The president of the United States said he was at ground zero in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attack in New York. On Tuesday, during a memorial service in Washington to mark the 25th anniversary of that horrible day, Donald Trump gave the impression he was part of the recovery effort as well as among those who were rescued.

It was a big lie, but it was more than that.

It was stolen valor.

Trump said because he was constructing "a big building in New York" at the time of the city's rescue-and-recovery operations, he "took the whole crew down [to ground zero] right after [9/11] happened." He said "we went down, it was a big group of people. Wasn’t too much we could do, I’ll be honest — it was, you know, it was raw, and nobody’s seen anything like it."

Trump said "we had other buildings; the United States Steel building was creaking, really creaking, and we thought it was going to fall down ... but it never came down."

Trump said "I remember — I’ll never forget two firemen. We thought it was coming down on top of us, and two firemen — big, strong guys — and I’m not the smallest guy in the world — they grabbed me under the arms, said, ‘gotta get out of here.’ And they literally lifted me up."

Every word here is a lie, including "a" and "the." Daniel Dale, Martin Longman and Judd Legum establish the facts. So did New York magazine. "Naturally, his appearance couldn’t pass without a bit of weirdness." In response, the president accused the magazine of lying.

It's a game Donald Trump likes to play – speak in a way that makes him look like the most dominant man in the room, whom everyone must pay attention to, then accuse those who point out his lies, exaggerations and outright delusions of grandeur of acting in bad faith. Trump has been playing this game a long time. New Yorkers are especially familiar with it. In October 2016, before that year's presidential election, the Daily News ran this cover story.

But again, these are not just lies. They are stolen valor.

"Stolen valor" is a term usually reserved for people who lie about military service. Here's how the Armed Forces Benefit Association defines it: "Stolen valor is essentially a lie. It involves falsely claiming military service, rank, recognition or even someone else's identity."

The Stolen Valor Act of 2013 made it a federal crime for a person "to fraudulently claim to have received a valor award specified in the Act, with the intention of obtaining money, property, or other tangible benefit by convincing another that they received the award."

But I think it's fair to apply the term more generally to anyone who wants a piece of the fame and fortune of heroic acts, but none of the cost, risk or sacrifice that comes with them.

A decade ago, Donald Trump wanted the glory of supporting the families of 9/11 victims without actually giving them any money. On Tuesday, he wanted the glory of dispatching "more than 100 men" to ground zero without actually dispatching anyone, much less himself.

He wants the valor, but not the work that goes into earning it.

So he steals it.

Trump's theft should have made for banner headlines, especially on the 25th anniversary of 9/11. It is tempting to say it would have been if he were a Democrat. However, that might overlook how much American politics has shifted in the last quarter century, a shift that I think was captured by Jesse Ventura when he was on Paul Rieckhoff's podcast in February.

"This last election was a choice, a very simple one, in my opinion," Ventura said. "You have the choice between the Constitution and the criminal, and this country chose the criminal. Now they’re all appalled at what’s happening? What would you expect the criminal to do when he gets in there? He’s gonna hire other criminals to work with him. They all will be an ilk together, a big group. You put a criminal at the top of America, a convicted felon.

Expect crimes when you elect a criminal, but don't expect them to be limited to bribes, corruption and other obscenities. We put a criminal at the top of America. If he acts like he's entitled to take for himself a piece of the honor reserved for heroes, that's on us as much as it is on him. To be sure, Donald Trump is stealing valor. But we the people are his accessories.

Almost 3,000 Americans died on 9/11. Four and a half thousand US military personnel died in the Iraq War. (As many as 400,000 Iraqis died with them.) Donald Trump's theft should be more than "a bit of weirdness." The public should see it as a ferocious national scandal.

But it won't be, because a scandal would force us to confront the truth: that a majority of voters traded the rule of law for the fraudulent promise of "economic security" (to borrow Chris Christie's exceedingly charitable framing of the 2024 election). The media is indeed deferential to Trump, but most of us do not want to be held accountable for our choices.

Better to avert our eyes.

Even if that results in the sacrilege of the hallowed dead.

Liberals have a bad habit of putting the views and values of Republicans at the center of their attention. We do it without thinking about it, because it's normal. And it's normal, because I think we tacitly accept the argument that our views and values can't be broadly persuasive on their own. Making progress will require making better choices. One of those is pushing Republicans out of the center. They are not the arbiters of our reality. We are.

For example, liberals believe the GOP is a boy's club. We believe Republican misogyny is structural, from the top down. We frequently note that the president demeans women. (We frequently mourn that he won twice when running against a woman.) And we believe that whatever lip service the Republicans give to women, their goal is holding power for men.

Because we believe these things, a liberal news outlet made sure its audience saw this.

Many liberals will argue that Marjorie Taylor Greene's comments are evidence that a new majority may be coalescing in opposition to the Republican agenda. To be sure, I think there's something to that interpretation. But whatever the case may be, the result is that Greene is the center of our attention, and with that so is the implication that liberals do not have the authority to say that the Republicans are a sexist organization bent on controlling women. (Indeed, Greene says she's not doing what liberals do, "shoving" women's rights "in men's faces.") Our beliefs are insufficient to being broadly persuasive. We have to get validation from "the other side." We can't be right on our own. For that, we need permission.

Liberals puts the views and values of Republicans at the center of our attention partly out of necessity. The Washington press corps does not treat the parties equally. There's one standard for the Republicans, another for the Democrats. To the news media, one party represents power that's natural and legitimate while the other represents power that must be constantly tested. Here's how I explained it last week to Alex Wise, host of Sea Change Radio, when he noted that what reporters agree on is that America is a center-right nation.

Yeah that’s what they agree on. I mean what they are really agreeing on, and they won’t say it, is that the true center of power in America is whiteness, and the true consensus is white supremacy. That’s what they’re really saying, but they’re not gonna say that, because that would be gauche. That would be impolite or some other word that a snob might use. But that’s what they’re really saying, though. And by the way, that's why the press looks at the Democrats as slightly illegitimate, because the Democrats are a multiracial, multi-ethnic, and multi-religious party, whereas the Republicans are white, white and white, all the way through. They therefore represent to the media, politically, historically and culturally, an automatic natural legitimacy. That I wish more people would really understand. That is the double standard that animates all of political journalism.

Given this double standard, liberals often feel like there is no choice. We have to put Republicans at the center, because those are the media's rules. (Even the liberal media conforms to them.) The result is that liberals end up playing Lucy and the football, taking the risk of trusting a fundamentally untrustworthy system in order to achieve our goals. This arrangement is so maddening that Leigh McGowan completely lost it on CNN recently. In doing so, "PoliticsGirl" represented every single liberal in America who screams at their TV.

But it doesn't have to be this way. I want to point to two examples. One is by Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff. The other is by Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan. Both men have demonstrated how liberals can liberate themselves, campaign by their own rules and control the terms of debate in order to bring their views and values to a broader public.

You probably already know about Ossoff.

On the strength of "travels with Natalie," Ossoff bent everyone's attention his way, including Donald Trump's, and with that attention, he accused Trump of being a paper-tiger president. During an appearance on MS Now, Ossoff said Trump "retreats into this bubble of West Wing aides, who are his security blanket, to make him feel good about himself, to reassure him that he’s doing a great job, to help him while he designs his new ballroom, and he adorns the Oval Office in gold, and picks the interior decorations on this new luxury, flying palace he received from a foreign prince, when every single minute of every single day what the president of the United States should be doing is bearing his most solemn burden of care."

With that, Ossoff pushed Trump out and made himself the center of attention.

In El-Sayed's case, he rejects the "rule" that says he must apologize for something somebody else said, ie, what prominent tankie Hasan Piker said. (I wrote about him last spring.) Piker, who is viewed by some (me) as an antisemite, supports El-Sayed. The "rules" therefore state that El-Sayed must denounce Piker to denounce antisemitism. That El-Sayed did denounce antisemitism isn't enough, however, according to those same "rules." El-Sayed must denounce Piker, too. MS Now's Katy Tur: "Why not fully disassociate yourself with him?"

His answer, in essence? No one defines my campaign but me.

I'm going to leave the challenges of big tent-building for another time. (Bill Scher takes on the question in the Washington Monthly.) My focus is on the press. To that end, every Democrat knows the score, El-Sayed said. This campaign is about voters and their struggles, not "a streamer in California," he said. And then he throws the question back at Tur, raising viewers' awareness of the choices she is making. "I get that in the media, it's a lot easier to pick out one person and be like, 'this is what this [campaign] is about.' This is why a lot of people get so frustrated about politics and political media, because it doesn't actually speak to the challenges they face." (With that one sentence, by the way, El-Sayed summarized James Fallows' classic article, published in 1996, about "Why Americans Hate the Media.")

In reply, Tur says "it's not just the media and I reject that framing." She gives up the game. Her real question isn't why didn't El-Sayed "fully disassociate" from Piker? It's why isn't he playing by the "rules"? Tur implies that he isn't allowed to frame the facts. Only members of the press corps have that authority. With that framing, she put the views and values of Republicans – namely, El-Sayed's opponent, Mike Rogers – at the center of attention. Katy Tur isn't asking. She's telling. And Abdul El-Sayed is saying no: my campaign, my rules.

These are just two examples, but I think they are hopeful and point the way forward for liberals who are in the bad habit of accepting the argument that our views and values are not persuasive on their own. They are, or can be once we have made better choices. One of those is pushing Republicans out of the center. They are not the arbiters of our reality. We are.

The cake is baked. The Republicans are cooked.

The Post ran a story this morning on the effect of "vibes" on the congressional elections. The story's takeaway was that how people feel is probably not going to change from now until Election Day, regardless of the facts. And how they feel is mad. The context of the story is a new poll by YouGov. In October 2018, Donald Trump's approval stood at -4 among indie voters. Last month, it stood at -53. The Democrats won over 40 House seats six years ago. At the rate things are going, the Republicans really are looking at an "extinction-level event."

But the trouble the GOP is facing isn't just vibes. People are mad for good, solid reasons, primarily the Iran War and its economic consequences. Even Trump's most reliable cohort is turning against him, according to the same YouGov poll. On July 11, net approval among white people without college degrees was zero. On July 25, it was -6. On July 11, net approval among people ages 45 to 64 was -12. On July 27, it was -29. White Gen X working-class voters used to be Trump's strongest base of power. Now they're like a millstone around his neck.

If the war ended today, would things improve? That appears to be the thinking of some GOP campaign operatives. In that Post article I mentioned, they said that when gas prices fall and the war ends, the vibe will shift. "Democrats are strapped for cash, nominating unelectable candidates in key districts, and Republicans are squarely on offense," said the National Republican Campaign Committee spokesman. In other words, the cake isn't baked yet.

Yet the president is not ending the war. Indeed, serious people seem to be getting tired of his gimmick. For the first time, as far as I can tell, the AP reported today on his habit of playing chicken with the Iranian regime – and then chickening out. The hope is duping voters, as well as investors, into believing that everything will go back to normal soon. The AP said:

It starts with a grim warning to Tehran that [Trump] is on the cusp of ordering US forces to “obliterate” its power plants or seize key parts of its oil industry if its leaders don’t quickly agree to US terms. ... It ends with him edging away with a last-minute declaration, sometimes at the behest of Gulf allies, that he’s going to give diplomacy more time.

The hardball strategy — one that Trump honed during his years competing in New York’s real estate scene and has employed in politics — aims to create movement in negotiation through pressure and chaos. But the tactic is facing a challenge with an Iranian theocracy that believes it holds a higher threshold for strategic pain than Washington.

Trump's "hardball strategy" is ordinary adolescent bullying by a more flattering name, and like all bullying, it is doomed to fail when faced with a determined adversary. Threats and warnings are revealed to be Sturm und Drang, and what's left is the image of a president too weak to do what needs to be done. The war is not going to end by the midterms. It could go on indefinitely under Trump's style of "leadership." And no one has seen anything like it.

"Has the US ever been cowed by threats as badly as Trump backing down with Iran?" said Nicholas Grossman, a political scientist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. "Not only did he make big threats, get nothing, then drop the threats anyway. Iran made big threats and the US backed down in the face of them. No matter how much Trump lies about it, the whole world sees what happened." Grossman added: "Other than brinksmanship with the USSR, I can’t think of any instance of the US backing down in the face of threats to anywhere near the degree Trump just did with Iran. And the Soviet Union was a nuclear-armed superpower! Am I missing any? Or is this the biggest US climb down ever?"

But if the cake is baked – if voter sentiment is fixed against the Republicans – it's because of Donald Trump. He isn't going to change. If his choices cause death, destruction and misery, it's never his fault. If public opinion disapproves, he just lies about public opinion. In a post written today, Trump lumped polls in with "fake new" and "the radical left." "My REAL Polling Numbers, not those made up by the Fake News Media, are the best they have ever been, and why wouldn't they be ...? Don't believe the Radical Left' Fake Poll numbers. They are Crooked and Corrupt, just like the Country Destroying Dumocrats are Crooked and Corrupt."

It was a crazy post.

And crazy does not change.

Except when it gets crazier, which is why the Iranians reportedly hired "senior psychologists" to help with peace talks. A strong president who follows through with his threats and warnings might be trusted to stand by his word, but a weak president who regularly TACOs out can't be. According to Jeremy Scahill, sources told him the Iranians now "recognize that we are dealing with a mentally incapacitated individual and we've had senior psychologists work up a psychological profile of what they think is going on with Trump's brain."

For all I know, Scahill is carrying water for the Iranians, but the point is well taken. Donald Trump does not make sense, even to his own supporters, who have stopped looking for sense in the madness. If there's hope for the GOP, it's in white-power gerrymandering and in con artists like Elon Musk spending tens of millions to demoralize Democratic turnout. Otherwise, though, the cake looks baked to me, and the Republicans looked cooked.

Don't kid yourself. The sphere of freedom is shrinking. Trans people wanted to live their lives, but the political right, in the form of Donald Trump, turned them into demons, and the political center, in the form of respectable white people, made the right's demonization seem respectable. Kamala Harris wanted America to choose liberty. "We're not going back," she said. Many of us agreed, but we did go back. And the reversing of trans rights could lead to the reversing of other rights – birth control, gay marriage, inter-racial marriage, and more.

Yet the future is unknown. People will fight. More importantly, they will find joy in the struggle. That's the spirit I found in the interview below with Evan Urquhart. After writing extensively for The Atlantic, Vanity Fair and others, he set up Assigned Media in 2022 to report on transgender news. He told me that hope can be found in the fact that for all the bigotry trans people are facing, they still face less than they used to. Moreover, there's greater awareness, which means more chances for normalizing trans life. But most of all, he said, trans people just know themselves, and "you can't put toothpaste back in the tube. We're out, we're everywhere, and even if our lives are harder, we're not going away."

Even so, things will get worse before they get better, he said. "The presidencies of Donald Trump represent a phase shift for American democracy, one that has made it impossible to return to the way things were. I think if you look at the totality of the actions of Trump himself, his administrations, and his judges, that's an inescapable conclusion. ... It's too unsettling ... So people tell themselves this is just trans issues stuff, nothing to do with them."

SCOTUS ruled that states can ban transgender athletes. The number of such athletes is vanishingly small. Yet states are targeting people without much power. What's going on?

Trans women's participation in women's sports was identified as a perfect wedge issue by conservatives, in part because the stakes feel relatively low, because playing sports isn't required for survival, and because fairly few trans people play sports.

The right has since moved on to targeting trans people in every part of our lives, from identity documents to restrooms to stripping any mention of trans women out of rape protections in federal prisons. But the sports issue has been around for the longest, which is why it had the time to make it to the Supreme Court.

As a wedge, it works to cement the idea in people's minds that trans people should be treated as members of our birth-assigned sex, in order to slowly roll up the idea that treating us equally means making room for us to live as our authentic selves.

What do you see being done about this among Dems and allies? What are the obstacles?

I think that the consensus among Democrats and allies, and even among many trans people, has been to let this one go. The majority of Americans have been convinced to see this as a common sense issue of keeping men from steamrolling women's sports, and since it really is such a tiny group of people being impacted, the thinking is to retreat and regroup.

I personally think there's a bit of a lost opportunity here, though. Because sports is lower stakes, there's actually room to get people curious about the science, about the ways hormones influence our bodies, about the vast differences between trans people and cis members of their birth sex. In all the years trans women who'd medically transitioned were allowed to participate, not one dominated a single sport. That's interesting and unintuitive for a lot of people, and I think you can activate the part of people's brains that gets curious and wants to know more about this issue, which can be useful for education. It's different with questions that are more emotional, like whether to allow your 14 year old to start a hormonal medication. On those questions, I see people's curiosity give way to fear.

On transitioning, I think what are called radical centrists are largely responsible. They pushed fear over liberty. They pretended that rightwingers are only reacting, not making the choice to punch down. What can be done? What historical models are there?

Centrists want easy answers to the challenges we're facing. They want an easy answer to the challenge of having a completely unsuitable, unethical, mendacious person attain the US presidency, and to other challenges like climate change and increasing inequality as well. They want to believe we're still living in the 1990s, an eternal 1990s where the Overton Window is extremely narrow, our political parties agree and work together on a lot of things, and voters reward them for that.

To someone with that mindset, it's very appealing to think there's a minority (one who people in their social set largely agree are a little weird) who they can just change positions on with no pain. If that's true, you can just tweak your platform at the margins and avoid the hard question: Why are Americans so desperate for change they'll vote for a fascist in one election and a socialist in the next?

But the damage is not going to be limited to one subset. Some say the trans ruling is softening the ground toward striking down gay marriage, birth control and perhaps inter-racial marriage. The sphere of freedom is shrinking. Is there enough awareness of that?

In my view, the presidencies of Donald Trump represent a phase shift for American democracy, one that has made it impossible to return to the way things were. I think if you look at the totality of the actions of Trump himself, his administrations, and his judges, that's an inescapable conclusion.

It's also a very scary conclusion, which is why people don't want to look at these precedents on trans rights and ask, if a state legislature can ban a safe and effective treatment for trans people, does that mean they can ban vaccines? Does that mean they can ban antidepressants, birth control, and ADHD medications? They want the disturbance to stay with the trans community, not necessarily because they hate us but because it's quite scary to imagine the consequences of, for example, a far-right court deciding that equal protection just doesn't apply to trans people in sports because there aren't that many trans people in sports.

Who else might they decide equal protection doesn't apply to? It's too unsettling to ask the question, so people tell themselves this is just trans issues stuff, nothing to do with them.

Here in Connecticut, the state GOP is trying to ban trans women from women's sports, but their effort is falling on deaf ears. That seems indicative of the future, where some states and regions honor and protect equality under law while others savage it. Legally speaking, the same person in Connecticut is different in Alabama. Is that our future?

Blue states have largely circled the wagons around their trans communities, in a way that's lovely to see. I think that the far right really wants to federalize fascism, and make it impossible for states to protect trans people, but that project may be more difficult than they thought.

As difficult and scary as it is to see my rights being chipped away, a lot has changed. Part of that is that more people know trans people, and even with a bit of backsliding the prejudice isn't nearly what it was when I was young. Another part is that trans people have more ways to know themselves and express themselves than they ever did. I can't predict the future, but I know you can't put toothpaste back in the tube. We're out, we're everywhere, and even if our lives are harder, we're not going away.

Don't kid yourself. The sphere of freedom is shrinking. Trans people wanted to live their lives, but the political right, in the form of Donald Trump, made them demons and the political center, in the form of respectable white people, made the right's demonization seem respectable. Kamala Harris wanted America to choose liberty. "We're not going back," she said. Many of us agreed, but we are. The pulling back of trans rights could lead to the pulling back of other rights – birth control, gay marriage, inter-racial marriage, and more.

Yet the future is unknown. People will fight. More importantly, they will find joy in the struggle. That's the spirit I found in the interview below with Evan Urquhart. After writing extensively for The Atlantic, Vanity Fair and others, he set up Assigned Media in 2022 to report on transgender news. He told me that hope can be found in the fact that for all the bigotry trans people are facing, they still face less than they used to. Moreover, there's greater awareness, which means more chances for normalizing trans life. But most of all, he said, trans people just know themselves, and "you can't put toothpaste back in the tube. We're out, we're everywhere, and even if our lives are harder, we're not going away."

Even so, things will get worse before they get better. "The presidencies of Donald Trump represent a phase shift for American democracy, one that has made it impossible to return to the way things were," Evan told me. "I think if you look at the totality of the actions of Trump himself, his administrations, and his judges, that's an inescapable conclusion. ... It's too unsettling ... so people tell themselves this is just trans issues stuff, nothing to do with them."

SCOTUS ruled that states can ban transgender athletes. The number of such athletes is vanishingly small. Yet states are targeting people without much power. What's going on?

Trans women's participation in women's sports was identified as a perfect wedge issue by conservatives, in part because the stakes feel relatively low, because playing sports isn't required for survival, and because fairly few trans people play sports.

The right has since moved on to targeting trans people in every part of our lives, from identity documents to restrooms to stripping any mention of trans women out of rape protections in federal prisons, but sports has been around the longest, which is why it had the time to make it to the Supreme Court.

As a wedge, it works to cement the idea in people's minds that trans people should be treated as members of our birth-assigned sex, in order to slowly roll up the idea that treating us equally means making room for us to live as our authentic selves.

What do you see being done about this among Dems and allies? What are the obstacles?

I think that the consensus among Democrats and allies, and even among many trans people, has been to let this one go. The majority of Americans have been convinced to see this as a common sense issue of keeping men from steamrolling women's sports, and since it really is such a tiny group of people being impacted, the thinking is to retreat and regroup.

I personally think there's a bit of a lost opportunity here, though. Because sports is lower stakes, there's actually room to get people curious about the science, about the ways hormones influence our bodies, about the vast differences between trans people and cis members of their birth sex. In all the years trans women who'd medically transitioned were allowed to participate, not one dominated a single sport. That's interesting and unintuitive for a lot of people, and I think you can activate the part of people's brains that gets curious and wants to know more about this issue, which can be useful for education. It's different with questions that are more emotional, like whether to allow your 14 year old to start a hormonal medication. On those questions, I see people's curiosity give way to fear.

On transitioning, I think what are called radical centrists are largely responsible. They pushed fear over liberty. They pretended that rightwingers are only reacting, not making the choice to punch down. What can be done? What historical models are there?

Centrists want easy answers to the challenges we're facing. They want an easy answer to the challenge of having a completely unsuitable, unethical, mendacious person attain the US presidency, and to other challenges like climate change and increasing inequality as well. They want to believe we're still living in the 1990s, an eternal 1990s where the Overton Window is extremely narrow, our political parties agree and work together on a lot of things, and voters reward them for that.

To someone with that mindset, it's very appealing to think there's a minority (one who people in their social set largely agree are a little weird) who they can just change positions on with no pain. If that's true, you can just tweak your platform at the margins and avoid the hard question: Why are Americans so desperate for change they'll vote for a fascist in one election and a socialist in the next?

But the damage is not going to be limited to one subset. Some say the trans ruling is softening the ground toward striking down gay marriage, birth control and perhaps inter-racial marriage. The sphere of freedom is shrinking. Is there enough awareness of that?

In my view, the presidencies of Donald Trump represent a phase shift for American democracy, one that has made it impossible to return to the way things were. I think if you look at the totality of the actions of Trump himself, his administrations, and his judges, that's an inescapable conclusion.

It's also a very scary conclusion, which is why people don't want to look at these precedents on trans rights and ask, if a state legislature can ban a safe and effective treatment for trans people, does that mean they can ban vaccines? Does that mean they can ban antidepressants, birth control, and ADHD medications? They want the disturbance to stay with the trans community, not necessarily because they hate us but because it's quite scary to imagine the consequences of, for example, a far-right court deciding that equal protection just doesn't apply to trans people in sports because there aren't that many trans people in sports.

Who else might they decide equal protection doesn't apply to? It's too unsettling to ask the question, so people tell themselves this is just trans issues stuff, nothing to do with them.

Here in Connecticut, the state GOP is trying to ban trans women from women's sports, but their effort is falling in deaf ears. That seems indicative of the future, where some states and regions honor and protect equality under law while others savage it. Legally speaking, the same person in Connecticut is different in Alabama. Is that our future?

Blue states have largely circled the wagons around their trans communities, in a way that's lovely to see. I think that the far right really wants to federalize fascism, and make it impossible for states to protect trans people, but that project may be more difficult than they thought.

As difficult and scary as it is to see my rights being chipped away, a lot has changed. Part of that is that more people know trans people, and even with a bit of backsliding the prejudice isn't nearly what it was when I was young. Another part is that trans people have more ways to know themselves and express themselves than they ever did. I can't predict the future, but I know you can't put toothpaste back in the tube. We're out, we're everywhere, and even if our lives are harder, we're not going away.

I will spare you the details of the rightwing reaction to the Supreme Court's decision last week to uphold birthright citizenship. I will spare you because they are disgusting, especially on America's 250th anniversary. What you need to know is that the mainstream of the Republican Party is no longer flirting with the so-called "Great Replacement Theory." In GOP circles, the idea that immigration is "civilizational suicide" is now conventional wisdom.

I know the Democrats have a lot on their plates right now, but the rest of us need to push them into accepting this reality. Rightwingers no longer care, if they ever genuinely did, about the "illegal" part of "illegal immigration." As their reaction to the court should make clear, federal law and the Constitution are obstacles to overcome. To them, it doesn't matter what immigrants do or don't. What matters is who they are – namely their race, culture and religion – and from the viewpoint of these reactionaries, it's their humanity that's "illegal."

I think it's up to the rest of us to push the Democrats, because they tend toward inertia, not action. The party's mainstream – think Chuck Schumer – will interpret the Supreme Court's decision on birthright citizenship as the end of the story. Fact is, it's probably the beginning. First, because the court itself is corrupt and in need of punishment. It's only a matter of time before it strikes down 158 years of Constitutional law. Second, because we have been here before. Democrats used to think abortion was settled. Look where that perspective got us.

These reactionaries will always be with us, alas, and they will never be satisfied with a court siding with the law, because, as they see it, the law is part of the conspiracy against them. They have convinced themselves that they are locked in a war for their very survival. "Border security," therefore, has nothing to do with the "border" or "security" in any objective sense of those words. It means closing the door and purging anyone "who does not belong."

The Times reported last week that immigrant arrests have surged to 10,000 in five days. The number of immigrants in detention has reached 63,000. The Post reported last month that due to immigrants dying in custody during the first five months of this year, the administration is no longer going to report deaths. The Marshall Project reported in April that 6,200 minors have been detained since the beginning of last year. It published a follow-up story, in June, reporting that 500 of those minors were literal babies. The Supreme Court supercharged the effort by dramatically eroding the means by which to seek asylum and ending the protective status of nearly one and a half million refugees from Haiti and Syria.

The Republicans have taken a maximal position that requires a maximal counter-position. Theirs is anti-immigration, and every action taken by the Trump administration, with the blessing of the court (mostly), has advanced that position. So the maximal counter-position should be anti-anti-immigration – or simply pro-immigration, a view that gives a whole-chested defense of immigration in terms of freedom and America as the land of opportunity,

But that's not what I see in the mainstream of the Democratic Party. I don't want to sand the corners of nuance here, but I do think it's fair to say that the center of the party still accepts the bad faith of the Republicans as if it were well-intended. They talk about loyalty when they mean conformity and obedience. They talk about patriotism when they mean bigotry and prejudice. They talk about capitalism and tradition when they mean creating an economic system in which mediocre men do not have to compete on the basis of merit and risk the humiliation of losing to women. They are this close to saying that immigrants have no rights which the white man is bound to respect. Yet many Democrats seem to believe that reasonable people can work together to find a halfway point between liberty and tyranny.

Again, I don't want to encourage the idea that all Democrats are the same, but I do not believe the Democrats as a party truly understand the maximal position being taken by their rightwing counterparts, and what that requires. Therefore, it is up to the rest of us to make it clear to them that compromise, though it may mitigate immediate harms done by the forces of anti-immigration, will not defeat those forces in the end. "Pro-immigration, pro-security" might seem like common sense, but ultimately, the boot still comes down on the necks of immigrants. Indeed, from the immigrant's point of view, "pro-immigration, pro-security" means there's a dime's worth of difference between the parties, as the Republicans get to stomp and the Democrats get to tell the Republicans there's a better way to stomp.

But before the Democrats can liberate immigrants, they must liberate themselves. The Republicans have been living in their heads rent-free for a quarter of a century. During that time, they have accepted as true the implication that immigrants are a threat to national security, cultural identity, social cohesion and "our way of life." It's to the point where the Democrats are co-dependent, asking the Republicans to be allowed to disagree. In fact, immigrants are not and never have been any of these things. For God's sake, even Ronald Reagan said immigrants are "one of the most important sources of America's greatness."

The Democrats do not need Reagan's permission, of course, but I think it's important to remember what he once said: "If we ever close the doors to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost." Democrats should make their own case for immigration as a universal good for their own sake but also for the country's. The forces of anti-immigration are not only destructive but a perversion, a profanity, a con. The Democrats should go on the offensive, demanding that the immigration system be burned down and rebuilt so the burden of proof is no longer on the huddled masses yearning to breathe free but on the government to assume the humanity of "new Americans" so their pathway to citizenship is just details.

The American republic dodged a bullet this week when the US Supreme Court decided to uphold birthright citizenship. If not for two Republican justices, who refused to make-believe their way through a plain reading of the text of the 14th Amendment, we would have seen the clock turning back to a time after the Civil War when politicians were debating whether formerly enslaved people and their children were actually United States citizens. We came too close to destruction to consider anything short of a maximal response. For years, some Democrats talked about reforming the court. I think it's time they talked about punishing it.

Reforming the court as an institution – term limits, for instance – might deter future malfeasance, but the court is behaving badly now. It acts as if its benefactors will move heaven and earth to protect it, allowing it to rule with impunity for the law. To me, it's simple. Stop bad behavior by punishing it. No democracy can endure when a half dozen high priests of the law are untouchable. Punish the court by impeaching and removing a justice.

This kind of thing used to sound fringe-y. Democratic activists who lost faith in the high court, due to Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation in 2018, called for his impeachment a year later when the Times revealed that he almost certainly lied to the Senate about allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior. His critics were small in number but loud enough to get the attention of Democratic presidential hopefuls like Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, who joined their calls. Still, the focus was on just one man. These days, the focus is much broader.

In the summer of 2024, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez filed two articles of impeachment, one against Clarence Thomas and one against Samuel Alito, alleging that both men did not disclose gifts provided by wealthy patrons, nor did they recuse themselves from cases involving them. ProPublica reported in 2023 a pattern of behavior spanning decades in which Alito took luxury vacations paid for by a Republican billionaire who later had cases before the court. Also from ProPublica that year came numerous reports on similar conflicts by Thomas. (The article against Thomas includes his wife's legal interest in cases before the court. Virginia Thomas was indirectly involved in the J6 insurrection.)

Ocasio-Cortez's articles focused on justices, not their rulings, but Steve Cohen's did. The Tennessee Congressman, who was gerrymandered out of a job thanks to the court, filed six articles of impeachment in May against Chief Justice John Roberts on the charge of "violating the Constitution, disregarding his statutory obligations as chief justice and breaching his oaths of office." The court's rulings, Cohen alleged, were "for the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor and the broader citizenry." Under Roberts' stewardship, Cohen alleged, the court has become "biased" with "decisions designed to benefit Republicans at the expense of representative government," "a pattern of ethical breaches that raises questions about the role of the wealthy" and "seemingly contradictory and unexplained orders."

That last part – about "contradictory and unexplained orders" – is finally getting more attention. Today, ProPublica reported that last year, for the first time, justices decided more cases in secret than they did in open court. ProPublica analyzed over 20 years of rulings and found that "when the last court term ended, justices had issued 63 orders on the shadow docket, as opposed to 56 orders on the more traditional merits docket — where the court hears oral arguments scheduled months in advance and the justices issue signed opinions."

By using the shadow docket, the court can decide cases fast, without deliberation, scrutiny or accountability, as orders are often handed down unsigned. And doing so has been to the benefit of the court's chief sponsor. "Increased willingness to bypass its regular process has empowered President Donald Trump at the same time as the administration has increased use of executive authority," ProPublica reported. "The court has repeatedly green-lit policies of his that lower courts have blocked — and has done so with little to no explanation."

Just as it is plainly obvious that the 14th Amendment says all persons born in America are American, it is plainly obvious that when the highest court in the land operates in secret, it's corrupt – and must be punished for its transgressions. In commenting on the ProPublica story, attorney Max Kennerly said that "the GOP Supreme Court does not even bother to explain the majority of its decisions. It's apparently too much to ask they at least barf up dishonest, unprincipled, poorly-reasoned excuses for their arbitrary exercise of power."

"By itself," Kennerly said, this is "cause for radical reform."

By itself, he said, this is "impeachable."

At this point in the story, the question is whether punishment for obvious high crimes and misdemeanors is possible in a political system that's really a cartel in all but name. A high court has paid one of the parties for protection, in the form of legal immunity, so that both can continue to act with impunity for the law. It takes a simple majority to impeach in the House, but it takes a supermajority, two-thirds of the Senate, to convict. The bar is so high that removal is practically impossible. Just talking about justice feels futile. I think that's why, when it comes to the Supreme Court, most of the discussion ends up being about reforming it in order to prevent wrongdoing in the future. Clarence Thomas said he's "just walking" when asked why he's strolling around Capitol Hill. He clearly believes no one can touch him.

He will be right if no one tries.

For the Democrats, the path toward taking control of the House has long been clear. The path toward retaking the Senate is now shaping up. Today, the Times said that new polling suggests that Senate seats in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas are all toss-ups. The Democrats need only four seats to control the chamber, but even if they swept them all, it wouldn't be enough to punish a justice by themselves. They would need at least 14 Republicans to join them (assuming all 53 of the Senate Democrats were on board). Unless it's seen as a cynical ploy to replace an old reactionary with a young one, the odds of that happening are low. But this is about crime and punishment, the administration of justice.

Whether it's popular should be beside the point.

The Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship this week. The Times said the decision "capped a more than decade-long effort by Mr. Trump to use the issue as a political tool." A relief, to be sure, but no cause for celebration. A plain reading of the 14th Amendment would bring anyone to the same decision. The court was split, however, with some justices unable to resist the temptation to dehumanize immigrants by calling them "foreign birth tourists."

The majority didn't check the president, though that's how most people will see it. A more accurate interpretation would be that it encouraged him, or some future authoritarian, to try again. Change a few things, including who's on the court, and a plain reading of the 14th Amendment won't matter anymore. All it would take to destroy equal citizenship would be five rogue justices pretending that history didn't happen and words don't have meaning.

The high court can't be allowed to continue in its present form, not when it profanes the Constitution, perverts the rule of law, and comes within a hair of transforming America into de jure apartheid state. It has already legalized corruption. It has already gutted the Voting Rights Act. Yesterday, it said that the US Congress (meaning we, the people) has no rights which a Republican president is bound to respect. All things being equal, it's only a matter of time before the current court finds a way to turn "white makes right" into law.

The Republican won't stop it. Will the Democrats?

I can't say I'm encouraged after reading Dana Milbank's latest. A former Post columnist who now writes for NOTUS, Milbank wanted to know if the unitary executive powers amassed by Trump and blessed by this court can be used to launch what he called "a new Progressive Era, in which a Democratic president imposes by executive fiat government run health care and many other ideas liberals have long dreamed about but lacked the votes to enact."

Milbank interviewed "veterans of previous Democratic administrations and liberal policy wonks" to ask "what would it look like if the next Democratic president wielded power the way Trump does?" The answer, Milbank said, is like "an embryonic Project 2029," though no one called it that. "The advocacy arms of the Roosevelt Institute, the Center for American Progress and other influential groups on the left are already assembling lists of ways a Democratic president could use the breathtaking executive power Trump has seized."

On that list are some golden nuggets. They include (and here I'm quoting Milbank almost verbatim): creating a government-run health insurer; seizing patents from drug makers that developed their products with government funding; establishing government-run grocery stores; cutting off funds for businesses that don’t significantly raise their wages; taking “golden shares” in, or other forms of government control over, frontier AI firms, banks, pharmaceutical firms and others; dismantling the Department of Homeland Security; and breaking up media monopolies like Paramount's merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.

I'm sampling what is a truly mouth-watering list of progressive objectives, but two aspects stand out from the full list. One is that it's limited to policy. Two is that there's nothing on the list about reforming the Supreme Court. Indeed, there does not seem to be awareness among Milbank's sources that the Supreme Court will strike down every one of these policies if given a chance, no matter how good or popular they might become. Worse, a kind of magical thinking seems to be driving the debate. None other than Neera Tanden suggested what's good for a Republican is good for his Democratic successor in the eyes of the court.

"Trump has discovered, or created, powers that no president has ever had that have been sanctioned by a rightwing Supreme Court,” said the head of the Center for American Progress. “Trump has widened the aperture of the powers the federal government has.” That aperture, Tanden said, can be used by a Democrat to "create a kind of new social contract.”

Not if John Roberts has anything to say about it.

It doesn't matter how much "Trump has widened the aperture of the powers the federal government has." The next Democratic president can't change America without changing the court. It is not politically neutral. It does not serve the law. It is profoundly corrupt. And only a fool would forget that what this court gives, this court can take away. It must be held accountable for its impunity for the law, same as everyone. So expand its number, impose term limits, strip its jurisdiction, throttle its budgets – whatever it takes, because there will be no new dawn as long as there's a rightwing supermajority that's prepared to veto it.

It's hard to believe, but apparently "the entire GOP political ecosystem" is now dedicated to the idea that what worked in 2024 is going to work in the coming congressional elections. Every level is focused on "building a turnout operation with the sole focus of identifying, engaging and ultimately persuading 'low propensity' voters," according to Alex Roarty.

In a story in NOTUS today, Roarty reported that operatives have been planning to run the same play "from almost the moment the 2024 campaign ended." By focusing on nonvoters – people "who maybe cast a ballot two years ago but often skip midterm elections" – the aim is "solving a traditional problem for parties in power during midterm elections when their voters become more complacent and turn out in lower numbers than their opposition’s."

Why is this hard to believe? First, because the fundamentals for 2026 are arguably the same as they were in 2024, but dramatically worse, in which public opinion turned sharply against the party in power due to inflation, prices, wages and the economy generally. The obvious difference is the party in power is not the one that Donald Trump and the Republicans ran against two years ago. A new poll puts his overall approval at 30 percent, with 82 percent saying that they expect conditions to get worse over the coming year. Importantly, people keep telling pollsters that they hold the president personally responsible for their misery.

But there's another reason the GOP's "plan to win" is hard to believe – it depends on a paradox. On the one hand, operatives believe that Trump supporters who usually vote are not going to show up. On the other hand, they believe Trump supporters who usually do not vote – "low propensity voters" – will show up to replace Trump voters who are not going to show up. In other words, "the entire GOP political ecosystem" believes that voters won't vote but nonvoters will. Everyone sees this house of cards but no one is ready to admit it. "We kind of compare notes on everything, making sure that we’re all seeing the world the same way. Which we do,” CLF’s Joe Pileggi told NOTUS. “There’s no fragmentation in our thinking.”

I guess unity is the play you make when you don't have a better play.

After all, Republican consultants gotta get paid, too.

It used to be that casual voters supported Democrats during presidential elections, then disappeared until the next one. That gave the GOP the advantage during midterms. Trump changed that. He chased away educated and mostly white middle- and upper-middle class voters, and replaced them with working-class voters who were more racially diverse but less prone to voting. Democrats have had the advantage since. Even the 2022 midterms, when Joe Biden was president, did not produce a red wave. The Republicans took the House but barely.

The economy was in better shape back then. Last week, the Post released a review of 990 races, over three cycles, in 25 states. It found that "turnout is rising in Democratic primaries even when they aren’t hotly contested and the nominee has little chance of winning in the general election." The Post looked at all the Democratic House primaries held so far this year and found that, in more than 90 percent of them, "voters cast more ballots than during 2022, when Republicans flipped the House. So far this year, people cast 12.6 million ballots in Democratic House primaries compared with 8.6 million in GOP primaries" (my italics).

Why did Donald Trump blow up a signing ceremony that would have celebrated the passing of a new housing law that takes aim at the affordability crisis that everyone is talking about? With Congress in session, the bill becomes law whether he signs it or not. So why would the greatest narcissist in the history of presidents pass up a chance to brag about how great he is? Why is he acting like Republican control of the Congress is not his highest priority?

On Wednesday, California Congressman Ted Lieu suggested an answer – that the 80-year-old president no longer has the mental capacity to recognize what's in his own best interest.

"Inflation is up," Lieu said. "Grocery prices are up. Utility costs are up. Housing prices are up. We have a bipartisan housing bill ... There was supposed to be a big signing ceremony today. All of a sudden, Donald Trump decides he’s not coming to sign the bill. Why is that?

"Did he wake up on the wrong side of the bed?" Lieu asked. "Is he unable to stay awake today? What’s causing him to chicken out again? ... Is it the side effects from a drug?

"We don’t know," Lieu said. "This erratic behavior is very concerning. He has trouble staying awake at multiple White House events and Cabinet meetings. He has clearly some weakness in one of his arms. He’s got swelling in his hands. The White House needs to come clean."

Lieu then cited a report by Stat that revealed that the FDA has approved access to an experimental drug on a "compassionate use" basis to one person, who was 79 years old in April and whose case was "personally overseen" by a doctor at the National Institutes of Health.

The drug is called retatrutide. It is administrated by injection once a week. Drugmaker Eli Lilly considers it treatment for obesity, Type 2 diabetes, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea and other ailments. Three sources told Stat that the patient, described as "well-connected," wanted the drug to treat refractory obesity with obstructive sleep apnea and pulmonary hypertension.

Donald Trump was 79 in April. He falls asleep during public events. He posts to his social media site at all hours. He's had three "annual" checkups in the last 13 months, one that included an MRI for reasons Trump won't explain. The Post reported recently that for his most recent medical exam, he was attended to by no fewer than 22 doctors. Trump has expressed interest in weightless drugs, per the Times. He also has a history of pulling strings to get special access to new drugs, for himself during the covid era, and for friends.

Which brings us back to Lieu. "What we know is a report saying that one person in America got this special new drug. It was a 79-year-old person, very high profile. This drug can only be given to someone under the 'compassionate use' provision, meaning you do that if someone basically has a terminal illness. We need to know did Donald Trump get this special drug from Eli Lilly and did he get it under that provision and if he did, why is that the case?"

If Trump were not a Republican, Lieu's remarks would be part of an already established "narrative" about the travails of an old Democrat who's become so weak that he can't recognize what's in his own interest before an election that threatens to wipe out his party.

But since he is a Republican, Lieu's remarks will sink like a stone.

I don't mean that reporters won't rewrite "the narrative" if Trump, say, falls down the stairs while descending Air Force One. But short of something dramatic like that, I don't see anything changing. That's the conclusion I came to after reading a new piece by political scientist Julia Azari. She said the public and, by extension, the press corps view the aging of presidents not only through a partisan lens but a cultural lens that authenticates Americans.

"Republicans represent groups who are assumed to hold legitimate power; Democrats represent groups who are not," Professor Azari wrote last week in Good Politics/Bad Politics. "Challenging these elements of the status quo runs the risk of violating journalistic norms about neutrality, while affirming the status quo does not. ... So part of what drove the discussion of Biden’s age was that the former president was showing up, flawed, to advocate for policies on behalf of the poor, people of color, LGBTQ Americans. Trump, on the other hand, uses unconventional methods to advocate on behalf of the existing structure of power. For Biden, there was a higher burden to explain and justify. For Trump, some outbursts and rambling can still fit the script. And the messenger is hard to separate from the message."

In other words, Republicans are seen as having been born with the legitimate right to rule while Democrats are seen as having to earn that right, even when, or especially when, they have already earned it. When Biden struggled, he was judged to be old and weak. When Trump struggles, he is not judged at all, because that's just Trump. That framing arises from an old understanding of who counts as real. "Parties and presidents have flattered and favored rural [white] majorities" since the founding, wrote Jason Opal in 2023. "American culture identified farm folk and small towns as the most authentic and virtuous parts of the nation — or, as President Andrew Jackson put it in 1837, 'the bone and sinew of the country.'”

I asked Professor Azari for an interview. I told her that I thought her analysis was the best explanation I have seen on the discrepancy between the Washington press corps' treatment of Old Man Biden versus Old Man Trump. Some Americans are given a place in America on the day they are born, I suggested, while other Americans are always expected to earn their place, even after they already have. Here's her response and the rest of our conversation.

Professor Azari: I think this [framing] is harder to trace to Biden, which leads me to make a controversial statement about Biden (because it's uncool to say anything positive about him). I think Biden sought to convey a sense of humility about the many privileged identities he brought to the leadership of a diverse party. This is someone who pretty seamlessly stepped into the No. 2 role for the first Black nominee and then president! And then he chose Black women for important roles, talked about not just LGBTQ rights but trans rights. He understood the assignment. But he performed awkwardly, and age did not help. The news media has really changed its views about power. I'm not precisely sure why or how. But the narrative tends to be that preserving the status quo equals order, and order is good. Challenging the status quo is disruption and disruption is bad. And so I think that informs what we see in much of the coverage differences, which is in the framing and language.

Within that framing, however, Biden was never going to be given the benefit of the doubt by the press corps, because he had to keep earning the right to be president, because he spoke for groups that were not legitimate from the start. In that framing, to be old is to be weak, to be weak is to represent Black people.

I would phrase the latter part is that to represent Black people (and other marginalized groups) is to ask for power to be redistributed in ways that makes a lot of people nervous.

So empowering Black people disrupts the status quo, which is a white status quo, which is what Trump represents, which is why his getting old isn't as alarming to Republicans or the press corps to it would be if Trump were a Democrat?

Right. I think there's also substantial evidence that Trump's coalition has two main parts: people who think he represents everything they love and equate his angry rants with strength; and people who see him as a useful instrument for their priorities. The former group can just make AIs of him as they wish to see him, and the latter doesn't really care what traits he brings, as long as he keeps appointing people who will enact their agenda through the executive branch. Years ago, I would have varnished this commentary, but I don't really care anymore.

I used to think the press corps would start noticing Trump's age. But your piece suggests that with power and legitimacy comes endless deference with respect to aging. Can you envision a moment when that stops? If he trips and falls on live TV?

Embedded in my thinking is a sense that news media are responsive to perceived demand, so I think as it generates interest and become hard to ignore, we will see coverage. But will we ever see coverage that uses language subtlely to undercut legitimacy the way it did for Biden? That connects it to "hiding something" or the other tropes that were implied? Hard to know. It's also true – and this is what Seth Masket was getting at in his piece – that there's a lot of material about the other ways Trump isn't really qualified or legitimate – the lack of understanding of issues, the lack of deference to Constitutional traditions and text. So you don't really need age to do that work.

I think what the coverage signifies is more important than the coverage itself. We tend to assume that sunshine disinfects – that publicity leads to accountability – but with Trump, there's not much evidence showing that to be true. He had no elective experience before 2016, was impeached twice, faced multiple indictments and a conviction while out of office. What makes us think some bruises or mental slips will matter? But the larger story of what's behind those differences in coverage won't go away after Trump leaves office.

The president contaminated the Reflecting Pool that's in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Donald Trump had the bottom of it painted blue in celebration of himself, er, America's 250th anniversary. The $14-million paint job is now peeling. Algae is blooming. Efforts to kill it with hydrogen peroxide have made it look like a giant Mark Rothko painting. The Times reported that the White House gave the task of "refurbishing" the pool to a firm tied to a Trump donor.

Paint was seen peeling from the floor of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, weeks after a $14 million renovation that included a new color President Trump called “American Flag Blue.” pic.twitter.com/pCYznXRoFF
— CBS News (@CBSNews) June 18, 2026

Liberal and Democrats sometimes get caught up in abstractions. We often lose people by talking about "institutions" and "oligarchs." So the pool is an appealing metaphor, as is the president's attempt to blame others for his mess. Authorities charged a former Olympian for "vandalizing" the monument. The National Guard was ordered to protect its desecration. (Claiming vandalism, Trump said that the pool would need to be drained again and redone.)

"This story is such a perfect reflection (no pun intended) of Donald Trump’s failures and character flaws that it might have unique power to break through some otherwise impermeable skulls," my pal Marty Longman said in his newsletter, which I recommend.

"Found an imaginary problem, said only they could fix it, didn’t listen to experts, hired buddies who grifted millions, failed miserably, bragged how great it went," Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said on Twitter. "The entire Trump presidency in a nutshell."

I agree, but I think it should be said that the story is a reflection of more than a president who turns everything he touches into "crud," as Paul Krugman told Greg Sargent Monday. A national monument that is being choked with peeling paint and pollution, and that is being "protected" by a perversion of power, reflects something about us. It reveals the inner state of our national character: drained, declining, even diseased, and in desperate need of healing.

I think it's easy to suggest that Donald Trump is the exception to the rule and that what he is doing is not who we are as a people. But it's harder to suggest, because it's more truthful to suggest, that he's the rule itself, and that what he's doing is exactly who we are. After all, we elected him twice. You could say the first time was a fluke. The second time, however, was a choice. A majority chose a pool of corruption, because they themselves have been corrupted.

Usually, liberal don't talk this way, especially liberal pundits like me. We blame Trump for every evil, and see the metaphor of the Reflecting Pool as an opportunity to press our case against him. But we stop short of taking in the whole of what the Reflecting Pool is reflecting, namely that there's something deeply morally rotten when a country like ours can produce, maintain and empower a man like him. We speak of symptoms, but overlook the disease. We speak of strategies, but not about a nation experiencing the crisis of its collective soul.

Talking like this is second nature to me. I was raised among very conservative Protestants. We were weaned on Bible stories about a nation that faced repeated calamity for turning against righteousness. (That "nation" was ancient Israel but the link to America was implicit for us.) Liberals talk about Trump voters who are suffering from the consequences of their choices and hope they will learn from their pain. But we're all part of the same political community and we're all feeling pain. What are the rest of us learning if we are only willing to see Trump in the Reflecting Pool and not ourselves? God's judgment isn't for him alone.

Why are some of us willing to see Donald Trump in the Reflecting Pool but not ourselves? No doubt the answer is partisanship, but it's also myth. We believe deep in our bones that America is special, a superior country above all others. Our sense of patriotism and pride is based on that idea. Therefore, a pool of putrid green water cannot reflect the whole of the people, because Trump is a mistake, a blip in our noble history, a deviation from our values.

Some of his supporters seem to be coming around to that way of thinking. While that's good news for the Democrats and their chances of success in the next election, that's bad news in the long term. If we cannot collectively face the whole truth, and the fact that Trump is not a mutation of the American genome but a faithful expression of it, then it won't be long until we see another of his kind, and when we do, many of us will again be shocked and unable to accept the idea that his very existence is a picture-perfect reflection of who we are.

You know who has no trouble looking into the Reflecting Pool and seeing a picture-perfect reflection of who we are as a people? The children of the immigrants who are being savaged in the name of national pride. A mother in Connecticut is suing ICE for separating her from her children, leaving them in the car, wailing. According to the Courant, the suit "described Martinez’s son as someone who was 'once a bubbly child' who now struggles to sleep through the night. In school, he frequently interrupts class because of his uncontrollable crying. The complaint describes one instance where he sat down outside a classroom, told his teacher that he missed his mom and stayed on the ground crying for almost 20 minutes."

That boy will eventually grow up. He will live a healthy, happy life if he's lucky. But no matter his good fortune, he will never forget what the United States really is. No amount of belief in American exceptionalism is going to change that. Moreover, what our government is doing to the children of immigrants like him cannot be undone. Five hundred literal babies have spent time in ICE custody since Trump returned to power, according to the Marshall Project. (They are among the 6,200 minors that the government has detained since early 2025.) In the future, when these crime victims are looking back, the pain of their memories will be deepened beyond comprehension by the insistence that this is not who we are. Try telling these kids that the American people aren't so bad, that they were just mad about inflation.

I do not expect anyone to take my advice. I am but a humble newsletter writer. Anyway, most of us don't want redemption from the truth. We want relief from the responsibility of doing something about it. Accepting, for instance, that America is the kind of country that will take food away from 770,000 hungry kids, and then making the sacrifices necessary to reversing that crime, is too much for most of us. It feels better to be told by an aspiring leader that a disgusting Reflecting Pool is not a picture of who we really are, and that the true authentic soul of America will reemerge once the right party is in charge. Redemption would require giving up the privilege of America being God's special exception. Accepting that we're just another country in the eyes of God is a loss, and a humiliation, that's too great to bear.

The housing bill that sailed through the US Congress this week is going to become law no matter what the president decides to do. On Monday, it passed the Senate by a vote of 85-5. On Tuesday, it passed the House by a vote of 358-32. Even if Donald Trump were to veto it, those numbers suggest the will to override him. The United States might be divided on other issues, but not on affordability. That crisis is unifying. This act of Congress reflects that.

Yet Trump said this morning that he wouldn't sign it until Senate Republicans nuke the filibuster and pass the so-called SAVE Act, which would require proof of citizenship to vote (in addition to all the other hoops required by state law that you have to jump through to vote.) He apparently believes that the controversial piece of legislation would save him the humiliation of defeat in November. (That is by no means a certainty). He also apparently believes he has leverage. He doesn't. The Constitution states that unless the Congress is adjourned (meaning its session has ended), a bill becomes law in 10 days, signed or not.

According to USA Today, the legislation would ease federal regulations on manufactured homes, which would boost the supply of housing and therefore lower housing costs. It would also bar private equity firms from gobbling up housing stock and jacking up prices. Maybe that would work. I think it's worth a try, as housing has been getting more scarce since the mortgage-backed meltdown of 2008. What I do know, however, is that everyone in Washington should at least pretend to be concerned about the cost of living if they know what's good for them. If the ease by which this bill passed is any indication, everyone does.

Everyone but Donald Trump.

The candor in the AP's news summary underscores a recurring theme of the Trump era: he is very bad at presidenting. Trump "blindsided" the Republicans, the newswire said. "At the same time, he has blocked them from confirming one of his own nominees, asked them to fund parts of his White House ballroom project despite opposition and forced them to defend his Iran war even as they question the strategy and endgame. By rejecting a public bill signing, Trump is also indicating a level of indifference to the affordability issues that are a leading concern for voters going into November’s midterm elections" (my italics).

Weakness is the flipside of indifference. If he doesn't like the bill on the merits, he should veto it. But he won't because he doesn't care about the merits, and he doesn't care about them, because he doesn't care about anything but himself. "Nobody gives a s--- about housing," he reportedly told House Speaker Mike Johnson, according to Punchbowl News, as if the Congress did not have enough votes to force him to face the truth of his nakedness.

Weakness can also be seen in the fact that Trump had signaled support for the housing bill as recently as yesterday. It was only this morning that the Republicans sleep-walked into the president's reversal. "Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency," he said via social media. Perhaps his tantrum was the result of getting advanced word of today's court ruling that "permanently barred" him from pursuing an executive order that requires proof of citizenship to vote. The judge said elections are run by the states. The order violates the separation of powers. It seems Trump believes that if he can't get what he wants from a judge, he can do what he's always done and bully the GOP.

Keep your eyes peeled on the GOP's reaction. Are the Republicans going to keep eating humiliation as the price of power or will they start seeing it as a price too great to bear. I don't want to make too much of that, but at the same time, I don't think there's a clear answer yet. The humiliation is indisputable. French Hill, the GOP sponsor of the housing bill in the House, was literally on stage bragging about the president's support, not knowing that he had posted his notice revoking it. "Let's show the American people what legislating looks like," Hill said. "Let's show the American people how you bring together and do something on an bicameral basis. We did that in conjunction with the president and his priorities."

Whoops.

"He’s having a f------ tantrum,” a senior Republican told NOTUS.

French Hill touts bipartisan Housing Bill, as Trump cancels signing mid-conference: "Let's show the American people what legislating looks like…We did that in conjunction with President Trump and his priorities." pic.twitter.com/xSh2BKWktk
— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) June 24, 2026

Some would say that the Republicans' appetite for humiliation is virtually unlimited, and I am sympathetic to that view. But even now, we can see in the Senate, where the Republicans really, really do not want to nix the filibuster, for fear of what the Democrats might do if they take the chamber in November, a tension that's growing between Republicans who are imagining life without Trump, and a president who can't imagine anything, much less his own party, existing without him. In the months ahead, we're going to see whether Trump is "tightening his grip on the party" or sabotaging it. With this vote, they proved without meaning to that they can succeed without him. If the price isn't high, they might try again.

The Republicans are stuck between voters demanding that Congress act on the cost of living, and a leader believing that "nobody gives a shit about housing" and any other affordability issue. If the Republicans win, Trump will hate them, because that would mean they don't need him anymore. He will punish them for it. But if they lose, Trump will hate them even more, because that would mean they can't do anything for him. He will punish them for that, too. 2026 is shaping up to be, as Roger Stone might put it, the GOP's time in the barrel.

May it be so.