Author: A.T.

RNC Chair on Epstein

Hope you had a great Fourth.

DEM250.COM

So far, Andrew Yang has the most votes, followed by Abe Lincoln, Heather Cox Richardson and Harry Truman (““When even one American – who has done nothing wrong — is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth — then all Americans are in peril.”).

Jimmy Carter comes next (“The only title higher and more powerful than president is the title of citizen.”) 

Then former lifelong Republican FBI Director James Comey (“A president who sees the rule of law as an obstacle to be circumvented—rather than a principle to be upheld—is a threat to the very democracy he was elected to lead.”)

I love all those, but there are so many more.  John McCain!  Elizabteth Warren!  AOC!  Ronald Reagan!

George H.W. Bush:  “America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.”

Gerald Ford: “Our constitution works; our great republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here, the people rule.”

Dan Rather: “I have covered wars, assassinations, and political upheavals. But I have never seen a threat to democracy as clear and present as the one we face today. History will judge how we respond.”

Jake Sullivan!  James Talarico!

Jeb Bush: “We need to be vigilant against the forces of authoritarianism. America’s democracy is worth defending—and that means standing up even against members of your own party when they go wrong.”

And preposterously, as it comes from the current chair of the Republican National Committee, who might take a cue from Jeb Bush (above): “The moment we treat the rule of law as optional, we’ve already lost what makes America great.”

Lots more.  Enjoy.

 

SUMMER READING

Rule of Lies: My Wild Ride Through Chaos, Corruption, and Murder in Putin’s Russia — the amazing autobiography of Jamison Firestone, read (if you choose the Audible version) by the author.

A Dutiful Boy: A Memoir of a Gay Muslim’s Journey to Acceptance — so beautifully written, by a Brit named Mohsin Zaidi.

SUING HEGSETH

Last month my friend James Dale sued the Department of Defense. As reported by the Associated Press, The Washington Post, and The New York Times:

. . . Mr. Hegseth, who has made a campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion policies the hallmark of his tenure as defense secretary, said that Scouting America was banning transgender people from openly participating in the group. But Scouting America said it had not changed its policies on transgender members.

“Both accounts cannot be true, and the stakes are of profound public importance,” the complaint, filed by activist James Dale, said. Mr. Dale said in an interview that he had tried for months to get the Pentagon to show him the agreement, and that the department had not done so.

Mr. Dale was the plaintiff in a 2000 Supreme Court case in which the court ruled, 5 to 4, that the Boy Scouts of America was exempt from a state law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. The organization changed its name to Scouting America in 2024. . . .

EPSTEIN!

MAGA Republicans are okay with pedophilia when their leader — who has enriched himself by billions in the past year — tells them it’s all a witch hunt.

Trump continues to flout the law Congress passed one vote shy of unanimously — and RNC chair Joe Gruter, quoted in bold face above, says . . . nothing.

 

What Reagan, Rogan, Bono and AOC Have in Common

DEM250.COM

You got an early look, but now this nonpartisan 250th Birthday Card To America is about to launch.  Mary Trump will be sharing with her 5 million followers tomorrow, Seth Godin with his 1.5 million, Andrew Yang is tweeting it — and more.

Our friends at Field Team 6 just shared it with their 40,000 volunteers:

DEM250.COM INSPIRES!

In honor of America’s 250th birthday, friendly anonymous organizers have assembled a collection of inspiring quotations about American democracy, many from the present, some from the past (hello Honest Abe!), one from Field Team 6 founder Jason Berlin. Check them out at dem250.com – and upvote any you like, including Jason’s quote (if you like it, of course)! The quote links to our site, so the more people see it, the more volunteers and donors we can rally!

So it just might go viral and remind people of the ideals on which this wonderful, imperfect country was founded . . . striving, two steps forward, one step back, to form an ever more perfect union.

Grammarians note that perfect is perfect, so “more perfect” is impossible.  But that pursuit of the more perfect union, based on our Founders’ ideals, was until recently a beacon of hope to billions around the world.  So, grammar be damned, it falls to us to re-light that torch.

As you’ll see — from AOC to Ronald Reagan; from Abe Lincoln and Joe Rogan to Oprah, Bono, and Barbra; from two former chairs of the RNC to the current chair of the DNC — there is broad agreement: democracy is worth fighting for.

Join Indivisible.

Support the opposition.

 

 

“Find your favorites and vote at Dem250.com.”

 

Depoliticize The Court!

DEPOLITICIZE THE COURT!

Even the ruling on birthright citizenship was terrible, when you look into it more deeply (5-4 instead of 9-0, with Brett Kavanaugh opening the door for Congressional action).  The worst, as both Paul Krugman and Robert Reich make clear, was in destroying the independence of the independent agencies.  Oddly, the one that troubles me least upholds a state’s right to ban trans girls from playing sports in public schools, because many states do not ban that . . . and as more and more of us get to know the wonderful trans women I know, I think they will defer to local legislatures, who may in turn defer to coaches and common sense.  (Why not let a trans girl compete in swimming?  And perhaps award TWO trophies, one for the trans girl who won and one for the female at birth?  Will this ruin any 14-year-old swimmer’s lives?)

We need to depoliticize thew court.  Not stack it or pack it or “take it back” — depoliticize it.

And I believe we can, as long-time readers will recall.  (If you have time, take a look!)

EPSTEIN

Any news?  Trump still defying the law Congress passed one vote shy of unanimously?

Alleged child rape something MAGA can overlook because prices have come down and he ended Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Day One?

CORRECTION:

Rich G.: “Of course I agree with this generally [hurray for Heather Cox Richardson!]. But saying that Trump’s nine federal investments in private companies have ‘cost’ taxpayers $10B is inaccurate. The Intel investment (done by Trump under Biden’s CHIPS act) is now worth an unrealized gain of $45B. We lost $10B on GM but probably saved an industry.  We made >$22B on AIG and probably saved the financial system. My favorite was a nonfinancial investment but government intervention in LTCM as beautifully written about in When Genius Failed.”

 

Watergate Shmawtergate

But first . . .

SLTB: “Senator Rodger Marshall, up for re-election in Kansas [an obstetrician who has voted consistently against women’s reproductive rights], was on “Meet the Press” Sunday. Despite his being a highly educated doctor, I never saw anyone (other than Trump) lie so blatantly to the national press and get away with most of it.  He said Trump was the first person to get Iran to sign a document that they wouldn’t pursue a nuclear bomb.  This statement was so obviously false and wasn’t challenged by the moderator.  The JCPOA under Obama did this and way more (inspections and removal of all enriched uranium as well as giving up their centrifuges).  Every Dem needs to call this guy out.”

→ Better still: every Dem needs to send Pastor Adam Hamilton $25 and we’ll win!

And now . . .

I am definitely not the first to remark on this — it’s a month old — but it’s worth amplifying.

JD Vance thinks Watergate was trivial. (For some reason, YouTube cuts off before the good news, below.)

. . . In trying to romanticize Richard Nixon’s corruption, J.D. Vance took it further, making the strongest case yet for just how far America’s standards for presidential misconduct have fallen.  He was asking Americans to view Watergate, once considered the defining presidential scandal in modern history, as something so insignificant by today’s standards that it would barely survive a single news cycle. . . .

And that’s the part he didn’t realize he was admitting. Because if Watergate would barely make the news today, then what he’s really saying is that the scandals surrounding Donald Trump have become so much larger, so much more constant, and so all-consuming that the crime which once brought down a president would now barely interrupt the news cycle. Nixon’s corruption didn’t become smaller. Our tolerance for presidential corruption became much larger because Donald Trump keeps pushing the boundaries of what Americans are expected to accept. . . .

She goes on to say:

What the Vice President said was an accidental confession about just how dramatically the standards of American democracy have eroded.

And it goes deeper than just that one moment. Because what J.D. Vance said wasn’t an isolated slip. It reflects a broader strategy this administration has been pursuing for months. They are choosing their words carefully, not to elevate our politics, but to lower the standards of what Americans are expected to tolerate. If you can normalize the language, you can normalize the behavior that follows.

For example:

The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool has been a disaster for the president. . . . [T]he administration did not take responsibility for the botched project that it had commissioned, overseen, and accelerated. Instead, Donald Trump is continuing to claim, without evidence, that vandals had slashed the pool’s lining and poured chemicals into the water. . . . National Guard members were deployed to the site, approaching visitors to remind them not to touch the water, or they could be arrested. . . . [I]nstead of admitting the failure, they arrested people who touched the pool.

This is how authoritarian normalization works, and it never happens all at once. You test the language first. You see if anyone stops you. Nobody does. You escalate the language. A cabinet secretary says “libtards” on a government stage. Nobody stops you. You test the action. You arrest citizens for touching the evidence of your own failure. Nobody stops you. And then you rehabilitate historical corruption itself. A vice president sitting in a presidential library and tells America that the scandal that once brought down a president wouldn’t even last in the news cycle very long. Each one of these, taken on its own, can be dismissed as a gaffe, a joke, an overreaction, another Trump thing. But taken together, they are rehearsals. They are an administration testing the limits of what Americans will tolerate, and every test that passes without consequence gives permission for the next one.

We are now less than five months from the midterm elections. Every one of these tests is calibrated toward November. The language is designed to dehumanize the opposition before voters go to the polls. The arrests are designed to intimidate. And the Nixon rehabilitation is designed to tell Americans that the corruption they’ve already witnessed doesn’t matter, has never mattered, and should never have been grounds for accountability in the first place. The message Vance delivered today from that cream-colored chair, whether he understood it or not, was simple: stop expecting consequences.

And now the good news!

In December 2025, Donald Trump filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC over a Panorama documentary called “Trump: A Second Chance?” The documentary edited together portions of Trump’s January 6 speech in a way that made it appear he had urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell” before they attacked the Capitol. The BBC has apologized for the misleading edit but has argued there is no basis for a defamation claim and is fighting to have the lawsuit dismissed. Trump filed the lawsuit because he could not tolerate being embarrassed by a British documentary that most Americans never even saw.

And now that lawsuit is becoming something Donald Trump never anticipated. In a new legal filing reviewed by Newsweek and reported today, Trump’s own attorneys are complaining that the BBC is “attempting to use this action as a vehicle to conduct a trial as to the events that occurred on January 6th.” The BBC’s lawyers have requested through discovery Trump’s telephone logs, his calendars, his schedules, and his daily diaries from November 3, 2020, to January 20, 2021. They have requested documents related to the “Stop the Steal” rally and Trump’s communications with key advisers, including Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Rudy Giuliani. They have formally subpoenaed the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, managed by Donald Trump Jr., which holds the president’s business interests and assets. Trump’s attorneys are calling these requests “drastically far afield from the issues in this action.” The case is currently set to go to trial in February 2027.

Jack Smith’s prosecution was shut down. The congressional January 6 investigation was completed, but its consequences were blunted by sweeping pardons. The January 6 accountability that so many Americans wanted disappeared when he was re-elected. And then Donald Trump, because his ego would not allow him to let a British documentary go unanswered, filed a lawsuit and handed the BBC’s lawyers the legal standing to demand every record of what he did between Election Day 2020 and Inauguration Day 2021. He opened the door himself. And now he is complaining that the BBC walked through it.

Nobody forced him to do this. This is not a prosecution. This is not a congressional subpoena. This is a lawsuit that Donald Trump chose to file in a court he chose because he wanted $10 billion from a public broadcaster. And the legal process he set in motion is now demanding exactly the kind of evidence that brought down Richard Nixon: the phone logs, the schedules, the communications, the minute-by-minute record of what the president was doing while the Capitol was under attack. Nixon had the tapes. Donald Trump may end up producing his own.

Whether this case goes to trial in February or settles before it gets there, the discovery requests alone have already told us something important. The legal architecture of accountability is still functioning, even when it looks like it’s been dismantled. The truth has a way of surfacing, even when powerful people spend years trying to bury it. Nixon learned that lesson. And J.D. Vance, sitting in Nixon’s Presidential Library, accidentally told us that this administration knows it too. Their entire strategy, the language, the arrests, the rehabilitation of Nixon’s legacy, all of it is designed to convince Americans that the truth no longer matters. But a courtroom in Florida, powered by a lawsuit that Donald Trump filed with his own hand, is quietly proving them wrong.

The one thing this administration cannot control, no matter how many words they manufacture or how many people they arrest for touching peeling paint, is the truth. The truth does not disappear because they rewrite the narrative. And consequences do not disappear because they stop believing in them. Consequences have a way of catching up to those who spend their lives convinced they are untouchable. They are patient. They are relentless. And for some of the people responsible for bringing us to this moment, they are already beginning to arrive in the very courtrooms Donald Trump helped build for himself. That is why I still have hope for America. And you should, too.

EPSTEIN

Any news?  Trump still defying the law Congress passed one vote shy of unanimously?  Alleged child rape something MAGA can overlook because prices have come down and he ended Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Day One?

 

Handing The Mic To Heather Cox Richardson . . .

. . . who writes, in part:

. . . Unable to accomplish anything, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) sent House members home on Thursday.

Representative Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) noted: “[N]obody has ever seen a Congress like this before. . . . This is not good for our country. It is not good for our communities. It’s not good for our democracy. It’s not good, just for basic common sense and basic human dignity. Like, these guys need to get it together.”

The turmoil in Washington, D.C., reflects the changing world of American politics as the Republicans become a far-right party that embraces white nationalism while those Americans standing firm on the nation’s historic democratic principles jockey to create a political system that will represent their movement.

. . . Yesterday, at a Faith and Freedom Coalition town hall in Washington, D.C., Representative Tom Emmer (R-MN), the third-ranking Republican in the House, made the white nationalism of the Republican Party clear. He said: “Minnesotans are so afraid that you’re gonna call us a racist, you’re gonna call us an Islamophobe…. You know what? I would argue that I never did care, but I’m done being careful, even the least bit careful…. [Somalis] don’t assimilate. And if they don’t assimilate, then they should go the hell back to where they came from.”

Eric Henderson of CBS News notes that Emmer has moved dramatically rightward in the past decade. In 2016, Emmer told NPR that the Somali community in Minnesota was among “the fastest-assimilating populations that we’ve had.” “I’m going to say it out loud,” he said, “when you move to a community, as long as you are here legally, I am very sorry, but you don’t get to slam the gate behind you and tell nobody else that they’re welcome. That’s not the way this country works.”

The once grand Republican Party has become a party of radical extremists, coalescing around white nationalism.

Meanwhile, . . . Trump is trying out midterm messaging that calls Democrats “hard core, godless communists.” “They’re animals,” Trump said of his political opponents today in a speech to Christian conservatives at a convention of the Faith & Freedom Coalition in Washington. “We have to stop this, this horrible thread of cancer that’s permeating our country called communism.”

. . . Communism is a political ideology that calls for public ownership of major resources as well as the means of production, so that the state, rather than private individuals or corporations, owns factories, farms, mines, and so on. In theory, although seldom in practice, the state then redistributes wealth according to need.

Communism has never been popular in the United States, and the only politician calling for state takeover of private industries is Trump, under whom the government has taken stakes in at least nine companies involved in steel, minerals, nuclear energy, and semiconductors, costing at least $10 billion in taxpayer money.

Unlike communism, the sort of government both Democrats and Republicans embraced from 1933 to 1981 was very popular, and those opposed to the Trump administration appear to be starting to demand such a government again.

Their views are a response to the extremes of wealth in today’s United States. Mary Cunningham of CBS News reported in January that the third quarter of 2025 showed the top 1% of households in the U.S. owning 31.7% of all U.S. wealth. That’s the highest share they’ve had since the Federal Reserve started tracking household wealth in 1989. That means the wealthiest 1% held roughly as much in assets as the bottom 90% of Americans combined: about $55 trillion.

. . . The Democratic candidates Trump is railing against as “communists” actually argue that robust private enterprise cannot survive unless the government combats dramatic wealth inequality through regulation and taxation, and operates the segments of society that people need to survive, like transportation, utilities, and health care.

Across the country we are seeing Democratic candidates calling for an end to government corruption; the breaking up of monopolies that hurt workers, farmers, and consumers and shut entrepreneurs out of markets; protection for workers and consumers; universal health care; and an end to big money in politics. These policy demands are not radical; they are firmly within the political tradition not just of the Democrats, but also of the Republicans.

In 1956 the Republican Party platform approvingly quoted “the great truth first spoken by Abraham Lincoln” that “[t]he legitimate object of Government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and individual capacities. But in all that people can individually do as well for themselves, Government ought not to interfere.”

The platform went on to affirm the party’s determination “that our children and their children, without distinction because of race, creed or color, may know the blessings of our free land.”

It called for “unimpeachable ethical standards and irreproachable personal conduct by all people in government.” Honesty was “an indispensable requirement of public service,” party officials said.

The Republicans of 1956 also said they were “proud of and shall continue our far-reaching and sound advances in matters of basic human needs—expansion of social security—broadened coverage in unemployment insurance—improved housing—and better health protection for all our people. We are determined that our government remain warmly responsive to the urgent social and economic problems of our people.” . . .

Like everything she writes: worth reading in full.

EPSTEIN

Any news?  Is MAGA really okay with protecting alleged child rapists?

Why?

 

A Great Resource For Protecting Democracy

Click here to see numerous ways to help . . .

. . . every one of them a total piece of cake — one actually involves donuts — compared to the wars our forefathers fought to overthrow British rule, defeat fascism*, and stanch the spread of communism**.

* Most of us are anti-fascist, I hope.  (“Anti-fa” for short.) 

** Communism has a far nobler premise than fascism, but — because it defies human nature in asking people to be selfless — quickly morphs into authoritarian tyranny.  Think Stalin and Mao, starvation and gulags.

 

Vote For Steve! Vote For Me!

VOTE FOR STEVE!

One of you — Steve Frank — wrote to tell me he’d “thrown his hat into the ring” to be Mr. South Whidbey 2026.

Not a race I’d been following, but — apparently — a worthy effort to meet the medical needs of his neighbors on an island off Washington State.

Steve’s email taglines are Make America America Again and Illegitimi non carborundum (don’t let the bastards grind you down) so I couldn’t resist clicking that link.

When I read this on his candidate bio . . .

Asked if he had a happy childhood, Steve replies “so far, so good.”

. . . I couldn’t resist giving him 25 votes.

Karma.

VOTE FOR ME!

A friend sent me an early look at Dem250.com.  Somehow, I found myself in the company of Thomas Jefferson, Liz Cheney, Michelle Obama, Warren Buffett, Paul Volcker and Paul McCartney.  If you like the quote Claude apparently found for me, “vote” for it.  (I prefer Norman Lear’s quote, but you can vote for more than one.)  Zero money is involved and zero data collection — just a way to celebrate what’s RIGHT about America 250 years in, and what we’re all fighting to preserve.

The site goes live for real in a few days . . . so you may find some bad links or other rough edges . . . but it’s live enough to vote.  And you know what they say: vote early and often.

Happy Birthday, America!

 

Superpower Vacuum

Superpower Vacuum—and the Broligarchs’ Plan to Fill It

If someone told you in 2016 that within a decade, Russia would lose a war to Ukraine and the United States would lose a war to Iran, you would have likely thought them insane.

Nevertheless . . . Putin’s dream of a Russian Empire stretching from the Pacific Ocean to Germany seems far less likely at this point than Putin being brought down by his own hubris.

And the long project of America’s far-right to destroy “globalism,” continuing with Trump’s dismantling of U.S. soft power, has left us isolated, weak, and vulnerable.

If nature abhors a vacuum, and the superpowers that took up so much space in the geopolitical order are shrinking, who will fill this yawning chasm?

Well, the broligarchs have a plan . . .

And I’m guessing you will not like it.

On a brighter note:

Take heart.  The tide is turning.  When we rise up in protest, we win.  Listen to Monday’s Maddow.

 

Thwarting Their Plans

How the Trump administration plans to interfere with the 2026 elections:

♦ Deceive

♦ Disrupt

♦ Deny

Click that link and join Thursday’s call to find out what you can do about it.

We’re gonna win.

Maybe even in Idaho!  There, Andrew Yang tells us, Todd Achilles is running as an Independent against an 83-year-old incumbent who hasn’t held a town hall in 18 years.  Until he resigned to run for the Senate, Todd was a Democratic state legislator appointed by the Republican governor*.  He’s an MBA with impressive military service followed by corporate experience.  Though he’s pledged not to caucus with either party, that’s fine by me.

*Andrew mis-typed.

THIS IS GOING TO SELL 5 ZILLION COPIES

Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump

(Tina Brown’s review.)