Must Watch: Siding With Putin February 20, 2025 Timothy Snyder, here with Lawrence O’Donnell. Trump is siding with Putin against Ukraine, just as he famously sided with Putin over the FBI. And just as — or at least reminiscent of the way that — Charles Lindbergh and the America First Party sided with Hitler in 1938 when he invaded Austria. And again in 1939 when he invaded Czechoslovakia and Poland. And in 1940 when he invaded Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and France. And in 1941 (Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania, the Soviet Union) — until Pearl Harbor, when they dropped their opposition to opposing Hitler. And it got worse yesterday, as I’m sure you know, when Trump explicitly doubled and tripled down. Have you joined Indivisible? Signed up for today’s 3pm EDT call? Tomorrow I hope to make another suggestion. In the meantime, I hope you can find a few minutes to watch Timothy Snyder with Lawrence O’Donnell. UNIT David T.: “I bought UNIT a few years ago after you plugged it. They had broken off from Windstream as I recall… now they’re proposing a merger with them. I got the proxy vote email tonight. Is the merger something that shareholders should support?” → My Uniti guru thinks “it’s a winner.” “After the merger,” he says, “it’s a 12-dollar stock. I believe it’s being packaged to sell to Verizon or AT&T.” He doesn’t mean literally right after the merger; just somewhere down the road, in like the next year or two. Having quite a few shares, I’m hoping he’s right — but only with money I can truly afford to lose.
Buy? Sell? Hold? February 19, 2025 But first . . . Here’s 7 minutes on Trump/Musk’s firing of nuclear safety personnel. Was it done legally? Efficiently? Will it help lower the price of groceries? Who needs nuclear safety, anyway? I’d love to know Carl’s opinion — and, as he writes me almost every day, he may well share it. If he does, I will share his views. So much more to say, including — tomorrow or soon — an idea for turning anxiety into action, but The Brutalist just started streaming and, while not for everyone, I was more or less riveted for 200 minutes last night. Also . . . Thanks for the feedback on yesterday’s “idea worth considering.” Most of it was thumbs up, but Nathaniel M. wrote: I think this is a terrible idea. One of the things that the extended primary system allows us to do is build infrastructure in the states for the general election, usually a year out or so from the general election. This would essentially hoover up donor dollars needed to retake the House, and either 1) force the eventual nominee to raise and spend at a time when donors and voters just want a break from politics (at a minimum the six months immediately following the election) or 2) lay off the staff they hired to win the primary and go dark for an extended period, which means they’d lose all momentum from the primary campaign season. Now, I did help bring Ranked Choice Voting to Alaska (and a Top-Four primary system), so I think there’s a lot of value in finding a way to get it adopted everywhere. I just don’t think this proposal is the way to do it. → Objections worth considering (and he concluded with some kind words, which I appreciated), but I think that, even if for this one time only, the pros could far outweigh the cons. There will be SO much Democratic time and energy focused on going to the polls in the mid-terms, whether for specific House and Senate candidates or for this added reason of expressing your preference for our next presidential nominee, I think it could definitely help us win back Congress and state legislatures . . . and that the energy will continue all the way through 2028. All further thoughts welcome. And now . . . OPRT closed at $9.05 in after-hours trading, so most of us now have a double, triple, or quadruple by now. Profit-taking in a tax-deferred retirement account wouldn’t be crazy (or if you’re somehow in a very low tax bracket). But if the company does hit its projected $1.10 to $1.30 earnings per share this year, with prospects for further gains, one could see it gradually trading up to 12 or 15 times earnings — so maybe another double from here in a year or two. I have no expertise to predict any of that; but I know for sure that selling here in a taxable account means giving up a good chunk of the gain, so I wouldn’t rush to do it if you bought your shares with money you could truly afford to lose. Or maybe sell some, so you’re playing with house money. Or sell but take a loss somewhere else to net out the gain. PRMRF dropped from $22 to $12.75 in the last couple of days. Even though we paid as little as $1 years ago, my heart still sank — until I saw that they’d paid out a one-time $10.42 special dividend ($15 Canadian), much of it a potentially tax-free return of capital. It’s certainly not the screaming buy it once was; but the same tax thinking above may apply here. CMRX, first suggested May 18, 2022, when it was trading under $2, closed at $4.83 last night — in part, I assume, on this announcement. I sold half.
Now HERE’s An Idea Worth Considering: February 18, 2025 The DNC should re-write its rules for the 2028 presidential primary to hold it all at once on November 5, 2026 — the day of the 2026 mid-terms — with ranked-choice voting. (Full disclosure: this was not my idea. It came from a fellow donor this past weekend at a fundraiser for Senator Ruben Gallego and Congressmen Eric Swalwell and Derek Tran. He gave me permission to steal it and eschewed credit.) The two main advantages? Mid-term turn-out among Democrats would be huge, improving our chance of winning back Congress and state legislatures. Whoever emerged as our nominee would have two years to “lead the opposition” and get his or her message across. By using ranked-choice voting, most people would see one of their top choices win; everyone would feel they had had a role in the process. A subsidiary advantage? The whole country would learn how simple and sensible ranked-choice (also known as “instant-runoff”) voting is . . . which really matters, because the more widely adopted it is, the more moderate candidates will be able to win primaries, and the less polarized our politics, and our nation, could become. (As I’ve written before, ranked choice voting is the very simple idea that if you’re ordering a lychee frozen margarita and the waiter says he’s not sure they have lychee today, you say, “well, if they don’t have lychee, I’ll take pineapple.” Just substitute Ralph Nader for lychee and Al Gore for pineapple.) A couple of finer points: > Sure, the RNC could copy this; but do we really think Trump would allow it? He has his eye on a third term, one way or another; and, even if not, would he want to see his successor in the spotlight so early on? My guess is no. > The rules should probably allow some mechanism, triggered under certain specified circumstances, for an escape hatch. Perhaps a re-run-off among the top tier if, a few months in advance of the 2028 Convention, national polls showed that the winner had not held up well. A health issue, perhaps, or a scandal. Either way, shortly after November 5, 2026, our newly-chosen nominee would take over leadership of The Perfect Shadow Cabinet (as described here a few days ago) and perhaps swap out some of its members. What do you think? Would this improve our odds in the mid-terms? And in 2028? PRESIDENT’S DAY BONUS Abe’s birthday was last Wednesday; George’s, this coming Saturday. Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, LBJ, Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden were also pretty great presidents in my view, despite some well-known flaws. Nixon, too, in some ways . . . even aspects of Reagan and the Bushes, if one hunts to find them. But the true gold standard in the modern era had his 102nd birthday last August 18th: President Jed Bartlet. Here he is with our Ambassador to Bulgaria. (Thanks, Andy R.)
Actions We Can Take — Today February 16, 2025February 16, 2025 But first: Not counting the military, there are 2.6 million federal employees. On average, including benefits, they earn on the order of $140,000 a year. That works out to a little more than $350 billion a year. If Elon Musk fired half a million of them, that would save just 1% of the budget — not counting the cost of paying them unemployment benefits and the loss of tax revenue levied on their earnings (and the cost of losing the value of their work, just in case they had not been totally useless, as he seems convinced they are). Maybe an even better way to reduce our deficit would be to collect more tax revenue from our wealthiest citizens and corporations by letting the Trump tax cuts expire on any income above, say, $1 million — and by adequately funding the IRS to collect those taxes. Both ideas are anathema to the billionaires who now control our government (though not to billionaires like Nick Hanauer, Mark Cuban, Oprah Winfrey, J.B. Pritzker, and Warren Buffett). I found this PBS interview of Philip K. Howard and Will Marshall on the right way to make government more efficient thoughtful in the extreme. And now: Indivisible just launched its Musk or Us Toolkit. Check it out! To see what their Zooms are like, here was Thursday’s. Register for their next one? 3pm Eastern Thursday. Also: Their latest Indivisible organizing guide. (If you live in a blue state, check out their blue state guide.) How to respond to Trump’s unconstitutional overreach. Their step-by-step toolkit for planning a meeting with your member of Congress. How to stay prepared and secure during a second Trump administration. Ready to start organizing your community? Fill out this form and let them know.
Is This What Carl Voted For? February 14, 2025February 13, 2025 Besides being monstrously cruel and immoral, Killing U.S.A.I.D. Is a Win for Autocrats Everywhere, writes Ambassador Samantha Power: We are witnessing one of the worst and most costly foreign policy blunders in U.S. history. Less than three weeks into Donald Trump’s second term, he, Elon Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have halted the U.S. Agency for International Development’s aid programs around the world. In so doing, they have imperiled millions of lives, thousands of American jobs and billions of dollars of investment in American small businesses and farms while severely undermining our national security and global influence — all while authoritarians and extremists celebrate their luck. . . . Many of the agency’s most significant investments — like helping communities rebuild after ISIS has been defeated or improving poor countries’ ability to suppress deadly infectious disease outbreaks — are immensely important for national security. And yet U.S.A.I.D. is no longer monitoring bird flu in 49 countries as it was three weeks ago; it has stopped working with at-risk youth in Central America to prevent gang violence that spurs migration; it is not cleaning up fields poisoned by Agent Orange in Vietnam; it is not eradicating polio; it is not collaborating with communities in countries like Syria, Morocco and Kazakhstan to reduce vulnerability to radicalization. The costs of dismantling these programs — and thus perpetrating these harms — will be felt for generations to come. . . . Some investments save lives almost immediately — like the medicines dispensed to 500,000 children with H.I.V., or the nutrient-rich food manufactured in states like Rhode Island and Georgia that pulls starving children from the brink of death. . . . U.S.A.I.D. has generated vast stores of political capital in the more than 100 countries where it works. . . . Unless [the Administration’s] cruel and immensely counterproductive actions are reversed — or Republicans in Congress join Democrats in an effort to roll them back — future generations will marvel that it wasn’t China’s actions that eroded U.S. standing and global security, paving the way for Beijing to become the partner of choice around the world. Instead, it was an American president and the billionaire he unleashed to shoot first and aim later, eliminating an institution that is a cost-effective example of what once distinguished the United States from our adversaries. I’d urge you to read Power’s full piece — every word of it, authoritative and compelling. And to join one of Indivisible‘s 1,300 chapters to fight back. And . . . if you have a few more minutes . . . to watch Lawrence O’Donnell, starting here, with inflation; or here, with the CEO of the Ford Motor Company; or here to see how Americans feel about the January 6 pardons and renaming the Gulf of Mexico . . . but especially about “Elon Musk’s literally snatching food away from starving babies.” O’Donnell may not have been fair in citing $57,000 as the sole dubious expenditure Musk found to justify his actions. But it was the sole example cited by the White House Press Secretary; and even if they had come up with $1 billion in dubious outlays — what about the other 97.5% of U.S.A.I.D.’s budget? I have not read 2 Corinthians, but can Christian MAGAs abide starving the poor to fund tax cuts for the rich? Even if they can, “we are witnessing one of the worst and most costly foreign policy blunders in U.S. history.” Surely MAGA voters didn’t vote for that. They have been betrayed.
Looking For Hope? February 13, 2025 One obvious destination: Simon Rosenberg’s Hopium Chronicles. (Tuesday’s post: Trump Is In A Far More Vulnerable Place Than It Appears Right Now. He Is Weak, Not Strong And Making Mistakes.) Subscribe! Another point of hope was suggested in a recent Zoom with Dahlia Lithwick. Executive summary: Democracy, once lost, can be clawed back, as it was in Poland and Brazil. Or not, as in Hungary and Russia. Alarmingly, writes Lithwick, Donald Trump’s Orbán Playbook Is Working Exactly as Intended. See, also, Trump on the splash page for CPAC Hungary 2025. It’s so much easier to save democracy before it’s been lost. We came within a couple of percentage points of doing that November 5th. If the Trump Administration obeys court rulings, we could be okay. Damaged in numerous ways, but around to fight another day. If Trump ignores court rulings, then “we the people” who believe in the rule of law — as so many Republicans used to! — will be tested as Poles, Brazilians, Hungarians, and Russians were. Will we rise to the challenge? Will we prevail? There’s Really Only One Way to Stop This Thing, writes Lithwick in another recent piece. “Unfortunately, it involves persuading ourselves to care about civics.” Have you joined Indivisible? Field Team 6? Loaded 5calls.org onto your phone? Two unrelated, minimally important sources of hope: OPRT and PRKR. OPRT reported its return to profitability yesterday and projected 2025 earnings per share in the range of $1.10 – $1.30. The stock reached $6.75 in after-hours trading. Who knows whether they’ll meet their projections or what earnings multiple the market will accord them if they do? But, as suggested here when the stock was $3.19, I’m hoping for a lot more upside. The only PRKR “news” to report today isn’t news at all; just something I forgot: In addition to its now much-storied suit against Qualcomm, and its suits against giants MediaTek and RealTek, as recounted Tuesday, it also has patent claims against NXP Semiconductors(NXPI), Texas Instruments (TXN), and LG Electronics. I’m hoping these lawsuits, too, will eventually pay off for ParkerVision.
I’ve Figured Out Who Should Head Our Shadow Cabinet! February 12, 2025February 11, 2025 But first . . . It seems more than a little odd to be linking to Glenn Beck, but those of you who’ve become intrigued by the PRKR story will find another episode of sorts here. (Links to the official episodes are here and here.) Also . . . They knew then and they know now — including Glenn Beck (2 minutes). And now . . . THE PERFECT SHADOW CABINET In the U.K., Canada, and Australia among others, the out-of-power opposition party leader routinely forms a shadow Cabinet. A lot of people have floated the idea of doing that here. But how? And who would lead it? Ken Martin, the DNC’s excellent new chair? To capture national attention (or else why bother?), it probably needs to be someone more famous. Kamala? Hillary? Bill? Barack? Michelle? Al Gore? PoliticsGirl? They are all awesome — but I don’t see any of that happening. Nor can we seen to be anointing someone as our 2028 nominee. There’s a primary process for that. You know whom I’d like to see? Bernie! He’s tough, he’s not running in 2028, he tells it like it is — and he could choose a Cabinet of much younger people to do TV appearances of their own. Tony Blinken or Jake Sullivan for State; Elizabeth Warren or Robert Reich for Treasury; Lloyd Austin or General Mattis or General Kelly for Defense; Preet Bharara or Dan Goldman or Adam Schiff — or Liz Cheney! — for Attorney General; Atul Gawande for Health & Human Services; Van Jones for Labor; Pete Buttigieg for Transportation; Jennifer Granholm for Energy . . . you get the idea. Bernie is further to the left than the country is, but that’s okay. He’s “authentic” and fun to watch and, on the kitchen-table issues most people really care about, may actually be dead center. If our 2028 nominee* were a bit to the right of Bernie, that would be fine. Maybe even a plus to be seen as more moderate. But in the meantime, Bernie and his shadow Cabinet would be giving the other side hell, whenever and wherever warranted. Which seems, at least for now, to be 24/7. Happy 216th Birthday, Honest Abe. Trump is so not the kind of Republican you had in mind. *Assuming our democracy survives that long. Have you joined Indivisible? Field Team 6? Loaded 5calls.org onto your phone?
Against The Giants February 11, 2025February 10, 2025 The ParkerVision saga — now 26 years in the making — seems, conceivably, to be coming to a head. The latest video in its “Against the Giants” series dropped yesterday on Instagram and X. The previous video suggested that PRKR’s $173 million unanimous jury verdict was overturned by pressure from the Obama White House. The series is billed as “a David vs. Goliath tale of innovation, theft, and the fight for technology’s future.” It already has nearly 10,000 followers on Instagram; more than 3,000 on X. Or you can watch on YouTube here and here. Qualcomm can’t be enjoying this. They are looking really bad. Their own internal emails are so damning! They filed a 28-page motion asking the court to quash the videos, but the judge threw it out as ludicrous. As I type, PRKR is about a buck a share. When you think back to the $173 million PRKR was awarded in 2011 (plus interest?) . . . plus what might have been 14 years of ongoing royalties . . . plus what could legally be treble damages for “willfulness” . . . plus whatever PRKR might collect in its suit against MediaTek and/or its suit against Realtek . . . one could imagine $1 billion flowing to PRKR net of legal fees — $10 a share. Maybe even more! Or maybe, of course, nothing at all. I own a ridiculously large number of shares that I am whittling down as the stock rises (because, gambler though I am, recklessness has its limits) — some of them bought on the open market for as little as a dime and some direct from the company for more than a dime to help keep it alive. So take my enthusiasm with several grains of salt. INDIVISIBLE’s TO-DOs FOR THE WEEK Tell your Members of Congress to take a stand against the Trump-Musk coup. Musk and Trump are usurping the legislative branch’s power by freezing funds allocated by Congress and attempting to shutter agencies that can only be terminated by legislation. All congresspeople — regardless of party — should be up and arms and fighting back. Our resource page has call scripts and email tools you can use to demand action from your elected officials. Tell your Republican senators to reject the nominations of RFK Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, and Kash Patel. If you’ve already completed our first to-do, you know that we are telling Dems to vote no on ALL Trump nominees until this constitutional crisis is over. But Democrats are in the Senate minority, so to stop Trump’s most heinous nominees, we need a few Republicans to vote NO too. Visit our Nix the Noms page for email tools and call scripts. Join our weekly discussion Zoom with Indivisible co-founders Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg (Thursday, 3pm ET/12pm PT). On the day of the inauguration, we sent an email with a paraphrased quote from one of our favorite shows on rebellion, Andor: “The pace of oppression outstrips our ability to understand it and that is the real trick of the imperial thought machine.” Applicable, right? When horrendous news comes at us as fast as it has the last few weeks, the only way to process it and stay grounded is to come together, in community, and discuss what’s happening. And, more importantly, to discuss how we fight back.
5 Calls Make It Incredibly Easy February 9, 2025 Friday, I posted brief words from two geniuses, Garry Kasparov and Fareed Zakaria, and some extremely troubling background on a third, Elon Musk — 4 minutes in all if, like me, you’re a slow reader. To which Freda S. reacted: Yes! We must take action! 5 Calls makes it incredibly easy. Once you type in your location, it tells you your reps, their DC numbers, their district office numbers (click on the 3 dots next to the DC number) . . . and lists issues of concern that you can click on for information, complete with suggested ‘scripts’. Please give it a try! Comedian John Mulaney suggests there’s a horse loose in the hospital . . . but thinks (or pretends to think for the sake of his audience) it’s going to turn out okay. Masha Gessen is much less sanguine: [W]hen Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia . . . my world suddenly felt like a chessboard from which an invisible hand was picking off pieces faster than I had thought was possible. Now, in Donald Trump’s America, I am living through something similar, and it is moving at a faster rate still. Timothy Ryback recalls “The Oligarchs Who Came to Regret Supporting Hitler.” They helped him in pursuit of profit. Many ended up in concentration camps. Are there parallels between Alfred Hugenberg, 90 years ago, and Elon Musk today? Speaking of whom, neuroscientist Philip Low shared this scathing personal perspective . . . and reports on the subsequent blowback. Join Indivisible? Give 5 Calls a try?
How Three Geniuses See The Current Situation February 7, 2025 Garry Kasparov’s Take This will be dismissed as “hysteria” like many of my warnings about Trump and Musk that are coming true. But this doesn’t end with fights over top-secret documents, budget cuts, and unaccountable agents taking over. It ends with who has the guns when they won’t listen to the judges. There are many steps between here and there, of course. But eventually they remove enough judges, refuse any access or challenges, and simply ignore the law and court orders the way they’re ignoring Congress now. What then? → Putin refugee Kasparov (KAH-spar-off) — for 255 months the World Chess Champion — knows something about thinking a few moves ahead. Fareed Zakaria’s Take From Gaza to tariffs to gutting USAID, Trump’s team is struggling to explain away bad policies . . . With the abrupt dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Trump’s supporters scrambled to adjust. Secretary of State Marco Rubio quickly blasted the agency, saying it was out of control and unresponsive. This was the same agency he had repeatedly posted in favor of over the years, written about in his book with pride and admiration, and recommended for funding increases to President Joe Biden. . . . Trump’s White House is now a court, and his courtiers scurry around, aware that the mercurial monarch might change his mind at any time. “TikTok is terrible!” can suddenly become “TikTok is great!” — and they need to pivot quickly. It reminds one of the court of Henry VIII, who went from being the greatest defender of the Catholic Church to a vicious opponent because he wanted an annulment that the pope would not sanction. (One man who refused to play the game, Sir Thomas More, had his head chopped off.) The reason Trump forces aides and supporters to say things they know are false is to enforce a regime in which loyalty is paramount, overriding facts, overriding long-held convictions. . . . This might seem like an amusing spectacle, but there is a real cost. In the case of USAID, it will translate into death and despair for millions of the poorest people on the planet. → Zakaria (whose name I trust you can pronounce from having seen him every Sunday on TV) was — among so much else in his astonishing resume — named managing editor of Foreign Affairs at the age of 28. Elon Musk’s Take I freely admit he, too, is a genius. Only — it’s becoming all too clear — a genius whose values do not align with most of ours. And by “ours” I’m including most Republicans, who are not white supremacists; along with most Democrats and Independents. I have always found it troubling that the President of the United States kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside. But now this: The shadow president of the United States is a neo-Nazi. For real. Watch at least the first 90 seconds . . . and then I think you may want to go back and watch from the beginning. It’s even worse than we thought. Join Indivisible! Take action! Join Field Team 6!