The United States is not a grotesque, racist country because of Donald Trump. It is a grotesque, racist country because of the absolutely deplorable people who support him.

There is no him without them.

Read that again.

Without his disgusting supporters, the America-attacking Trump would have been nothing but another wealthy, women-abusing white guy using the money that was handed to him by his sugar daddy to try to stay relevant hawking his broken products, bankrupting start-ups, begging for attention, and cheating on the golf course in the relative obscurity of his leveraged, tacky Florida country club, where the golden bathrooms are overflowing file-holders for all his lost causes.

In other words, he would have been just another filthy-rich Republican …

Except Trump, and his nuclear-powered narcissism just wasn’t content with all that, and desperate for any kind of relevance decided he’d start dealing America’s best-selling product during the past four centuries: hardcore racism.

He knew if he could get his orange little hooks into people and get them to believe he was every bit as big a racist as they were, there wasn’t a single thing he couldn’t claim for himself in America, including the presidency.

“Show us your birth certificate, Barack Obama …”

I have written variations of this piece before, because I have decided that it can never be written about enough. If I have my way, these words will serve as seeds to continue growing a movement and amplifying the powerful words of great artists past and present, who have spent their lives climbing mountains to make sure their message echoes across a country that so badly needs to hear it.

As an aging white man with a pen, I cannot think of a more important topic to lean into, because as long as the color of a person’s skin matters more than their character, we are all living in poisoned, debilitating air.

As long as this idiotic, toxic thing can be exploited to divide us, and hold people down, we are proving without a shadow of a doubt that human beings are the least evolved of God’s living creatures.

Do I expect this bigotry will stop because of the words I put to paper? Of course not.

But that misses the point, too, because this really does need to end just as soon as possible, people, and we all should be doing what we can to put the brakes on it. There is nothing stopping us from doing at least that.

How long will we continue to live with this national emergency?

Just the other evening, during a fake wrestling match on our White House grounds — go ahead and read those 14 words again — a frontal-lobe challenged wrestler named, Josh Hokit, thanked Trump directly for hosting the pathetic event before adding: “And lastly, Michelle Obama is a man. Am I right, America?”

Let’s stop right there for a second.

THIS is what has become of our once hallowed White House grounds. It is now a ghastly plantation, where horrid racism is given the oxygen it needs to breathe by a beady-eyed loathsome orange master who died inside years ago.

It truly is a white’s house.

Trump, wrinkled orange chin jutted forward and celebrating himself while he burns America and the world to a crisp, accepted the bigot Hokit’s words as if they were a bouquet of roses, and smiled.

He smiled.

The President of the United States smiled when a former First Lady was publicly insulted on public property with one of this country’s most insulting, and sickening racist tropes, and all on taxpayers’ dime ...

In other times during my many decades on this earth that ghastly snapshot would be everywhere by now, and roundly condemned by members of both political parties. It would be the beginning of a scandal that would not end until bare minimum, the White House issued a public apology, and showed contrition for such a grotesque, bigoted act.

Except as we close in on America’s 250th birthday, the white’s house has not done any of that.

They have not done any of that because they know that their abhorrent base — many of whom are your white family and friends — love every bit of it.

Turns out, Trump knows them better than you do.

He knows that dragging brown people down lifts them up, and makes them feel good about themselves.

These people didn’t vote for Trump three times because they thought he would improve their lives — there’s been ample proof none of that happened — they did it because he was going to make the lives of the people of color in his country just as miserable as possible.

There’s more than enough proof to back up that claim.

People of color were going to get knocked down and stay down this time. There would be no more voting rights or equal rights measures, because they had inconvenienced enough white people’s lives.

This was all favoritism, not fairness, and in their polluted minds there was nothing fair about lifting people up, who had been held down in chains. Couldn’t these ungrateful Black people have the decency to thank them for removing those chains? Hadn’t these poor white people done enough already?

Well, this time Black people were going to finally learn their lesson and their place in America. This time they were going to be publicly insulted on our White House lawn, caged, and have their voting districts removed. Any institutions, whether it be universities, companies, or media empires that didn’t go along with this would be threatened and severely punished if they dared to speak out against it.

These friends and families of ours — in my case, former friends and family — who STILL support all this are bigots, plain and simple. THEY are America’s greatest sin.

And I know what a few of you white people are thinking right now. I can hear your shuffling feet and pathetic excuses from here. “Well, sure my husband supports Trump, Earl, but I know for a fact he doesn’t like it when Trump does racist things like that.”

Which of course makes it worse.

Because if you vote for, or give safe harbor to a person who acts like a bigot, you are a bigot. You actually know better, but are content to quietly let the cancer spread.

You aren’t the bigger person, you are a sniveling coward.

If one of your husband’s friends told him that you looked like an ape, how would you expect him to react?

Remain friends with the disgusting creep, or belt him in the mouth?

The people I know who support Trump are broken, and simply refuse to be fixed. They somehow think it is their right to inflict themselves on the rest of us, and be just as cruel and odious as they want to be.

It’s all a big, damn joke to them.

These people are cheap shots. Weak. They tried playing me for just another white guy who would go along with all their noxious, racist bile they had done such a clever job of hiding up until 2016. After a decade of screaming at them, I have finally just had to let them go on off and wander in their darkness.

I am no longer worried that my pointed words hurt these people, I am much, much more disheartened that they can’t feel them at all.

So what to do about all this, besides publicly and loudly condemning it and them, while shaking the people who don’t consider this at all? What to do besides standing with people who are worth our loyalty, love and attention?

Vote for Democrats.

I know, I know … but listen to me:

Democrats for all their flaws have passed every important piece of legislation in my lifetime. They give, they don't take. They are not perfect because nobody is.

We simply have to overcome the Republicans’ attacks on America and stand up for her by turning out in overwhelming numbers at the polls to win as many elections as we can.

Again, I realize I am not breaking any news here, just underlining it, and sending it out in boldface type. This means voting for — and better yet working for — the Democratic candidates on the ballot.

Read that again, because I swear to God, if I hear Democrats griping about the candidates who have won their primaries fair and square, I am going to gnaw my keyboard in two, and then come looking for you.

Do you STILL think Kamala Harris wouldn’t have been a far superior president to the repulsive Trump???

I am already seeing this highly stupid crap going on and it positively blows my mind. We stand to lose it all in November unless we can get out of our own way and not let the search for the perfect get in the way of the common good.

Democrats, left-leaners and Independents like myself need to stick together like glue until November. We must become inseparable and walk as one.

That starts RIGHT NOW.

Yes, I have been constructively critical of Democrats in the past, because the party desperately needs some tough love. I do what I can between elections to make sure my team is ready to win, but when election season rolls around the Democrats get my love and my vote every single time.

Anybody who can’t do at least this, needs to stop pretending they are above it all, and start realizing they are part of the problem in America.

Actually it is worse than that: They are bigots.

Do not make me explain this to you again.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

As the smoke finally started to clear following Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, and Donald Trump’s violent attack aimed at overthrowing our government just two months later, I wrote a piece castigating our disintegrating working press in the United States.

The thrust of my write was this: If you were addressing ANY Republican about ANYTHING, your first question simply had to be, “Do you believe Donald Trump lost the 2020 election?”

After all, The Big Lie that Trump had won was the catalyst of his Big Attack on January 6th, and simply had to be put down, refuted and corrected for the record by all means possible.

If after this question was asked, the Republican either refused to answer, was evasive in any way, or worse, flatly denied that Biden won, the follow up had to be this: “Show us the proof you have to back up these dangerous assertions.”

If they could not provide any proof, the interview was over.

Done.

Finished.

There was simply no logical reason to continue talking to a desperate pusher selling a noxious, destructive lie aimed at poisoning the lifeblood of our Democracy.

Allowing dangerous propaganda and people like that to litter our airways and print, wasn’t just irresponsible journalism, it was aiding and abetting Trump’s attack on America.

Besides, he had Rupert Murdoch’s goons at Fox for that.

Well, we all know by now that my pleas to shut these people down were roundly ignored — if they were even heard at all — and because of that, 2024 might be the date that’s etched in the tombstone marking the end of the great American experiment.

The Big Lie hangs over America like a dark, menacing cloud, while too many in our broken press carry on like it is just another sunny day.

As a longtime member of that press, I have sadly come to understand that incompetence, ratings, and money are behind their failures to do even the most minimal thing required of sound journalism: report the truth.

Their inability and/or refusal to sound the alarms of what was coming if God forbid Trump won another term were amateurish and outrageous. How could they have ignored the biggest story since the Civil War?

Why weren’t Democracy Desks set up in every newsroom across America that did nothing but report on Trump and his Republicans’ brazen attack on our nation that was so obviously buttressed by a corrupt, lying, bought-off Supreme Court, whose majority they appointed?

Wasn't it obvious what would happen if Big Lie Republicans ever regained Executive power again? Was there ever really any doubt among the people who were paid to pay attention that Trump would get the blessing of his court to be just as disgusting and anti-American as possible by carrying on as their mad king?

How could this have been missed by the very people whose job it is to cover these lowlifes?

It took no time at all for Trump to lay waste to our government, and for armed troops to litter our streets.

He is placing his name everywhere and on everything, and God only knows how much of our money has landed inside his bottomless pockets.

Fascism is here, and our damn media barely fired a warning shot.

I’m long past the stage where this shoddy, irresponsible “journalism” has broken my heart, and am now just plain furious. Surrendering the facts to Trump during the past decade has to be one of the most pathetic things I have ever seen.

So when the orangey, puffy Trump arrived on the set of Meet the Press Sunday, and started with his anti-American bilge about elections being rigged again, I was shocked when he got some actual pushback from the show’s host, Kristen Welker.

Here’s what went down:

Trump lied that the California gubernatorial race was “rigged.”
“It’s four days and they aren’t even close to counting ballots,” he harrumphed.
Welker correctly asserted that this is how California has always counted votes, and Trump shot back:
“Do you know why they’re doing that? Because they’re cheating on the election.”
Welker asked for any evidence of cheating, and Trump started his tantrum:
“They’re crooked, just like you’re crooked, your press is crooked. And Meet the Press is crooked.”
Welker pushed back again, and Trump whined like baby:
“You’re either crooked or you’re stupid. You play right into their hands with this crap. You know that these elections are rigged. Your network knows that they’re rigged.”
Trump then arrived where always does, and hauled out the Big Lie that he won the 2020 US presidential election.
Walker wasn’t having that and pressed on. That’s when the grotesque Trump, who was nearly in tears at this point, said this:
“Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough.”
But not before snarling:
“Thank you, darling. Have a good time.”

And just like that he was gone, like a loud fart pushed out of the room by an air-purifying exhaust fan ...

Congratulations to Welker for holding her ground and her nose during that interview, but the damage has been done. The America-attacking Trump’s Big Lie is louder than ever, and our press, with a few exceptions, has all but gone quiet correcting it.

On Monday afternoon, Trump’s pointy-nosed puppet, Speaker Mike Johnson, pawed through the halls of Congress parroting his master’s election lies while a clutch of reporters nipped at his little heels. Johnson who lies as he breathes like so many of these odious Republican Christians was asked for proof the recent California election was “rigged.”

He somehow said this without generating a lightning strike: “Look, some of these efforts are so diabolical and so far upstream it's impossible to prove. But I think everybody knows instinctively that something is wrong here.”

Oh, we sure do, sport ...

Anybody who is still somehow wondering what November’s gerrymandered, Jim Crow elections are going to look like got another preview the past few days. Any close race led by a Democrat will be rigged by “diabolical” means, and any close race led by a Republican will be just peachy-keen.

This is all the result of that Big Lie which has never been properly addressed as the anti-American cancer it most certainly is, and corrected once and for all for the record.

While I long ago abandoned the shoddy, corporatized media for the clear air of independence, it won’t stop me from demanding that my former misguided brethren finally do their jobs, and set the record straight on that lie.

So one more time, people: Any time you are talking to any Republican before Election Day like you did Johnson Monday, the first thing you ask is who won the 2020 election.

If they won’t answer, or deflect and lie like Johnson, then correct them for the record, and shut them and the interview down. Do not give them a platform to perform for their sickly orange king, while helping him attack the foundation of this country.

There’s been more than enough of this the past decade.

Do that? You are doing your job.

Don’t do that? Go to hell.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

Let’s start with some questions today, before we arrive at the answer.

What if Kamala Harris had become president, promptly leveled the historic East Wing of our White House, and then spent each day like a petrified drama queen shrieking that taxpayers should purchase her a new ballroom?

What if Harris had spent her time in office plastering her face and name on inanimate objects, while food prices she promised to lower spiraled out of control, and then belittled the people who dared mention this?

I’m not done.

What if Harris and her administration had spent their time attacking science and vaccines and then did nothing as Measles — MEASLES — made a deadly comeback across America?

What if Harris had become president and picked silly and insulting fights with our NATO partners who have been with us since WWII, while threatening to invade Greenland like some petulant child?

What if after running a campaign on no new wars, Harris appointed a drunken, racist talk show host to be her Secretary of Defense, who then proceeded to commit a series of war crimes, shared top-secret intelligence with God knows who, brazenly blocked military promotions of women and people of color, and then led a moronic war in Iran that has only succeeded in making America a more dangerous and expensive place?

Sorry, I’m not done yet.

What if instead of supporting Ukraine during their heroic fight on the frontline of democracy that benefits America, Harris berated its leader and then rolled out the red carpet for the murdering fascist, Vladimir Putin, on U.S. soil?

What if instead of prosecuting law and order, Harris appointed HER personal lawyer as OUR attorney general and then went about spending billions of taxpayer dollars to reward the traitors who attacked us on January 6, 2021?

Can you imagine?

What if Kamala Harris had become president and leveled idiotic tariffs on every country she could locate on a map that resulted in making things more expensive for Americans?

What would all those sanctimonious MAGA farmers say about that?

What if instead of answering questions from the media, Harris called them names like piggy, and enemies of the people?

What if after becoming president Harris stayed awake at night hate-posting unhinged bilge directed at 70 percent of America?

What if Harris had become president and got into a bitter feud with the Pope?

What if we found out Harris had been mentioned more than 30,000 times in the Epstein Files, and was a longtime friend of the child-rapist?

What if Harris had become president and spent the first 17 months in office spending more time at Walter Reed Medical Hospital than she did with her husband, and then publicly bragged about passing basic cognitive tests while being held up on swollen ankles?

Can you imagine????

What if Kamala Harris had become president and invited thousands of Blacks to immigrate to America from South Africa, after saying she was closing our borders?

What if Kamala Harris had become president and led a government-wide attack on rural white voters by making it as hard as possible for them to vote?

What is Harris had become president and depicted herself as Jesus Christ in a social media posting?

What if Harris had become president and filled her cabinet with unqualified rightwing talk show hosts and billionaires, whose only talents are filling their bottomless pockets with our money?

What if after becoming president, Harris did everything in her power to strip people of their healthcare, and medicare and medicaid benefits to benefit corporate raiders?

What if after becoming president, Harris set about putting actions in place that will pollute our air and drinking water …?

OK, I’ll stop there, my friends, because we all have things to do this morning while we carry on through the most insane, destructive timeline in American history.

The truth is none of those things would have happened had Harris — or ANY — Democrat been elected president, because we — Democrats and Left-Leaners — would have never allowed it, nor elected anybody — much less a convicted felon — who even hinted at these appalling attacks on America, Americans, and our standing in the world.

It must be said often, and out loud that in 2026 America, our two major political parties are publicly held to completely different standards.

In fact, one of them is held to absolutely NO standards at all.

Read that again.

This is indisputable, and we simply must get to the point where we accept at least this much, or we are done for good.

Finished.

That this ongoing and brutal numbing of our sensibilities has somehow been normalized to such a truly terrifying degree by our media, as well as the people and institutions who are charged with monitoring the America condition and the threats facing her citizens, is a terrible, terrible tragedy, it really is.

The annihilation of the barriers that used to separate good from evil and right from wrong have transformed America and its insane military might, into the most dangerous country in the world. When anything can be justified — even an attack on OUR OWN CAPITOL — everybody is in deep trouble.

We are spiraling out of control, and on the brink of losing our democracy for good, and the people who dare to pay attention — the blessed woke — know it.

That is most likely you.

This disregard of the truth, and just plain human decency is taking a terrible toll on average, good-hearted people in this country who have watched, jaws dropped, the past decade as millions have been given permission to willingly surrender to their very worst instincts, while following a grotesque man and party that are leading us to our bitter end.

That many of them are friends and family has been almost too much to bear and comprehend. How long have they carried this disease inside them? Can they be cured?

Either way, they and their debilitating weakness, and a busted media that tries to understand and excuse them, are to blame for our demise.

We feel powerless to get through to them to stop their madness, because they have been provided cover and coddled by the people and institutions I mentioned above, who have somehow accepted this as our new normal.

They are weak in mind and heart. They are the lowest among us, and refuse to lift themselves up, or even consider the damage they are doing to a country that they think even less of than themselves.

Well let me tell you something: I have no trouble stepping on them to get to higher places where we can properly survey the damage they have caused and set about repairing it.

I will not get over this or them. I will call them out and our condition in America for what it is: hideous.

The normalization of this ongoing rot inside our White House simply has to stop — or bare minimum be recognized for it is — if we are to have any hope of carrying ourselves as a half-decent nation making an honest run at once again searching for the common good.

That starts with recognizing the truth, and shouting it out, instead of normalizing chaos and odious behavior.

And if that truth hurts the people who are wrecking our society, then there is still a sliver of hope, because at least we will know they aren’t completely dead inside.

These aren't normal times we are living in unless we just surrender and accept that they are, my friends.

Well, I just can’t let that happen.

Can you?

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

After wiping the lack of sleep from my eyes, and pouring some midnight-black coffee into my overused mug, I fell into my office chair, flipped on my computer, and cautiously waded into my morning newsfeed.

It took me but three seconds to sadly realize that I hadn’t gotten the news I’d hoped for, so I sighed, and hit The New York Times front page to assess the overnight damage.

Here are the gruesome headlines that greeted me:

-Hospitals See Diseases Resurge as Vaccinations Decline
-Extreme Water Shortages in the West
-Hegseth Strikes Female and Black Navy Officers From Promotion List
- Trump backs off Plan for $1.8 Billion Fund That Drew Political Backlash
-Israel Strikes Southern Lebanon
-Trump Announces Stricter Rule For Medicaid Work Requirement

There was no above-the-fold mention of the idiotic, dangerous war in Iran, our rocketing gas prices, or the millions of Americans who are being forced to use credit cards to feed their families or account for through-the-roof healthcare prices because there is only so much bad news that can be squeezed onto a screenshot.

There was nothing about out-of-control inflation, rising interest rates, or the crumbling value of the dollar.

There wasn't a thing about corporate America’s environmental terrorism, and steady assault on our clean air and water.

The endless assaults on our vote, and resurrection of the Jim Crow South were now an active crime scene to be treated with the occasional gory update.

If you are an American out looking for any good news at the moment, you better pack a lunch, and let your loved ones know you might not be returning for dinner.

Our White House and the once pristine grounds that surround it are a metaphor for the wreckage King Trump and his corrupt Republican court have inflicted on what was once the world’s premier democracy.

In just over 16 months, we have been reduced to a budding third-world country that is being crushed by out-of-control billionaires who are in our elections and our homes. They are being provided cover by a bought-off radical Right Supreme Court majority that has no notion of what law and order really means as it protects the insane whims of the convicted felon that appointed half its soulless members.

And here — RIGHT HERE — is where it’s worth reminding everybody that things did not have to be this way and were not this way under the previous administration, which offered a hand up to people in need, and provided millions and millions of good jobs while rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure in every state of the union — not just the red, purple, or blue ones.

Here’s where we must note for the record that while Joe Biden was not a perfect man, he was a patriotic one who spoke of all Americans — Democrats, Republicans and Independents — as being a part of the whole, and did not rip apart large segments of our colorful democratic fabric to ram through a dark agenda.

He was a man of deep faith and conviction, who actually went to church every Sunday.

He spearheaded the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest investment in U.S. history. All it did among scores of other good things was fight climate change, cap out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for Medicare recipients, and provided $2,000 per year of aid, while enabling Medicare to actually negotiate drug prices.

He pushed through the CHIPS and Science Act which chiefly provided billions in incentives to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing, reduced reliance on foreign supply chains, and celebrated science as a beacon of discovery instead of an enemy of the state.

He expanded minimum wage for federal workers, provided scores of other workers protections, including making good and sure they got the mandatory overtime they deserved for their efforts.

He ended the longest war in history in Afghanistan, after the previous slobbery president had surrendered to the odious Taliban. He stood firmly with Ukraine, and expanded and strengthened NATO to stand against Putin and Russia, not with them.

Our allies across the globe also stood with us back then, instead of turning their backs in disgust and dismay as they do now.

All of this was done during a four-year term that started with a lockdown following a terrible Republican attack on our Capitol, and under the sorrowful cloud of a once-in-a-century pandemic that killed more than one million Americans.

I did not start this piece intending to prosecute such an ardent defense of the Biden Administration, but I am glad that I arrived at this place.

An enormous amount of good was done during his four years, and I look back at them reverently, and with a sinking heart.

We were safe back then.

Were there warts and blemishes? Of course. The record will show a good-hearted, aging man in declining health, who was too stubborn to acknowledge the residue of Father Time, and the toll it had taken on him.

He should have served one term as he promised, and bowed out heroically, to let a younger crusader lead from the front to build on all his good work.

He also had a blind spot the size of Kansas for an attorney general, who simply refused to do the most important thing in his job description: protect America. Instead he dithered while the most dangerous man in the world — the man who had already violently attacked us once — rebuilt his army of Republican Orcs, and readied for another assault to finish us off for good.

In the end, the disgraceful Merrick Garland even refused to protect Biden himself ...

These things are simply unforgivable, because they left all of us exposed, and without protection. Armies are in our streets and masked government agents are shooting us dead.

We have a mad king who demands loyalty instead of earning it, and has no talent for governing and pushing tough legislation through our House and Senate that helps Americans like Biden did.

Trump is a petulant punk and a no-talent negotiator who has used that bought-off Supreme Court he built in his grotesque image, and Mike Johnson’s pathetic GOP House of used playing cards to steamroll his way toward the demolition of our White House, and the use of taxpayer dollars to compensate the lowlifes who attacked us on Jan. 6, 2021.

He’s breaking the backs of working folks in America in myriad ways to include all these damn MAGA farmers, who are currently getting screwed almost as badly as the people of color who tirelessly work their fields just for the privilege of pocketing some chump change, and a leaky roof over their heads.

Trump has proven beyond a shadow of any doubt that he could not only shoot one of his racist supporters in the middle of some street and not lose their vote, but could also swipe their family’s benefits and leave them destitute in that street just to really rub it in.

America is a leaking sewer, and crumbling under the bloated weight of all these hideous billionaires, who are squeezing the life out of us and our budgets.

As we stumble toward one of the most somber Independence Days in history, America is going it alone on the road to nowhere. We aren’t leading from the front, we are falling behind.

Even if you don’t completely share my assessment of America 2026, this much must be acknowledged if you have even a shred of decency and an honest heart: We are not better off now than we were two years ago.

Not even close.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.)

When the oppressive Republican regime that is taking a sledgehammer to our rights and sensibilities is finally gone — and it WILL be gone — the arts will still be here filling up our lives and our hearts.

Lately, I have found myself reflecting on this lovely certainty, and am bolstered by its power to fill me with much-needed hope.

Our fight for our survival will be buttressed by the arts and our artists, and I can feel this in my bones, my friends.

Last Friday, after Stephen Colbert was kicked off the noxious CBS airways for good, I celebrated his choice of using his final show on our music, not politics, to celebrate his legacy as well as the road ahead.

The arts have the superpower to reflect where we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going. They can sustain us and lift us up, as we deal with the most dangerous times and people since the Civil War.

There was some significant news broken on the arts front again this week that deserves some reflection and attention.

First, the odious Freedom 250 concert that Trump’s fascists have been ginning up in conjunction with our ailing nation’s 250th birthday, saw its already pathetic lineup of musicians take a significant hit, when some of the artists who were scheduled to perform finally caught on to what this event was really about.

To be fair, it was not a venerable list of musicians to begin with, but since all of them have given their professional life to music, they do get a piece of my respect. The music business is a tough go, so if you have persevered, and even found modest success, you have lived a life to be envied.

If you use this music to assuage bigots and misogynists, who mean this nation harm, you have completely lost your way.

On Friday, Bret Michaels, who is most likely best known (if he is known at all) as the front man for the heavy metal band Poison, decided it best if didn't lend his name and music to a regime that poisons our air and water.

Michaels, who will never be confused with Bruce Springsteen politically, or in most any way, actually, released a statement explaining why he dropping out that included this:

“Concerns have also been raised regarding the safety of my fans, band, crew, family and myself, including threats that are completely unfounded and unforgivable.”

So, in other words, Michaels caught wind that this gathering is quickly shaping up to be another one of Trump’s January 6th renderings, where entitled, violent losers scream and whine and take out their pain on everybody else.

This is what Trump refers to as art.

Man, I’ve had enough of these people.

Because of them, our nation’s capital is probably best avoided during this stupid, self-serving gala that will most certainly be conducted in Trump’s despicable image, not ours.

Country singer Martina McBride, who might have been the most reputable performer on the billing, also dropped out a day earlier, which is significant because while she has kept her political views fairly quiet, her husband, John, is a vocal Conservative.

McBride’s decision to bolt was the right one, even if like Michaels she is trying to convince people that she was lured to perform under false pretenses.

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m happy people are pulling out of this thing for any reason, but anybody who signed up thinking it wouldn’t be a fascist cesspool simply hasn’t been paying attention.

Regular readers will know that these are the people I can’t stand most.

WAKE.

UP.

Better yet, get involved and use your influence and your music to save this country from an authoritarian regime that means us and YOU harm.

Friday brought yet more news on the art front when a federal judge ruled that Trump must take his despicable name off the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

This was always a low-class insult to Kennedy, the arts, and anybody with even a shred of decency in this country. It was yet another assault by a career abuser who wrecks what he can’t have. In this case: good taste.

Let’s be crystal clear about Trump’s true affiliation to the arts.

So here goes with some righteous precision:

Trump is an unread moron who’s appreciation of the arts is confined to dashing off birthday cards of headless, naked women to his rapist buddy, Jeffrey Epstein, devouring reality TV shows while eating Happy Meals, and pursing out his lips and harrumphing around a steel-reinforced stage on his inner-tube ankles as “YMCA” blares from nuclear-powered speakers in the background.
Slobbering his grotesque name everywhere including the Kennedy Center is his chief motivation, followed by taking a meaty swipe at anybody who can carry a tune, or recite a poem, and understand that the Beatles weren’t insects, and Prince didn’t live in some castle.
He’s an incurious moron, who as always, is trying to drag an entire nation down to his mud-low standards because he hates the loneliness inside the cavernous bunker that is carved out deep inside his thick head.
-End

Of course, Trump has said he will challenge this decision, because he’d rather fight to get his way like a 2-year-old spoiled brat, than serve the citizens of a country that is crumbling under the weight of heavy prices, loathsome racism and misogyny, and costly, unnecessary wars.

So as we close in on our ailing nation’s birthday, I suggest we all celebrate it in our own way. Personally, I will spend it by doing everything I can to make sure this birthday isn’t our nation’s last.

Any hoopla can wait until our country’s leaders once again conduct themselves in the image of Lincoln and King, not Putin and Stalin.

There is a lot riding on how our nation’s true patriots comport themselves as we face this daily assault on our common senses by a despicable man and party who have lost all respect for themselves and this country.

Last week, we discussed the increasingly favorable political environment for Democrats as we steam toward the crucial midterm elections in November.

In that piece, I referenced a couple of recent polls from The New York Times and NPR that show a Republican Party in descent and a Democratic Party on the rise.

From that write:

“… there are signs everywhere that upwards of 70 percent of Americans do not like what is happening in their country right now. Whether that matters or if it is too late is still up for debate, but at this moment, America still has a shot to save itself in the nick of time. Even in this redistricted mess of a country, if things continue to go along this way Democrats will take the House, and actually have one helluva chance of taking the Senate.”

Things have gotten no better for Republicans since then. Tuesday night they once again slammed a door on their toe, and did all they could to help the suddenly fleet-footed Democrats to win their first statewide election in Texas in 30 years.

I know, I know, we’ve heard this one before, but when Republicans in the state voted for Donald Trump’s despicable Ken Paxton to run against Democrat James Talarico for that Senate seat in November, they gave us all permission to dream the impossible dream.

By putting his decaying thumb on the scale for his fellow crook, Paxton, Trump all but wiped out the chances for incumbent Rep. Senator John Cornyn to do what he has been doing since ascending to the Senate 24 years ago: win.

Thanks to Trump, impressionable Republicans in Texas overwhelmingly supported "a true MAGA warrior" who like so many MAGA warriors before him has little regard for the law. Paxton has been indicted on felony securities fraud charges, bribery, dereliction of duty, obstruction of justice and abuse of the public trust, just to name a few violations.

Did I mention that this lawless lout is the state’s attorney general? Can we at least stop for a minute to consider the absurdity of this? We are now to the point that if you really want to make an impression on Trump, it’s best doing it by abusing the public’s trust.

Talarico wasted no time framing Paxton’s crooked political picture by releasing a video Tuesday night.

In it he says:

"Something just happened in Texas. The most corrupt politician in America just became the Republican nominee for the United States Senate." He accused Paxton of using his office to “enrich himself.”

He added:

“That kind of corruption is the rot at the core of this broken system. It’s why we can’t afford anything. It’s why we can’t get ahead no matter how hard we work.”

Paxton is eminently more beatable than Cornyn, so I’ll just say this out loud right now: Talarico will beat Paxton.

Are you still there?

What’s more, the cantankerous Nate Cohn of The New York Times actually has an astonishing take on this one that reads almost too good to be true. Without saying he agrees with my pick, he strongly agrees it is a very distinct possibility.

In his piece on Wednesday, A Blue Texas May Be More Than a Dream for Democrats, he lets the numbers do the talking, and they are shouting at a Texas-size upset in the Lone Star State. He cites two chief reasons to buttress his argument:

1. Paxton’s absurd candidacy: The man is a walking crime wave, and in the middle of an ugly public divorce. Because really, what kind of woman could stand to be around such human rot?
2. A monumental shift in Hispanic voting tendencies since the 2024 election.

Cohn:

“Texas is one of the most diverse states in the country, and national polls show Democrats surging back in support among young and nonwhite voters — and especially Hispanic voters.”

More:

“In the latest national polls, Mr. Trump’s gains among Hispanic voters have vanished — and the Republican grip on Texas is in danger as a result. The latest New York Times/Siena poll is representative: It shows Democrats ahead by 30 points, 54 percent to 24 percent, among Hispanic registered voters nationwide. That’s better than Joe Biden’s margin in 2020 and getting close to Hillary Clinton’s margin in 2016.”

One more for the win:

“Or consider another example: Imagine we adjusted the results of the last presidential election by shifting each racial demographic group’s support to match the latest Times/Siena poll results. Based on the poll’s findings, Texas would be expected to tilt Democratic in this national political environment.”

Texas would be expected to tilt Democratic in this national political environment.

Amazing is the best adjective I can come up with. Texas has been Democrats’ great white whale for decades. Time and again, we hear how close they are only to come up short — and in too many cases wildly short.

Not this time. And I’ll bet my sterling reputation on that.

And while we are floating on air, another prediction: When the Democrats win in Texas it will translate to a majority in the Senate.

If this becomes a true “wave” election — and I believe it will — Democrats should be expected to win what should be tight races in Georgia, New Hampshire, Michigan, Maine, North Carolina, and Ohio.

By holding three seats — Georgia, New Hampshire and Michigan — and flipping Maine, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas, the Senate is theirs.

But since we are soaring at 30,000 feet, there are yet more combinations to unlock the Senate for Democrats in this suddenly balmy political environment above all the dark-gray clouds we have been stuck in since November, 2024.

Alaska, and their popular Democratic candidate, Mary Peltola, would be very much in play for a flip, and it would not shock me if one or two of five other states — Iowa, Montana, South Carolina, Florida and Nebraska — swapped a Republican for a Democrat.

The nut of all this? It is not crazy to say the Democrats have a real shot at flipping the Senate Blue in November.

In fact, I expect it.

This would put a screeching halt to the Trump regime’s odious agenda, but maybe even more importantly would protect the Supreme Court from any further Republican erosion for a minimum of two years.

As bad as this 6-3 radical Right Supreme Court has been, picture what a 7-2 advantage would like if, God forbid, something happened to one of the three liberal justices on the Court, or even what a 6-3 advantage would like if Trump can convince (threaten) one of the older justices on the Right to drop out, so he could nominate another smug liar in the Brett Kavanaugh mold who would be around to help wreck America for another 30 years.

Something simply has to be done with this Supreme Court, but I’ll hold fire on that one for another day. For now, the American voters must do their part to ensure things don’t get worse, and that means showing up to flip the Senate five months from now.

Thanks to Trump, it is right there for the taking.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

Donald Trump’s rapid descent into his own special hell is gaining speed. This hulking, demented racist conman will eventually land with a thud, with only the billions in cold, hard cash he has drained from the American taxpayer to cushion his collapse.

Our standing on the world stage has taken a hit we might never recover from. We have no allies, only old neighbors who are watching in disbelief as the big, old white house on the block burns out of control.

Our air and water is getting dirtier by the hour, and food prices are higher every time we wander into a store. Women have less rights than they did 50 years ago, and the Jim Crow South is back. Our government has been dismantled by greedy, billionaire Orcs, so that it works exclusively for them and not us.

America has never been worse off, and that is the best we could have hoped for following that ghastly election in November, 2024, which handed Republicans the Executive, the Court, the House and the Senate.

Because it actually could have been worse …

In the worst-case scenario, Trump would have been an incoherent madman able to rein in his worst instincts as a subhuman, and worked diligently to at least give the phony appearance he was doing all he could to keep prices under control, and America out of any asinine wars.

He would have worked quietly behind the scenes raking in cash to ruin us at the behest of those billionaire Orcs, and most Americans wouldn’t have been the wiser.

As we have painfully learned over the past decade there are more than enough shallow people in America who are willing to go along with almost any abomination — including the caging of children — just as long as the gasoline they are pumping into their hulking vehicles is as cheap as they are.

Under this worst-case scenario enough Americans would have gone along with Trump’s very worst, because somehow they would have continued to believe the fantasy that their lives would improve, even if every metric told them otherwise.

Republicans’ chances going into midterms would be decent. There would be no talk of Democrats taking back the Senate, and plenty of predictions that Republicans would actually increase their advantage.

Troops would be in the streets just in case.

Three-dollar gas can mask a world of hurt in America.

Well, that worst-case scenario didn’t come to pass, and there are signs everywhere that upwards of 70 percent of Americans do not like what is happening in their country right now. Whether that matters or if it is too late is still up for debate, but at this moment, America still has a shot to save itself in the nick of time.

A New York Times/Siena poll released Monday has Trump’s approval rating at 37 percent, which is the lowest number in that paper’s polling since Trump hulked on the scene in 2016.

Under the headline: Trump’s Approval Sinks Amid Unpopular War, Darkening GOP Prospects the case is made by the paper that …

“… no president’s approval rating has been under 38 percent for more than a few days in the last 17 years. If there has been a floor during this partisan era of politics, Trump’s ratings today have fallen to it.”

Adding …

“The most immediate political consequences is that Democrats appear increasingly well positioned for the midterm elections in November. The poll shows Democrats have a double-digit lead, 50 percent to 39 percent, when registered voters are asked which party’s candidate they’ll support for Congress.”

If you are one of those people saying right now that it is insane his approvals are that high, I will readily agree, but one of us hasn’t been paying attention to the past decade during which America has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that it isn’t even a good country, much less a great one ...

Under this best-case scenario we simply must accept that historically low approvals is the best we can hope for as we steam toward the latest most-important elections of our lives in November.

The NYT poll mirrors an NPR poll two weeks ago that I typed about extensively.

From that story:

More than 80% of Americans say pain at the pump is straining their household budgets and a striking majority blames the president, according to a NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. The poll found that President Trump faces his lowest popularity ever and is experiencing major declines with key demographics since being sworn in for his second term. Most Americans said the economy isn’t working for them. The war in Iran — which has directly led to higher gas prices — is increasingly unpopular. Those challenges have given Democrats a distinct advantage in the midterm elections. When asked which party’s candidate they’d vote for if congressional elections took place today, Democrats led by 10 points.

Even in this redistricted mess of a country, if things continue to go along this way Democrats will take the House, and actually have one helluva chance of taking the Senate.

This would have been unheard of if Trump was able to quiet the voices in his head and control himself and all his worst instincts.

Right now, Trump is a nuclear-powered drag on his party, and even better yet in true authoritarian fashion is refusing to accept this reality.

Like unpopular fascist leaders before him, he is cloaking himself in his own sad realities and surrounding himself with yes men, who will readily carry his garbage and dump it all over Americans.

America is not a pleasant place right now, and only promises to get worse.

At this stage of Trump’s disastrous presidency it is very sadly all the Democratic opposition could have hoped for.

Vote.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

I do the cooking in the family, so I’m also the guy who shops for the groceries.

Truth is, I like doing both just fine, because sitting down for a good meal is one of life’s underrated treats.

When I was done this morning corralling the goods at the local market that I hoped would get us through a few day’s worth of semi-fine dining, I aimed my shopping cart into an empty checkout line and started offloading my supplies.

Experienced shoppers will know that there’s nothing like the privilege of scooting into an empty line at the grocery store. Better yet, this welcoming aisle was being staffed by one of my favorite cashiers, Betty.

All signs were pointing to a better-than-average day.

As I greeted Betty, and put the last of my stuff — the breakable items — on the conveyor belt, she asked with a smile if I’d found everything OK. Salty grocery-store navigator that I am, I told her I had, but with things so slow in the place, decided to make the opportunity for some small talk while driving toward a larger point.

“No offense, Betty,” I said politely, “But I found everything to be too dang expensive, if I’m being honest here. I mean, $13.72 for this little pouch of coffee? $5.45 for three apples? $6.75 for a box of cereal? I’m wondering just how long we are supposed to put up with this.”

She hardly batted an eye, and said, “No offense taken, honey, that’s why I have to work here at 72, so I can afford to eat what we’re sellin’. I figured I’d be long retired by now, but I just don’t see that happening anytime soon.”

“Well, that’s one nasty riddle,” I said. “I’m sorry about that, Betty.”

“Could be worse, I suppose,” she said with rueful resignation.

“I guess,” I said, before pushing my cart and my point forward, as a manager nudged closer, “I thought everything was supposed to get cheaper on Day 1 of Trump’s presidency. I mean, that’s what he told us.”

That’s when she laughed out loud, handed me my receipt, and we both decided that we’d struck a sad but fitting end to our interaction.

Truth is, America is a very bad joke right now courtesy of a very bad man, and a ruthless party and lawless court system, which are hell bent on making things great for themselves, and just as hard as possible on everybody else like my friend, Betty.

If high food prices were the only thing ailing America, it would be bad enough, but they are but one sore subject on a Republican report card that’s so bad right now, even a hungry junkyard dog wouldn’t eat it.

Mathematically, things just don’t add up anymore.

Gas prices are soaring and inflation and interest rates are back on the rise thanks to Trump’s idiotic tariffs and greedy billionaires and corporate raiders who won’t stop tapping people’s wallets until they have picked them dry. Oh, there’s still plenty of money to go around in America, but these days most of it stays in the fat little hands of the One Percent, who are getting richer by the minute standing on the tired backs of the Ninety-Nine Percent.

If Republicans had any sense of history — another subject on that report card that they are failing miserably — they’d understand that’s exactly how things work in monarchies, one of which we fought and defeated 250 years ago for our freedom.

They’d also learn from hard lessons of the recent past, that burning American treasure and countless lives in a region of the world where oil is worth more than human rights is a fool’s errand, and will end in no good.

And it’s no wonder the American experiment has gone so poorly when the subject of science is the enemy of the people, and is no longer even a part of the curriculum of the political party in charge. Our planet is heating toward the point of extinction, and we are but one serious virus away from total catastrophe.

And what is Republicans’ answer to that?

Tapping a whacko anti-vaxxer with zero training in medicine, academia, or scientific research to lead the response to our next medical emergency. Let’s face it, RFK Jr. is a ghoul, who lacking his famous family’s credentials, would just be some roided out, chestnut-colored freak leering at women at the local gym. Instead, he is in charge of our Department of Health and Human Services and that continues to be just too absurd to imagine.

Meanwhile, the smarmy Lee Zeldin is heading the Environmental “Protection” Agency, by attacking it and Mother Nature. It’s like putting an arsonist in charge of the fire department.

The emphasis on the subjects of English, literature and the languages couldn’t be a lower priority in America, because have you heard what comes out of Trump’s dirty mouth each day?

America is at the back of the world’s class and failing catastrophically right now, because we have the dumbest, most destructive people ever at the head of our government. They are from a privileged, unsympathetic upper class, who are so out of touch with what ails regular folks like Betty, it has gone past low-class ignorance and right to highly insulting.

The American dream has gone off to die on the patio of Mar-a-Lago, where billionaires muster their pompous asses to pick away at shrimp cocktail and the bones of the people they are eating alive, while kissing the ample ass of the man who is making all of it possible.

They’re not thinking about people like Betty, they’re thinking about themselves first, and Americans second.

Our elections are coming fast, and if these lawless buffoons aren’t careful our vote could get in the way of their good times. Used to be when a president and his political party got everything wrong like these Republicans have, the American voters would give ‘em a failing grade at the voting booth, and demand they start flying straight or else.

Except these arrogant losers are making it clear they aren’t much interested in receiving, or even making the grade. So they are busy leaning on our crooked courts to rig the test by making sure as few of us as possible can hold them accountable for their ongoing theft of our democracy.

Rather than fight on principle, they are cutting and running and avoiding the subject altogether. They are taking the coward’s way out, and we simply cannot let them get away with it.

It is on every single one of us then to ensure that we do everything in our power to take these anti-American low-class clowns to school in November.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

It comes at us in waves …

It relentlessly pounds away at our heart and soul, threatening to break us in two …

This week it again washed ashore in all the likely places — Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia, and finally our corrupted, irredeemable “Supreme” Court housed in what was once the world’s cradle of democracy, Washington, D.C.

Donald Trump’s Republicans not only refuse to atone for America’s original sin, but are intent on re-injecting its poison into a new generation’s veins just to make good and sure we never properly heal.

Anytime our so-called united states get within striking distance of truly congealing into a democratic republic where there really is liberty and justice for ALL, the well-funded GOP fiends, who stay plenty flush by dividing us, spread their unlimited cash and outsized influence to make sure the crack between us widens and can never be crossed.

Nothing scares these morally busted garbage peddlers more than a cohesive electorate, or a fair election.

The reality of a Black president, and a Black woman vice president was so unbearable for these bog-snorters and their shattered moral compasses that the final House district in Tennessee that stood on a foundation of fairness and true representation was set aflame by their tiki torches Thursday.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is now just a relic from a time America at least gave the appearance it was interested in evolution.

The Republican Party has become so brazen in their odious efforts to erase Black people, they no longer feel the need to wear hoods while they pile high barriers to voting booths, and leadership positions in our government, universities, and places of influence.

This is a national emergency.

Better to just incinerate a healthcare program that insures tens of millions of Americans with no viable alternative in place, than to continue anything with Obama’s name on it.

Better to enter an unwinnable and costly war with Iran than continue with the peace our nation’s only Black president brokered in our planet’s most volatile region.

At its core America is a racist country, and there is plenty of dirty money to be made by the clutch of bankrupt billionaires who spend all their time keeping it that way.

America is not, nor has it ever been, a great nation. The insistence on implying anything different is borne of weakness not strength. We are a dark room without mirrors. We can’t bear to look at ourselves, so we look outside our windows and find fault with others who don’t share our skin color.

If actions are stronger than words, then a nation that engages in one senseless war after another, steps on the necks of its own citizens, and confuses a truly rich life with one of wealth and appalling privilege is a complete and utter failure.

It is not remotely great.

Time and again, America has diagnosed its sickness, and made good-faith efforts to cure it, before grotesque men like Rupert Murdoch have decided there was no money to be made in a nation strong enough to admit its weaknesses.

Exploiting our original sin for their gain is, to quote Hillary Clinton, “deplorable.”

I have seen far too many people of both political parties say we cannot make everything about race. Well, I say we can no longer afford not to, because looking away has never worked.

Without fail, these pleas come from the mouths of white people, who are either insulated from hard truths, or worse are just too cowardly to address this terribly sad reality.

I cannot pretend to know what is truly inside a Black man’s heart and mind, but I can seek it out, and do what I can to help with their centuries-old afflictions.

Better to look like a fool while running a good and noble errand in the name of equality, than doing the fool’s work of pretending everybody is good and equal in America.

As an old, white man I am highly qualified to diagnose my condition which is, and always has been, privilege. Too many white men were born halfway up the ladder, but confuse it with making a mighty climb. These are the people who go through their empty lives holding onto a lofty status that was never earned.

There are the people who are inside this corrupted Trump White House who are almost too stupid and ridiculous to imagine. Forget the president, what about his crooked, no-talent cabinet that includes Pete Hegseth, Markwayne Mullin, Lee Zeldin, Howard Lutnick, Scott Bessent, Sean Duffy and RFK Jr.?

None of these people got their jobs on any merit. Quite the opposite: They got their jobs because of their allegiance to a broken and bigoted man, who grew up in a world where loyalty and respect weren’t earned, but claimed by a wretched, cold hand holding tight to a whip.

There has never been a single time and place in history where diversity, equity and inclusion was needed more, because America has never been sicker.

This strain of bigotry might be the most lethal one yet, because it is coming from the very top of our government, and filtering its way through our elected offices, our military, our highest courts, and into our schools.

It is crawling over us, and there are seemingly no barriers to prevent its spread … except one: US.

We must all do what we can to turn racism away, and stay true to our hearts. We must rally like-thinkers, and amplify our quest to finally and once and for all address America’s inequity, and grab it by its roots and shake it.

We must call it what is.

Silence is not an option, only a pacifier.

Until this is finally done — and it must be done — millions of beautiful people will continue to suffer needlessly for simply entering this world a certain color.

Is there really anything more sickening and tragic than that?

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

Let’s start our Wednesday by enjoying this delicious nut graph from NPR on their recent polling which reflects Trump and his GOP’s epic failures, and what that might mean for November’s key midterms:

More than 80% of Americans say pain at the pump is straining their household budgets and a striking majority blames the president, according to a NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. The poll found that President Trump faces his lowest popularity ever and is experiencing major declines with key demographics since being sworn in for his second term. Most Americans said the economy isn’t working for them. The war in Iran — which has directly led to higher gas prices — is increasingly unpopular. Those challenges have given Democrats a distinct advantage in the midterm elections. When asked which party’s candidate they’d vote for if congressional elections took place today, Democrats led by 10 points.

Pour another cup of coffee. Grab a danish. Now read that again. Let it soak in, and then we can discuss it a little further for a few minutes before we all go off to whistle while we work.

-The poll found that President Trump faces his lowest popularity ever …

-Most Americans said the economy isn’t working for them ...

-The war in Iran — which has directly led to higher gas prices — is increasingly unpopular ...

That ghastly noise you are hearing right now is a result of the sheer panic emanating from the offices of the nearest GOP rep to you. Thanks to their submission to the fascist Trump, they will have nothing but pain to run on the next six months.

Watching those reps — particularly in close congressional districts — trying to support their moronic president on one hand, while trying to delicately separate themselves from him with the other will be entertainment you just can’t find anywhere.

These people are called burnt toast.

Now for a caveat: As I typed Tuesday, we are now six months out from the most important elections of our lives, so nothing can be taken for granted. We have a deranged president, who instead of working toward consensus, is rallying his billionaire orcs, and soul-suckers in his broken cabinet to step on our necks in an attempt to finish us off.

Trump is failing spectacularly on every level, and rather than admit it, he will continue tossing grenades at our election apparatus and the American voters. Rather than fix his problems he will relish in making them ours.

That said … this poll is a real eye-opener.

OK, one more caveat: Yes, yes, I agree, how ANYBODY can still support this America-attacking, lying bigot is an ongoing sad commentary on America. The guy should be rotting in jail, but like it or not, we all must live with the reality that fully 35 percent of the American electorate is broken and refuse to be fixed. The people who told us for four years under Joe Biden that rising gas prices were a deal-breaker, are now looking under their hoods, while their orange idol makes their lives more expensive and meaningless.

It’s a cult.

Moving on …

The number that really stands out to me in this poll is that 10-pt. edge Democrats are currently enjoying on the congressional ballot test.

From NPR:

The ballot test asks which party’s candidate they would vote for if congressional elections took place today.
Democrats also have the edge on enthusiasm to vote, which is critical in midterm years when turnout is expected to be lower than in presidential-election years.

For some perspective, in the lead-up to the 2018 midterms, the Democrats’ had that exact 10 pt. margin in enthusiasm, and it fueled the Blue Wave that swept onto the beaches and across the American countryside.

The Democrats flipped 40 seats in the House that year and picked up seven governorships. Democrats would end up netting more than 8.6 million voters overall, or an eight-pt. margin on Election Day. That’s down from the 10-pt. margin the polls predicted, but still a convincing wipeout.

Democrats would sign on to a similar margin right now for November’s elections, but while we’re feeling good about things for a change, let’s hope for 10 this year, and make it 11 for a good measure.

Unfortunately, gerrymandering will mitigate some of the gains, but if this number stays within two or three pts. of 10, it will be a complete blowout — the kind we must have in November to hammer Trump’s odious party into submission, and send a signal loud and clear that the Trump regime cannot stand.

Maybe most important: If this number stays in the vicinity of 10, Democrats will almost certainly win the Senate, which would slam the brakes on Trump’s endless designs to celebrate himself, and turn Washington, D.C., into nothing but a cheap version of Moscow.

All this is not entirely a surprise. Since 2024, Democrats have been winning all over the map, and flipping seats in red, blue and purple states. That is the result of the work YOU are doing on the ground to protect America from Republicans’ ongoing attack.

Hard as it can be through all the blood, sweat and tears, we are doing what we can to hold the line. Maybe more important: We are doing all this while imploring the party we vote with to do more, and stop playing patty cake with the damn Republicans. We are reminding the Democratic National Committee, that if they persist to exist they damn well better start listening to the people who really run things: US.

Keep it up.

There will be more polls and endless analysis like this in the lead up to the midterms. You can count on more pain coming from the rubble of our White House and bought-off Supreme Court. But for today … just today … Why not enjoy this good news, while we navigate through the mayhem that is Trump’s America?

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

Like you, my friends, I am dealing with a lot of grief and anger about the terrible state of affairs in the United States of America right now.

I’ll be honest with you, the Conservative Supreme Court’s appalling decision to shove a knife in the heart of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 sent me right over the edge this week.

Similar to the decision to bury Roe before it, this was a decided retreat and two significant steps backwards on the long, muddy road toward progress, as well as this flawed notion of liberty and justice for all …

I have now lived long enough to see the birth and death of these two things, and as a liberal, and a patriot I grieve their loss. These were terrible, destructive decisions that have diminished us both as a people and a nation.

I know you feel the way I do, because we have the audacity to care, good people.

By steeling ourselves with the courage to dig in and stand against the terrible forces who toss evil in our faces by the shovelful, we have opened ourselves up to a world of blinding hurt.

Yet here we are.

Tired as we are, we don’t look away or run for cover. We wear our hearts on our sleeves and stand in there and fight like hell.

We are liberals, after all, and people come no tougher than that.

As I get old, I grow ever more comfortable inside my worn skin. I know who and what I truly believe in, as well as the things worth fighting for.

When I take my last breath, I will do so knowing I put up a good, righteous fight.

So what is it I (we) liberals believe in? I thought about this at length yesterday, and put together the following partial list. I say partial because it is impossible to recite all the good we do for Americans and the world.

The word liberal has gotten a raw deal in my lifetime, and I am past sick and tired of it. America is damn lucky to have us.

I am proud to be a liberal.

Here’s why, as well as what I believe in:

• I believe people of color have been getting screwed in this country for centuries.
• I believe women in this country have been getting screwed in this country for centuries.
• I believe as a white man born of privilege that was never earned, I have a responsibility to advocate for these two groups to help lift them up and earn their respect.
• I believe war should be the last resort — I mean, the absolute LAST resort — to solve disputes between nations.
• I believe as a United States veteran I should speak out against wars, and work for peace.
• I believe toxic male masculinity and the bro culture is a dangerous, pathetic overcompensation by little men like Pete Hegseth.
• I believe if more women were in charge, there would be less war and less acrimony.
• I believe that is indisputable.
• I believe in the arts. They are everything.
• I believe we should do everything possible to make it as easy as possible for the citizens of the United States of America to perform the single most important act there is to ensure our survival as a democratic republic: VOTE
• I believe nature is sacred, and must be protected.
• I believe keeping our air and water as clean as possible shouldn’t be a wish, but a law.
• I believe anybody who harms nature should be treated with the same consequences as anybody who harms a person.
• I believe corporations should be taxed at the same rate I am.
• I believe there is no reason whatsoever for billionaires.
• I believe as a veteran, the budget of the bloated Department of Defense is a dangerous, unnecessary joke and should immediately be cut in half — and half more, after that.
• I believe the other halves of that money should go first toward making sure every child gets enough to eat each day, and our seniors get the first-class care they damn well deserve.
• I believe the Department of Defense should be renamed the Department of Well-Being.
• I believe access to affordable healthcare should be a right.
• I believe there is nothing more important than treating everybody with dignity.
• I believe people should mind their own damn business.
• I believe love is love no matter where and how you get it.
• I believe clean energy should be the present not the future.
• I believe every child has a right to a top-notch education.
• I believe teachers should have their salaries immediately doubled with funding from the Department of Well-Being.
• I believe as a white man that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion make America a more just and better place, because DEI is not about favoritism, it is simply about fairness.
• I believe that can’t be said enough.
• I believe there should be reparations paid to descendants of slaves, because owning, chaining, beating and lynching other human beings is an abomination, and is a cancer that still runs through America’s hardening veins today.
• I believe this is obvious as hell when you compare the living standards and wages of Blacks and whites in America, as well as their accessibility to the voting booth.
• I believe if you don’t believe this, you are simply lying to yourself.
• I believe if you are lying to yourself, you probably voted for the racist Donald Trump, the most notorious liar in the world.
• I believe better days ahead, because I believe liberals never give up and keep pushing forward no matter what.

Again, this is but a partial list, and I apologize if I missed things that are dear to you as fellow proud liberals.

Know this, though: I am proud to know you.

Thanks for being in my life and helping to fill it up. Thanks for your friendship, readership and support. You are the people I will remember when I finally go off to join the dogs and cats in my life who left this troubled world before me.

You are liberals after all, and the best there is.

Don’t you ever forget it, dammit.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.

Lately, I have been thinking about the word “freedom” and how that word has been twisted into unrecognizable wreckage by a Republican Party that uses it as a sad excuse to brutally hammer tens of millions of Americans into submission, including themselves.

America is supposed to be the land of the free, but try telling that to a pregnant woman who is faced with a crushing decision about what’s best for her, or Alex Pretti or Renee Good who were shot dead in the street by government thugs for freely standing up against violent authoritarianism. (Government thugs, incidentally, who are still free among us to kill again as I type this.)

I was finally spurred to put words to my thoughts about freedom after attending a casual meeting of do-gooders here in North Carolina last week, which veered into the importance of cleaning up our coastal waterways, so marine life are free to flourish without the man-made threat of being violently choked to death.

A younger woman told the story about how plastic bags had been banned in the Outer Banks of the state in 2009, because their overuse had become a hazard to beach life such as sea turtles. The ban was actually popular among a majority of the residents and businesses, and worked just fine until a Republican representative on the island, Beverly Boswell, decided she’d seen enough of all this good, and decided that telling people how they should sack up there groceries was an infringement on their freedom to be just as disgusting as they wanted to be.

Well, no surprise this stirring Braveheart moment caught on like wildfire with Republicans across the state, and by 2017 the ban was repealed by the GOP majority in the legislature in the name of freedom.

It became known as North Carolina’s ban on bans.

You read all that right.

I have grown weary hearing about this cultish party’s distrust and full-blown hate of our government in the name of freedom, but lack of distrust in the head of that government, Donald Trump, who is easily the most dishonest, self-serving man in United States history.

It is impossible to describe just how stupid and weak they look and sound, but I’ll take a whack at it ...

You see, the Republican Party wants us to believe freedom exists to give them the right to do whatever the hell it is they want when they want, and oppress people they don’t like all in the name of some perverted notion of law and order.

Well, we simply have to know by now that Republicans don’t stand for law and order or freedom. In fact, they absolutely loathe them. Why, they helped give a 34-count convicted felon, who stood up the most violent attack on our Capitol since 1812, the keys to finish us off for good.

That isn’t called freedom, it’s called treason.

Freedom isn’t the reason they absolutely love our U.S. troops patrolling our U.S. cities. Control over those cities is.

It gets worse (more pathetic), because these so-called freedom-loving Republicans inside our Congress have handcuffed themselves to Trump’s altar, and are told what to say and when to say it by their shriveled up, 80-year-old, orange wannabe king, or else.

Such freedom, eh?

They have been stripped of original thought, and believe only what they are allowed to by an abusive slob, who is mentioned in the Epstein Files tens of thousands of times, has lied hundreds of thousands of times while in office, and regularly beats Republican legislators into submission.

Picture Lindsey Graham …

Now picture the dangerous, anti-American tongue-draggers at the J-6 insurrection attempt, who were given the freedom to do it all that again, after being pardoned by the dangerous slob, who was given the freedom by our busted Supreme Court to do whatever he likes without consequence.

That isn’t freedom, it is authoritarianism.

Of course the damndest thing about all of this is just how freely these low-wattage idiots are hurting themselves in their never-ending quest to oppress everybody else.

Best I can see, Trump has not done a single thing to make their lives better, except hate the very same people they do.

Otherwise, he has made it harder for them to get the most basic things in life like affordable medical care, broadband access, unbiased news, clean air and water, and matching funding to keep their schools, parks, ball fields, libraries, streets, buildings, and neighborhoods thriving.

Even the gasoline they chug by the gallon is more expensive now.

And, say, what about freedom of choice or freedom of speech?

What about the freedom to read what they want?

What about freedom of the press, or freedom from all that religion they are throwing in our face?

How about the freedom to be who you want to be, or freedom from these damn billionaire-run monopolies who choose what we buy and where we can buy it?

All this freedom they seek is killing them and us.

Still not convinced?

Their warped sense of freedom has allowed them to finally unshackle themselves from all this dreaded science that has saved millions and millions of lives over the years from things like the Measles, which they believe they should be free to spread again.

Science used to be relied on to increase life expectancy, but thanks to all these Republican freedoms that is on the decrease, too.

They have given predatory insurance companies the freedom to ignore our claims, and raise our already sky-high premiums — that is if we can even afford to carry insurance in the first place.

By giving our government the freedom to deregulate corporations they are free to once again kill generations of people and animals from toxins that the scientists warned were lethal.

Their march for freedom has led to cuts in disaster relief that aids and comforts them when their towns are blown to pieces by catastrophic storms and fires that are far more severe than they used to be because of a rapidly changing climate. Republicans will look you straight in the eye and swear that isn’t happening, even if those predatory insurance companies are using the very science they distrust to defend devouring their savings.

That isn’t freedom. It is willful ignorance.

Look, I could go on here, but 1,000-plus words on this subject is enough for now, and you should be free to go.

Republicans’ bastardized notion of the word freedom, is slowly strangling all of us, and that is by design, people. The truth is Americans have never been less free in my lifetime, and it is getting worse by the minute as fascism runs through the GOP’s hardening hearts and into our democracy’s veins.

All of which has led me rather unintentionally to all-time liberal Kris Kristofferson’s immortal, obfuscatory lyrics that were belted out by the incomparable Janis Joplin in the hit single, Me and Bobby McGee:

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose … Nothin', don't mean nothin', honey, if it ain't free …”

Fifty-five years later I finally get it …

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

The 2026 White House Correspondents' Dinner is this Saturday, so let me be blunt: If you fancy yourself a journalist, and I hear you were within a mile of this event I will cut you off cold.

Anybody who decides to share the stage with the greatest threat to a free press and the United States of America in my lifetime, the appalling Donald J. Trump, should never be allowed to carry a press pass again.

I’ve had more than enough of these phonies disgracing what was once one of the most important vocations in the world. By checking their backbones and credibility at the door to self-serving events like these, they are going out of their way to make a mockery out of the profession.

Before cutting them to pieces, and laying them bare, I will make exceptions to any so-called journalist who attends this nauseating event and makes a loud point of standing up, turning his or her back, and walking out of the place the minute Trump begins to run his big, fat mouth.

Otherwise, the rest of them can all go straight to hell.

Truth is, many people who have worked for and with me in the business over the years will know I never had a soft spot for this sort of stupid back-patting gala of me-first media elites, but tolerated it through clenched teeth.

Every person who attends this event knows full well they are doing so to make news, instead of cover it. They know that this is one of journalism’s highest crimes.

Unfortunately these days, too much of the attempted journalism I see from our corporate media is nothing but a series of high crimes.

Most of the people who will be shoving their mugs in front of the cameras Saturday night are the same lost souls who were unable to spot one of the most significant news stories in United States history — the attack on democracy — in the run-up to the 2024 election, and instead covered it like some meaningless, back-and-forth horse race.

Even they should be able to see where that has gotten us now, as our democracy teeters on the edge of extinction.

It’s absolutely perfect then, that Weijia Jiang, is the current president of the stupid association hosting this spoiled dinner. Jiang works as a correspondent at CBS “News” — the place that has made a pathetic spectacle of itself by surrendering to the man and his administration they have invited to spit all over everybody, and the notion of free speech in America.

Here was Trump’s noxious, public response to Jiang’s insane invitation last month:

“The White House Correspondents Association has asked me, very nicely, to be the Honoree at this year’s Dinner. It will be my Honor to accept their invitation, and work to make it the GREATEST, HOTTEST, and MOST SPECTACULAR DINNER, OF ANY KIND, EVER!”

Oh, well, since they asked him “very nicely ….”

How is it they STILL can’t understand they are dealing with a spoiled toddler holstering nuclear codes in his soiled diaper, who needs consequences, not coddling?

Jiang continued to outdo herself with this quote:

“(The dinner) reinforces the importance of the First Amendment in our democracy. Our choice to gather as journalists, newsmakers and the president in the same room is a reminder of what a free press means to this country and why it must endure.”

Sorry, and excuse my French, but what the f--- does that even mean?

Because gathering together in a ballroom and rubbing greasy elbows with a man who has called you “the enemy of the people” and your work “fake” has to be one of the weakest, most pathetic things I have ever seen.

You know what really exhibits the meaning of a free press? Holding power to account, Weijia.

Good God.

You are making it crystal clear you have zero respect for the business that I, and thousands of others gave our professional lives to. You are making fools of the journalists who paid the ultimate sacrifice by laying their lives down to tell us all what was happening on the battlefield, the storm-ravaged country, or myriad other dangerous places of upheaval around the globe.

And what of the journalists who covered the attack on the United States Capitol January 6, 2021, by the man you are honoring Saturday? The very man who has since pardoned the thugs who stomped law enforcement officers to near death and threatened to murder politicians that day.

Unless, as the ace reporters you somehow fancy yourselves, you really don’t think Trump had anything to do with the violence that day …

What is wrong with you people? Does it mean THAT much to you to fall at the fat, little feet of a sick, demented man who is trying to end us just as sure as I am typing this?

How about getting to the bottom of that, instead of some overpriced, dirty martini.

Among other heinous things, Trump has relentlessly attacked, and banned the Associated Press from the White House, defunded Public media, defended the Saudis for their brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, pulled credentials from news organization that have covered the Pentagon for years, and raped one of the most important papers in the world, Stars and Stripes, where I spent 11 years of my career.

He has called women reporters like Weijia Jiang “horrible” “stupid” “ugly” and “piggy.”

And it somehow gets worse …

From reporting in the Daily Beast Monday:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who last week compared the media to the Pharisees, a vilified sect cited in the Bible, is expected to sit at a table with CBS News.

This is almost too appalling to type.

I see more than 250 former broadcast journalists, including Dan Rather, Ann Curry and Sam Donaldson, delivered a letter Monday urging the dinner’s organizers “to forcefully demonstrate opposition to President Trump’s efforts to trample freedom of the press.”

The letter starts this way:

“We, the undersigned, call upon the White House Correspondents’ Association to use the occasion of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, to forcefully demonstrate opposition to President Trump’s efforts to trample freedom of the press.”

It goes onto to say:

“These are not normal times, and this cannot be business as usual with the press standing up to applaud the man who attacks them on a daily basis.”

And:

“Continuing in that spirit, we believe the White House Correspondents Association should take stronger action by issuing—from the podium—a forceful defense of freedom of the press and condemnation of those who threaten that freedom, followed by a standing toast to the First Amendment and a pledge to continue upholding such a critical cornerstone of our democracy.”

I respect them, and appreciate their efforts, but doing my best folksy, deep-voiced Rather impersonation I inject this:

“Do not let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

The truth is, the normalization of the abominable Trump by our corporate media has had a more devastating consequence to our democracy than just about anything I can think of.

They have normalized racism, abuse, toxic dishonesty, and even treason.

On Saturday they will normalize authoritarianism, by standing alongside a fascist thug, who has spent the past year-plus taking a wrecking ball to our White House, erecting statues carrying his repulsive name, and hanging banners of his ugly face from our public buildings to honor himself instead of America.

He is treating Washington D.C., like it is just another one of garish country clubs.

Or did the White House “working press” somehow miss all that on their way to honoring themselves Saturday, and forgetting who they are really supposed to serve: the American public.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.)

It has been another long, brutal week of lies, misdirection and lawlessness from Donald Trump and his political party of sycophants, who spend the majority of their time somewhere in the vicinity of their master’s wobbly knees.

Prices are soaring, our democracy is crumbling, we are seemingly at war with the world to include the Pope, and the corporate media, or whatever you want to call ‘em, still have no idea what to make of any of it.

All this is especially galling to their consumers, who are angry as hell and scared to death as we try to navigate through the most precarious time in America since the Civil War.

You don’t need guys like me to tell you we won’t survive three more years of this, but you do need guys like me to tell you it’s a pretty big, damn news story that has somehow been grossly under-reported by what passes for that media.

The President of the United States is a serial liar, who can’t be trusted to tell the truth, and why this isn’t included in every single story about him completely escapes me, it really does.

I have pounded the table about this before, and don't intend to stop now.

Our feeble press acts as if seeking comment from the White House, no matter how devoid of truth it is, is somehow practicing journalism.

As a career journalist, here is what I have to say about that: NO IT ISN’T.

If you ask a known liar a question, you better point out that he is a known liar in your coverage, and then fact-check the hell out of every bit of it.

“Trump says this, now Trump says that” is not journalism. It is lazy, dangerous, and serves only one person: the liar.

This morning while I was poking around all the likely news sites critiquing our media’s work and celebrating the good reporting when I was lucky enough to come across it, I noticed that the Strait of Hormuz seemed to be closed again.

“Huh,” I grunted sarcastically to myself.

Why just last night the guy who lies about everything told the media and us that the Strait of Hormuz was open. They even had it in 100-pt type.

Guess he was lying again.

Here’s an approximation of what my newsfeed has looked like the past few weeks, my friends:

STRAIT OF HORMUZ OPEN, TRUMP

STRAIT OF HORMUZ CLOSED, IRAN

STRAIT OF HORMUZ OPEN, TRUMP

STRAIT OF HORMUZ CLOSED, IRAN

Well it turns out it’s closed again, though the headline type was much smaller this morning.

Here is the The New York Times’ header as I type this:

Iran’s Military Says It Has Reimposed ‘Strict Control’ of Strait of Hormuz

All this would be comical if is wasn't so damn sad, so let me help everybody out here, with the hope of moving on from this journalistic stupor we are in:

The Strait of Hormuz will be open when Iran says so.

Sorry, that’s just how it is, no matter what the guy who lies approximately every other minute alleges.

And one more time for emphasis: Please, stop repeating his lies, dammit.

Here’s more truth: As long as Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) is intact, ships will not be able to navigate the strait safely. The IRGC is not a part of Iran’s regular navy, and has been wreaking havoc in the region for decades. Back in my Stars and Stripes days, we used to deal with them all the time.

THAT THEY ARE STILL ACTIVE IS NOT A SURPRISE.

Sorry for hollering at you there, but good grief.

I actually searched for some sound reporting on the IRGC to see what they were up to these days, and wouldn’t you know it, I ended up right back at the NYT that broke out a meaty story on the group THIS MORNING.

Again, sorry for hollering but if the NYT has reporters telling us that the Strait of Hormuz is nearly impossible to open safely, why are the managing editors and decision-makers in their newsroom parroting whatever Trump is lying about as pertains to opening it safely?

Incredible, isn’t it?

This is from the reporting on IRGC that their managing editors are apparently ignoring:

“Iranian warships sunk by U.S. and Israeli attacks litter naval harbors along the Persian Gulf coast, but what is sometimes called a “mosquito fleet” lurks in the shadows.”

That’s a great lede.

Here’s more:

It is a flotilla of small, fast, agile boats designed to harass shipping, and it forms the heart of the naval forces deployed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a force separate from Iran’s regular navy.
These boats, and especially the missiles and drones that the Guards navy can launch from them, or from camouflaged sites onshore, have been the main threat stymying shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

Even more:

“The I.R.G.C. navy works more like a guerrilla force at sea,” said Saeid Golkar, an expert on the Guards and a political science professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
“It is focused on asymmetrical warfare, especially in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz,” he added. “So instead of relying on big warships and classic naval battles, it depends on hit-and-run attacks.”

Finally:

The boats are often too small to appear on satellite images, and they are moored along piers within deep caves excavated along the rocky coastline, ready to be deployed in minutes, analysts said. Their arsenal poses a major threat to commercial ships in the gulf and the strait.
“It remains a disruptive force,” said Adm. Gary Roughead, a retired chief of U.S. Naval Operations. “You never quite knew what they were up to and what their intentions were.”

All this wonderful reporting was tucked inside the paper that only last night was trumpeting Trump’s lies that the strait was open.

Again, as a journalist that is maddening. As a Navy vet, I take no pride in the fact that the most powerful navy in the world is handcuffed right now to eradicate the IRGC without tremendous risk to its sailors, which is Reason No. 1 that going into Iran with absolutely no thought or planning was reckless at best and criminal at worst.

Right now the only way the strait opens is with a significant military escalation that will endanger thousands of American lives, or if Iran gets what it wants from our lying, incompetent White House.

Iran has the upper hand.

Trump’s incompetent leadership has led us headlong into this hell hole, and we are all paying for it with U.S. treasure and American lives.

The quickest way to end this nightmare, and this madman’s appalling presidency is to stop repeating his lies, and instead start holding him to account.

This nonsense has gone on long enough.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

“The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants, yet it is held together by a multitude of supportive brothers and sisters!”

“Blessed are the peacemakers, but woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.”

-Pope Leo XIV, Thursday speaking to thousands in Cameroon

Before I begin my very short sermon today, I ask you to read the above thunderbolt again, and share it widely.

We are watching history unfold as the Catholic Church publicly makes it clear as day that it stands against anybody who will prostitute the name of God for his own sick, and ill-gotten gains as the morbid Donald Trump continued to do this past weekend with this sickening image.

This is but one example, of course, of this detestable man’s disregard for humanity, religion, and all that must be held as decent in this world. For more than a decade the good and righteous have watched with rage and horror as Trump burned the contents of the Bible to ashes with his grotesque actions and “filth” and it is about time people of moral standing like the Pope are standing with us to put this evil down once and for all.

I cannot recall a time in recent world history when more loaded words have been spoken by a person of such global repute. Leo’s words were shot out of a cannon and aimed directly at the lawless, immoral men like Trump across the globe who are busy trying to drag us all into the “darkness and filth.”

There was no nuance here, because these devils must be stopped dead in their tracks, before it is too late. And as many of us know “too late” is menacingly banging at our doors.

It cannot be overstated how important it is that this Pope from Chicago has injected himself to the front of this battle for what is so clearly good against what is so clearly evil.

You do not have to be a religious person to understand the importance of this history-making moment.

-Either you believe we are in a life-or-deaf struggle against good and evil or you don’t.
-Either you believe our democracies around the world, and certainly here in America, are under extreme threat or you don’t.
-Either you believe our rights as citizens and people are under extreme threat or you don’t.
-Either you believe that everything has to be done to preserve our human freedoms or you don’t.
-Either you believe people like Trump are moral vandals and “filth” or you don’t ...

We now know without a shadow of a doubt what the Pope thinks, and he is shining his powerful light across lands and seas as he calls for this public reckoning with evil.

And lest you think Leo’s words Thursday were directed only at Cameroon’s own separatist conflict, the Vatican was rocket-quick to clarify that. From AP reporting:

“Vatican officials have made clear that on this trip, he is preaching the Gospel message of peace that surpasses borders and continents, and is meant for all those responsible for the wars and exploitation ravaging the Earth.”

The Catholic Church has now come out strong against the Trump regime and drawn a line in the sand. Now we watch to see how the 55 percent of Catholics who supported Trump in the 2024 elections respond.

I wrote extensively on this subject Tuesday, typing:

“The battle has been joined against the maniacal Trump by his countryman Pope Leo XIV, and as a righteous man and warrior for what I believe is good and right, I welcome him with open arms.”

On Thursday Leo only intensified his warning that the course we are on is simply not sustainable, and he intends to make good and damn sure everybody knows it.

Perilous times call for leadership and courage, and too damn many of us have been left alone to fight the evil on the lawless political Right that wants to end us.

I welcome the Pope to this fight, because as I also typed Tuesday:

“I might not be a Christian, but I know an ally when I see one.”

The patriotic phonies and racists who have propped up this orange Antichrist have been put on notice. You can abandon this evil man and join the rest of us democratic crusaders who are standing up for what is good and right, or your reckoning might be coming.

But I’ll let a man who speaks for God say it:

“Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth.”

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

Hard as it is, I’d like you to view these four images, before we have a serious talk about the much-needed and immediate response to this assault on the senses and the Holy See.

I am sorry for putting you through that, I really am, because if you are a person that possesses even a shred of decency, it is a dizzying attack on your mental well-being, and impossible to process.

It is breathtaking in its raw idiocy and sheer hate.

That anybody could produce such incendiary bile speaks to the sad fact that anybody can possess unbridled hate and ignorance in this world. That the “anybody” in this instance is the President of the United States of America should be a showstopper, and the final straw of the saddest 10-year stretch in this country’s 250-year history.

Donald Trump needs to be removed from office. You know it, I know it, and tens of millions of people who aren’t reading this piece know it.

Well, somehow 99 percent of the mainstream media in America don’t know it, are too damn scared to say it, or have absolutely zero understanding of their jobs as journalists and their duty to warn the people they serve of the extreme danger we are facing right now.

Trump is capable of anything, and also sits atop the largest nuclear stockpile in the world. He is growing more desperate and unhinged every day, and everything should be done to stop him to protect us.

You know who else knows this? Pope Leo XIV.

I’ll get to him in a minute, when I am done setting the morbid scene, and the short past that has somehow dangerously been normalized in present-day America.

Just 12, short years ago, not a person reading this thought they would ever live to see this kind of madness emanating from our White House on a daily basis. This is the kind of unhinged behavior we’d expect to see from the authoritarian leader of North Korea.

Looking back, maybe we shouldn’t have been surprised.

The unhinged, scary reaction on the Right to Barack Obama’s election in 2008 was yet another sad indication that the Civil War in America was never fully decided, and just rolled around uncomfortably below the surface in an uneasy truce.

The incendiary Tea Party movement was kindled from the ashes of a failed war, a decimated economy and John McCain’s presidential loss, and birthed heartless sickos to take over the Republican Party like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann and Ted Cruz.

Essentially they set the dirt-low standard for what would follow as warm up acts for what would eventually crawl upon stages all over America at something called, MAGA rallies.

Anything went in these rowdy events because everybody was a target. Rebel flags were as common as moths to light in these hate fests. The two-time election of a Black man and healthcare for all was a bridge too far for these phony patriots, and they were drooling to get even.

The Civil War truce was officially over.

The leader of this bowel movement was a stone-cold bigot, who had proved his low-class mettle by steadily slogging through the mud and incessantly trolling the hated Obama with his ugly, racist birther attacks.

It was incredibly ugly, and as it turns out, the beginning of the end of the last vestiges of civility and decency in the Republican Party.

Military veterans like myself naively told anybody who would listen that we were better than this, and would never succumb to that kind of overt hate from a draft-dodging bigot.

That was the last time I ever overestimated this below-average country again.

Instead of calling these venomous attacks what they were, our media labeled them “political differences.” Incessant lies were called “mistruths.” Foreign attacks on our elections were not dissuaded by Republicans, they were publicly invited. “Russia, if you’re listening …”

Donald Trump had been normalized by a media which willingly lost its credibility, because of its inability and/or refusal to report on this monster and his threat to this nation accurately.

Even worse: Many people of religion publicly supported Trump, which is why I have always been deeply suspicious of all religions. I tried various forms of Christianity over my long lifetime, and discovered it did absolutely nothing for me.

Suddenly people who loudly supported the virtuous Jesus Christ, were also good with the loudmouth Donald Trump, and that just seemed wildly conflicting, and why religion is a very dangerous weapon when it isn’t holstered properly.

Maybe that’s changing.

In the past few weeks, religion has become an answer in addition to an enemy of America and her democracy.

I am grateful that Pope Leo has thoughtfully, politely and forcefully injected himself into this conversation about this life-or-death issue concerning America’s democracy.

While in my mind it is fair to question many aspects of the Catholic religion, I do believe this man is a person of moral standing and maybe more important, is an American. That would make him the most qualified Catholic in the world to speak about what is happening inside his country, and even if all of the 55 percent of Catholics who somehow supported Trump in 2024 aren’t listening, I damn sure am.

He didn’t need to be doing this but he is, and everybody fighting for good and decency should welcome him and his voice to the important fight.

After the repulsive Trump posted his incessant screed, Leo came back strong:

“I have no fear of the Trump administration, or speaking out loudly of the message of the gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do, what the church is here to do.”

He wasn’t through:

“We are not politicians, we don’t deal with foreign policy with the same perspective he might understand it, but I do believe in the message of the gospel, as a peacemaker.”

A week earlier, Leo criticized Trump’s public threats to “wipe out” Iranian civilization, and said: “Attacks on civilian infrastructure are abasing international law” because that’s exactly what they are.

He then went full-on activist and urged people to contact leaders and members of Congress to call for peace. He didn’t provide a phone number, but I will: (202) 224-3121

Then he said this:

“God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”

In response to this, I am seeing many Republicans urging (warning) the Pope to stay out of politics, and because I am not the Pope, I will politely tell them to stick it where the sun don’t shine. I will also tell them to shut their big yaps, and keep their damn, two-faced religion out of our schools, city halls and the workplaces where it does not belong.

Just this afternoon Leo showed no indications of backing down and released this letter of concern about democracy:

“Lacking this foundation, (democracy) risks becoming either ⁠a majoritarian tyranny or a mask for the dominance of economic and technological elites.”

Read that again, because it is smart, and on target: “⁠a majoritarian tyranny or a mask for the dominance of economic and technological elites ….”

That is EXACTLY what is happening inside America.

He went on in the letter to urge democratic societies (America) to avoid any temptation to hoard power:

“Temperance … proves ⁠essential for the legitimate use of authority, for true temperance restrains inordinate self-exaltation and acts as a guardrail against the abuse of power.”

Again, perfectly put: “inordinate self-exaltation and acts as a guardrail against the abuse of power.”

Sound like anybody you know?

So the battle has been joined against the maniacal Trump by his countryman Pope Leo XIV, and as a righteous man and warrior for what I believe is good and right, I welcome him with open arms.

I might not be a Christian, but I know an ally when I see one.

Trump and all his accompanying evil must go.

Can I get an amen?

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

I’ve heard more than enough from people who are attributing Donald Trump’s hourly low-grade filth and evil to some alleged bout with dementia, or any of the other terrible effects from Alzheimer’s disease.

I’m not sure why so many feel the need to ascribe dementia to a lifetime malignant narcissist, who has tragically lived his entire nearly 80 years on this planet serving exactly one person: HIMSELF.

I think it is important to be precise about what this repellent man is, and what he isn’t.

What he is:

A racist, a woman-abuser, a convicted felon, a serial liar, a thief, a huckster, a user, a cheater, a phony, a complete moron, and a deviant, all of which have congealed to make him a monster, and the most dangerous thing on earth.

Trump is dead inside, and best we can tell, this goes back to close to the point of his birth to a mother who couldn’t stand to be around him, and shipped him away the first good chance she got.

Here is what else he is:

An orange power tool being used by billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg so they can have unfettered access to our pocketbooks, mine our nation’s wealth, and access the halls of Congress to buy off one political weakling after another. As long as Trump gets his cut, he will run interference for these grotesque men, and then hang himself in the shed of our White House next to the other power tools to be used again and again and just as long as the money rolls downhill into his bottomless pockets.

Blaming dementia for Trump’s inhumane actions comes dangerously close to rendering him a sympathetic victim — a guy who has no control over where he goes, what he says, and what he does.

Trump knows exactly what he is doing, people.

His evil is calculated, and effortless.

Just look at the filth he has very intentionally surrounded himself with: The two Stephens, Bannon and Miller, JD Vance, Russell Vought, Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Kash Patel, and his odious, snotty sons, and son-in-law. Then of course there are the revolting trio of Supreme Court Justices he appointed, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, who along with the reprehensible Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas, and the feckless John Roberts are the most lawless group of people who have ever disgraced that chamber.

All these men (besides the doe-eyed Barrett) didn’t just happen to fall into these positions by mistake. They were carefully selected and loaded with purpose into the magazine of Trump’s weapon of mass destruction, which is otherwise known as his presidency.

These irresponsible claims of Trump’s dementia are also insulting to the tens of millions of people who have dealt with this terrible condition. My mother was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s when she was 62. She officially died at the age of 70, but had left this earth at least five years before that.

She was locked inside a world I know she hated, and surrounded by people who loved her, but were unable to reach her and set her free from her terrible bondage.

If you have dealt with this, or worse, are going through this now, you have my profound regards, and sympathy. Nobody should have to deal with this, and count me as a person who advocates for a peaceful, painless way out after the mind has long ago exited. I know this is what my mother would have wanted.

That is what compassion truly looks like.

Look, Trump may have dementia-like symptoms, but none of this is at all new.

He’s just an old, angry bigot, who is taking out the pain that courses through his trash can of a body on everybody else. He is a physical mess of a man, who harrumphs around on his swelling ankles looking for the next helpless victim to tackle.

He’s a miserable person, who relishes taking everybody down around him, and the latest proof that money can’t buy happiness.

When he has finally and blessedly taken his last breath, he will be remembered as one of history’s most evil, destructive men — that is, if he doesn’t drop the bomb first after a particularly tough day of screwing things up. Nobody can say with a straight face that this isn’t possible, and why he needs to be removed from office.

For now, and until then, let’s be careful about rendering Trump as a man who has no control over what he is doing, and instead call his condition what it really is: HATE.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

I am still wondering what the hell we are supposed to do with the people who voted for Trump upwards of three times, the anti-Americans who are somehow still with him, and the abhorrent, lazy, self-serving people who can’t be bothered to vote at all.

America is a complete disaster area that is littering the world with our radical right-wing trash, and ten of millions of us who predicted this would happen are owed a damn apology, and need to be listened to exclusively going forward.

So let me say this with precision: We were right about all of it.

And while that won’t change one damn terrible thing that has happened since that pitch black November night in 2016, I do think that for mental health purposes, it is important during this time of war and want, that the real patriots in this country hear this from time to time.

And let me be crystal clear about this, too: Predicting all these atrocities had nothing to do with possessing a brain, and everything to do with common decency.

A serial liar, and career woman-abusing bigot should have never been given the time of day much less a place on a ballot determining who would ascend to the most powerful position in the world.

That this is even minimally debatable is the problem.

America is hanging by a thread, and exposed to the corrupt whims of a mad, sociopathic convicted felon and wannabe king, and his hand-picked, bought-off conservative Supreme Court jesters, who have handed him the keys to the faltering American kingdom.

If you saw Trump’s so-called speech last night on God knows what, or even small snippets of the thing, it simply has to be clear as day that this wreck of an old man is nothing but a blown inner-tube with a malfunctioning release valve.

He is incoherent to the point of his own distraction, and the only thing we got last night for certain was confirmation of his endless capacity to lie with reckless abandon, and that things are about to get a whole lot worse.

Essentially, Trump has dragged this nation to the edge of the cliff, and is threatening to give us a final shove if we don’t submit to his incompetency, and start seeing things his way.

He’s not governing, because he has no talent for it. He’s not reversing course, because his broken transmission is stuck in fourth gear, and the padding on his brakes failed around the time his racist parents threw him out of the house, because even they could no longer stand to be around him.

He’s a runaway maniac careening out of control and using the rest of us as human bumpers.

He spends his day relentlessly insulting and rooting against the 70 percent who didn’t support him, and flat screwing the 30 percent who did.

I guess I am making a big deal out of this today, because every now and then the “We Told You Sos” need to rub it in everybody’s faces to keep our release valves functioning.

So hear this: Trump will kill every person on earth to avoid the insult of admitting he was wrong about anything.

I’m not wrong about this, and it should scare the hell out of anybody who has been paying any attention to this unnatural disaster.

He’s been wrong about everything except for the fealty of his base, and an inhumane Republican Party that will stay with him no matter what, because they somehow can’t find their way out of the corner they themselves have backed into. Like Trump they have no brakes. Trouble is, they are stuck in reverse, and won’t stop until they’ve reached 1852.

No surprise that while in the middle of typing all this, Trump continued the scapegoat phase of his failing regime. Trump fired his puppy-killing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem three weeks ago, and today Attorney General Pam Bondi was kicked down the stairs behind her.

This will not surprise even a single one of us Anti-Trumpers, because the first to go from this repellent White House was always going to be the revolting women like Bondi and Noem, who traded their self respect for the chance to be seen for who they really are.

Trump hates everybody, but he really hates women.

He has proven time and time again that he possesses an endless allegiance and affinity for grotesque, abusive men like Pete Hegseth, Robert Kennedy Jr., and Stephen Miller just as long as they dutifully stay in line.

Incompetency had little to do with Bondi’s firing, though there’s not a Anti-Trumper you’ll speak to who didn’t know she lacked the qualifications for the most important law enforcement position in the country.

No, Bondi is gone because apparently she was incapable of lowering herself completely into the sewer, which is a baseline qualification for anybody who works for Trump. That she didn’t eat and swallow the tens of thousands of mentions of her former boss in the Epstein Files, sealed her fate.

Still, she wanted to prove to everybody that her lack of self respect was fully intact when she released this bizarre statement after her firing:

"Over the next month I will be working tirelessly to transition the office of Attorney General to the amazing Todd Blanche before moving to an important private sector role I am thrilled about, and where I will continue fighting for President Trump and this Administration."

I suggest we take that as a threat.

So now another unqualified white man, Blanche, will take over until Trump can nominate an even more unqualified white man as a permanent replacement to Bondi.

Blanche was Trump’s personal attorney before infesting our DOJ.

Rumor has it the grotesque Lee Zeldin is a frontrunner for the job. Zeldin is currently working 24 hours a day to make sure our air and water are plenty polluted in his capacity as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Whoever gets Trump’s stomp of approval will be confirmed by the lawless Republican Senate with the disgraceful Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) in tow.

Here’s where I also remind you that attorney generals are supposed to work for US, not the president. I feel the need to point that out because like a dumpster full of other discarded normalities, Trump’s incestuous relationship with his attorney generals is both gross and thoroughly un-Democratic.

You also won’t see that mentioned much, if at all, in today’s reporting, because so much of the atrocities happening right now have been completely normalized.

Say, did you know the killers of Renee Good and Alex Pretti are still out there free as a bird to kill some more, because people like the odious Bondi are protecting them?

See what I mean?

Normalized.

Look, all this wasn’t written in a huff today to make you feel any better or worse about what is going on in America right now.

It was written because every now and then, people need reminding that there are a bunch of us who aren’t surprised by any of it, and even warned this would happen.

We are owed a damn apology, but if you can’t bring yourself to do that much, the least you can do is just shut up and start listening to us.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.)

I was triggered by The Atlantic yesterday morning, and simply have to fire back for the record.

This screenshot might read as a minor offense, but when piled like kindling onto the red-hot embers of countless other examples of our corporate media soft-pedaling the most dangerous, corrupt regime to ever visit our White House, it’s no wonder we have a fire burning completely out of control in the United States.

Here’s the assaulting item:

“Mixed” messages. THAT’S what The Atlantic headline writers have assigned to Donald Trump’s incoherent lies, pontifications, insults, threats, backtracks, rage, double downs, doubles backs, and abhorrent treatment of the entire world because of the chaos that bangs around inside his fat head.

When will this gaslighting stop from media organizations that have catastrophically failed us the past decade?

Just what in the hell is going on here?

Trump is a human dumpster, a collection of the foulest character traits ever piled into one man.

His mouth is a sewage pipe.

He is a racist, a misogynist, an unrepentant liar, an autocrat, and a convicted felon. Nothing I typed there should be in any dispute by now, and would easily survive the most strident fact-check.

So why isn’t this included in all the reporting about him for necessary context?

The Atlantic is hardly the only member of the corporate media who has normalized the abhorrent, and incapable Trump.

The corporate media has failed us to the point that our Democracy is now hanging by a thread. I have typed extensively about this for years, and will say again as a man who spent 30 years around newsrooms that it galls me to no end.

I have concluded that either the editors in these newsrooms are incompetent, or they need Trump around to keep their enterprises profitable.

I will readily concede, it is probably both.

But back to this piece in The Atlantic, which framed their video this way:

“Joining the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to discuss this and more: Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent at The New York Times; Susan Glasser, a staff writer at The New Yorker; David Ignatius; and Missy Ryan, a staff writer at The Atlantic. Watch the full episode here.”

This was a polite, meaty discussion that for the most part was critical in a pinkies out sort of way about this asinine war. Being from the polite, upper-crust media elite, all five of the panelists successfully avoided calling the war exactly what it is: an utter and complete cluster----.

Essentially, they spent the better part of the show trying to do what Trump has so far proven completely incapable of: explaining just what the hell it is we are doing in Iran.

It was the kind of discussion you might get when the grownups discuss what to do with Uncle Billy, who simply can’t stop wandering into traffic with his pudding.

Trump is easily the most dangerous man in the world, and this is what needs to be reported with urgency.

The time for polite avoidance simply has to be over by now.

I have argued that if they had covered him this way the first time around, there would have never been a second or third time.

Here’s what needs to happen right now:

Our media needs to stop reacting to what Trump is doing, and start anticipating the worst before it happens. It does little good to tell us the house is burning out of control when you could have told us an arsonist with a blowtorch was roaming the neighborhood beforehand.

Starting now, every single piece on him should include the following for proper context and accuracy:

-He is a serial liar, who cannot be trusted to tell the truth about anything.
-He is a convicted felon, who was protected by the Supreme Court from being held accountable for crimes like his attack on America.
-He is a racist.
-He is a misogynist, who has attacked women verbally and physically. Start calling him that.

This is how any story about Trump should read: “President Trump, who is a serial liar, misogynist, racist, and convicted felon alleged this morning that … [fill in the lie].”

They could also stand to start working into their stories about the fact that Trump appears in the Epstein Files an astonishing 38,000 times. These are just the files his lawless, crooked Justice Department has allowed us to see.

Read that again.

All of these things are relevant, and provide the much-needed context to remind and inform us all of the sociopath who is in a position to finish us off.

STOP NORMALIZING HIM.

That we aren’t already at this place, speaks to the media’s shoddy job covering this deviant since he started blocking out the sun in 2015.

Either you believe we are in a national emergency or you don’t.

If you don’t, then kindly surrender your press passes, because you are incompetent as hell and unable to identify the most important story in America since the Civil War.

If you can’t see what is happening you are stupid, unserious people that shouldn’t read a news story, much less type one.

If you do see it that way, but refuse to report it that way, then you are aiding and abetting the end of our Democracy, and no better than Trump himself.

What never came out of that damn Atlantic roundtable was a much-needed, urgent discussion about removing this tyrant from office, which is most certainly going to need to happen.

We cannot survive three more years of this nuclear-powered assault on our country.

Removing Trump from office, and holding the monsters to account who are appeasing him, should not be seen as a stretch, or some faint hope, but completely necessary.

Does anybody think Trump is capable of taking a deep breath and reassessing the hell he is inflicting on the entire world right now, starting with his own citizens? Or is it more likely he will escalate and put us on the brink of extinction, and the point of no return?

Again: The arsonist is roaming the neighborhood with a blowtorch. Are you going to report it this way, or wait until we are all engulfed in flames?

Our mainstream media needs to sit with this, and consider how they go forward with their coverage.

There’s only one correct course of action, and they better get it right, because there will be no second chances.

This is a national emergency.

Report it that way.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

While working my way East the past week from Wisconsin, I spent a lot of time behind the wheel of my car ruminating about Trump supporters, and more specifically, just what in the hell it is that can possibly make them tick.

Why are they so gleefully putting our country, and themselves, through all this unnecessary pain and hurt?

People who spend their precious time around here, will know I blame them for everything right now.

Simply: Without them, there is no him.

For the past decade this mouse of an orange, old man has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that his only talent is going lower. He is incapable of lifting America up, and instead spends hours and hours each day tearing us down and dividing us.

Trump is not interested in making America better — much less great — he is getting off on repeatedly abusing her for his enjoyment like so many other unfortunate souls who have crossed his grabby path.

He is not interested in world peace, only total chaos. He has not created jobs or wealth, only crashed our economy, and made himself and the billionaires like Elon Musk who own him richer. He has not made our failing healthcare system better, only more expensive and less responsive. He has not protected our retirement savings, he has looted them. He has not made us safer, he has made his odious political base more violent. He has not made our air and water cleaner, he has intentionally polluted them. He has not provided workers protections, he has torn them down, and left them exposed. He has not made it easier to raise our children, he has made it harder. He has not improved our schools, he has tried to close them. He has not made life more affordable, he has made it far, far more expensive. He has not tried to unite our country, he has taken out a golden sledgehammer and smashed it in pieces.

So what is there to recommend this man?

Until proven otherwise I always circle back to what I believe are Trump’s two main attractions to his cult: cruelty and bigotry.

There is a robust group of truly terrible people in America who have illustrated there is no known pain or sacrifice to our civil liberties or pocketbooks that they won’t absorb just for the satisfaction of watching some poor kid of color go without something they don’t think he or she should have.

If I have this at all right, and Trump’s unlimited capacity for cruelty and bigotry are relentlessly attractive to tens of millions of our fellow Americans, then imagine the terrible toll it is taking on the rest of us.

What are we supposed to do with this? How are we supposed to carry on through this homemade madness?

I’ve been giving that a lot of thought, too.

The day after arriving in North Carolina, I donned one of my favorite T-shirts. I didn’t wear it so much for effect, but because it’s comfortable and I like its message.

While standing in a supermarket checkout line, the woman behind me leaned in and quietly said, “I like your shirt.”

“Oh, wow, thanks,” I said. “Very kind.”

Then I remembered the shirt I had on, and realized she was attracted to the message and not the shirt!

“Oh … yeah,” I said. “Scary times we’re in.”

“They are,” she said.

“There are more of us,” I said.

“I hope so,” she said.

“There are,” I said defiantly.

I told her to keep the faith, grabbed my supplies and off I went.

We were both better for the exchange — two strangers coping with the dread that is enveloping this country and rediscovering they aren’t alone.

This happened two more times over the course of the day — strangers leaning in and quietly telling me how worried they were.

I have been given this a lot of thought, too.

Good people are scared and suffering silently in America. They are looking for hope wherever they can get it.

The late Jesse Jackson used to say, “Keep hope alive,” and that has never been more important now.

This is why Saturday’s No Kings rallies were so important. They provide a community for people who are tired, scared and just fed up with it all. There is nothing like rubbing shoulders with other people who share your concerns and core beliefs. They are a celebration of the good and decency that is still out there in America in abundance, and we need to shout that out.

It is also why we need to work these kinds of celebrations into our daily lives. We can’t be shy about leaning in and telling other patriots we stand strong with them. Just making a call to a friend, or a chat with a neighbor can provide the much-needed fuel to carry on.

We need to get louder and prouder, and celebrate our patriotism, decency, and love for a country that needs a hug, not a wrecking ball. We don’t need to be obnoxious, there is enough of that in America right now, but we do need to make it clear that what is happening to our country IS NOT OK.

There is nothing normal about a president who wants to “bomb our little hearts out” or brags that he “can do anything he wants” to another country like Cuba.

There’s nothing normal about ill-trained, masked government thugs in our streets murdering us. There is nothing normal about hunting down and separating children from their parents and caging them.

A man who will put his ugly face and name everywhere including our money, belongs in the Kremlin, not our White House.

Can we stop here for just a minute and consider the outrage if Barack Obama had started naming American institutions after himself, while demolishing our White House? The man wore a tan suit one day, and half the Republican Party fainted.

None of this is normal, and it’s time to be more vocal about this.

I started Enough Already nearly a decade ago, because at the time I was sure electing a racist deviant like Trump even once was a horrible mistake that needed correcting.

Nearly 10 years later, I am still here, and I am still saying the same thing with plenty of battle scars to prove it. This was a tougher fight than I expected, because it turns out my country was a lot sicker than I thought.

I intend to stay at it, and I know you do, too. And that gives me strength, because I am not alone.

I intend to be here when America takes care of all her people again, and is once again a friend to our allies around the world.

I promise you those days are coming, and I’ll give you the shirt off my back to make that happen.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

After singlehandedly closing the Strait of Hormuz, destabilizing the entire world, and bringing about needless death and destruction, I see Donald Trump is contemplating surrender to Iran.

Of course the man with the “best words”is not putting it quite that way this morning, because the man with the “best words” was working overtime, hands flailing away while playing his invisible accordion, as he tried his best to talk his way out of a catastrophic mess that was entirely of his own doing.

After a weekend of golf, and bragging to guests on the patio of Mar-a-Lago about the size of the engine in his diesel-powered golf cart, Trump bloviated in that spoiled-snot, idiotic way Monday morning that at some point during his weekend of leisure we had “very strong talks” with Iran.

Really, pal? “Very strong talks?”

Oh, well, if they were “very strong” I guess that does it, and we can all relax now, and get on with our lives.

Can we finally stop giving this supersonic moron a pass for his diarrhea of the mouth, and making up conversations that never happened? This has been going on for the better part of a decade, and we really need to circle back and decide again we have had more than enough of this, and simply have to get back to expecting more from a president.

Trump opens his big, fat mouth, random words just fly out of it, and the press reports them unchallenged and almost completely without context.

I wrote the book on it several years ago, and finally surrendered myself, because it was clear as day too many Americans were just fine with having a complete, dumb-s--- for a president.

I am way past sick and tired of these Americans, but more on that for another day.

Trump is a stupid idiot, and is not only incapable of deep thought, but any thought. He is a hyena with a reusable “get out of jail free” card, who has been led around by his ridiculous, painted orange nose his entire miserable life through failed businesses, marriages and now presidencies.

Only hours before telling the world about his fictional “very strong talks” with Iran, he was asked about the horrific collision at LaGuardia Sunday night, and he said this: “They made a mistake. It’s a dangerous business. That’s terrible.”

“They made a mistake.”

This is the nuclear-powered idiot who casually thrust the world into an unnecessary, intentional, catastrophic mistake that we will all be paying for for years, and long after he is blessedly gone.

He has no idea what he is doing.

Let me try that again:

HE HAS NO IDEA WHAT HE IS DOING.

This needs to be said over and over again.

He is a failure of a man, who lost this stupid, senseless war the minute it started.

Thousands of human beings are needlessly dead, among them school children, and members of our military, both of whom he could care less about. He treats them all like so many Big Macs to be devoured to feed his endless appetite for chaos, and affirmation he never got growing around people who loved him so much, they just couldn’t wait to kick him the hell out of their cavernous mansion because it wasn’t big enough to keep them all separate, and from killing each other.

And when the real fighting started, he chickened out of that, too, because service to himself is more important than service to his country. Trumps don’t love this country, they feed off it.

None of them serve.

So Trump is surrendering today after his “very strong talks” because last week Iran used small, cheap weapons to blow up energy complexes in Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. This is easy as pie, and was never given any consideration from the dry drunk and human oil slick, Pete Hegseth, who is leading a military that as a veteran, I still believe deserves so much better.

The longer Trump’s idiotic, unnecessary war goes, the more damage will be inflicted on these gas and oil reserves that have a disgraceful and outsized impact upon world order.

If only there were cheaper, safer options to oil out there …

For its part, Iran has denied there were any talks at all this weekend, much less “very strong” ones, and will be content to wait out Trump and all those invisible voices in his head, until he has extinguished every bad option on his supersized menu.

Here is the statement they posted on social media:

“No negotiations have been held with the U.S. Fake news is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets.”

This was a senseless war, started by a complete sociopath and failure of a man, whose second term in office has been an authoritarian disaster area, and we will pay through the nose for both of these things for many years to come.

Like this barbaric regime itself, nothing good was ever going to come out of this sad chapter of American history.

But since very strong words carry the day in America these days, here’s a few more: Trump and his bloodthirsty regime can all go straight to hell.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

I spent the first hour of my day, reading story after story essentially saying that Donald Trump “miscalculated” in his catastrophically stupid war in Iran, which would seem to make the big damn assumption that this utter and complete moron “calculated” ANYTHING in the first place.

In fact, The New York Times headline had it this way atop their meandering story: How Trump and His Advisers Miscalculated Iran’s Response to War

That’ll be about enough of this damned nonsense.

This war never made any sense to anybody with a brain in their head, because here was what we knew for sure in its lead-up, and what we still know right now: Trump is a dangerous and impetuous idiot, who is capable of anything including attacking his own country, which is why his attack on Iran shouldn’t surprise a soul.

If I had to guess what was behind this insanity, I’d venture that in the last month or so, somebody inside the White House with a semi-cool head, and most likely his Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, was able to finally chase him off the golf course for 45 minutes, and force-fed him some unsavory polling numbers to go along with all those Big Macs that pointed to a looming disaster in November, if he didn’t change course but quick, and do something about them.

Trump heard that as a great chance to go bomb another country, so he invited his boss, Bibi Netanyahu and his 22,000 pages of war plans to share an unhappy meal, while they discussed how to deploy their human oil slick, Pete Hegseth, to carry out their favorite war crimes.

But that’s just me speculating about why we are in Iran right now when even Trump and his wreck of an administration can’t seem to tell us for sure. They change their story by the hour, and our service members and their families are paying a terrible price for it.

This was a totally preventable manmade disaster in the most volatile region in the world that is intensifying by the minute.

The dead and wounded are mounting, and that is our horrifying reality right now.

The most gruesome look at where we really are came from this eye-opening blast from Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy on Bluesky Tuesday night. This sets the terrible scene right now better than I could ever hope to.

So essentially we are just bombing the bejesus out of the place and hoping victory will somehow rise out of the rubble. Calling these so-called plans “incoherent and incomplete” is about as nice as you can put it, but I do appreciate this senator’s direct approach to telling America the truth, because truth is the one thing you will never, ever get from the most notorious liar in American history.

We are in a very, very dangerous place right now, because America’s No. 1 convicted felon has managed to stick a gun to his own head and hold himself up. It really didn’t have to be this way, but anybody who has been paying even the slightest amount of attention the past decade or so knew this is exactly what would happen.

Trump actually entered his second term in decent shape, had the House and Senate falling at his fat little feet, and the political winds at his hunched back. In just 14 months, he’s incinerated all that goodwill, and his Republican House and Senate is starting to take on water.

Trump is failing everywhere, and I am telling you right now there is panic in the Grand Ol’ Party as we steam toward the midterms.

If the elections were to happen tomorrow, the Republican Party would most likely lose the House by 30-to-50 seats. Even the Senate would swing to Democrats with victories in just four of these flippable states: Alaska, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Montana.

Trump would be no less dangerous — and maybe more so — but at least we could gum up his dirty works, and stare the rest of the world in the face and not be completely laughed at.

A new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll is out today with some stunning numbers.

Consider that Trump’s two strong points entering his second term were the economy and immigration. Now take a look at this:

-35% of Americans approve of how Trump is handling the economy, while 58% disapprove.
-40% of Americans approve of how Trump is handling immigration, while 57% disapprove.

These are devastating numbers for Republicans, but it gets worse, because perhaps the most important tell for what voters will do when they hit the voting booth is how they are feeling about both parties at the time, so get a load of this:

-53% of registered voters said they would support the Democratic candidate on the ballot in their district, compared to 44% who said they would support the Republican.

Generally any party garnering a number above +5% is jumping for joy. This +9% spread has no doubt triggered a tsunami warning for Republicans, and jibe with recent election results in which Democrats have been hammering Republicans in one election after another.

Here’s are some other random numbers from that poll:

-Trump’s job approval rating among Americans is 38%, while 57% disapprove of the job the president is doing, and 5% are unsure.
-Americans are nearly twice as likely to strongly disapprove (50%) of the job he is doing than to strongly approve (26%).
-55% of Americans say the state of the union is not very strong or not strong at all. 45% think the union is very strong or strong.
-More than six in ten Americans (61%) also report that the nation is headed in the wrong direction. 38% say the U.S. is moving in the right direction.

This points to a president and a party that is failing at historic levels. It is every bit as bad as most of us thought it would be after throwing our hands up in disgust at a country that is capable of literally anything except electing a woman to lead our country.

Which leads to our cold, hard reality right now. To hash that out, I’ll return to a piece I typed just two weeks after his election two Novembers ago. It is still the most read thing I have ever published. Here is the lede of that offering:

“I considered waiting to publish this dire warning about what will be coming in the wake of the America-attacking Trump’s inauguration in two months, because too many good people are being asked to process too many terrible things right now.
This simply had to be put to paper, though, because I would be remiss if I didn’t urgently warn you that Trump’s takeover of our military is at the top of his dirty to-do list, and at the tip of his toxic spear in his quest to murder our Democracy.
Once you understand that Trump will use his presidency and whatever is left of his miserable life to settle scores and return the favors of the crooked dictators, and slobbery weaklings in his political party, who helped put him back in office, you can better prepare for the hell that’s most assuredly coming.”

I actually considered not reminding you again of this today, but because you pay attention, you fully know what is at stake right now, and what this madman is capable of doing.

Since returning to our White House, Trump has misplayed every card on his table, and is now turning that table upside down, and treating it like so many bottles of ketchup.

He is cornered, failing, and lashing out.

Because he is incapable of calculating anything clearly, as we discussed up front, he will do what he does best and scream and moan. His problems will be everybody else’s problems. He is capable of anything, because he is an incapable president.

With that backdrop, here is how I ended that piece 16 months ago, and how I will end this one today:

“Throughout history, supposedly good men have been talked into doing heinous things because of blinding misjudgment, weakness, or rocket-fueled ambition.
Trump is counting on this weakness to exploit our military for his rotten gains because NOTHING Trump does with our military will be to protect the citizens of the United States of America. EVERYTHING Trump does with our military will be to protect himself from the citizens of the United States of America.
This is not a story of hope, my friends, but words of warning.
Like it or not, and as tired as we are, we must be vigilant and NEVER accept this as anything approaching normal in this country.
A repulsive coward who never had the guts to serve will do everything he can to get our armed forces to serve only him.
WE must be the resistance.”

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)

When Republicans started calling our Defense Department the “Department of War” it probably should have been a dead giveaway for what was most assuredly coming next.

When the most bloodthirsty and immoral president in American history, Donald Trump, appointed a high-octane oil slick like Pete Hegseth to lead that shell-shocked department, it should have been dreadfully obvious that human beings, not soaring prices, would be under steady attack as long as this violent regime could hold onto power.

Just 14 months into his vile second term, consumer prices are rising quickly across the board, and we are at war seemingly everywhere because it turns out Trump is the most Republican president in my long lifetime. Trump, unlike his phony predecessors in the GOP like the Bushes, isn’t even pretending he gives a damn about the myriad issues that affect Americans’ daily lives, or even life itself for that matter.

Trump knows what his voters really like, and is delivering it to them wrapped cold in body bags.

When he said with a shrug last week after the first three troops were killed in his sinful Iran War, “There will likely be more [deaths] before it ends. That’s the way it is,” he was telling us just how little he values their lives.

Because that is how it really is with Republicans, and has been my entire life.

In Trump’s world there are the billionaire elites, who prop him up and fill both his bottomless pockets and unquenchable malignant narcissism to overflowing, and there are the expendable “suckers and losers” he abuses like so many of the women who have crossed his crooked path.

Trump and his Republicans don’t value life, they celebrate violence and death, and the more brutal and bloody it is the better. This really needs to be talked about more, because it is true, and that truth — like so many countless people and places around the globe and certainly right here in America — has taken one helluva beating the past decade ...

The “shock and awe” of the senseless War in Iraq was just a warm-up act for what we are getting right now from a monster who ran on “no new wars” but has now attacked eight different countries, on four different continents to give his electorate what they really want, but would prefer we didn’t talk about.

High prices, inflation, and affordability issues were just a polite front for what really gets their cold hearts beating: death, destruction, and plenty of it.

An NPR/PBS News/Marist poll released Friday revealed that 84 percent of Republicans favor this illegal war in Iran, because if they can’t have the lower prices they lied to us they cared about, they will damn sure get the pain and punishment they have proven they crave so much.

The truth is Republicans absolutely love this illegal war in Iran, because they will have the carnage from the racist, America-attacking thug they voted for not once, not twice, but three times.

Can we all finally admit that the cruelty really is the point with Republicans?

For the Republican voter, the 2024 election was never about lowering prices. Oh, sure, that would have been a nice little perk, but Trump’s appeal to the average Republican voter was always his unlimited capacity to say and do the very worst things on their behalf.

Instead of bringing them lower prices, he has brought them blood by the bucketful, via public beatings, and murders that make the hair on the back of their necks stand at attention.

Google “ICE beatings” and you can spend the rest of your day watching masked government agents slamming heads into concrete walls and sidewalks, throwing women into the street, dragging people out of their houses by their hair, and crying children being ripped from their parents’ arms.

These voters didn’t vote for Trump in spite of all those horrible things, they voted for him because of them.

No matter how high prices get, or how bad it gets for the working folk in America, Republicans can always, always, always count on their grotesque president taking their anger out on everybody else.

They concocted stories of brown and black boogeymen eating our dogs and cats so when the time came they could justify dehumanizing them and shooting and beating them to death.

The revolting Kristi Noem wasn’t fired this week because of any of the many heinous acts under her charge — including mass murder — at the out-of-control Department of Homeland Security (DHS). No, she was finally let go, because she gave herself, and not her orange, thin-skinned boss a starring role in an absurd $200 million-plus taxpayer-funded ad campaign.

The insane commercials feature the pie-eyed, flounder-lipped Noem celebrating herself by riding around Mount Rushmore on the back of a poor horse, whose life was in danger the minute she clapped a saddle on his back.

Noem did everything Trump wanted during her revolting tenure at DHS, except get caught, and I promise you that the average Republican voter still absolutely loves her for it.

Noem’s firing was no doubt instructive to Hegseth, who has been given carte blanche to devalue as many human lives as possible, including and mostly the troops under his charge, just as long as Trump gets all the credit for bringing the Republican voters the carnage they love.

It should be inconceivable that such a low form of life would be allowed within 1,000 miles of our armed forces, much less commanding them. Under Hegseth’s crooked charge, our military is no longer being ordered to honorably take the high ground, and are instead being threatened to go just as low as possible.

His very presence atop our Defense Department puts our troops in more and more danger each day, because mark my words, the time is coming when their adversaries will dish out the same terrible punishment to them that they have been ordered by Hegseth to inflict on others.

Most of us who wore the uniform in war and peace, did so because we believed in high ideals. We took an oath to follow the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and march in the footsteps of the thousands of brave souls who came before us, and stormed that beach, or bravely engaged that vaunted enemy carrier group.

War is hell, yes, but it is supposed to be fought with bravery, honor, and under the written laws that guide our military.

What would any of our prisoners of war through the years say about shooting men, who have long since surrendered and are helplessly clinging to the wreckage of a boat, pleading for their lives?

This is the type of thing coming for our troops if God forbid their vessel is ever blown to bits, or their boots ever hit the ground in Iran or elsewhere, because Hegseth and the draft-dodging Trump, have signaled to our enemies that our troops don’t matter much, and there are no longer any rules for engagement.

It is exactly what you would expect from a Commander-in-Chief, who disgraces the graves of our fallen and has never been brave enough to serve anybody but himself.

We are a nation at war with itself, and everybody around us, because that is exactly how the Republican Party likes it.

Violence, war and hate are their hallmarks, and the only things they have consistently delivered to the American public for the past 75 years.

There is nothing new about any of this, except that they’ve finally found a leader who can provide all that with a smile on his face.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.

Americans troops are starting to return home in coffins because of Donald Trump’s insane, illegal war in Iran, but today I wanted to touch on Tuesday’s primaries, that will go a long way in determining the candidates who will oppose this bloodthirsty felon, and his ruthless party of anti-American, anti-humane Orcs in November’s elections.

Once again, Tuesday’s primary results showed us that generalities and traditional assumptions are our enemies, and reality is our friend.

Left-leaning, and anti-Republican voters are also proving a helluva lot smarter than they’ve been given credit for, and are finally starting to realize their power in tuning out the tired, out-of-touch establishment in both of our unpopular political parties.

Take heart. I say again: People, not parties, will lead us out of the wilderness.

One size does not fit all on the Left, and man, it’s about time.

Zohran Mamdani is a generational political talent, who danced on the heads of the New York Democratic Party establishment led by Andrew Cuomo to win going away in the New York City mayoral race in November.

As mind-blowingly good as Mamdani is, he would not have been elected in neighboring New Jersey in that November race for governor, because the electorate and the issues are simply different in these places, which are separated only by a river.

So a very talented and able woman, Mikie Sherrill, a former federal prosecutor and Navy helicopter pilot, demolished her Republican opponent by 14 points in a race that was supposed to be close in New Jersey.

Again, the Democratic Party needs to return to the days when it kept the flap to their big tent wide open, and allowed candidates to run races their way in their backyards without toxic influence from the overblown Democratic National Committee (DNC).

This will also be true in a place like Maine and it’s absolutely critical Senate race in June. I will touch briefly on that one, too, after getting to a few of Tuesday night’s key results.

Starting deep in the heart of Texas, I send congratulations to the upstart James Talarico for his convincing win over Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett in that U.S. Senate primary. Polls were all over the place leading up to this one, but it looks like Talarico over-performed in his 6%-to-8% victory.

On the morbid Republican side, incumbent John Cornyn will be taking on the despicable Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a runoff for the right to face Talarico. I don’t have the time nor the inclination to type much about that disgusting race, but there is some pretty good stuff here, if you are interested in reading about train wrecks.

I believe the moderate Cornyn will prevail, but it would probably be best for Democrats if the abhorrent Paxton came out on top. Word has it Trump will be endorsing Cornyn.

Before going further, I want to direct my wrath at racist Republicans in Texas who seem to spend all their time figuring out ways to disenfranchise Black voters. I loathe them with everything inside my being.

The unmitigated c--- they pulled in Dallas, to screw with voters in that city was creatively monstrous even by their dirt-low standards.

Here is the lede in a Texas Tribune story this week:

DALLAS — Veronica Anderson walked 2 ½ miles Tuesday afternoon to the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center because she wanted to vote.
When she arrived, election workers told her she was at the wrong polling place and would need to cast her ballot at a different precinct — one she said she had never heard of. Unsure where it was or how to get there, she stood outside trying to sort out her options.
“I walked up here because I want to vote so, so bad,” she told a reporter for the Dallas Free Press and Votebeat, adding that it felt like “your self-esteem and everything is torn down.”

It felt like her “self-esteem and everything was torn down …”

This is exactly how Texan Republicans like it, and they can all go straight to hell.

Our anger should be at a simmering boil at what Black Americans continue to deal with at the polls all across America, and at what certainly happened in Texas yet again Tuesday.

NOBODY deserves better than Black voters — the true patriots in America — yet time and time again they get our worst.

I am still dubious a Democrat can win a statewide race in Texas, but am positive they can’t without the Black vote.

Crockett, who is no doubt hurting today, is still the most important person in Democratic Texas politics. If she can align with Talarico and help drive out that vital Black vote, the Republican candidate will have their hands full in the state.

In North Carolina, where I will be a resident starting next month, as my family moves away from Wisconsin after 15 years, Democratic Governor Roy Cooper will take on Trump-endorsed Michael Whatley in that key Senate race.

Now an ironclad prediction: Cooper will win this race and flip that seat blue. “Governor Roy” like Sherrill and Mamdani, is the perfect candidate for the Tar Heel State and has plenty of crossover appeal.

And get this: More than 200,000 voters participated in the Democratic primary than in the Republican primary. This is stunning.

That said: We must vote like hell in November, fellow North Carolinians! (It was fun typing that.)

This was a very bad election for moderate Democrats in purple North Carolina. The four moderates who lost to more progressive candidates have actively worked AGAINST Democratic Governor Josh Stein to defeat his vetoes on terrible Republican legislation.

Here was longtime North Carolina political observer and Catawba College political science professor Michael Bitzer’s take on these Democratic Party defectors:

"The biggest surprise was the absolute blowout in terms of the percentages, and what this really says to me is that not only are the voters party loyalists now, but the parties are expecting their elected representatives to be party loyalists — to be allegiant to the party — and when you buck the party, the party can kick back."

Takeaway: The Left-leaners in North Carolina have had more than enough of Trump-appeasers in the Democratic Party.

On the Republican side the headliner is that Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page holds a razor-thin lead over North Carolina Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger in Senate District 26. Berger might be the most evil person in North Carolina, and has singlehandedly led Republicans in their quest to undermine every good thing Democrats have tried to accomplish in the state. His loss would be seismic, and it looks like that race will go to a runoff.

Very briefly in Arkansas … A Democrat won a special election for the State House in a district north of Little Rock Tuesday night. Alex Holladay, smashed Republican Bryan Renshaw to flip that seat. Democrats have now flipped 27 state elections across America since 2024. Republicans have flipped ZERO.

Finally Maine …

The Pine Tree State’s primary is not until June, but all the races that have come before it across America are instructive. Whoever emerges as the Democratic candidate MUST BEAT SUSAN COLLINS for the party to have any chance of taking back the U.S. Senate.

I have written pretty extensively about this race, and know a little about Maine having worked at a newspaper there for six years. My ex-wife also lives in the state, also works at a paper up there, and provides occasional on-the-ground intel.

Mainers are a hearty, independent lot, who take great pride in not falling in lockstep with the other 49 states in our rattled union. From their rooftop perch in the northeast corner of the country they literally look down on the rest of the United States. This doesn’t make them haughty, it makes them properly suspicious.

You really can’t get they-uh from he-yuh, and they like it just fine that way.

Maine voters have repeatedly told us they prefer the progressive oysterman and veteran, Graham Platner, to line up against Collins in this vital election. He will be running against the state’s Democratic Governor Janet Mills.

Ever since emerging as a heavy favorite in the race, Platner has been lighting up arenas and town halls, but has also been dogged by controversy. Some of his errors have been self-inflicted, while others have been generated by heavy fire from the national Democratic machine, which has reflexively supported Mills.

Despite that, in a recent University of New Hampshire poll Platner led Mills by an astonishing 64 percent to 26 percent margin. His strength is increasing, not decreasing.

Read that again.

To be clear: I like Mills, and thank her for her service.

This is not an attack on her or her record, only what reeks of incredible hubris by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), which is sinking tons of money into the state to get rid of Platner, and set the party up for yet another fall. Democrats have not won a U.S. Senate race in Maine since 1988, when George Mitchell was reelected.

I am long past sick and tired of old career candidates running for office over and over again. Mills, who would be the oldest freshman senator ever at 78, simply will not beat Collins, 73, who will somehow look young by comparison if they were to go head to head in November.

Running Mills would be self-defeating and absolute madness in a race Democrats have to have.

Democrats have had a tremendous run since the disastrous November, 2024 elections, because they have fielded candidates who are listening to their constituents and not pointy-headed DNC wonks who are forever trapped inside the Beltway, and counting money.

That is the reality, and as we steam toward November, it’s vitally important that we continue to remember that reality is our friend.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.

On the third day of his illegal war with Iran, the bedraggled Donald Trump harrumphed in front of an overmatched podium in the East Room of a White House that is already under siege from this wrecking ball of a man.

Instead of formally and somberly addressing the terrible, needless deaths of four of our troops in this unnecessary war, and honoring their shattered families, this foul-mouthed, ill-bred coward spent his time castigating the gathered press, bragging about a ballroom that would allegedly grow from his rubble, and battering Democrats just for sport.

By this afternoon the U.S. death toll had marched to six.

Only hours before Trump spoke at the White House, not one … not two … but THREE American fighter jets were somehow shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses during an alleged "friendly fire incident” that leaves far more serious questions than answers, such as this one: How in the hell could this have possibly happened?

It really is incomprehensible, but everything connected with Trump often is.

It was an abhorrent display on the world stage, even by Trump’s dirt-low standards, and so I’ll ask another question: WHEN will Republicans stand on the side of decency and finally stop supporting this wreck of a man and his crusade to treat us all to the nonstop madness that bangs around his broken mind?

I will be brief this evening, but want to type with precision about the greatest danger that is most assuredly coming at us in the days and weeks ahead: more and more dangerous lies and accusations, and incoherent messaging that will contradict themselves by the hour.

The pollutants coming from Trump and his ghastly regime are sure to manufacture a fog of war so thick that anybody with eyes or ears will choke from being in their general vicinity.

Nothing can be believed by a serial liar, who from Day 1 of his disastrous presidency has worked tirelessly to drag our armed forces down to his pathetic level.

He will continue to deploy our troops in abhorrent ways that will benefit only him and not our country.

His Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is a stupid, loud man, who confuses screaming at people with leadership and clarity. He has no answers or manners, so he berates those who dare to ask him questions, and challenge his qualifications to lead our armed forces into needless battles.

I promise you that fully three-quarters of the military and civilian personnel inside our cavernous Pentagon, view him as a terrible joke without a clever punchline. He is a man without substance, who wears his ignorance on his sleeve. He is the perfect power tool for his mess of a boss to plug in and use however he sees fit.

Our military public affairs staffs deployed here and abroad, who are taught on the first day of their defense information training to deliver battlefield updates with “maximum disclosure and minimum delay” will be under siege, as they are instructed to forget everything they learned about the truth, by an administration that does nothing but tell lies.

I promise you that in the days and weeks ahead, as this war drags on to and fro throughout the most volatile region in the world, and takes more and more of our troops, the one common theme you will hear over and over again is the lack of any coherent message.

Hegseth will say one thing, his public affairs staff will say another, and the Lord of the Lies will contradict both.

And when the only thing achieved is chaos, death, and yet more instability, at some point they will all declare victory, and move onto stirring up trouble elsewhere always making sure to keep everybody terrified and on edge.

Whatever the terrible end looks like, you can count on it being every bit as chaotic as the beginning.

The truth will be nowhere to be seen ...

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.

This week, two old power-hungry, greedy, lawless men are in the process of killing countless hundreds and thousands of innocent human beings, while destabilizing a world they most likely won’t be living in a decade from now.

Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and the United States’ Donald Trump have proven without a shadow of a doubt that they are the two most dangerous men on earth, and everything should be done to stop them, because they are way the hell out of control.

I cannot deal with even one person who sees the sense in yet another global war centered in the Middle East, where we simply have to know by now that oil is thicker than blood.

Already three American troops have been killed and several more wounded in a military campaign that has no defined strategy, or upside, unless you are one of these monstrous men like America’s president who profits from that oil, and the residuals of a spiraling, unchecked $1.5 trillion military industrial complex.

The death toll from a deadly strike on a girls’ elementary school in Iran escalated to 115 people on Sunday, according to Iranian media. U.S. and Israeli military are saying only that they “take these reports seriously and are looking into them.”

All of this madness has been made possible by the most blood-thirsty president in United States history, who in the past year alone, has now bombed seven different countries.

Read that again.

He calls himself the president of peace, because he can say literally any unhinged thing he wants knowing it will get dutifully reported. He lies about everything all the time, and our press long ago became far, far too accepting of that.

If truth is the first casualty of war, then the bodies have been piling up since 2016.

He has put thousands and thousands of masked government agents in America’s streets, who have indiscriminately murdered American citizens, beaten hundreds of others to a pulp, and caged countless thousands of human beings in concentration camps.

There have been no consequences for any of these barbaric actions.

Our situation in America has gone from being chaotic to completely out of hand in just months, and promises to somehow get a helluva lot worse in the weeks ahead.

America has engaged in a relentless bombing campaign in three different continents, but has somehow missed Russia …

Sadly, I won’t be holding my breath for Democrats to do whatever is necessary to push back against this lawless regime’s action in Iran, because there are early signs they are already fractured, when the only response to this absolute madness should be a hard NO.

Far too many in that party voted for the War in Iraq, and I fear too many will vote for this war.

I am done being let down by the double-talkers in the party I have voted with, whose so-called leaders give credence to the accusations that both of our major political parties are basically the same in America.

I don’t believe that, but do believe we have never needed a third party more than we do right now. I’ll leave it at that for now, because my opposition to Trump and his grotesque Republican Party is far, far stronger than my distaste of the Democratic Party, which has no sense of itself, or even how to get out of its own way anymore.

Any Democrat who votes for this war will be on my list, and will never get off it. I promise this as a humanitarian, a Navy veteran, a journalist who has reported on too many wars in one lifetime, and an American, who is way beyond disgusted with my country right now.

I also won’t be coming at this as a religious man, because religion has the blood of millions and millions of dead souls on its crooked hands through the centuries. You name the religion, and I’ll point to the countless lives that have been ended thanks to their money-making, power-grabbing, holier-than-thou propaganda.

This war will solve nothing and will only harden hearts already clogged by the knuckle-dragging notion that might somehow makes right.

The men who are leading this latest atrocity are the same kind of men that either are, or could be, mentioned in the Epstein files. They have lived their privileged lives above it all, you see. They know there isn’t a single they can do that they will be punished for including raping children, or blowing them to bits with a tomahawk missile launched from some ship hundreds of miles away.

They cherish only their own lives, and have absolutely no regard for anybody else’s. They will rape, pillage, and burn people, and then enjoy cocktails on the terrace at 5.

Just last night, Trump was seen yucking it up during a party at his garish Mar-a-Lago country club. I’ll bet good money, he was on the golf course when he learned of the deaths of our service members today.

Broken men like Netanyahu and Trump, don’t give a single damn about anybody but themselves. Their strength comes from making good and sure we fight against each other, and not them, because they know the minute that happens, they are finished.

So today we are in yet another war in the Middle East, and nobody but gutless men like Trump and Netanyahu will come out any better for it.

Good grief, this should not be that hard to understand.

(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)

What if Donald Trump had gotten out of the box and had at least given the appearance of governing more moderately his second time around the White House block last year?

I’ve been giving this some thought on the rare occasions I can quiet my active mind and find the clear air needed to grapple with truly terrifying what-ifs ...

I was spurred to write this piece by my penpal, and reader, Margo Howard, who I have had the honor of getting to know a bit during this ongoing American tragedy. Margo spent her life in print, and penned the popular Dear Prudence column for Slate for many years. She is the daughter of Ann Landers, the renowned, syndicated advice columnist.

Margo is wise, direct, and one of those special people who can see straight through the fog.

She sent me this rocket in the aftermath of Trump’s never-ending State of the Union.

“Not that he listens to (White House Chief of Staff) Susie Wiles (or anyone) but had he spoken for 25 minutes, only upbeat stuff, and brought out the Olympians, he could have turned everything around.

I winced knowingly. I thought it was a perceptive take (as always) and spurred me to dig deeper into similar dark thoughts I have had on this subject.

So here goes:

In the days after a second, lethal November blast in an eight-year span had rocked our senses and nation, I wondered about two things specifically:

• How would the despicable Trump deal with power the second time around?
• How would Democrats react to this terrible event?

We got the answer to the second question first, and it was appalling and unforgivable.

Somehow, Democrats seemed to be caught flat-footed by Trump’s win, and came off as pathetic weaklings almost resigned to their fate. They were ripe for surrender, and dutifully waved white flags. My God, within weeks the outgoing Democratic president warmed Trump’s fat ass by a crackling fire at the White House while literally welcoming him back.

The uninspiring national Democratic “leadership” that couldn’t even provide a presidential candidate for us to vote for until it was all but too late, dusted themselves off, and seemed only too satisfied to reassume their places at the kiddie table, where the Republicans threw them scraps, and picked away at what was left of their self-respect.

Instead of pushing back with vigor, they acquiesced, and melted into the background. This did not go down well with the folks on the battlefield who had busted their tails working to get Democrats elected only to be abandoned by them the minute all the trouble arrived.

Our Democracy was officially put on the clock, and the opposition party hit the snooze button, before turning off the alarm.

Now let me tell you what my real fear was during that pitch-black time, when it was hard to see a way out: Trump would actually take some prudent advice, and get out of the box slowly. He would at least give the appearance that he was taking a measured approach to governing and would thoughtfully deal with the issues that concerned the majority of all Americans like the economy.

What if in the wake of that gruesome election Trump somehow found it deep inside himself to act like a semi-decent person who really cares about this country?

Before proceeding I want to be very careful here, because I like to think I know you almost as well as I know myself: Please notice the emphasis on the word act. Because I know you know how despicable Trump really is. I know you know the terrible things he has done, and what he will most certainly try to do with the rest of his miserable life: end us.

In short: There is NOTHING he can do to redeem himself in our eyes. We will celebrate when he is gone, because we know the world will be a better, safer place with his absence.

Unfortunately, we are but an ardent, clear-eyed voting bloc. Like it or not, we aren’t the majority of the people in this country, or it turns out, like too damn many cowards in the party we vote for.

As we have tragically learned by now, roughly 40 percent of the American electorate will stand with the orange, racist maniac no matter what. There isn’t a thing he can do, including shooting one of them in the middle of the street, that will change their stubborn, angry minds about following this soulless monster off a cliff while trying to drag the rest of us with them.

Then there are the people in the middle of the political spectrum, who can go either way with Trump. (And yes, I have concluded that these people actually exist.) They are persuadable. How that can actually be given that they are standing in hell up to their knees right now I don’t know, but they are out there just as sure as I am typing this.

Finally, there are tens of millions more who simply don’t give a damn, and rarely bother to vote at all. Who even knows what they will do, or worse what they could possibly be thinking.

Regular readers will know I reserve most of my heat for them.

How dare they …

Well, as we all painfully know by now, Trump did not move slowly and prudently, and wasted no time proving just how despicable he truly is by implementing the Project 2025 playbook he lied he knew nothing about on the campaign trail.

He moved to hurt as just many people as he could just as fast as possible.

He went full authoritarian, set fire to our government, and demolished our White House. He introduced ridiculous, harmful tariffs, and mustered troops in our streets. He blew up global alliances and threatened war with Greenland. He did nothing about our rising prices, and all he could to strip us of our health insurance, making everyday life just as miserable as possible.

He actually seemed to go out of his way to prove just how horrible he is, as if so many of us weren’t already convinced.

That’s when people decided that they, not some political party, were best equipped to handle this.

So we hit the streets and marched by the millions. We protested, and by God we voted. Democrats won every single election of consequence last year, and have hit the ground running again in elections this year.

Trump kicked the hornet’s nest and is as unpopular as he’s ever been in his short-lived political life. His approvals are hanging at about 40 percent nationally. Here in the battleground state of Wisconsin a recent poll has his net approval rating at -10, matching the worst numbers of his disastrous first term.

He is failing miserably, while doing what he has always done better than anybody: going lower.

He is a sicko bent on revenge, and filling his bottomless pockets with our money.

I believe Republicans are going to take a historic shellacking in November. They have nothing to run on, and are too damn scared to run away from the orange, swollen-ankled monster who has them by their skinny necks.

As bad as things are … this is actually the best-case scenario for Democrats, because mark my words: If Trump had proceeded slowly last year, and worked incrementally and quietly toward destroying America, instead of taking a sledgehammer to it, his approvals would at or around 50 percent right now, and Republicans would be in decent shape heading into the midterms.

According to The Cook Political Report, Trump is underwater with women by almost 30 points. This is a group he lost by only 7 points in 2024. White voters without college degrees, his strongest group, have dropped 23 points in their support of a man who is doing nothing for them, but providing a weekly booster shot of racism.

Had he been capable of showing just a shred of humility, it really wouldn’t have been that hard to steal it all forever, because as we simply have to know by now, there are just too many idiots in this country who would have gladly handed him the keys to the kingdom.

Tens of millions more just don’t give a damn either way.

It’s really sad when you can’t trust your country to do the right thing. We have been exposed, and I am just not sure we will ever be safe and sound again.

Trump could have had it all, but he wanted it too damn quick, and for now at least, a majority of America is finally on to him.

Instead of giving the State of the Union speech Margo suggested, he pontificated, spit and raged for close to two hours.

While making things harder on Americans, he’s only made his attempted authoritarian takeover harder on himself.

There will be more spitting and raging as we move toward November’s elections. In the past 24 hours there have been reports he will try to gin up national emergencies to stop or takeover our vote.

As we know, he’s fully capable of anything, and we will have to be ready for that.

I believe we will be, because as bad as things are right now, they could have been worse …

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.