’s disgorgement order, which directs that defendants pay nearly half a billion dollars to the State of New York, is an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution,” Justice Peter Moulton wrote in one of three opinions.

The contentious decision from the five-judge panel paves the way for the case to advance to New York’s highest court.

At least two judges on the court agreed with the original ruling that found Trump and his co-defendants liable for fraud, noting that the injunctive relief ordered by the presiding judge  was “well crafted to curb defendants’ business culture.” However, the final page of the order states that “three out of the five members of this panel clearly believe that the judgment should be vacated” on the basis that the “attorney general has not yet proven her case.”

Since Trump lost the case, his attorneys have argued that the fine was “grossly disproportionate” to his offenses, which included defrauding banks, insurance companies, and investors by falsely inflating his wealth and the value of his properties.

The penalty had left Trump and his portfolio in a whopping financial pickle. The former real estate mogul tried and failed to pause growing interest on the judgment, at one point counter-offering the court a $100 million bond in lieu of the full amount. 

He also approached several brokers and upwards of 30 suretors for help in securing a bond, though his attorneys claimed he was unsuccessful in doing so as the suretors refused to accept Trump’s real estate as collateral. Instead, they would only accept cash to the tune of $1 billion, which Trump claimed last year he didn’t have.

New York Attorney General Letitia James had threatened to seize some of Trump’s largest assets—including 40 Wall Street and Trump Tower—to cover the outstanding disgorgement. 

The decision also restricted the Trump Organization from borrowing cash and barred Trump’s two eldest sons from doing business in New York for two years.

James has been a target of Trump’s retribution campaign since he returned to the White House. Earlier this month, the Justice Department opened an investigation into James and her work, accusing her of violating Trump’s constitutional rights by taking legal action against him.

This story has been updated.

Trump’s DOJ Made Chilling Demand to Hospitals in War on Trans Kids - 2025-08-21T15:24:39Z

The U.S. Department of Justice tried to force a Philadelphia children’s hospital to hand over information on young transgender patients as part of Donald Trump’s crackdown on gender-affirming care for minors, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

A subpoena issued to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in June demanded access to “every writing or record of whatever type” that doctors had made, including everything from emails, Zoom recordings, and texts to names, birth dates, and Social Security numbers.

Notably, gender-affirming care is not illegal in Pennsylvania. Still, the Trump administration is taking efforts to invade young patients’ privacy, endangering them and the health care providers who treat them.

The subpoena became public Monday as part of a separate lawsuit from Washington state Attorney General Nicholas W. Brown, who is suing the Trump administration to block its executive order threatening to end federal funding to medical institutions that provide lifesaving gender-affirming care for anyone under the age of 19.

In a court filing, Brown wrote that the DOJ’s request for info from CHP has “only escalated” Trump’s efforts since a judge blocked his executive orders earlier this year.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the DOJ had issued more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics that it claimed “mutilated children in the service of a warped ideology.” The subpoenas arrived at hospitals in states that had banned gender-affirming care, as well as those that had not.

HuffPost conducted an independent review and found that 25 hospitals had ended gender-affirming care services since July, and none of them were in states that had bans. Health care providers are concerned that providing hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and surgeries could result in them being charged with a felony.

In July, Trump claimed credit for ending gender-affirming care at specialized adolescent programs in several states where it is legal: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Colorado, Illinois, New York, Virginia, Washington, and the District of Columbia.

You’ll Never Guess What Adams’s Campaign Adviser Gave a Journalist - 2025-08-21T15:22:40Z

New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s campaign adviser was caught trying to bribe a reporter with a potato chip bag full of cash on Wednesday.

This move comes as more and more of Adams’s inner circle face corruption, fraud, and bribery charges.

It started at what was a very typical event: the opening of Adams’s new Harlem campaign office, which The City’s Katie Honan was in attendance for. She got a text from Winnie Greco—campaign adviser and former Asian community liaison—saying that she’d seen her there, and asking her to meet her for a chat at a nearby Whole Foods.

While they were talking, Greco gave Honan an opened bag of chips with the top smushed closed. Honan told Greco she didn’t want the chips, but Greco insisted. When they went their separate ways, Honan opened the bag and found at least $140 in cash in it.

“I can’t take this, when can I give it back to you?” Honan texted Greco. She did not reply. Honan then took the bag back to The City’s office and gave it to her editors, who then contacted New York’s Department of Investigation. The publication never actually took the money out of the bag.

Following the interaction at the Whole Foods, Honan brought the chip bag and envelope with money back to The City’s office and handed it over to her editors. The City then contacted the city Department of Investigation. Anticipating possible law enforcement investigations, The City did not open the envelope or count the money inside.

After getting caught, Greco apologised profusely and blamed the blatant bribe on her Chinese heritage.

“I’m so sorry. It’s a culture thing,” she said, according to The City. “I don’t know. I don’t understand. I’m so sorry. I feel so bad right now. I’m so sorry, honey.”

Greco told The City to call her lawyer, Steven Brill.

“I can see how this looks strange.… But I assure you that Winnie’s intent was purely innocent,” he said. “In the Chinese culture, money is often given to others in a gesture of friendship and gratitude. Winnie is apologetic and embarrassed by any negative impression or confusion this may have caused.”

Absolutely no one was buying this excuse, not even the Adams campaign. It suspended Greco from any campaign activity, effective immediately.

“We are shocked by these reports,” Adams campaign spokesperson Todd Shapiro said. “Winnie Grecco [sic] holds no position in this campaign and has been suspended from all VOLUNTEER campaign-related activities. Mayor Adams had no prior knowledge of this matter. He has always demanded the highest ethical and legal standards, and his sole focus remains on serving the people of New York City with integrity.”

Decisions like this are why several Adams aides and confidants are being charged with multiple counts of fraud and bribery. This is another extremely serious act of corruption from the campaign of an extremely unserious mayor.

Trump Suddenly Changes His Tune on Putin-Zelenskiy Meeting - 2025-08-21T15:09:17Z

In a sudden about-face, Donald Trump now thinks it would be “better” if Russia and Ukraine met without him.

For the better part of this week, the U.S. leader has bragged that his recent meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy were “very successful”—in spite of the fact that the internationally controversial decision to invite his Russian counterpart to Alaska proved fruitless.

On Monday, Trump promised to coordinate a trilateral arrangement between himself, Putin, and Zelenskiy to solidify a peace deal. But just days later, the commander in chief changed his tune.

In an interview with conservative podcaster Mark Levin on Wednesday, Trump claimed the two warring countries should meet without his involvement.

“I had a very successful meeting with President Putin. I had a very successful meeting with President Zelenskiy. And now I thought it would be better if they met without me, just to see. I want to see what goes on. You know, they had a hard relationship, very bad, very bad relationship,” Trump said.

Putin has remained adamant that any peace deal would require “international legal recognition” of its 2014 annexation of Crimea, an internationally recognized portion of Ukraine, along with four regions it has claimed in the three years since it first invaded Ukraine. Ukraine, on the other hand, has remained just as adamant that those regions will remain within its borders.

Trump did suggest that the apparently just-for-fun meeting could be saved by his intervention, if needed.

“And now we’ll see how they do and, if necessary, and it probably would be, but if necessary, I’ll go and I’ll probably be able to get it close,” he continued.

Whether or not the U.S. president appreciates the gravity of negotiating over Ukraine’s occupied territories is unclear, considering he doesn’t seem to know where or how large they are. In the same interview with Levin, Trump wrongly asserted that Crimea was “the size of Texas” and that the Ukrainian peninsula was “in the middle of the ocean,” a faux pas that was not received well by Kyiv’s news media.

At least 13,883 civilians have been killed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, according to the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine. The monthly death toll reached 67 in July, with 209 injured, marking the highest monthly civilian death and injury count since the conflict began.

Who Is Dustin Burrows? Even by Texas Standards, He’s a Lawless Bully - 2025-08-21T14:45:09Z

Dustin Burrows, call your lawyer.

Burrows is the Republican speaker of the state House in Texas. After the members of the Democratic caucus who had left town to foil Republican efforts to re-gerrymander the state’s congressional map returned home, Burrows decided to play sheriff. He ordered the returning Democrats to sign a pledge agreeing to have a 24/7 police escort that could collar them in the event they made another run for the border. Those who didn’t accept his terms were told they would be arrested if they even attempted to leave the legislative chambers.

Enter Democratic Representative Nicole Collier, who represents a Forth Worth district. Collier told Burrows what he could do with the pledge. She read the form, thought about the implications, and flatly said: no way. In her words, she wasn’t going to live under police guard like a criminal suspect.

Calling Burrows’s bluff, Collier settled into her enforced quarters. For the last few days, she’s been sleeping in chairs on the House floor—like a traveler abandoned in an airport terminal. Tuesday morning, she posted a photo of herself asleep on the House floor.

And she has been giving interviews to national media that make Burrows and his colleagues, including House Administration Committee Chair Charlie Geren, look like the oafish jerks that they are.

It’s all made Burrows’s tough-guy posturing look petty and overbearing, especially since the Democrats had returned to town and cleared the way for Republicans to redraw the state map to squeeze out five more seats. They had done so only after California Democrats had moved forward with a plan to counter Texas with their own redrawn map with five new Democratic seats, a plan the California Supreme Court has now green-lighted.

What authority, you might ask, does Burrows have to deprive Collier of her liberty? The uncontroversial answer: none.

The rules of the Texas House include a provision that permits a so-called “civil arrest” (a dubious category in itself—an arrest is an arrest and is subject to Fourth Amendment restrictions) of lawmakers who have fled the state to break quorum. The Texas Supreme Court upheld that power in a 2021 decision, but it made clear that House Rule 5 applies only to compel the attendance of “absent members.”

Of course, Collier isn’t absent. She’s sitting right there on the floor of the House chamber. By her account, she’s never even tried to slip out a side door. The law, by its plain terms, gives no authority to hold her against her will or to threaten her with arrest for refusing an escort.

Collier has filed a habeas corpus motion asking the Texas court to order her release from custody. It is a pristine use of what Chief Justice John Marshall once called “the Great Writ”—she’s being detained on the orders of a state official with no legal justification. Her petition should be a slam dunk.

But that’s not necessarily the end of it. Consider the situation once Burrows’s proffered legal justification falls away. Stripped of the legal cover of House Rule 5, Burrows is operating outside the bounds of the law and is guilty of multiple offenses.

Start with the tort of false arrest. There is no doubt that Collier has been arrested: Applying the textbook definition of arrest, a reasonable person in her position would not feel free to leave. Texas law defines false arrest, a.k.a. false imprisonment, as the unlawful restraint of a person without legal justification.

Texas law does not shield officials who act in bad faith or outside the bounds of their authority. Geren appears to have exposed himself to extensive civil liability should Collier decide to sue him.

Then consider the Texas crime of unlawful restraint, which the state defines as the intentional or knowing restraint of someone without consent. Or “official oppression,” which occurs when a public servant acting under color of law intentionally subjects another to unlawful arrest.

And what about federal civil rights violations? 18 U.S.C. §242 makes it a crime for a person acting under color of law to willfully deprive someone of constitutional rights, and Burrows here sought to deprive Collier and other Democrats of their liberty based on their constitutionally protected activity. 

Dustin Burrows, call your lawyer.

All these developments, of course, depend on the independence of Texas state courts and the integrity of the Texas and federal law enforcement systems. The state, of course, is under the whip hand of Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton. It may be, in that setting, that all bets are off. And we can be certain that Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice is not going to bring a federal civil rights case against the Texas Republican House speaker with Maxine Collier as victim.

But if Burrows is able to escape the consequences of his unlawful, politicized conduct, it will only confirm that Texas has been captured by the same arrogant bullying, lawlessness, and delusion of omnipotence that have already corrupted the rule of law under Trump.

It’s the all-too-familiar premise that authority exists to dominate the opposition, and the law means whatever the leader says.

In any event, Democrats, who already scored a resounding public relations victory when they fled the state, leaving Texas Republicans feckless and tilting at windmills, have once again secured the upper public relations hand. Collier, pictured camped out on House chairs like a delinquent child at the overbearing command of the Republican speaker, is the kind of image that resonates.

Burrows has blundered badly. The law is against him, as will become apparent; and his officious overreach is likely to harm him in the national public eye. Instead of the domination he seeks, he is likely to go down as a lawless, thin-skinned, vindictive bully, like the president he emulates.

ICE Plans to Trump-ify Its Cars - 2025-08-21T14:32:47Z

Immigration and Customs Enforcement apparently shares the president’s obsession with shiny objects.

After the Department of Homeland Security blinged out ICE vehicles for a vain rap video, the agency now plans to shell out millions more in taxpayer dollars on flashy new rides.

The video, posted on social media last week, showed two ICE vehicles, darkly wrapped with gold accents and emblazoned with the slogan “DEFEND THE HOMELAND,” cruising through Washington, D.C., to DaBaby’s 2019 hit, “Toes.”

The cars in that video reportedly cost over $380,000, but the agency seems ready to dish out millions more on vehicles in the same style.

The Washington Post on Wednesday revealed $2.4 million in planned ICE expenditures—the bulk of which will go toward 25 Chevrolet Tahoes, with about $174,000 covering the custom-wrapping of Tahoes, Ford Expeditions, and other vehicles.

The purchases were detailed in records that the government had to submit in order to forgo the typical competitive bidding process that’s in place to ensure best value for taxpayers.

The decorated cars are, according to the documents, “essential for officers to provide support and a law enforcement presence” in the nation’s capital, and “must be deployed to the streets immediately to provide a visible law enforcement presence, support public safety operations, and reinforce recruitment efforts.”

Beyond seeking cosmeticized cars to aid President Donald Trump’s D.C. crackdown, the agency is also dipping into its congressionally approved slush fund to the tune of hundreds of thousands for vehicles and car-wrapping services as part of recruitment efforts.

ICE is eschewing the open bidding process for these, too, on the grounds that “the need for the services is so urgent and compelling that providing full and open competition would result in unacceptable delays and seriously hinder the Government’s recruiting initiative.”

For example, Ford Mustangs included in this order—in “an immediate request” by the White House—are said to feature “eye-catching design[s]” that help “attract top talent by conveying a culture of excellence and forward momentum.”

“Game On”: Dem Governors Hit Back at Texas Forcing Through Rigged Maps - 2025-08-21T13:33:19Z

Texas appears to have sparked a redistricting domino effect.

Republicans in the Lone Star State forced through their gerrymandered maps Wednesday night by locking state representatives inside the Capitol until they voted on a chart that would carve out five new GOP-favorable districts and erase Democratic areas. The brutal initiative followed weeks of counterefforts by state Democrats, who at one point fled Texas in order to avoid participating in the Donald Trump–directed vote.

Other areas of the country were watching the bedlam to ascertain just how far Texas would go to obey Trump’s command—and now, they’re acting.

Democratic governors on both coasts proclaimed redistricting war in the wake of the vote, announcing on social media that they would work to offset Texas’s maps, intended to help the GOP secure five more House seats in Washington.

“Game on,” wrote New York Governor Kathy Hochul, responding to news of the passed vote.

“It’s on, Texas,” posted California Governor Gavin Newsom.

Congressional maps are typically redrawn every 10 years, after new census data is released. But Texas’s decision to do so in the middle of the decade—at Trump’s direction—has raised alarms, with Democrats across the country labeling the effort a threat to democracy.

Between them, New York (26) and California (52)—two of the country’s most populous states—have 78 representatives, the bulk of whom are Democrats. Their share accounts for nearly 18 percent of the House’s membership. But as Texas worked to obey Trump’s midterm demands, the pair of Democratic strongholds warned that carving out more Democratic seats was well within their power.

“This is radical rigging of a midterm election,” Newsom told The Siren podcast earlier Wednesday. “Radical rigging of an election. Destroying, vandalizing this democracy, the rule of law. So, I’m sorry. I know some people’s sensibilities. I respect and appreciate that. But right now, with all due respect, we’re walking down a damn different path. We’re fighting fire with fire. And we’re gonna punch these sons of bitches in the mouth.”

When asked last month if he was concerned about California following suit in the redistricting department, Trump said that the White House would “fight them.”

“You know they’re so corrupt in California, you never know what’s going to happen,” Trump said at the time. “But we’ve done pretty well in the courts in California, you see. We’re batting about 1,000, ultimately.”

But the Republican stratagem is far from over. Trump issued similar demands of five other states: Missouri, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Florida.

JD Vance’s Description of Putin Wins Him a Star Role in Russian News - 2025-08-21T13:23:03Z

Vice President JD Vance is so good at saying exactly what Moscow wants him to say that he’s earned a starring role in state propaganda.

During an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham Wednesday night, Vance described his positive impression of Russia’s leader.

“So, I have never actually met [Vladimir] Putin. The president did that meeting. I have talked to him on the phone a number of times. You know, it’s interesting, he’s more soft-spoken than you would necessarily expect. You know, the American media has a particular image of him,” Vance said. “He’s soft spoken, in a certain way. He’s very deliberate. He’s very careful.

“And I think fundamentally he is a person who looks out for the interests, as he sees it, of Russia,” Vance continued. “And I think one of the reasons he respects the president of the United States is because he knows the president looks out for the interests of the American people.”

That soundbite of Vance’s interview was then shared on X by Russia Today, the Russian state-controlled television network that has been banned in the U.K., EU, and Canada. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in November 2022, RT suspended its activities in the U.S., as well.

Despite what Vance has claimed, Putin isn’t a gentle altruist—he’s a dictator who hopes to acquire Ukrainian territory by force—and Vance knows that. “The Ukrainians want security guarantees. The Russians want a certain amount of territory,” Vance told Ingraham. “The Russians want certain pieces of territory, most of which they’ve occupied, but some of which they haven’t.”

But the Kremlin also hopes to block Ukraine’s long-awaited NATO membership. President Donald Trump claimed earlier this week that if Ukraine could agree to give up Crimea and its dreams of joining the military bloc, then the war would immediately end.

During a meeting with European leaders Monday, Trump portrayed an unearned optimism about Putin making a deal “for him,” after dragging out negotiations for months. The White House then appeared to walk back claims that it had actually assured a bilateral meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Russia has yet to confirm any such agreement.

Transcript: Stephen Miller’s Crazed Fascist Rant to Media Is Revealing - 2025-08-21T10:57:09Z

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the August 21 episode of the
Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

This week, Stephen Miller unleashed a long, crazed, angry, shrill rant about demonstrators in Washington, D.C., who are protesting President Trump’s military occupation of the city. It was classic authoritarian agitprop, attacking leftists and even Communists as rabble-rousers who are secretly trying to make the city more dangerous to the city’s salt-of-the-earth, working-class residents. But we think this bizarre Miller episode is best seen as an expression of weakness. Trump, Miller, and their allies were certain that there’s a latent majority out there prepared to rally behind authoritarian rule. But that’s not what’s happening. Poll after poll has shown that the public is rebelling. Maybe that’s why Miller is panicking. The question is: Why won’t Democrats act like it? We keep hearing them saying things like Trump’s militarization of U.S. cities is a distraction, but it’s not a distraction. It’s the main event. Monica Potts, a staff writer at The New Republic, has a great new piece arguing that Trump’s D.C. takeover is very expressly about consolidating power, that calling it a distraction risks diverting us from the importance of what’s happening, and that the opposition party needs to act like it. Good to have you on, Monica.

Monica Potts: Thanks for having me. It’s good to be here.

Sargent: So Stephen Miller unleashed this crazed rant about all this on Wednesday. Let’s just dive right in and listen to it.


Stephen Miller (audio voiceover): They’re the ones who have been advocating for the one percent. They’re criminals, they’re killers, they’re rapists, and they’re drug dealers. And I’m glad they’re here today because me, Pete, and the vice president [are] going to leave here and, inspired by them, we’re going to add thousands more resources to this city to get the criminals and the gang members out of here. We’re going to disable those networks, and we’re going to prove that the city can serve for the law-abiding citizens who live there. We are not going to let the Communists destroy a great American city, let alone the nation’s capital.

And also just another thing, all these demonstrators that you’ve seen out here in recent days, all of these elderly white hippies, they’re not part of the city and never have been. And by the way, most of the citizens who live in Washington, D.C., are Black. This is not a city that has had any safety for its Black citizens for generations. And President Trump is the one who is fixing that with the support of the Metropolitan Police Department, the support of the National Guard, and our federal law enforcement officers. So we’re going to ignore these stupid white hippies, who all need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old, and we’re going to get back to the business of protecting the American people and the citizens of Washington, D.C.


Sargent: Monica, a couple of things about this. Note the threat. It’s overt. They’re good to respond to demonstrators with more law enforcement resources pouring into the city. And also note the absurd claim that only white hippies are upset about what’s going on. What are you seeing out there?

Potts: Well, I see people online and in cities taking videos of events where they’re chasing away federal troops or they’re yelling at ICE agents across the country or they’re throwing sandwiches at federal troops in D.C. People are upset, and it’s just regular people who live in cities, who love these cities, who care about these cities, who don’t want to see their cities militarized or become a backdrop for his propaganda—which is what’s happening. And I think it’s really upsetting to a lot of people, even people who—I don’t live in cities. I live in a very small town in upstate New York, and I’m upset. I used to live in D.C. for a very long time, and I love that city. It’s a beautiful, wonderful, diverse, electric city, and it shouldn’t be treated this way.

Sargent: It’s so interesting that you make that point that people who are protesting this stuff love their cities. Donald Trump and Stephen Miller see cities as representative of something very different than residents themselves understand it as. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Potts: Yeah. I think some of this is a holdover from the 1980s and ’90s which Trump never left—his brain is still in the ’80s and ’90s. The cities were very different in the ’80s and ’90s. They were underresourced and they were underappreciated. And it was after white flight, and many of them were devastated by the loss of the tax base there. So cities were different then. But in the past 20 years, even a little bit longer, we’ve seen increased urbanization in this country. There are people who are reinvesting in cities, who are thinking about what it means to be an urban citizen and trying to be good neighbors to the people who live there. I love cities. You’ll find some of the kindest neighbors and the most helpful communities in cities. A lot of the stereotypes that we have about small towns are true of cities.

I just think that what we see is this is pandering to his rural and suburban base. There are people who live in small towns in this country who haven’t been to a city in a long time or they only travel to it very briefly. They see things that are unfamiliar to them. They see a lot of people walking around. They’re scared of cities. They have racist stereotypes about who lives there and what happens there. So for them, this might be something that they’re cheering: to see this militarization of a city. It’s based on falsehoods. It’s based on this idea of crime that isn’t there and doesn’t exist anymore.

Sargent: Miller also, in his crazed rant, suggested that Blacks in D.C. will be with Trump on this. But we just got this new Washington Post poll of D.C. residents, and it found that 79 percent of them overall oppose Trump’s takeover of the D.C. police on the dispatching of the National Guard. Eighty percent of Blacks and 67 percent of Hispanics are opposed, as well. Sure doesn’t sound like it’s confined to white hippies, does it?

Potts: No, not at all. And we’ve been hearing from communities of color, and especially things like the Black Lives Matter movement and related movements, that they want to think about public safety differently. They’ve been protesting the increased militarization of the urban police forces for several years now—or more than a decade now. So having troops on the street harassing people smoking cigarettes on their own stoops, or arresting delivery drivers who are just trying to make a living, is not what people want in these cities. They want cities that are safe for them and their children for sure, but they want to think about public safety in a more nuanced and more community-minded way than modern policing allows for. And we’ve been hearing that for 20 years.

Sargent: I think there’s another game that Miller is playing here as well, which is that when he claims to speak for nonwhite residents of Washington, D.C., he’s actually talking to the rural and suburban or, maybe more accurately, exurban Trump base, right? He’s basically saying, Trump is doing this for the nonwhites in the city, and that’s supposed to appeal to nonurban white people.

Potts: Exactly right. Yeah, they don’t want to be challenged on their own beliefs. And so the idea that Black D.C. residents might be with them prevents them from having to deal with their own stereotypes.

Sargent: Right. There’s another point to be made here too. I think that Miller is banking on this idea that nonwhite working-class people will automatically be with Trump on this. The game is he’s appealing to this idea—a lot of pundits push this as well—that elite white liberals are out of touch with working-class minorities. And that’s the fuel of Trumpism, right? But there’s a lot of hubris here, I think. Trumpists think that because they made some inroads with those communities in 2024 that they can basically scream “Crime!” and they’ll get those same voters to mindlessly be all for consolidating authoritarian power and dear leader Trump. But the election was about the cost of living, and Trump’s win was incredibly narrow. There’s a panicky tone to Miller there.

Also, I do think on some level that Miller and the more overtly fascist people around Trump really thought that this was their moment. We see constantly Trump people telling credulous reporters things like This is a fight Trump wants, this is a fight that Democrats can’t take on. And I think that there is some genuine hubris there. What do you think about that?

Potts: I think so. I think they may be sensing the backlash starting or coming, and it’s very early in Trump’s second term already—he’s only been in office for seven or eight months; however long it’s been now, it feels like a lifetime—they may be worried about running out of steam. They don’t want to stop anytime soon. They don’t want to change course anytime soon.

Sargent: So let’s go through some more polling because it’s still not getting enough attention. A recent Pew poll found that 56 percent of Americans are not confident in Trump’s ability to effectively handle law enforcement in this country versus only 44 percent who are confident. A Reuters poll this week found that only 42 percent approve of Trump’s handling of crime and only 43 percent approve of his handling of immigration, supposedly a strong issue. The key here, I think, is that we’re getting numbers like these even as people’s phones and TV screens are filled with these images we’re talking about of Trump’s various crackdowns: the National Guard in L.A. and D.C., the federal law enforcement swarming D.C., and so forth. Those aren’t the numbers of someone who’s winning the argument. So let’s talk about Dems here. Shouldn’t polling like this be a bigger part of the conversation? And why don’t Dems see an opening?

Potts: I think that’s really the big question. And I think that a lot of people misunderstand a lot of issue polling. Before the election, if you asked people what one of the biggest problems was, a lot of people said immigration. If you ask them the biggest problems in this country, they said immigration. And they thought Trump would be better able to handle immigration. And so you saw Democrats give a lot of ground on immigration. They had negotiated a bill that Trump pressured Republicans to not pass that would have enhanced border security and addressed some of the concerns that people say they have about immigration. But the truth is when people don’t think that deeply about immigration and what it means and what the policy should be, there’s actually a lot of opportunity to lead on issues like that and on issues like “crime.”

You can say we should make our community safer, but what Trump is doing is not that. He’s leading the military into cities where U.S. citizens are being stopped while they’re trying to make deliveries or while they’re just hanging out with their friends on the sidewalk. Or you can say: We do need to deal with immigration, but we need to create a legal pathway for people who were brought here as children without being able to do anything about it because they were too young to make a decision. But what Trump wants to do is break families apart and send people to foreign prisons and do something that [America] doesn’t do, which is close its doors to people who want to work hard.

You can make your own case, and people may follow you. People may agree with you because when you dig down into the polling, people don’t think that families should be ripped apart and they don’t think that people should be sent to foreign prisons without being taken in front of a judge. And they don’t think that tanks should be rolling through American streets. And so there’s a way to frame issues and to attack what Trump is doing without risking alienating the public because public opinion is more nuanced than people give it credit for—and certainly more nuanced than people might know just by looking at the top lines from polling.

Sargent: Yeah, and these polls that I just cited before show opposition to having troops in the street fighting crime. It seems like there is an opportunity for Democrats. You wrote very well about this in your piece. You asked why Democrats aren’t in the argument about this and, I think, rightly pointed out that they’re squandering a chance to focus the country on the main event. Can you talk about that a little?

Potts: Yeah. Where are they? Where are they denouncing these troops in Washington, D.C.? It’s unprecedented, and it’s arguably [unconstitutional]. And it’s not something that people want to see. And they don’t want to see authoritarian behavior. They don’t want a dictator—and Trump is acting like a dictator. And he praises authoritarians across the country. And that is a winning argument. You can point out the things that he is doing—that Trump is doing as president—that are like what dictators do in other countries. And they’ve been mostly silent. And I think it’s partly because they’re scared of seeming to be on the wrong side of “crime.” But that’s not the point. Trump is not fighting crime. He doesn’t care about the safety of citizens of the city. He doesn’t care about the safety of residents of D.C. This is not what those troops are doing when they’re roaming through Georgetown on a weeknight, which is a really nice neighborhood where people go shopping. It’s not where anybody is being a victim of crime.

Sargent: Right. I think on some level, Democrats have just decided that they can’t persuade voters that Trump isn’t actually interested in fighting crime, that he’s using this as a pretext to consolidate power. It’s a ready-made argument. They could connect it to Trump’s kowtowing to Putin—which we’re seeing on the international stage right now—and, as you say, to his sucking up to international dictators. The through line is very clear, but it feels to me like Democrats are squandering an opportunity to make a big case on it.

Potts: I think so because the optics for Trump are really bad right now. And the longer it goes on and the more people try to rally behind opposition to it, the more they’re going to look for opposition leaders. It’s an opportunity to step up. And I think that’s why you see a lot of people who maybe didn’t think very highly of California Governor Gavin Newsom before recently—his social media presence and his political presence right now is very combative and anti-Trump. And people are rallying around that. And it’s because they just want to see someone standing up for their values and fighting for the things that are happening that are bad. They just want that leadership, and they want to know where to go and how to direct their anger and their disappointment in what’s happening.

Sargent: The Newsom evolution is probably worth spending a moment on. People might recall that he started out this year with Trump taking power playing footsie with Trumpism. He had clearly determined that the way to the White House in 2028 is to be a Democrat who understands the grievances of Trump supporters, in some sense. And so he did right-wing podcasting and stuff like that. But that really was a fiasco. And then events forced Newsom’s hand a little bit—the troop invasion of L.A. and so forth. But as you say, it was when he started to stand up aggressively to Trump and to stand for the people that he represents, that’s when he got more popular.

Potts: That’s right. The coalition that elected Trump in 2024 are not all the MAGA stalwarts, of whom there aren’t that many really. The true Trump fans just aren’t that huge a part of the voting population in the United States. They’re a minority overall. But I think it’s worth understanding why it is that Trump won and what about him may have appealed to some people who would have voted for Biden in 2020 or who might’ve been convinced to not vote for Trump with the right argument or maybe just wanted to give Trump a chance and didn’t believe he would do the worst things that he said he was going to do. There are reasons to explore that coalition and to think about how to maybe appeal to them. But I don’t think there’s any reason to be shy about standing up for the right thing and being on the right side of history, which is I think what we’re talking about now too.

Sargent: I want to close this out by talking about the role of the media in some of this. The New York Times had a big piece earlier this week about how Democrats are nervous that taking all this on might alienate their own voters who don’t like crime. But the piece was remarkably credulous in that it simply assumed that voters will believe that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and takeover of the D.C. police is about fighting crime. The assumption is that voters can’t make the simple leap to seeing Trump’s talk about crime as a pretext. And so I think there’s a really negative and toxic dynamic here: When the media is credulous about Trump’s ability to win arguments and treats arguments as things that Trump is in control of—as they treat the crime argument—even when he’s not, that persuades Democrats that they can’t take it on. It’s a toxic loop in a way. I don’t see any way out of it, but man, the press is not helping here.

Potts: Yeah. And I don’t see any way out of it either. It’s really tough because Trump says, I’m going to tackle crime in Washington, D.C., and he brings federal troops to Washington, D.C. And so that becomes the first-day story. And what we need is the ability to step back and say, Wait a minute, what’s really happening? And so you have this round of stories that are fact checks about crime, which is that crime in the district is actually down historically, which is true. Then you have arguments about whether that’s true in every neighborhood, and people get sucked into talking about crime. And I think it takes a little bit more time and a little bit more energy—and in fairness to the press, I’m not sure that journalism at this moment has time and energy to really think about that—but you have to step back and say, What’s really happening here? And I think that’s the moment that we as journalists have to meet. And I’m not sure how to do it, honestly—how to encourage everyone to step back and do it.

Sargent: Yeah, just to finish this up, watching Stephen Miller rant that way with his voice getting more and more panicky and shrill makes me think that maybe Democrats should try to tell themselves that Trump and his advisers actually aren’t winning these arguments. When you see Stephen Miller do something like that, it really looks to me like he’s losing his shit. That he’s frustrated. He doesn’t understand why people aren’t rallying behind his fascism. He’s using the imagery of crime: Isn’t that supposed to scare people into supporting whatever the leader wants? What do you think Democrats should start doing from here on out?

Potts: Yeah. It’s not too late. I think that they should start calling things like they see them and they should say, You’re not coming to our cities, you’re not coming to our towns with the military, you’re not going to turn this country into a dictatorship. We’re not going to let you gerrymander Texas and take over the House unfairly. We want democratic representation in this country. And you do see Democrats in the state of Texas fighting. They’re fighting their governor’s efforts to change the way that the people of Texas are represented in the U.S. House. And I think that that is really inspiring to people. So it actually, I think, doesn’t take much to find a way to communicate through social media and through the platform that all politicians have to really stand up and say, This is about Trump trying to consolidate power. We remember January 6. We remember when he lied about the election. He’s lied about the integrity of American democracy for years. We’re not going to let him continue to do that. I think there’s still time, and I think people would rally behind it. And it would put pressure on Trump, I think.

Sargent: I agree. And the idea that there’s still time is really critical. And Democrats, you know—voters like it when elected leaders fight for them. Monica Potts, thank you so much for coming on. That was a great talk.

Potts: Thank you so much for having me. It’s an important moment and an important topic.

The Super-Weird Origins of the Right’s Hatred of the Smithsonian - 2025-08-21T10:00:00Z

Did you hear the one about the Smithsonian hiding the bones of Bible giants in the basement? No? Well, Missouri Republican Representative Eric Burlinson did, and he recently said he wants to develop a “strategy” to use Congress’s investigative power to get to the bottom of the mystery. “I do believe [giants] were real,” Burlinson told a Blaze TV program in June, shortly before he gave a speech at NephCon 2025, a gathering of people who are hunting the remains of the Nephilim, or the giants from the Book of Genesis.

Burlinson’s comments on Prime Time With Alex Stein were delivered with laughter, but his attendance at a Nephilim conference was not exactly funny. It came only weeks before the Trump administration sent a letter to the secretary of the Smithsonian demanding a full review to ensure museum exhibits and curatorial processes conform to the president’s vision of history.

With the president declaring the Smithsonian “out of control” on Truth Social, the shape and scope of the growing threat to America’s premier public museum from the right wing is rapidly coming into view. And that shape is increasingly that of an internet fever dream of conspiracy, one that has been fomenting distrust of the Smithsonian for decades in service of a deeply conservative and religious agenda that sees both history and science as its ideological enemies.


For most of the nation’s history, the Smithsonian has served as symbol of national unity, receiving praise from members of both political parties and the public at large. Intermittent efforts to challenge the museum, such as Christian radio host Dale Crowley Jr.’s 1978 federal lawsuit demanding the Smithsonian cancel an exhibition on human evolution, have largely failed to materialize. That all changed in 1994, when veterans’ groups and conservative politicians, including Patrick J. Buchanan, vocally criticized the National Air and Space Museum for highlighting the Japanese casualties of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings in a proposed exhibit tied to the fiftieth anniversary of the Enola Gay. They considered any questioning of the decision to drop the A-bomb as dishonoring veterans, and thus anti-American. It was, in Buchanan’s words, “a sleepless campaign to inculcate in American youth a revulsion toward America’s past.”

“We’ve got to get patriotism back in the Smithsonian,” conservative Texas Congressman Sam Johnson said, on being appointed to the museum’s Board of Regents shortly afterward to provide so-called ideological “balance.” “We want the Smithsonian to reflect real America and not something that a historian dreamed up.”

The year-long media and political firestorm, and the attacks on historians as unpatriotic fantasists, helped fuel the politicization of the Smithsonian, but they did so in tandem with a development occurring on the nascent internet.

A year before the Enola Gay controversy, in 1993, future Ancient Aliens star David Childress, then a self-described “world explorer,” introduced the world to his new conspiracy theory, that the Smithsonian was actively trying to suppress the “truth” about various lost races of white giants, ancient Egyptians, and assorted what-have-you that allegedly occupied prehistoric America. He wrote about this in his self-published magazine, World Explorer, and in the New Age Nexus New Times that year. He dubbed the conspiracy with the not-so-original moniker “Smithsonian Gate.”

Childress gathered a passel of unconvincing evidence and wrapped it up in a sort of homage to the 1981 Indiana Jones film Raiders of the Lost Ark, whose final scene showed the U.S. government secreting away the fabled Ark of the Covenant in a warehouse, never to be seen again. “To those who investigate allegations of archaeological cover-ups,” he wrote, “there are disturbing indications that the most important archaeological institute in the United States, the Smithsonian Institute [sic], an independent federal agency, has been actively suppressing some of the most interesting and important archaeological discoveries made in the Americas.”

Childress’s evidence was about as solid as Indy’s celluloid adventures. Childress pronounced a 1909 newspaper hoax about an underground Tibetan city in the Grand Canyon true. He berated the Smithsonian for discrediting 32,000 ceramic statues, including some of people having sex with dinosaurs, because he assumed the modern fakes were ancient and proved evolution a lie. He heard a secondhand story about the Smithsonian dumping a barge of “unusual” artifacts into the Atlantic to stop anyone from seeing them. (Possibly this was a garbled version of the allegation, apparently dating to the 1990s, that the American Museum of Natural History dumped unwanted mammoth bones into the East River in 1949.) The list goes on.

The most important part of Childress’s conspiracy, though, was the specific claim that John Wesley Powell, the director of the Smithsonian in the late 1800s, orchestrated a cover-up of evidence for giants who were part of a lost race that had been in contact with Europe and built pyramids and mounds across America. The most spectacular of these mounds, Monk’s Mound at Cahokia near St. Louis, has a base as large as the Great Pyramid at Giza’s.

Powell wanted to disprove the popular notion that Native Americans erected these mounds, on the grounds that they were too stupid and lazy to create these features—something that nineteenth-century scholars assumed only white people or Bible giants could do. Childress implied that Powell suppressed the truth because he was too sympathetic to Native Americans and had chosen to improperly aggrandize their cultures by suppressing evidence of (imaginary) ancient European colonists that would have connected ancient America to the country’s current Caucasian population. He called this the Smithsonian’s “official dogma.”

Childress relied on Victorian reports about large bones that Powell’s team, led by Cyrus Thomas, had dismissed in 1894 as unevidenced. Hundreds of such reports littered the papers in the late 1800s, and claiming to find the bones of giants became a popular appeal to “prove” the Bible’s superiority to Darwin. The Smithsonian politely informed inquirers that these bones did not belong to the mythical Nephilim.

We know, of course, what those bones really were. As the onetime head of the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History, Ales Hrdlička, told Science News Letter in 1934, the so-called bones of “giants” the public sent to the Smithsonian for review fell into three categories: those measured incorrectly, those misunderstood due to ignorance of anatomy, and those belonging to mastodons and mammoths. When they arrived at the museum, they were correctly classified, and thus the bones of “giants” vanished into the catalogs of normal human bones and normal animal bones.

Twentieth-century evangelicals and creationists had long cited sensational newspaper stories of giant bones as proof of the Bible’s inerrancy, but even the most famous creationist book on the subject, Charles DeLoach’s 1995 work Giants: A Reference Guide From History, the Bible, and Recorded Legend, did not blame the Smithsonian for hiding the bones.

However, in the early 2000s, the creationist thread quickly wrapped itself around the needle of growing conservative anger at the Smithsonian’s perceived politics. Intermittent attacks on the Smithsonian over everything from evolution and environmental conservation to sweatshops (the apparel industry was offended) may have been forgotten, but the conspiracy about ancient giants elevated the same concerns to the level of myth and made them an article of faith.

Influential conspiracy theorist David Icke picked up Childress’s story for his 1993 book The Biggest Secret, but the reprint shared on the (now defunct) KeeleyNet paranormal bulletin board in 1993 spread Childress’s claims across the internet. Then, in 2001, a writer names Ross Hamilton produced an article in Nexus called “Holocaust of Giants: The Great Smithsonian Cover-Up,” expanding on Childress’s claim and linking it explicitly to conservative evangelical Christianity. Hamilton argued that the Smithsonian suppressed evidence of Bible giants not just to help Native Americans but to keep Christians from realizing that “Darwin’s troublesome theory” was false.

Hamilton’s article, often paired with Childress’s, crashed into a burgeoning alternative history media revolution that revolved, ultimately, around grievances against government, science, and “elite” academics who questioned jingoist renditions of the past. Whether it was popular books of fringe history that sought “white” gods in ancient America or cable TV documentaries looking for prehistoric Europeans who ruled ancient America, the overarching theme was a longing to return to an imagined past when a rapidly diversifying United States was still mostly white and Christian.


A lost white race of Bible giants—literally bigger, stronger, and whiter than everyone else—fashioned as a symbol of everything conservatives wanted to remake America into, is an all-too-convenient bit of lore for the conspiracy-besotted right. (Never mind that the Nephilim were technically the villains in Genesis!) And the Smithsonian was, if anything, a useful foil for a fringe movement looking for an enemy to accuse of suppressing the truth.

Soon enough, claims that the Smithsonian intentionally hid the bones of Bible giants went mainstream, presaging the country’s own rightward shift. By the 2010s, the Smithsonian’s secret giants appeared in popular paranormal books, on late-night radio shows, in multiple cable TV documentaries (including at least two separate History Channel shows), and across a network of evangelical and far-right media outlets.

Among the most popular of these were the Christian DVDs and later podcasts produced by Steve Quayle and his Nephilim-hunting partner, Timothy Alberino. Quayle, an archconservative, blamed Bible giants for “teaching” men to be gay. He and Alberino were regulars on the right-wing podcast circuit in the 2010s, often appearing with figures like Alex Jones and Jim Bakker so Quayle could hawk their merch, attack Democratic politicians as demonic, and advocate for a targeted genocide of Nephilim-controlled liberals.

Burlinson told Blaze TV that he had been radicalized against the Smithsonian through Alberino’s podcasts and videos. In his podcasts, Alberino has described Bible giants as a “superior race society.”

In recent years, Alberino has made moves to go more mainstream. He has appeared on Ancient Aliens, the History Channel show advocating historical conspiracies, where David Childress is a featured star. That same show also hosted Tucker Carlson, Tennessee Republican Representative Tim Burchett, and others to peddle conspiracies about government cover-ups of space aliens, interdimensional beings, demons, and more.

For the far right, the E.T.s of Ancient Aliens—the same ones Congress is currently hunting in various UFO hearings—are actually angels and demons, and those demons are the souls of the giants who died in the Flood, according to a nonbiblical text Alberino endorses. Burlinson said in 2023 that he thinks UFOs could be angels, and more recently he promised that a congressional UFO hearing to be held on September 9 would feature witnesses who “handled the bodies” of these beings.

Conspiracies about Bible giants are basically the Christian version of UFOs and aliens, and it’s no wonder there is significant cross-pollination between believers in the two camps, even in Congress, where several representatives like Burlinson and Burchett have publicly discussed their belief in both. In fact, both conspiracies give pride of place to the Nephilim narrative from Genesis 6:4 as proof of either fallen angels or alien intervention.

It would be laughable if the Smithsonian conspiracy theory and tales of Bible giants now being spread on Blaze TV, on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and across right-wing media, were not a kind of Trojan horse to soften up the public to accept political propaganda in place of history and complete the assault on America’s museums that failed in the 1990s. But the conspiracists continue to spread their lore, and mainstream conservative politicians continue to escalate their attacks on the Smithsonian—a far-right pincer movement directed at an institution that is both the nation’s premier repository of historical fact and a potent bolsterer of America’s civic fabric. And that is no laughing matter.

Liberals: Alas, the Time Has Come to Throw John Rawls Under the Bus - 2025-08-21T10:00:00Z

As fascism has returned to political power, elite liberalism seems to have been caught off guard, left unsure how to respond, how to argue for itself. Why?

Pre-Trump liberalism did not cause or provoke a far-right backlash: Fascism is an agential ideology with ideas, goals, and plans of its own. That said, though, liberalism was in a poor position to deal with this new threat. That’s because the ideology—particularly at an elite level—had started to understand itself in ways that were philosophically confused and that proved very vulnerable when it suddenly had to fight for its life.

One prime instance of this was that liberalism began to think it was, or should be, “neutral.” Philosophically, this is the belief that the state should not favor any particular conception of what constitutes a good life for its citizens, but should create a neutral framework for people to pursue the good as they see it. In recent American history, the most powerful liberals, when asked to justify neutrality—to explain how and why they use it—will often say they are applying “the rules” fairly and impartially. And this, to them, is what liberalism is for. Its role is as the referee of the great ideological game, not a player in it.

In public discussions, this idea of liberal neutrality has often been in the background, manifesting as a set of genteel conversational norms. Elite liberalism over the last generation has concerned itself with matters of decorum, civility, and process—making sure that everyone played nicely together.

The Origins of an Idea

To those of us who grew up with it, this seems normal. Historically, it’s a considerable deviation from liberalism’s self-understanding and self-justification, not to mention general tone and tenor. The proto-liberalism of John Locke was a revolutionary project in the literal sense that it sought to justify revolution. The liberalism of the early twentieth century was a project aimed at social reform. That of the mid-century—of the New Deal, Great Society, and civil rights eras—while certainly complicit in many of the evils of its world, was also a creed with a strong sense of its own values. Far from being content to “neutrally” enforce existing rights, it sought to expand them and create new ones.

Then, in the final decades of the century, the United States (and to an extent the developed world) found itself in a strange, and in historic terms quite aberrant, period of mild economic and political conditions and an accompanying thin cultural consensus. From the Volcker shock of 1982 to the crash of 2008, the economy entered a stable period known as “the great moderation.” On the political front, following the “Southern strategy” of Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, the fundamental cleavage of American society (anti-Black racism) was now split between the parties. This meant those who wanted to appeal to racism had to do so in coded language, forcing them to sanitize their speech—appealing, on a surface level, to a thin, “color-blind,” neutral set of rules.

In this new era—what Samantha Hancox-Li calls “the long ’90s,” defined by seeming stability and consensus—there was a feeling in elite spaces that the fundamental questions of governance had now been solved; the “end of history” and all that. Representative democracy, a classically liberal set of rights and freedoms, and free trade and markets had won. Communism, planned economies, protectionism, legally enforced race or gender hierarchies, and overt bigotry were being left in the past.

In this environment, neutrality became a highly attractive way for elite liberalism to understand its role: The basic order of things was now set. Everyone was playing the same game. All that was needed was an umpire.

The Age of Neutrality

The philosopher who offered the most important formulation of a neutral liberalism was John Rawls. His seminal Theory of Justice (1971) and Political Liberalism (1992) came just before, and at the heyday of, the long ’90s.

Rawls’s ideal society is an order justified not by appeals to “comprehensive moral doctrines,” but by “public reason.” People would hold a fair range of views, but all would agree on the basics of the Constitution—there would be an “overlapping consensus” that all “reasonable” people could buy into. Citizens would have to make their political arguments by appealing to premises that everyone else could accept (so “because my religion says so” is not a legitimate argument, as others do not share the starting point). The state, in turn, would be neutral between the different ideas and life paths its citizens might pursue outside of that. (It would not, for instance, have any preference how, or if, someone worships.)

I don’t want to overstate the impact of Rawls. As canonical texts go, he’s never had the cut-through of a Marx or a Rousseau. Crowds have never gathered in the street chanting “realistic utopia.” Elites in the long ’90s, however, tended not to be especially philosophical. They were pragmatic problem solvers, you see, not concerned with ideology (which became something of a dirty word). When they had to justify the fundamentals of their power, they would regurgitate some half-remembered formulations from that one college course (or simply mimic a peer doing that). Conservatives would give you a Cliff Notes Robert Nozick (property rights, markets, a limited state), and liberals would give you a Cliff Notes John Rawls (liberal neutrality, reasonableness, discourse norms)—these being the two thinkers who were generally taught in a Political Philosophy 101 class.

This isn’t the only side to Rawls’s legacy. For instance, he was a strong egalitarian, arguing that society should be organized to benefit the worst off. Political philosophers who are influenced by him tend to draw strongly on this side of his work. For liberal politicians however, while they were often more softly egalitarian, neutrality was the idea they most fully embraced.

Take the case of the abortion debate: The defining constitutional document in this period was the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey Supreme Court decision, which both upholds and partially limits the better-known Roe v. Wade a generation earlier. Unlike Roe, which has a clearer sense of its own values, Casey very much works through Cliff Notes Rawls reasoning. ​​The plurality opinion, authored by Anthony Kennedy, Sandra Day O’Connor, and David Souter, starts with the amusingly detached, “Reasonable people will have differences of opinion about these matters”; its core thrust is that it is not the court’s role to choose one worldview over another: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.”

Except the decision is not neutral at all. It cannot be neutral. This is not a case where two “reasonable people” can disagree about the outcome but both can accept the legitimacy of the process. The moral stakes are just too high. If the process doesn’t reach your desired end point, then the process must change. The abortion debate is, and has always been, about what sort of Constitution we should have, and how far its implied privacy protections should extend, not merely if a particular act is criminalized.

Specifically, the “pro-life” side is making two assertions about who is entitled to claim the protections of constitutional rights: that the unborn are so entitled and, tacitly, that women (or at least pregnant women) are not. To an extent, the court can punt on the first of these, but not the second. The logic of Roe is that people have the right to a certain sphere where the state may not intrude that includes bodily autonomy, that women are people, and therefore women have this right. The state cannot compel a pregnancy (even if doing so is believed to save a life) in the same way as it cannot force a man to donate a kidney.

Who counts as a person is not a question that can be decided neutrally without respect to comprehensive worldviews. This is basically a deal-breaker for a pure neutrality—it’s not just that it doesn’t work in this instance; this instance shows why it can never work at all. To neutrally apply a set of rules (rights), you have to agree about what set of things you’re applying them to (who or what has rights). But we don’t agree about this. We never have and we never will. Put simply, for you to referee there must be a shared understanding of who is a player in the game and who isn’t.

But this rhetoric was useful for a liberalism that had switched from offense to defense. Roe aggressively expanded rights, while Casey partially defended and partially abandoned them. The battle against overt bigotry had now been won, elite liberals imagined; the question now was do we maintain a few restorative measures (like affirmative action) or abandon them? (Liberals, to be fair, usually did favor affirmative action, but this defensive crouch often left them amusingly unable to say why.) On the economy, the Third Way liberalism of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair accepted the core thrust of the Reagan and Thatcher revolutions and sought only to temper them; to make them kinder, gentler.

This is not to say Third Way projects were identical to the political right at the time. Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy and attempted to expand health care. All the Democratic presidents of my lifetime, at a minimum, acted as a veto on Republican attempts to make our society crueler and less equal. All, in different ways, would have done far more good but for the various roadblocks of American governance (like Republican-controlled courts). Yet these presidents never questioned these same blocking structures. Court reform, adding states, or even ending the filibuster were off the table. Liberalism was simultaneously held back by the constitutional system but unable (or unwilling) to put forward a vision of how it might work differently.

Neutrality works here because it has a status quo bias. Referees might award a point, or send a player off, but they’re not empowered to change the rules of the game. Rawlsian liberalism hence forgot an important element of itself; its progressivism. Like socialism, it is a futurist creed, but this became limited to smaller “within the system” changes. The system itself was imagined to have reached an end point.

The Cracks Start to Show

To return to America’s core social cleavage, anti-Black racism, it was imagined that we were leaving bigotry behind. It was, or would soon be, a relic: a barbarous one, but a relic nonetheless. Even in Barack Obama’s 2008 “A More Perfect Union” speech—undoubtedly one of the great orations of the era—while he does not think racism has been solved, he still presents the issue as one of building consensus. The problem is not of fundamentally irreconcilable value systems; rather, it is of good people, Black and white, who want a “message of unity.” Obama cast himself as the referee between them (or perhaps even as a marriage counselor); arbitrating when one side made a valid point.

Well, what’s wrong with that? Is unity a problem somehow? No, as moral visions go, it’s an attractive one. It’s just that I don’t know if it’s accurate to say that white fears and frustrations about race are “grounded in legitimate concerns.” I think a reasonably large percentage of white Americans did, and do, hold views and values that cannot be addressed within a liberal framework of reasoned and empathetic discussion. They can only be defeated—deprogramed or marginalized. Now, I can fully understand why Obama wouldn’t want to say that. Hillary Clinton eight years later was pilloried for accurately (maybe even charitably) saying “half of Trump’s supporters” were motivated by bigotry.

It’s also worth asking what was meant, specifically, by leaving racism behind. The solution, we were told, was to move on from the weaponization of these frustrations to talk about the real problems that affected all Americans, regardless of race. What would this look like?

“This is the deal,” elite liberalism seemed to say: White people will refrain from overt bigotry, and Black people will stop talking about racism, and there will be the peace. It was a one-sided deal, imposed unilaterally by the more powerful party. Though highly flawed, it was not utterly vacuous: More opportunity was created for Black Americans through the long ’90s, and incomes did rise, even as the wealth gap remained stubbornly persistent. An equal opportunities framework did bring benefits, even as it locked in existing inequalities. Overt racism did become taboo for politicians, and for all those with a public image to protect, so it was easy for them to convince themselves that the deal was working.

But it didn’t last. It couldn’t. Politics does not reach end points; it goes on. The “deal” began falling apart as soon as it reached its symbolic height. The election of a Black president was, many insisted, proof of its success, its final ratification. White racists, however, had decided that if equal opportunity meant seeing Black people succeed where they had not, then they could do without it. A Black manager at work, or a Black president of their nation, was too much. They would no longer hide their true feelings. Conversely, through the 2010s, many Black Americans decided they were not happy to stay quiet about ongoing injustice, with police misconduct and mass incarceration becoming particular flashpoints.

During this time, the long realignment of race in American politics came to an end. The Southern, anti–civil rights block was now fully Republican, and the Republicans were now fully Southern. This removed the structural incentive for elites to mask their racism (anyone for whom racism was a deal breaker was now in the Democratic Party). As the realignment ended, the political culture it had generated—of civility, compromise, and the peculiarly American fetish for bipartisanship—started to evaporate. White racists increasingly asserted themselves through the Tea Party. Everyone could feel that the culture was pulling apart. Yet, Obama continued to give speeches throughout his second term on the fundamental rights all Americans agreed on; on our practice of “deliberative democracy” (a Rawlsian vision of liberal neutrality). Of the fury of the right, he famously predicted “the fever will break” in the run-up to the 2012 election.

There is something hopelessly naive about all this—the belief that a return to a neutral ground, or a cultural consensus, could be willed into being by presidential rhetoric alone, absent the economic and political structures that were generative of it in the first place.

In the latter Obama years—the waning days of the long ’90s—neutrality became a comfort blanket. The liberal elites of this period were mentally living in the world they wanted to be in, not the one they were in. From their perspective, you look around, and yes, the possibilities of politics are narrow, yes, the fruits of this culture have not reached everyone; but there is a thin sort of fairness to it. At the very least, it’s better than anything yet tried, and seemingly stable and peaceable. You and those around you are safe.

And then you hear the footsteps of the Lord of Hosts marching through history.

The Age of the Unreasonable

Like a strange inversion of a bankruptcy, the world of the long ’90s fell apart all at once, then bit by bit. The twin shocks of Brexit and Donald Trump’s election loudly announced that the age of cultural consensus was over. From there, the old order suffered a death of a thousand cuts. Anti-Trump Republicans slowly lost what footing they had within the party. The activist right, like a snake shedding its skin, abandoned its libertarian rhetoric and became more and more openly fascistic. Constitutional protections, checks and balances, kicked in, but only slowed the deterioration of the system. The house was not remodeled or even demolished; it was drenched in acid, unevenly but inexorably disintegrating into exposed beams and toxic sludge.

In such an environment, neutrality simply cannot exist as an elite practice. Half of the political spectrum is openly, aggressively opposed to the most basic liberal rights and freedoms. Attempting to maintain a position between the two sides pulls purportedly liberal commentators, by the nose, to the far right. They end up taking preposterous positions, like maybe we abandon birthright citizenship in some, but not all, cases. To be a referee, the teams have to agree on what game they are even playing. And they don’t. Neutrality turned out not to be the final evolution of the liberal Pokémon, but a delicate species of hothouse plant, able to grow only under very specific political, economic, and cultural conditions. In the gentle, consistent, collegial days of the long ’90s, it bloomed. When we try to plant it in our harsher climate, it just dies.

Elite liberals have been, to put it mildly, caught off guard. They did not, contrary to both reactionary and antiestablishment left narratives, cause the fascist resurgence. Nor do they sympathize with it. Their fear and horror are real enough. But like the French generals in the early days of World War I, they found themselves fighting a war they were not mentally or structurally prepared for.

Part (not all, but part) of this unpreparedness is that liberalism forgot how to argue for its values. A neutral liberalism has always required values to underpin it, but its practice obfuscates them. We no longer talk of what rights are, or why people have them. We simply assume they do, and that the matter is settled. This, in a sense, is quite Rawlsian. His work purports to justify values it largely assumes. His most famous argument is the “original position”—very simply, what sort of society would people design if they did not know their place in it? But this thought experiment assumes that we’ve already “bought into” liberalism, at least in a basic sense that we think giving people equal moral consideration is a good thing.

This will no longer cut it. We need to explain, much more directly, why liberalism is good for people. This type of liberalism (sometimes called comprehensive liberalism) never went away. Liberal neutrality was always more of an elite thing. If you asked the average Democratic primary voter why they came to support gay marriage during this period, you wouldn’t hear about how the state must maintain a principled agnosticism between comprehensive worldviews. Rather, they’d say that their son had come out and they wanted him to have a happy life. Or that they wanted a better world for their children more generally. Or that they’d talked to someone who had brought home for them how painful discrimination can be.

This approach can seem less sophisticated, but I think is ultimately more philosophically defensible. It’s also clearly more persuasive and, I’ve come to think, more capable of going on a war footing when required. It doesn’t require a consensus about the rules of the political game, nor does it assume people buy into its basic values.

As much as anything, it’s much more capable of saying others are wrong. That the fascists are not just “unreasonable”; they are a malignant cancer. That listening to them will lead to you having a worse life.

A New Liberalism

But isn’t that, in itself, somewhat illiberal? Won’t that be us telling people how to live, just from a “liberal” perspective? Not at all. Or at least it needn’t. For example, fascists insist that there is a set thing to being a man—he must be resolute, rugged, heterosexual, muscular, violent—and that society should pressure or compel men into these behaviors. Our response as liberals shouldn’t be to construct our own “liberal man”—feeling, caring, sexually fluid, pacifistic—and insist everyone must be that instead.

Rather, we should say that men should be able to choose which attributes they take on. To be traditionally masculine, traditionally feminine, or some combination, as long, of course, as we don’t harm others. This later proviso is known as the liberty principle. At a first pass, it may not sound that distinct from the idea of liberal neutrality I’ve spent this essay bemoaning, but its justification is very different. John Stuart Mill’s (the philosopher credited with its formulation) argument for it is rooted in what is good for people:

He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision. And these qualities he requires and exercises exactly in proportion as the part of his conduct which he determines according to his own judgment and feelings is a large one. It is possible that he might be guided in some good path, and kept out of harm’s way, without any of these things. But what will be his comparative worth as a human being? It really is of importance, not only what men do, but also what manner of men they are that do it.

So to take the case of masculinity, we want men to choose their lives, not because liberalism is neutral about this, but precisely because it’s not: because we believe that men having freedom is good for them. That we lead happier lives when we can form our own characters, pick our own hobbies and interests, rather than being forced into a narrow little box. That we will be more valuable to ourselves, and hence more valuable to others. That being self-formed will make us better sons, husbands, and fathers.

The difference is subtle but important: Both neutral liberalism and the sort I am arguing for agree that we should have freedom in how we approach gender roles, but they disagree as to why. It’s a question of how to make the argument. I think we as liberals can sometimes overthink our ultimate justifications. “Because it’s good for people” is a perfectly sensible starting point.

Why is slavery wrong? Well, it causes extreme suffering and is a profound denial of fundamental human dignity. This is bad and ought to be avoided. This simple argument, grounded in what is good for people, is none the worse for being simple. We might go on to ask what harm slavery does to a society. The slave economy of the antebellum South was outproduced by the Northern one and failed pathetically in war—its own self-justification. And how many less tangible goods were lost? How many Einsteins, Mozarts, and Shakespeares died working in its cotton fields?

How, liberalism should ask, do we avoid those things? What system will make people the happiest, give them the most dignity, lead to the most flourishing? How can we order society so it produces the greatest possible number of geniuses of every field? How can humanity continue to improve intellectually and morally?

We need to start thinking again in these terms—of people, progress, and reshaping the fundamental order of things. In the long ’90s we assumed agreement on equal rights. Now we can’t. In the early years of the Trump era, we could talk about protecting the constitutional order from him. Now it’s gone. Whether or not it’s desirable to return is beside the point. The point is, it’s not possible. The political culture of our youths, of tame and tamed discourse, of liberalism as a gentlemanly referee, no longer exists. It was a flower of a different climate.

Today’s climate demands something more direct. Liberalism must, to rephrase a Robert Frost quip, be able to take its own side in an argument. An aggressive liberalism does not mean an uncaring one; quite the contrary. Our denunciation of fascism’s society-destroying depravity must be matched by a hopeful, compassionate, and vibrant narrative about the lives we wish people to have.

So much of the new right’s vision—that we all return to rigid gender roles, that LGBT identities are banned, that our society be cleansed of foreign influences, that we only partake in what is authentically American—essentially boils down to the demand that we make ourselves small. That we follow a script we are handed at birth without deviation or question. This is wrong, not because it violates some abstract “neutral” constitutional balancing act, but because it is essentially inhuman. Because—and I can do no better than Mill here—“human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.”

Elon Musk Just Won His War on Labor Unions - 2025-08-21T10:00:00Z

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that the National Labor Relations Board’s structure is unconstitutional, dealing another severe blow to the board’s ability to resolve labor-management disputes and enforce federal labor laws across the country.

The case itself reads like a Gilded Age parable. South African–born billionaire Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, had asked the court to block the board’s enforcement actions against one of his companies for its alleged anti-union activities. A panel of three Republican-appointed federal judges in Texas, two of whom were appointed by President Donald Trump, agreed with him.

“The Employers have made their case and should not have to choose between compliance and constitutionality,” Judge Don Willett wrote for the panel, referring to Musk’s company SpaceX and two others that had sued on similar grounds. “When an agency’s structure violates the separation of powers, the harm is immediate—and the remedy must be, too.”

Tuesday’s ruling in SpaceX v. NLRB is a significant blow to American workers who hope to organize their workplaces without fear of retaliation. It represents a partial negation of the New Deal, along with 90 years of legal precedent—and a victory for the conservative legal establishment’s war against federal regulatory power.

At issue in this case is whether the NLRB’s actions were unconstitutional because, under federal law, its five-member board and its administrative-law judges cannot be fired by the president at will. NLRB board members can only be removed “for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office, but for no other cause,” while the ALJs can only be removed “for good cause” after a hearing before a specialized federal civil service board.

The NLRB’s structure is laid out by the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, a New Deal–era law that enshrined a range of new legal protections for organized labor in the private sector. Two months before the NLRA’s passage, the Supreme Court had ruled in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States that Congress could lawfully enact for-cause removal protections for the heads of independent agencies under certain conditions. This legal and constitutional backdrop remained intact for the last 90 years.

Overturning Humphrey’s Executor is a major goal of the conservative legal establishment, which generally seeks to maximize executive power and minimize legislative and regulatory power. Right-wing judges and legal scholars instead emphasized Myers v. United States, a 1926 decision that strengthened the president’s removal power. Instead of reading Humphrey’s Executor to supersede Myers, the Roberts court has argued that Myers represents the general rule and Humphrey’s Executor is a mere exception to it—one that happens to get narrower and narrower each time the court glances at it.

That view was given an official imprimatur by the 2020 case Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The court’s conservative majority struck down the for-cause removal provision that prevented Trump from dismissing the CFPB’s director. Chief Justice John Roberts distinguished the CFPB from other independent agencies that fell under Humphrey’s Executor (like the Federal Trade Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission) by noting that those agencies were headed by multi-member boards instead of a single appointee.

Justice Elena Kagan, writing in dissent, disputed Roberts’s claim that the ruling was compelled by precedent or historical practice, as well as his overzealous approach to the separation of powers. “[The conservative majority] writes in rules to the Constitution that the drafters knew well enough not to put there,” she wrote. “It repudiates the lessons of American experience, from the 18th century to the present day. And it commits the Nation to a static version of governance, incapable of responding to new conditions and challenges.”

The ruling achieved a major right-wing policy goal—defanging and disrupting the CFPB’s functions—while also avoiding more far-reaching consequences to other agencies. The FTC and SEC remained untouched. More importantly, so did the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, which wields enormous power over both U.S. and international financial systems. Many court watchers assume that the justices were unwilling to undermine the Fed’s independence—especially under Trump, a frequent Fed critic—because of the serious economic consequences that could follow.

But while the Fed seemed secure from judicial interference, a host of other agencies soon found themselves under the gun. After Seila Law, the Roberts court took aim at other protections against removal. The court held in Collins v. Yellin, for example, that the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency must be stripped of his for-cause protections as well. At the same time, the justices also rejected the idea that because it found the FHFA’s structure to be unconstitutional, it must also invalidate the agency’s actions that took place while it was unconstitutionally structured.

“All the officers who headed the FHFA during the time in question were properly appointed,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court. (Emphasis his.) “Although the statute unconstitutionally limited the President’s authority to remove the confirmed Directors, there was no constitutional defect in the statutorily prescribed method of appointment to that office.” As a result, he concluded, the plaintiffs could not argue that the challenged action was automatically invalid.

The companies behind Tuesday’s ruling—SpaceX, Energy Transfer, and Findhelp—all faced investigations and hearings by the NLRB over charges of unfair labor practices. In response, they sued the agency to argue that its structure was unconstitutional because of the for-cause removal protections for its board members and its ALJs. All three companies prevailed at the district court level, prompting the NLRB to appeal to the Fifth Circuit.

Much of the panel’s analysis echoes that of the Supreme Court’s rulings in Seila Law and related cases: The president’s removal power is broad, Congress can only limit it in certain narrow circumstances, and the NLRB does not fall under those exceptions because, among other reasons, it wields “substantial executive power” unlike the agencies at issue in Humphrey’s Executor.

Willett also cited the Supreme Court’s shadow-docket rulings about the NLRB when reaching his decision. Earlier this year, Trump fired NLRB board member Gwynne Wilcox despite the statutory for-cause protections for her removal. She filed a lawsuit and asked the courts to block her dismissal pending further litigation. While the lower courts sided with Wilcox, the Supreme Court sided with Trump.

“The stay reflects our judgment that the Government is likely to show that both the NLRB and MSPB exercise considerable executive power,” the justices wrote in an unsigned opinion, also referring to another agency where a fired board member was suing Trump over their ouster. “But we do not ultimately decide in this posture whether the NLRB or MSPB falls within such a recognized exception; that question is better left for resolution after full briefing and argument.”

Willett, writing for the Fifth Circuit this week, nonetheless took that explanation as justification for his own ruling. “In staying an injunction that barred President Trump from removing [Wilcox], the Court observed that ‘the Government is likely to show that both the NLRB and MSPB exercise considerable executive power,’” the panel wrote. “While the Justices were careful to say that they ‘did not ultimately decide’ the issue, their stay order reinforces our conclusion that Board Members’ insulation from presidential removal likely violates Article II.”

There is little reason to doubt that the Supreme Court will eventually side with Willett on the merits. The court’s conservative majority has made its antipathy toward for-cause removal protections, even for multi-member boards covered by Humphrey’s Executor, clear in Wilcox and in another shadow-docket case in June involving members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. They even invented a bespoke exemption out of whole cloth for the Federal Reserve in Wilcox to avoid any complications there.

At the same time, Willett also went further than the Supreme Court to effectively neutralize the agency for the time being. In both Seila Law and Collins, the high court held that the for-cause removal protections at issue meant that the respective agencies’ structure was unconstitutional. The justices’ remedy was to “sever” the removal protections from the rest of the statute. In effect, the agency could continue to function as normal, with the director’s removability the only legal change in how it operates.

That is not what the Fifth Circuit did in SpaceX. The NLRB argued that if the court ruled against the for-cause protections for that agency as well, then severability would be the best course. Instead, Willett distinguished the case from Seila Law and Collins by noting that those cases had reached the court on the merits, whereas this one was in a preliminary-injunction stage. As a result, he blocked the agency from operating against the plaintiffs altogether.

“If the Employers later prevail on the merits, we may then consider whether severance is appropriate,” Willett wrote. “At this stage, however, the severability inquiry is premature and belongs to the merits phase, when the court considers final relief.” By allowing the injunctions to stand in full, the court effectively sidestepped Alito’s conclusion in Collins that an agency’s action could only be invalidated if the officer were illegally appointed, and not if they were unconstitutionally insulated from removal.

The Supreme Court may eventually alter that portion of the decision down the road and allow the agency to continue to operate in some form. But the damage is already done. Wilcox’s dismissal left the agency without a quorum to operate with new cases involving unfair labor practices, and the Fifth Circuit’s ruling blocked its ability to work on ongoing ones. Thanks to the Roberts court’s enthusiasm for the unitary executive theory, Trump and Musk have nullified a central pillar of the New Deal and weakened workers’ ability to organize without facing illegal retaliation.

Stephen Miller Erupts in Manic Fascist Rant—and Reveals a Big Weakness - 2025-08-21T09:00:00Z

Stephen Miller exploded in a long, unhinged rant about demonstrators who are protesting President Trump’s military occupation of Washington, D.C. It was classic authoritarian agitprop, attacking demonstrators as “Communists” who are secretly trying to make the city more dangerous to its salt-of-the-earth working-class residents. Ominously flanked by the defense secretary and members of the military, he threatened to respond with more troops. But we think this is really an expression of weakness. Trump and Miller were certain that a latent majority is prepared to rally to authoritarian rule. But poll after poll shows voters rebelling. Miller’s hubris has become a major vulnerability. We talked to New Republic staff writer Monica Potts, author of a great new piece analyzing Trump’s long-term game plan. She explains how Trump is consolidating power right before our eyes, why Democrats need to stop calling this a “distraction,” and how the opposition should proceed, secure in the knowledge that the public is not with Trump. Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.

Trump Aide Thinks the Smithsonian “Overemphasizes” Slavery - 2025-08-20T22:07:20Z

Lindsey Halligan, the White House official leading President Donald Trump’s overhaul of the Smithsonian, thinks its museums overemphasize slavery when they should be emphasizing “how far we’ve come since slavery.”

Halligan appeared on Fox News Wednesday to discuss her effort to make the Smithsonian’s content align with the president’s version of history ahead of the U.S. Semiquincentennial.

So far, it remains unclear which specific content will be targeted for removal and replacement, but a March executive order claimed that the Smithsonian is overrun by “a divisive, race-centered ideology,” citing an exhibit that described race as a social construct (rather than promoting the fringe notion that it is “a biological reality”). In a Tuesday Truth Social screed, Trump lamented that the museums focus too intently on “how bad Slavery was.”

Halligan expressed similar sentiments on Fox, saying the institution has become a “platform” for “ideological narratives,” whereas it should be a (presumably somehow nonideological) means of representing “our country in a positive way.”

Asked by Fox anchor John Roberts whether she believes America’s “checkered past” should be minimized in museums, Halligan replied that, while slavery was “awful,” she believes the museums exhibit “an overemphasis on slavery, and I think there should be more of an overemphasis on how far we’ve come since slavery.”

Espousing a feel-good version of history that would please Orwell’s Big Brother, Halligan continued, “We should be able to take our kids, our students through the Smithsonian and feel proud when we leave.”

American history, she concluded, is “both positive and negative, but we need to keep moving forward” and “focus on all the positive as we approach America’s 250th birthday.” It’s a suspicious credo for an official tasked with radically transforming the world’s largest museum system.

NY Mayor Eric Adams’s Corruption Scandal Just Keeps Going - 2025-08-20T21:43:54Z

Another slew of New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s allies will likely face charges, which are expected to include multiple counts of bribery, according to The New York Times.

The defendants will probably include the mayor’s former chief adviser Ingrid Lewis-Martin; her son Glenn D. Martin; Adams’s friend and local official Jesse Hamilton; two businessmen; and supporters Gina and Tony Argento, who are siblings and whose company donated over $20,000 to Adams.

They all plan to plead not guilty, according to sources from the Times.

Lewis-Martin, who has described herself as Adams’s “sister ordained by god,” and her son allegedly tried to impact city policy by accepting favors from the other defendants. Lewis-Martin is already dealing with corruption charges from last year, in which prosecutors claim to have caught her via wiretap accepting $100,000 from the aforementioned two businessmen. She is also alleged to be the catalyst behind almost every corruption charge linked to the Mayor’s office, the Times reported.

Adams has attempted to wash hands of this.

“Mayor Adams was not involved in this matter and has not been accused of or implicated in any wrongdoing,” his spokeswoman, Kayla Mamelak Altus, said. “He remains focused on what has always been his priority—serving the 8.5 million New Yorkers who call this city home and making their city safer and more affordable every single day.”

Altus also noted that Lewis-Martin does not work for Adams anymore, without mentioning that she resigned just days before she was indicted last year.

These are just the latest developments in the scandal plaguing the administration of Eric Adams, who is in the midst of an underwhelming mayoral campaign, trailing solidly behind Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani and independent candidate Andrew Cuomo.

In the past few weeks, Adams has had his former chief Muslim community liaison charged with fraud for instructing witnesses to lie to the FBI, a loyal Turkish businessman and donor convicted for making illegal donations to him, and four of his former police officers sue him for corruption. In the suit, they accused him of running the NYPD like a “criminal enterprise.”

Yet Adams’s campaign still chugs on. He seems intent on ignoring hit after hit to his reputation and legacy, instead choosing to post his way through it all. It seems clear that not even the de facto pardon from President Trump can help save him now.

Trump and Melania’s Scammy Meme Coins Have Lost Almost All Value - 2025-08-20T21:09:40Z

You may recall that the president has a meme coin, $TRUMP. Days before his second inauguration, the president—who told Fox News in his first term that he was not “a big fan” of cryptocurrencies, which he deemed possibly “fake”—made his own foray into crypto.

The meme coin’s value quickly rocketed to around $75. It dropped shortly thereafter but saw a bump in April when Trump announced “the most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION in the world”: for the top 220 investors in $TRUMP coin to enjoy a private dinner with the president at his Virginia golf club.

Since then, the Trump coin’s value has slumped again, to $9, having sunk 88 percent from its January high.

You may also recall—if you strain your memory further—that the first lady, Melania Trump, is in the meme coin business as well. Her $MELANIA coin has followed a similar trajectory to her husband’s coin, seeing a precipitous, 98 percent decline in value from its $8.50 peak in mid-January.

In May, the Financial Times published an investigation into Melania Trump’s meme coin, revealing that a coterie of traders reaped nearly $100 million by buying $MELANIA coin minutes before it was publicly announced, before off-loading most of their holdings after its value spiked following the announcement.

The first lady’s meme coin is now worth less than a quarter of a dollar.

GOP Governors Sending Troops to D.C. Crime Show Self-Awareness Is Dead - 2025-08-20T21:05:33Z

Six Republican-led states are sending a collective 1,200 National Guard troops to assist Donald Trump’s crackdown on crime in Washington, D.C. But the states those troops came from have higher crime rates than the nation’s capital.

As Washington’s residents brutally resist the president’s authoritarian takeover of local law enforcement and deployment of federal troops, other states would do well to remember the old proverb: Doctor, heal thyself!

To compare, The New Republic has evaluated the FBI’s national crime data for 2024 alongside state populations, focusing on available data documenting violent and property crime rates in major cities in Ohio, Tennessee, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and West Virginia.

FBI data showed that in 2024, for every 100,000 Washington residents, 926 were victims of violent crime and 3,588 were victims of property crime. In 2024, the nation’s capital saw roughly 25 murders for every 100,000 residents.

Ohio

Cleveland, Ohio, experienced higher rates of both violent crime and property crime than Washington did in 2024, according to Cleveland.com. For every 100,000 Clevelanders, 1,550 were victims of a violent crime and 4,446 were victims of property crime. Cleveland also had a higher homicide rate than Washington in 2024, with 35 homicides for every 100,000 residents, according to the office of the Cuyahoga County medical examiner.

Columbus, which is Ohio’s most populous city, has a comparatively smaller crime rate. It saw marked decreases in violent and property crime in 2024, according to the Columbus Division of Police.

Tennessee

Tennessee’s violent crime rate in 2024 was higher than the national average at roughly 597 violent crime incidents per 100,000 residents, according to FBI data compared to population. While that alone is not higher than the violent crime rate in Washington, that number doesn’t tell the whole story.

In 2024, the state’s own capital, Memphis, had a murder rate of 48 per 100,000 residents, according to The American Prospect—a number significantly higher than D.C.’s homicide rate.

Meanwhile, Nashville, the state’s most populous city, which was home to an estimated 704,963 people in 2024, experienced 8,473 violent crimes and 31,902 property crimes, according to the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department. That means that for every 100,000 Nashville residents, roughly 1,202 were the victims of violent crimes and 4,525 were the victims of property crimes, which are both higher than Washington’s crime rates.

Still, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee is set to send roughly 160 guard members to Washington this week.

Mississippi

For every 100,000 Mississippians, 118 were the victim of a violent crime and 751 were the victims of property crime, according to FBI data. The American Prospect reported that in 2024, Jackson, Mississippi, had the highest murder rate of any city in the country, experiencing a rate of 77 homicides per 100,000 residents, which was more than three times the homicide rate in Washington.

Louisiana

For every 100,000 Louisianians, 406 were the victim of a violent crime and 1,758 were the victim of a property crime. But state capital Baton Rouge had a murder rate of 36 per 100,000 in 2024, and New Orleans had a murder rate of 31 per 100,000—both of which are considerably higher than Washington’s homicide rate.

South Carolina

In 2024, for every 100,000 South Carolinians, only about 438 were the victim of a violent crime and 1,985 were the victim of a property crime. However, North Charleston, one of the state’s most populous cities, had a murder rate of 26 per 100,000 residents in 2024, according to The American Prospect. This places it on par with the homicide rate of Washington. South Carolina’s Republican Governor Henry McMaster ordered 200 troops to be deployed to the nation’s capital.

West Virginia

For every 100,000 West Virginians, 234 were victims of violent crime and 1,051 were victims of property crimes in 2024, in keeping with the state’s trend of being generally below the national average.

But the state’s most dangerous city is Beckley, which has a similar violent crime rate to Washington. With a population of 16,234, Beckley experienced 147 violent crimes in 2023, which equates to a rate of 905 violent crimes per 100,000.

By comparison, property crimes were off the charts. In 2023, there were a whopping 836 property crimes, so for every 100,000 Beckley-ians (again, there aren’t really that many), 5,149 would be a victim of a property crime, a rate significantly higher than that of Washington.

Texas Dem Who Rejected Authoritarian Tactics Threatened With Felony - 2025-08-20T20:32:15Z

On Tuesday, Texas Representative Nicole Collier chose to sleep on the floor of the state House rather than be subject to draconian 24-7 state trooper surveillance if she were to leave.

Now, on Wednesday, she shared that she was threatened with a felony
unless she exited a bathroom while on a DNC call with Senator Cory Booker, Governor Gavin Newson, and other Democrats.

This comes as some Texas Democratic officials remain under the watch of law enforcement, a move GOP House Speaker Dustin Burrows and Texas Republicans levied after more than 50 state Democrats left Texas two weeks ago in response to the Republican Party’s blatantly political effort to reshape voting districts to gain more GOP House seats in the 2026 midterms elections.

While the redistricting vote is likely to occur now that they’re back in the state, Texas Democrats are still looking to exhaust any options they have in regard to delaying or obstructing the power grab of a vote.

They’ve even floated an amendment that would block the redistricting vote until the Epstein files are released, an issue that has fallen from the public eye after weeks of dominating the news cycle due to a well-orchestrated campaign of distraction by the Trump administration.

“That is outrageous,” Cory Booker said live as Collier updated the call about her situation. “What they’re trying to do right there is silence an American leader, silence a Black woman. And that is outrageous. And I hope everybody took note of that. The fact that she can’t even let her voice be heard is frickin’ outrageous.”

Trump Fails for Third Time on Unsealing Epstein Grand Jury Records - 2025-08-20T19:51:17Z

The Trump administration should just unseal the Epstein files on its own, a judge determined Wednesday.

Manhattan-based U.S. District Judge Richard Berman threw out the Justice Department’s third attempt to unseal the grand jury records related to Jeffrey Epstein’s case. Berman argued in a 14-page decision that it would make much more sense for the government to make its “trove” of Epstein-related documents available to the public instead of petitioning the court to release the limited grand jury materials that are protected by law.

“A significant and compelling reason to reject the Government’s position in this litigation is that the Government has already undertaken a comprehensive investigation into the Epstein case and, not surprisingly, has assembled a ‘trove’ of Epstein documents, interviews, and exhibits,” Berman wrote. “And, the Government committed that it would share its Epstein investigation materials with the public.”

Berman further disregarded the DOJ’s appeal for the grand jury materials as little more than a “diversion” from the “breadth and scope of the Epstein files in the Government’s possession.”

“The grand jury testimony is merely a hearsay snippet of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged conduct,” Berman argued.

The order follows a similar decision last week by another Manhattan-based judge, Paul Engelmayer, who denied a DOJ request to unseal grand jury testimony related to Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s girlfriend and longtime accomplice. Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence for abducting and grooming underage girls for Epstein’s abuse, though her decision to comply with the Justice Department earlier this month earned her a sudden transfer to a minimum-security prison.

Engelmayer wrote in his decision that the administration’s argument that the grand jury materials “​​would bring to light meaningful new information about Epstein’s and Maxwell’s crimes is demonstrably false.”

Much to Donald Trump’s chagrin, the botched rollout of the Epstein files has continued to plague his administration. The president has tried dozens of strategies since the beginning of July to peel attention away from the base-shattering issue, including suggesting that the FBI should expend resources to prove his invented claim that the entire case against Epstein is actually a Democratic “scam.”

A reminder that prior to his death, Epstein described himself as one of Trump’s “closest friends.” The socialites were named and photographed together and partied at casinos together with underage girls. Trump penned a salacious letter to Epstein for the sex trafficker’s 50th birthday, and was quoted in a 2002 New York magazine profile as saying that he had, at that point, known Epstein for 15 years, referring to him as a “terrific guy.”

“Couch F***er!”: JD Vance Booed While Hyping Up Trump’s D.C. Takeover - 2025-08-20T19:26:18Z

Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had to hear just how much Washington, D.C., hates them as they attempted a friendly photo op with Donald Trump’s federal forces Wednesday.

As Vance, Hegseth, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller walked through Washington’s Union Station, surrounded by a gaggle of photographers and guards, it was immediately clear that they were unwelcome there.

“Oh look, it’s couch-fucker!” one person shouted in a video shared to X by HuffPost reporter Arthur Delaney. “You gonna fuck a couch, buddy?”

The shouting built to a crescendo, and it became difficult to make out the jeers of individual onlookers. But one sentiment was clear: “Go fuck a couch, JD Vance!” the first heckler shouted.

The Team Trump trio had arrived to deliver burgers (bought at the Shake Shack in Union Station) to National Guardsmen hanging around the train station, well within the sights of their own photographers. Six red-led states have mobilized roughly 1,200 additional troops to join the 800 already unleashed on Washington’s streets, tasked with stopping crime—the rate of which was already down.

The group took a few questions from the press, shouting their answers over the chants of dissidents. Miller tried to dismiss the demonstrators as “elderly white hippies.”

Vance strained to hear a question over the sounds of people in the train station. The question was: “Polls show that a majority of D.C. residents don’t support the guard here. So what’s your message to the majority of D.C. residents?”

“I’m highly skeptical that a majority of D.C. residents don’t want their city to be—to have better public safety and more reasonable safety standards within Washington, D.C.,” Vance said over the shouting. “I don’t know what poll you’re talking about, maybe the same poll that said that Kamala Harris would win the popular vote by 10 points.”

Vance then ended the question session, clearly irritated.

In fact, a recent Washington Post-Schar School poll found that 65 percent of D.C. residents did not think that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard would make the city safer.

As Vance glad-handed National Guard troops, chants of “Free D.C.” could be heard in the background.

Another video shared by HuffPost reporter Igor Bobic showed the trio departing the station while deafening boos echoed off the high ceilings, the large hall bristling with contempt.

“Boo! Get out of here,” cried one onlooker.

It seems that the residents of D.C. have spoken—and they want Trump’s cronies gone.

Democrats Have a Massive Voter Registration Problem - 2025-08-20T19:02:48Z

Fewer and fewer Americans are choosing to be Democrats.

With just over a year until midterms, one of America’s two main parties is hemorrhaging voters, losing registered voters in all 30 states that track registration by political party. The change has been observed in blue, red, and swing states alike.

In total, some 2.1 million voters ditched the Democrats in favor of alternative politics between 2020 and 2024, The New York Times reported Wednesday. The drop has resulted in more registered independents, but it has also become a boon for the GOP, which gained 2.4 million new voters over the same period.

Last year marked the first time since 2018 that more Americans checked “Republican” on their voter registration forms than “Democrat.” The downward trend has sparked serious concern among Democratic strategists, who have identified it as a “hidden-in-plain-sight crisis” that needs a solution before the next presidential election.

“I don’t want to say, ‘The death cycle of the Democratic Party,’ but there seems to be no end to this,” Michael Pruser, who tracks voter registration closely as the director of data science for Decision Desk HQ, told the Times. “There is no silver lining or cavalry coming across the hill. This is month after month, year after year.”

The most contentious battleground states have also experienced the liberal erosion. Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania all saw support peel away from Democrats over the last four years.

“In North Carolina, Republicans erased roughly 95 percent of the registration advantage that Democrats held in the fall of 2020, according to state records as of this summer,” reported the Times. “In Nevada, Democrats suffered the steepest percentage-point plunge of any state but West Virginia between 2020 and 2024.”

Meanwhile, Republicans are working overtime during Trump 2.0 to minimize future turnout at the voting booth. Since Inauguration Day, the administration has tried and failed to force Americans to show proof of citizenship at the voting booth and has attempted to take away the option of mail-in ballots.

Donald Trump and his allies have also made a target of voting software designed to identify potential voter fraud, advanced a Homeland Security agenda that has made immigrants fearful to legitimately participate in the American electorate, and generally undermined trust and confidence in the country’s process to elect its leaders.

In Latest Weird Flub, Trump Mixes Up Two Countries That Start With A - 2025-08-20T18:17:36Z

President Donald Trump on Tuesday night confused Armenia with another, somewhat similar-sounding nation, leading him to mistakenly claim he’d brokered peace between Azerbaijan and Albania.

The gaffe, which occurred while he was calling in to conservative commentator Mark Levin’s eponymous radio show, is only his latest geographical flub.

The president raved on air about his peacemaking efforts, repeating his false claim about having ended six wars during his second term.

“It’s, you know, a lot of amazing, amazing things,” Trump said, before attempting to mention his recently arranged Azerbaijan-Armenia peace declaration, which moved the countries toward peace—but did not fully end their 37-year-long conflict.

“You saw the Azerbaijan. That was a big one going on for 34, 35 years with, uh, Albania. Think of that,” the president said.

Not only did Trump incorrectly call Armenia “Albania,” but he also hesitated uncertainly while stating the name of Azerbaijan. He ultimately bungled the country’s pronunciation (“the Aber … baijan,” he said), so much so that The Mark Levin Show’s transcript of the episode, as of this writing, has him as saying “Arab or Bhaijaan.”

In a recent Fox News appearance, Trump puzzlingly added an extra seventh war to his already misleading list of six accomplished peace deals. Perhaps the mysterious seventh was this fictional conflict between Armenia and Albania.

Trump Forced European Leaders to Admire His Dictator Merch - 2025-08-20T17:41:44Z

President Donald Trump showed off “Trump 2028” hats and other merchandise to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and European leaders—right after an extremely sobering discussion about ending the death and destruction of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

According to photos, he was keen to draw their attention to various items, including a “Four More Years” hat, a “Gulf of America” hat, a “Trump was Right About Everything” hat, along with the classic “MAGA” and “USA” hats.

It’s moments like these that remind us that the president is a salesman in his heart of hearts.

The Trump Organization conglomerate has made billions through cryptocurrency and media ventures alongside the merchandise, which is typically only used to fund campaigns. But Trump has yet again figured out a way to game the system.

“In addition to the campaign merchandise sold by his campaign, which all candidates and all presidents do … the Trump Organization also has its own online store, and they sell all kinds of Trump merchandise that looks very much like its campaign merchandise, but this money flows to Trump himself—you know, $20, $40 for a pair of flip-flops, a pair of beer koozies, a baseball hat,” The New Yorker’s David Kirkpatrick told Democracy Now! on Wednesday.

“He’s making, you know, millions of dollars—you know, I forget what the exact number was, but 20 millions of dollars over the last few years—selling this kind of merchandise, which is arguably competing with his own campaign and diverting some of the money that his supporters might think is supporting the MAGA movement and his candidates to his own pocket,” Kirkpatrick continued.

The words on the hats are as alarming as the open corruption they represent. “Trump 2028” has become a commonplace slogan on the right, though the president is constitutionally barred from running again. But Trump himself has alluded to the possibility multiple times, as recently as this week.

“So you say, during the war you can’t have elections?” Trump said to Zelenskiy. “So let me just see: Three-and-a-half years from now, so you mean, if we [the United States] happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections … I wonder what the fake news would say about that.”

Trump’s Interior Secretary Repeats Weird D.C. Restaurant Claim - 2025-08-20T16:58:04Z

The Trump administration is apparently intent on lying about the impact of the president’s military occupation of D.C. on local restaurants.

While some data suggests the federal takeover may be scaring away diners, the Trump team keeps insisting that the very opposite is happening.

Appearing on Fox Business Wednesday morning, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum touted Trump’s crackdown, which is strongly opposed by most D.C. residents.

Burgum cited alleged decreases in carjackings and robberies—apparently, week-over-week percent decreases reported by D.C.’s police union, from which little can actually be concluded (in part because, as one conservative commentator observed, “robbery and property crime reports often lag the date of the incident by a week or more, making any short-term comparison like this liable to look more favorable than is true of the situation on the ground”).

Burgum also said restaurant reservations are “up 30 percent,” in a “dramatic change.” Here, the interior secretary was echoing Trump’s baseless claim earlier this week that restaurants are “busier than they’ve been in a long time.”

As D.C.’s local Fox station reports, restaurant attendance was down each day during the first week of Trump’s crackdown on the capital compared with the same week last year. The most significant plunge took place last Wednesday, when reservation numbers fell by 31 percent.

Conveniently overlooking these facts, Burgum seemingly narrowed in on data from Monday, which saw a 29 percent year-over-year increase in reservations made via the online service OpenTable.

However, this increase took place on the first day of the city’s summer Restaurant Week, during which local eateries offer promotional deals. Restaurant Week 2024 took place a week earlier, also potentially affecting last week’s numbers.

Reservation data aside, The Washington Post reports that Trump’s actions in D.C. have sent restaurant owners reeling.

One said that “reservations are low, low, low,” and, “The city is dead.”

Another, who said this month is on track to be the slowest August in his restaurant’s seven-year history (peak pandemic years included), told the Post that “seeing law enforcement—armored and plainclothed—in the neighborhood, casing our building and looking into our windows, definitely put guests and staff on edge.”

Trump Tries to Blame Rising Energy Prices on Anything But His Tariffs - 2025-08-20T16:42:29Z

Donald Trump’s energy policy is already raising prices for consumers—and his administration is desperate for someone to blame. 

“Any State that has built and relied on WINDMILLS and SOLAR for power are seeing RECORD BREAKING INCREASES IN ELECTRICITY AND ENERGY COSTS,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday. “THE SCAM OF THE CENTURY! We will not approve wind or farmer destroying Solar. The days of stupidity are over in the USA!!! MAGA.”

But clearly, the days of stupidity are far from over. A new report from Climate Power found that energy price increases spurred by Trump’s behemoth budget bill are already beginning to take root, The Guardian reported Tuesday.  

Using data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Climate Power found that household gas prices had skyrocketed 56 percent from January to May 2025. 

The group also found that the average price of household energy had increased by roughly 10 percent during the same period, from 15.95 cents per kWh to 17.47 cents per kWh. Electricity prices were six percent higher in May than the same month the previous year. 

Climate Power senior adviser Jesse Lee accused Republicans of inflicting a “massive utility bill hike” on their constituents. “This is nothing short of a betrayal of their own voters. Families are losing jobs while their bills climb, all because Republicans would rather protect their donors than lower costs,” Lee told The Guardian.

Energy Innovation, a climate think tank, published a report in July that estimated Trump’s so-called “big beautiful bill,” which repealed tax credits for solar and wind energy installed under the Biden administration, might raise wholesale electricity prices by 74 percent by 2035. Shortly after the law passed, Trump issued an executive order to ensure an end to “market distorting subsidies” for green energy projects.

In an interview for Politico, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright preempted the Trump administration getting blamed for the rising energy prices, and blamed Democrats for the cost increases. “The momentum of the Obama-Biden policies, for sure that destruction is going to continue in the coming years,” Wright told Politico. “That momentum is pushing prices up right now. And who’s going to get blamed for it? We’re going to get blamed because we’re in office.”

In response to The Guardian’s report, Department of Energy spokesperson Ben Dietderich said: “While radical activist groups might still be trying to peddle nonsense, the American people elected President Trump to restore commonsense energy policies and that is exactly what we are doing.”

“Other than higher energy prices and a less reliable grid more prone to blackouts, there is very little to show for the previous administration’s reckless green new scam spending that cost hundreds of billions of dollars,” he added. 

Dietderich also claimed that in 2024, the U.S. got only three3 percent of its energy from renewable sources. But a special report from global energy think tank Ember found that wind and solar energy accounted for a record 17 percent of electricity in the U.S. in 2024, overtaking coal for the first time, which only accounted for 15 percent. In 2023, the U.S. got 21.4 percent of its energy from renewable sources, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. 

Shocking Poll Shows D.C. Residents Don’t Like Trump’s Occupation - 2025-08-20T15:53:29Z

A new poll from The Washington Post shows that Washington, D.C., residents are overwhelmingly against the deployment of federal agents and national guardsmen in their streets.

The Post’s random sampling of 604 adult D.C. residents showed that 79 percent of them either somewhat opposed or strongly opposed, “Trump ordering the federal government to take control of Washington, D.C.’s police department and ordering the National Guard and FBI to patrol D.C.”

When asked, “How much, if at all, do you think the D.C. police should help the federal government deport undocumented immigrants who live in D.C.?” almost 60 percent of respondents replied, “Not at all,” and over half thought Mayor Muriel Bowser should do more to oppose the president.

Nearly 80 percent of respondents stated that they feel “very safe” or “somewhat safe” in their communities, up two percent from this May. The percentage of respondents who said that crime was an “extremely/very serious” issue in the District also fell significantly, from 50 percent to 31 percent. About 40 percent of August respondents stated that crime was a “moderately serious” issue.

The poll also shows that support for D.C. statehood is at its highest since 1995.

While these numbers give us insight into what just a portion of the city’s more than 700,000 residents are thinking, it’s clear that President Trump’s federal takeover has not had the desired effect.

It turns out that having masked Homeland Security Investigations, FBI, and other agents setting up checkpoints, harassing people for smoking weed, and pulling delivery drivers off of their scooters mid-route does not actually make D.C. residents feel safer.

“Trump’s overheated rhetoric about D.C. crime has evoked strong feelings among many residents offended by such characterizations of their city,” Mark Rozell, dean of George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, told the Post. “A federalized takeover of any aspect of a city’s operations will naturally create a backlash, and that is clearly happening here,” he said.

MAGA Rep Says Dead People Personally Told Him They Voted Fraudulently - 2025-08-20T15:31:24Z

Republican lawmakers are apparently consorting with the dead in their search for a justifiable reason to nix mail-in ballots.

Speaking with Fox Business Tuesday, Representative Jeff Van Drew claimed that he had spoken with “large numbers” of deceased people who had received the voter ballots.

“There were multiple mail-in ballots sent to the same person. Sometimes people would have multiple ballots sent to different addresses,” Van Drew said.

“Other times, people who are passed away—these are real people I spoke to, large numbers of them, and it’s indicative of what happened around the country,” the New Jersey lawmaker claimed.

Since he lost the 2020 election, Donald Trump and his allies have obsessed over contrived claims of voter fraud—a statistical nonissue in U.S. elections. For instance, a statewide audit out of Georgia, the epicenter of Trump’s baseless theory, revealed in September that just 20 noncitizens out of 8.2 million residents existed on the state’s voter roll, just 0.00024 percent of the state’s voting population. Out of those 20, only nine participated in elections years ago, before ID was required as a part of the voter verification process. The other 11 individuals were registered but never actually voted, according to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Critics argue that restrictions on the front end of the electoral process—such as one-day voting and requiring day-of voter ID, which Trump has tried but failed to implement—would minimize voter turnout and limit American democracy’s ability to represent its constituents. This would especially be true in high-density areas like the nation’s biggest cities, where those stipulations would significantly drain resources (i.e., the number of volunteers required) and require more time to process, potentially leading to more delays, which Republicans could weaponize to further restrict voter access.

The MAGA party’s continued focus on the nativist nonissue belies the fact that it is, of course, already illegal and impossible for noncitizens to vote in U.S. elections.

Attacking mail-in voting has not proved popular for Republican lawmakers, however. A heated exchange over the tool at a Casper, Wyoming, town hall Monday resulted in an irate crowd practically screaming at Representative Harriet Hageman, who claimed that mail-in ballots are not “foundational tools” of democratic elections.

The White House Is Beefing With a Musician Over ... Decor? - 2025-08-20T14:49:11Z

President Donald Trump is notoriously incapable of taking even petty criticisms in stride. The White House’s latest spat with the White Stripes’ Jack White does little to change that perception.

On Tuesday, White posted a photo on Instagram of President Trump sitting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the Oval Office. Panning the president’s dictator-chic design choices, White wrote in his caption that the White House is “now a vulgar, gold leafed and gaudy, professional wrestler’s dressing room. Can’t wait for the UFC match on the front lawn too.”

White continued, writing, “Look at his disgusting taste, would you even buy a used car from this conman, let alone give him the nuclear codes? A gold plated trump bible would look perfect up on that mantle with a pair of trump shoes on either side wouldn’t it? What an embarrassment to American history.”

The musician also praised Zelenskiy. “Also pictured in this photograph, a REAL leader of a nation in a black suit,” wrote White, who has called Trump an “obvious fascist” and filed (but subsequently dropped) a lawsuit against his 2024 campaign for unauthorized use of the song “Seven Nation Army.”

In a statement sent to several media outlets, Steven Cheung, the famously hot-tempered Trump senior staffer, railed against White for his post.

“Jack White is a washed up, has-been loser posting drivel on social media because he clearly has ample time on his hands due to his stalled career,” wrote Cheung. “It’s apparent he’s been masquerading as a real artist, because he fails to appreciate, and quite frankly disrespects, the splendor and significance of the Oval Office inside of ‘The People’s House.’”

But if White’s post reveals that he has “ample time” on his hands, can’t the same be said about the White House for its reply?

This isn’t the first time Trump’s communications staff has deepened the impression of the president as thin-skinned. When the Comedy Central cartoon South Park featured a withering portrayal of Trump, the White House then too put together a statement defending the president’s honor. “This show,” it said, “hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years and is hanging on by a thread with uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention.”

The Five Wildest Things Fox News Hosts Said in Smartmatic Case Texts - 2025-08-20T14:39:15Z

Interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro once bragged about helping out President Donald Trump and the Republican Party as a Fox News host, according to newly unredacted court documents in Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News.

The electronic voting machine company sued Fox in 2021 over the network’s coverage of the 2020 election. Fox News helped perpetuate the conspiracy that Smartmatic’s voting machines helped rig the election against Trump. The lawsuit is ongoing, and Smartmatic is seeking $2.7 billion.

Fox settled a similar lawsuit with voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems in April 2023 for $787.5 million.

The 468-page filing made public Tuesday included private conversations between the conservative network’s hosts, showing just how far Pirro and her colleagues were willing to go to push Trump’s claims that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen.

Here are the five craziest messages:

1. Pirro Boasted About Doing Trump’s Dirty Work

Pirro messaged then–Republican Party Chair Ronna McDaniel voicing her support for Trump and the party. “I’m the Number 1 watched show on all news cable all weekend. I work so hard for the President and party,” she wrote. Smartmatic claims that Pirro hoped to keep Trump’s favor in order to secure a presidential pardon for her ex-husband Albert Pirro, who’d been convicted of tax evasion and conspiracy. Albert Pirro was the last person Trump pardoned in his first term.

2. Pirro Cheered on Sidney Powell

Smartmatic’s suit alleged that Pirro served as a conduit to Trump’s associates, such as Trump’s former lawyer Sidney Powell—and the texts don’t lie. “It’s Jeanine P. Got a former CIA chief of station who knows [about] development of Dominion,” Pirro wrote, referring to Dominion Voting Systems, which had explicitly identified Pirro as a font of misinformation during its lawsuit. “Keep fighting,” she urged.

But Pirro’s producer Jerry Andrews warned her to stay away from claims of voter fraud. “You should be very careful with this stuff and protect yourself given the ongoing calls for evidence that has not materialized,” he said. Pirro later admitted as much during her deposition, saying that the election was “fair and free” and that Joe Biden had been “legitimately elected,” according to Smartmatic’s filing.

3. Bartiromo Asked Sidney Powell to “Please Please” Overturn the Election Results

Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo also urged Powell to keep up the good work attempting to overturn Georgia’s election results. “Sidney we must keep you out there,” Bartiromo wrote via Signal.

“Dobbs is considered very opinionated. I am news,” she said, referring to the late Fox News host Lou Dobbs.

“I am very worried,” she added. “Please please overturn this. Bring the evidence. I know you can.”

Bartiromo was the first person to interview Powell, a few days after the election. In 2023, Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor charges connected with her efforts to interfere with Georgia’s election.

4. Baier Called the Claims a Load of “Crap”

Fox News anchor Bret Baier was so concerned about Bartiromo’s unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud that he warned Fox News executive Jay Wallace that they needed to verify her shoddy reporting. “None of that is true as far as we can tell,” Baier wrote, according to the filing. “We need to fact-check this crap.”

5. Gutfeld Fantasized About Boosting Ratings

Fox News host Greg Gutfeld, who has a penchant for spouting racist and antisemitic drivel, messaged his colleague Jesse Watters in December 2020 about how leaning into dubious claims of election fraud could prove to be lucrative. “Think about how incredible our ratings would be if Fox went ALL in on STOP THE STEAL,” Gutfeld wrote, according to the filing.

He later testified that he’d seen “no evidence that Smartmatic Technology switched votes in the 2020 Election in the United States.”

Amid Trump’s DC Takeover, Pirro’s Office Releases Bonkers Gun Policy - 2025-08-20T14:26:19Z

After making fiery, aggressive promises to crack down on crime in Washington, D.C., U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro has told prosecutors not to pursue felony charges against people caught with rifles or shotguns in the nation’s capital, according to The Washington Post.

This is a surprising move that contradicts almost everything the Trump administration has said and done regarding crime in D.C. thus far. The president has compared the District to Baghdad and said that people don’t even feel safe walking to a restaurant or “newspaper stand” (which are, unfortunately, in short supply these days) because they fear being attacked or killed. Pirro has all but echoed those statements.

“I see too much violent crime being committed by young punks who think that they can get together in gangs and crews and beat the hell out of you or anyone else.… They know that we can’t touch them. Why? Because the laws are weak,” Pirro said, just over a week ago at a press conference about President Trump’s federal takeover. “I convict someone of shooting another person with an illegal gun, on a public bus, in the chest. Intent to kill? I convict him. And you know what the judge gives him? Probation.”

This doesn’t sound like someone who would ever even consider lifting the District’s ban on shotgun and rifle possession without a very specific, local permit—and yet here we are.

This move certainly sends mixed signals to supporters and opponents alike, as firearm seizure has been a primary tactic in the early days of Trump’s D.C. crackdown. The Trump administration has already seized 68 guns within city limits as of Tuesday.

But Pirro now sees D.C.’s ban on shotguns and rifles as a liberal overreach that violates the constitution.

“Nothing in this memo from the Department of Justice and the Office of Solicitor General precludes the United States Attorney’s Office from charging a felon with the possession of a firearm, which includes a rifle, shotgun, and attendant large capacity magazine pursuant to DC Code 22-4503,” Pirro said, in a memo obtained by The Washington Post. What it does preclude is a separate charge of possession of a registered rifle or shotgun.”

This raises the question, though: How exactly does making it easier to carry large, powerful guns in the nation’s capital make people safer and decrease crime, even if they’re registered legally? If Pirro actually cared about safety more than shows of force, maybe she’d realize that.

Ex-Trump Ally Couldn’t Definitively Say He Isn’t in Epstein Files - 2025-08-20T14:25:48Z

Donald Trump is not cleared of wrongdoing in relation to the Epstein files, according to House Oversight Ranking Member Robert Garcia.

Speaking on former Attorney General Bill Barr’s testimony before the Oversight Committee Tuesday, Garcia contradicted Oversight Chair James Comer, who claimed Barr said that “he had never seen anything that would implicate Trump in any of this.”

Instead, Garcia wrote in a statement, “Barr could not clear President Trump of wrongdoing.”

“Chairman Comer should release the entire unedited transcript of his interview to the public,” Garcia said.

The Trump administration has been in a tailspin over the case files since the beginning of July, when the Justice Department directly contradicted Attorney General Pam Bondi on the existence of Jeffrey Epstein’s “client list,” eliciting surprise and upset from the deepest pockets of the MAGA leader’s base.

Since then, new reporting has pointed to several new ties between the pedophilic financier and the man sitting in the Oval Office, revealing that the pair had a remarkably close relationship. Some of those details include a salacious letter Trump penned to Epstein for the sex trafficker’s 50th birthday, and testimony from the former COO of Trump’s Atlantic City casino that placed Epstein and Trump with three underage girls in the late 1980s.

And the Trump administration likely knows all about it: The Wall Street Journal reported in July that the Justice Department had notified Trump months earlier that his name appeared several times in the Epstein files.

But rather than release the Epstein files and provide the transparency so demanded by his supporters, Trump decided to go in a different direction, attempting to distract from the base-shattering scandal while seeking a new “list” from Epstein’s incarcerated longtime associate and girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.

“Let’s put all of these tapes and depositions out to the public,” Garcia told Meidas Touch Tuesday. “We have nothing to hide here.”

“What I would say is that in no way [did] Bill Barr’s testimony—change the direction of this case,” he continued. “In no way did Bill Barr say anything that was groundbreaking in a way to halt our desire and need for justice for these victims and our certainty that Donald Trump and his name and other folks that may have been involved in different ways with Epstein are not in these files. We know that they are.

“So Bill Barr’s testimony was an act of Republicans trying to control a narrative,” he added.

Even Steve Bannon Admits Gavin Newsom’s Trump Trolling Is Pretty Good - 2025-08-20T13:18:13Z

Nobody is getting under MAGA skin like California Governor Gavin Newsom.

The Democratic bully-for-good has been on a social media crusade this week, rising to the top of algorithmic feeds by parodying Donald Trump’s posting style and his attention-grabbing stunts. Some of those low-brow trolling efforts include reposting a photoshopped image of Mount Rushmore with Newsom’s face on it, a mock-up of Newsom as a king on the cover of Time magazine, as well as an AI-hatched depiction of Newsom surrounded by Tucker Carlson, the late Hulk Hogan, and Kid Rock (and then writing in all-caps that he hates Kid Rock.)

The déjà vu is intended to serve as a jarring mirror for Republicans still allied with the authoritarian president, and, incredibly, it’s working.

“He’s trying to mimic President Trump,” Trump’s first term chief strategist Steve Bannon told Politico Playbook. “He’s no Trump, but if you look at the Democratic Party, he’s at least getting up there, and he’s trying to imitate a Trumpian vision of fighting, right? He looks like the only person in the Democratic Party who is organizing a fight that they feel they can win.”

“People in the MAGA movement and the America First movement should start paying attention to this, because it’s not going to go away, they’re only going to get more intense,” Bannon added.

The California governor’s social media strategy is a novel one for Democrats, fighting the right’s AI-generated slop with even more AI-generated slop. In one particularly viral post, Newsom ragged on the president’s latest variant of “covfefe,” mocking Trump for posting “bela” to his most frequented communication platform, Truth Social.

“DONALD (TINY HANDS), HAS WRITTEN HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY THIS MORNING—UNFORTUNATELY (LOW IQ) HE SPELLED IT WRONG—‘BETA,’” Newsom wrote. “SOON YOU WILL BE A ‘FIRED’ BETA BECAUSE OF MY PERFECT, ‘BEAUTIFUL MAPS.’ THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!—GCN”

Newsom, in his own words, has “changed.”

“The facts have changed; [Democrats] need to change,” Newsom told Fox LA’s Elex Michaelson Tuesday.

Breaking character momentarily during a press conference last week, Newsom said that he hoped the dumbed-down antics would serve as a “wake-up call for the president of the United States.”

“I’m sort of following his example. If you’ve got issues with what I’m putting out, you sure as hell should have concerns about what he’s putting out as president,” Newsom continued. “I think the deeper question is how have we allowed the normalization of his tweets, Truth Social posts over the course of the last many years, to go without similar scrutiny and notice?”

Newsom’s nonsense has ruffled feathers all the way to the Oval Office. Asked for a request to comment to Politico, the White House issued what could be the first official statement in meme format.

Screenshot of a White House meme

Trump Praises Man Responsible for Over 60,000 Deaths as a “War Hero” - 2025-08-20T13:02:45Z

Draft dodger Donald Trump claimed to be a “war hero” while gushing similarly about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

While calling in to The Mark Levin Show Tuesday night, Trump defended his old pal “Bibi”—and took the opportunity to pat himself on the back too. 

“He’s a good man, he’s in there fighting. He’s fighting, you know they’re trying to put him in jail on top of everything else. How about that? He’s—he’s a war hero, because we worked together. He’s a war hero, I guess I am too. Nobody cares, but I am too, I mean, I sent those planes,” Trump said, likely referring to his controversial strike on nuclear facilities in Iran.   

But Netanyahu isn’t a war hero—he’s a war criminal accused of committing crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court, which has issued a warrant for his arrest. Netanyahu’s sweeping military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 60,000 people, including civilians, children, and journalists. Incarcerated Palestinians in Israel have reported horrific torture and abuse at the hands of their captors, according to the United Nations. Israel’s destruction of Gaza has displaced nearly two million Palestinians and resulted in a widespread famine that threatens to kill thousands more. 

Earlier this month, Trump and Netanyahu reportedly got into a shouting match over the phone when the Israeli leader tried to claim that there was no starvation in Gaza. But less than a month later, Trump is back to singing his praises—and trying to take credit for the violence he has sown. 

And Trump is far from a war hero himself, no matter how many conflicts he claims to have resolved—and being complicit in Netanyahu’s war crimes certainly isn’t helping. 

Transcript: Trump Press Sec’s Fury at Media Erupts as Putin Mess Grows - 2025-08-20T11:43:23Z

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the August 20 episode of the
Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s fawning over President Trump really went haywire, and so did her anger at the media for not reporting sufficiently on his world-historical greatness. The topic was Trump’s handling of Russia and Ukraine. Leavitt slammed the media for not reporting on Trump’s smashing successes on this front, even though there haven’t actually been real successes. But behind all the absurdity here is something deadly serious. Amid all these demands for adulation of Trump, he, Leavitt, and the White House seem to be moving us toward a world that we very much should dread—one of a weaker Western alliance and stronger autocracies—and they never come clean about what that world will actually look like. Today we’re talking about all this with one of our favorite observers of global affairs, Nicholas Grossman, a professor of international relations at the University of Illinois who recently wrote a good piece for The Bulwark about Trump’s megalomania as a major factor in all this. Nick, good to have you on.

Nicholas Grossman: Hi Greg, great to be with you.

Sargent: So over the last week, Trump has met with both Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian leader Zelenskiy and with European leaders. He emerged from the meeting with Putin without a ceasefire and then turned right around and said the push for peace should continue without any ceasefire, essentially going along with Putin’s wishes. Then he offered Zelenskiy and European leaders only the vaguest of security guarantees for Ukraine should some kind of peace deal be reached. Nick, can you sum up where we are right now and what it means?

Grossman: Where we are is basically where we’ve been all year, which is the Ukraine war raging. The party is no closer to peace in particular because Russia started the war and the war will keep going until Russia changes that and decides to stop that, make some sort of deal. Trump had actually—and he’s gotten a lot of accolades from the media for this—somewhat shifted from a Putin sympathetic tone to parroting a lot of Russian propaganda, to saying he was offended; he was angry and frustrated that Putin wasn’t making peace and [said] that there would be sanctions or other pressure. And then this meeting came out and there [are] no sanctions and he’s back to essentially parroting Russian propaganda.

So the Russian military is still advancing. The Ukrainians are still resisting them. Russians are still bombing Ukrainian cities. The Europeans are still supporting the Ukrainians, working harder to try to support them in the absence of some of the U.S. support that Trump has reduced. And the United States is floundering, is looking like it is hapless as opposed to being the essential leader in the world that is trying to establish peace. It is flitting back and forth between these two different parties and trying to just tell them what the other one is saying. [That] is pretty much the greatest achievement that the U.S. has claimed.

Sargent: That doesn’t sound too great, and it certainly contrasts rather sharply with what White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. She gave her own version of events. She’s very upset about the media coverage of Trump’s handling of the situation. Listen to this. It’s a bit long, but it’s worth it.


Karoline Leavitt (audio voiceover): However, one thing that has absolutely not changed is the media’s negative and downright false coverage of President Trump and his foreign policy accomplishments. From the beginning of this entire process, much of the left-wing media has been actively rooting against the president of the United States in the pursuit of peace. Initially, the media ridiculously claimed that President Trump was somehow beholden to Russia for even agreeing to have a face-to-face discussion with President Putin inside of the United States. The media said President Trump was making a grave mistake by “legitimizing Putin.” They were aghast that President Trump would treat another world leader like a world leader. The media relentlessly attacked President Trump and claimed he suffered a “major defeat” for not immediately emerging with a final agreement, even though he said, heading into that meeting, this was a meeting to listen and to understand how to move the ball forward.

All weekend following those historic U.S.-Russia bilateral talks, we listened to clueless pundits on television trying but failing to claim that the president had failed. The so-called experts in the foreign policy establishment whose record is nothing but endless wars, trillions of wasted taxpayer dollars, and dead Americans have the nerve to try and lecture President Trump, who has solved seven global conflicts in seven months, about peace.


Sargent: Nick, let’s divide this into two pieces. First, let’s start with the claim, which is now constant from Trump and Leavitt, that Trump is the greatest peacemaker in world history, having magically solved seven wars—although that number tends to shift. In some cases, there isn’t a lasting peace or the violence is continuing. And in others, his role is heavily disputed. It’s just a lot of nonsense. You want to give us the rundown on the claim?

Grossman: Sure. The short answer is that it’s bullshit. It reminds me of something from debate: a move called the Gish gallop where somebody just throws a whole bunch of bullshit at the wall and then their opponents end up getting caught up in disputing each one. And if anything, it would be a waste of time to dispute each one. There’s things like between Congo and Rwanda; the rebel group there is still fighting and they’re saying they’re going to escalate again. Or India and Pakistan where they’re saying, No, actually we did it on our own. They didn’t really do much. Other ones where it isn’t even a peace deal. They don’t even have relations. And so all of it is essentially bullshit.

What Trump has actually done in office is escalate various conflicts, destabilize various situations and generally make the world a less stable place by weakening support for U.S. allies and abandoning America’s role in the world. That is a much bigger impact than the rest of it: that they’re lying because Trump’s top foreign policy priority has always been lying to the American people, to put on a show for Americans, not to do the hard work that actually makes this stuff accomplished in the world. The reason why people get, say, a Nobel Peace Prize or that’s an achievement is because peace is hard—and they haven’t done the work. They’ve mostly just tried to bullshit their way through it and claim credit for things that happened or just lied about things that didn’t actually happen.

Sargent: What’s funny about that is that Leavitt really feels the heat from Trump’s actual desire for a Nobel. It’s very clear that that’s what’s going on with her. He’s really probably raging in private, Why haven’t they given me the Peace Prize yet? And she goes out at these briefings with the task of soothing Trump’s ego over this. And that’s why I think you’re seeing rant after rant from her both at the press and at the failure to award him a peace prize, which, by the way, she actually complained about the other day. She said it’s high time he gets granted one.

Grossman: It’s crazy to think that the priority of the president of the United States is to pretend and bluster his way to get a prize for himself, not to actually advance U.S. interests or do anything positive for the world. But if you take that as true, that that’s what they’re actually doing—that she really is getting up in front of the world with the primary goal of soothing his ego and trying to sell him to the Nobel Prize Committee or a similar prize committee—then the actions make more sense. It’s not for national interest. And that is both very weird—we should not stop recognizing how just weird that is.

And also, it’s really bad for U.S. interests, for the world. The U.S. played an essential role, and various presidents with varying degrees of foreign policy—positive and negative—still all managed to play that role to some positive degree in parts of the world. And the Trump administration has abdicated it. And they’re floundering and trying to put on a show instead of actually doing it.

Sargent: Well said. Let’s go to the other piece of Leavitt’s claim, which is her long complaint about the media coverage. It seems to me the coverage has been more than appropriate here. First of all, as you pointed out earlier, and I thought it was a critical point, he actually got lots of praise when he got temporarily tough on Russia, though he dropped that rather quickly. But since then, he has bent over backward to align with Putin, and he has promised to get Putin to agree to peace but has failed to come through on that. And also, there’s absolutely no sense whatsoever of what Trump will demand in concessions from Russia in exchange for any peace or what sort of guarantee of Ukraine’s long-term security he’s willing to demand. That’s what the criticism has been, and those are valid criticisms. Am I being too harsh?

Grossman: No. In fact, not harsh enough. The security guarantee is a good place to start, because a real security guarantee is hard. It’s the sort of thing that requires real effort. You can’t just say, Don’t do it or I’ll attack you. You have to make them believe it. You have to make it credible. So with North Korea, for example, the U.S. has troops in South Korea. They do joint exercises. They have integrated command structures, integrated equipment and supply chains. If North Korea attacks, they will kill Americans. China knows they will kill Americans. And so that creates a type of trip wire that makes it where they don’t want to cross that and do it. NATO is similar with Russia. It takes an immense amount of effort to make it that Russia truly believes that the United States will go to war for, for example, Poland. And by that, it keeps Russia out of Poland.

So to make a real security guarantee that would keep Russia out of Ukraine—given that Russia has attacked not once but twice, breaking agreements each time in doing it, it stands to reason that Putin can’t be trusted, that he could easily decide to try for more again later, which means that there would need to be real boots on the ground that would be in the way. And part of the problem with the Trump administration is while they’re not even saying that they will do that—so not even putting the gestures toward the real thing that might create a stable peace—but even if they tried to, it would not be credible. Nobody, certainly not the Kremlin, believes that Trump would follow through with that. Even if maybe he thought it was a good idea for a moment, he’s shown that he’ll flip back and forth. He’s subject to flattery, to manipulation, to moods, or just to general incompetence and lack of follow-through.

And if you looked at Leavitt’s comments, when you cut through a lot of the bullshit, her whole defense was Trump’s achievement was he got meetings. He got Putin to have a meeting, and then he got the Europeans to have a meeting. And those are not achievements. Giving Putin a P.R. victory of a red-carpet rollout on U.S. soil and then coming out with the president of the United States essentially repeating Russian propaganda and saying that he will not be putting on those sanctions—dropping the whole idea of sanctions—that is a success for Russia. Anybody could have done that. It was very easy to get Putin to come to the United States and dance around in front of the cameras and get a president to look at him positively, if a U.S. president wanted to do that. They just didn’t because it was bad for the United States. She says, Why didn’t you treat him like an international leader? Why wouldn’t they? And the answer is because he’s an aggressive war criminal. So countries are treating him like an aggressive war criminal.

Sargent: So here’s some more from Karoline Leavitt. Listen to this.


Leavitt (audio voiceover): There was so much progress in the readout that was given to these European leaders immediately following his meeting with President Putin that every single one of them got on a plane 48 hours later and flew to the United States of America.


Sargent: Nick, that’s not what happened, is it?

Grossman: No. The Europeans scrambled to Washington in worry to try to urge the United States not to make a terrible mistake. And that is not an achievement. That is a sign of a terribly frayed alliance, of the U.S. being an unreliable partner, of chaos where there’s supposed to be this bedrock of reliability that provided security for the U.S. and its allies for so many years.

Sargent: There was a new Reuters poll that found 54 percent of Americans say Trump is too closely aligned with Russia. I want to say that that’s actually really, really heartening to see. It’s not as big a number as I’d like, but it’s a pretty solid majority: 54 percent, well over 50. And given the roar of propaganda that’s come out from the White House, essentially trying to portray him as genuinely desiring peace between the two parties, it’s good to see that people are figuring out that at the core of this whole thing is that Trump is allied with Putin. That’s the essential fact that they can’t paper over no matter how hard they try. Trump has long, I think, wanted to see Russia win the war, maybe not for any particularly strong ideological reasons but because he’s simpatico with Putin. He thinks Putin and he get each other in some sense. They’re fellow autocrats. They’re sneered at by elites in a similar way. And I’ve got say, I’m glad to see that the public is figuring this out.

Grossman: Yeah, it’s nice to see a majority. And I think it’s fair to say that there’s a big chunk of the country that would respond to polls just by which answer says “I side with Trump,” and then just say whatever that is. That creates a ceiling on what the disapproval would be. But the fact that this is 54 as opposed to, I don’t know, 42 or something where it’s just Democrats—it’s something that is overwhelming. It’s one of the, I’d say, key features about Trump in his public life that he is very positive about Vladimir Putin. He’s negative about so many people in so many different ways. We know what he sounds like when he wants to speak negatively of somebody. And he never does that of Putin. And he seems almost, and like he did in Alaska, like he was, I don’t know, fanboying—like he was a Star Wars fan meeting Mark Hamill or something. He seemed very excited. And I take it as not any secret meetings where they’re working on a nefarious plan but that Trump has always had admiration for Putin, is jealous of Putin, wants to be seen as a tough guy like that. Trump is personally a wuss, and Putin is personally a killer and is a hard man in a way that Trump is not and portrays himself well with good image creation.

And Trump, even at the start of the war, gushed that it was savvy and genius to attack Ukraine like that. Real quotes, savvy and genius was his reaction. A big part of it is also his worldview: that the strong should be able to push around weaker ones. He and a lot of his staff bathe in online right-wing propaganda that the Ukrainians—like the West—are weak and woke and too gay to fight. And that has nothing to do with warfare, how it actually works. That’s culture-war nonsense. But they really are caught up in a lot of that. And so his worldview—a lot of their worldview—needs Russia to win, to have some success to validate it. And the type of actual response to Russia that would really get them to stop the strong, sustained military effort—that would make them realize either that their war effort would collapse or make them realize that it was futile and unlikely to succeed, not worth the effort, and that they should just take what they can get—that’s the only real path to peace. And Trump can’t do that because he simply—I don’t even think he’d be capable of it. But even if he were, he does not want it. He doesn’t really try for it. I, at the very least, think it’s safe to say, based on all his actions, he does not want to see Putin lose, actually lose. And therefore he can’t do what the Ukrainians and the Europeans need.

Sargent: Well, that brings me to the question I wanted to close out on. Just to go big picture, we keep being instructed to worship Trump as a great world-historical peacemaker. But at the end of the day, you put your finger on it there: Trump is setting us up for a world in which the alliance of Western liberal democracies is weaker and autocracies are stronger. It’s a world in which quasi-genocidal conflict and invasions like Putin’s are rewarded. Can you talk about where we’re going here and what that might look like, that world?

Grossman: Sure. I think that this is without exaggeration one of the biggest things that’s happened in modern history. Essentially, the world order from World War II on, and especially from the end of the Cold War, was based on the bedrock of American power: America as the champion of democracy, as the policeman of the world, as the head of the liberal world order, whatever euphemism you wanted to use for it of American hegemony. And Trump has abdicated that role. By Americans electing him once, a lot of other countries could say, Oh, it’s a fluke, but doing it again after seeing all the criminality, after seeing the first term of him in office has signaled to the world that the United States is not reliable.

So we have at minimum a few years of the U.S. upending the global trade order that the U.S. built after World War II and after the Cold War that has made so much peace and prosperity. We’ve got him upending alliances at NATO; I mentioned credibility earlier. NATO depends on the widespread belief that the United States will be there for its allies. And that belief is not there—because who really trust Trump is going to do that? There’s Middle East destabilization. Nuclear proliferation is a big part of his legacy, both with normalizing North Korea’s nuclear weapons in his first term and with the Iran attack that he’s lying about because they did not actually destroy Iran’s nuclear program. And now Trump, because he’s trying to pretend that he did, effectively is giving cover for their additional nuclear development.

All of this adds up to a more dangerous, less stabilized world: something that in the grand scheme of things looks closer to multipolar before-World-War-I international system rather than the more stable, unipolar, U.S.-led international system that lasted from the end of the Cold War until—I think really, when historians look back on it, they will mark it until November 2024, or January 2025, when he takes office.

Sargent: Yes. And to top all that off, he’s also collapsing American liberal democracy here at home. Nick Grossman, thanks for that rundown, man. That was really something. We really appreciate it.

Grossman: All right. Thanks for having me.

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