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.

To put it mildly, the Democrats have had a complicated relationship with the white working class at least since passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But things are going to be simple in the run up to November's midterm elections. Democrats don't need to offer much. White working-class voters who supported Donald Trump are probably going to stay home.

“I don’t even want to vote for anybody in the next election,” Annette Dombrowski told the Post last month. The 64-year-old janitor in rural Ohio voted for the president three times. She used to vote in the midterms, but not this time. “I don’t care, because they’re all crap.”

Dombrowski represents an "extraordinary swing," as the Times put it last week. Though his unpopularity, especially among affluent white women, hurt the GOP in the 2018 midterms, white working-class voters stood by their man. They approved of Trump's "management of the economy by margins of 30 percentage points or even more," the Times said. Now, however, as inflation climbs ever higher, his base is falling out from beneath him. The Times: "Now, recent polls show them disapproving by anywhere from 14 to more than 30 points."

That's why a GOP pollster who has worked with Trump is sounding downright panicked. “It’s working-class voters who are not happy with the Republican Party, and they may not come out and vote,” John McLaughlin told the Times. The day before the 2018 midterms, Trump's approval rating on the economy among white working-class voters was 66 percent, according to a CNN poll. Now, his disapproval is 57 percent, a recent CNN poll said. If the Republicans fail to mobilize them, McLaughlin said, "we lose the House and the Senate.”

Despite the odds being in their favor, I don't think Democrats should leave anything to chance in light of the Supreme Court's decision to legalize cheating via white-power gerrymandering. Though they don't need to offer white working-class Trump voters anything, they should offer them something to shore up their advantage. But I don't mean offer them nonpartisan policies like universal child care. I mean offer them retribution.

These voters know who's screwing them. According to a new study by research firm Bluelabs, as reported by The New Republic's Greg Sargent, the most resonant messaging "blames insurance companies and other conglomerates for high medical and prescription drug costs and hits big corporations for price gouging and tax avoidance." It also "blames Trump and Republicans for allowing these things to happen." But most important of all, in my view, is that the messaging that works "vows that Democrats will crack down on them."

"Regions hit hard by Trump’s tariffs and Iran War-related costs are very responsive to arguments about those things," Greg said. "Among targeted voters in Iowa’s 1st and 2nd districts, for instance, one message that resonates hits Republicans for backing Trump’s tariffs and his war with Iran, arguing that they’ve hiked grocery and energy costs and hurt farmers who export goods. In short, what appears to work is a populist economics that centers villains, hits Trump and Republicans for enabling them, and pledges action.

I put "villains" in italics, because that word gets at something important about the white working class. These voters – including in "districts in some pretty pro-Trump areas in rural North Carolina, central Pennsylvania, and Iowa farm country," Greg said – have been primed to gobble up messaging that names the bad guy. Only instead of "insurance companies and other conglomerates," the villains have been "criminal illegal aliens" or some other other. The white working class is persuaded by messaging that clearly identifies the criminal, the crime and the punishment, to wit: The brown guy is stealing from you, so crack down on him.

Maga messaging also taps into the fundamental nature of the white working-class voters, which is that, above and beyond all else, they are hierarchical. The belief that society has a top-down structure is fixed. That's why they can apply the word "entitled" to people at the bottom of the social order – undeserving "welfare queens" – as well as people at the top – the undeserving rich. Neither has earned their place. One wants everything given to them. The other has already had everything given to them. Both are "entitled." For a decade, the GOP has oriented white working-class voters so they look downward only. The trick for the Democrats is reversing that orientation, so the criminal, the crime and the punishment are just as clear looking upward, to wit: The rich are stealing from you, so crack down on them.

Some progressives believe that if the Democrats want white working-class voters back under the Big Tent, they must offer something in the affirmative. So there's lots of discussion of broad nonpartisan issues that affect everyone, like health care, wages, inflation, affordability and so on. The head of American Bridge, which commissioned the Bluelabs study, told Greg Sargent that "working-class voters of all kinds are 'pissed' over everything from higher healthcare and grocery costs to gas prices, and 'this fall they will make their voices heard.'"

Maybe.

More likely, they will stay home in the absence of a strong Democratic message that taps into their fundamental nature. It's one thing to say "we're going to bring down the cost of groceries." It's another to say "we're going to bring down the cost of groceries and bring those responsible to justice." One is an aspirational statement applicable to all. The other is a gesture of power in which the crime, the criminal, the victim and the punishment are clear.

Progressives who do not come from the white working class may not be aware that working-class white Americans are essentially illiberal, in the sense that they will resist liberal attempts to flatten the top-down structure of society. In that resistance, however, lies an opportunity. It is because they are illiberal that they are not only open to a message of retribution, but attracted by it. They already know who's screwing them. What they don't know is who's going to make it right. The Democratic candidate's job is to tell them.

Indeed, many merely need reminding. Annette Dombrowski, the Ohio woman who told the Post that she didn't "want to vote for anybody," grew up poor to parents who worked in a factory. They taught her to believe that "Republicans were for rich people," according to the Post, "not families like theirs who struggled and saved money by making their own clothes."

She put her faith in Donald Trump, but that backfired on her. (She told MS Now that "I'm the most angry person when I grocery shop.") She trusts no one now. She's so demoralized that she told the Post that politicians just “want your money and give you fake promises.”

She will continue to feel that way if the Democrats offer nothing.

But she might feel differently if she believed Democrats would make the bad guys pay.

Glenn Beck put up a long post Thursday justifying the ways of Donald Trump to men. He came to the conclusion that with the Iranians, the president had no choice but to play "the cards that were actually on the table." "He did exactly what a leader of a Republic should do: he listened to the people and found a way to end this. A dictator would have kept on going. At the end of the day, a president can only go as far as the people will carry him" (my italics).

Sounds convincing, except for one thing: what he did is what a dictator would do. He began an illegal war in contempt of Congress to distract from domestic troubles. That backfired so badly that he's now going to give Iran virtually everything it wants, including $324 billion in make-good money and control of the Strait of Hormuz. The details in the "Memorandum of Understanding" strongly suggest that Trump deliberately lost in the hopes of making the problem go away. It was easier than trying to win. All that's left is declaring "victory."

Actually, all that's left is paying the bill. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon is asking the Congress – the one that a dictator would hold in contempt – for an additional $80 billion to cover costs. That's on top of the $132 billion that has already been spent on a war that, by the way, Trump knew could not be ended without Iran's permission. He told reporters that he had to come to terms with the Iranians, because "the strait would never open." The owners and insurers "don't like floating billion-dollar ships down a strait when there are rockets flying over them and mines all over the place." In other words, he knew the war would end when Iran said it would end, and we're all going to pay for Trump's weakness.

A situation in which a dictator breaks the law, profanes the Constitution, commits war crimes, ruins the economy, burns up the good will of his supporters, then loses – on purpose, as a matter of convenience – all before paying the bill with other people's money, well, that seems like a situation in which concerned citizens would reasonably raise the subject of impeachment. And I stress reasonably, not angrily, though rage would be appropriate given that Trump wants tens of billions more from the American people while taking our health insurance, food stamps and other services, in addition to bleeding Social Security dry.

In that spirit, I got in touch with Nicholas Grossman. He’s a professor of political science at the University of Illinois, a senior editor of Arc Digital, and a frequent presence at the Editorial Board. In his latest, he annotates each of the 14 points in the "Memorandum of Understanding." He concludes that Trump basically surrendered. In the following interview with me, Professor Grossman said that while Trump's second term "has done more to break the Trump mystique than anything Democrats could say," Democrats could hurt him more by emphasizing how the Iran war and its painful aftermath show the opposite of strength.

"'We're paying for Trump's weakness' strikes me as a good line," he said.

Trump threatened to destroy a "whole civilization" before caving. He has always been weak, but perhaps now the public will see it? I'm not holding my breath.

With this sort of thing, it's about the margins. Some maga hardcore will stick with Trump no matter what, buying into any fiction that helps them do that, no matter how absurd. Many Republicans will try lying about what happened with Iran to support him, even though everyone can see what actually happened.

But some Americans who thought Trump was strong will recognize the reality that this whole episode has been a damaging display of weakness. There's more open criticism in rightwing media of this Iran deal than any other Trump move I can think of. That's not transformative on its own, but it'll impact some opinions, and those impacts add up.

The weakness isn't just humiliating. It's costly. $132 billion spent so far. The Pentagon needs $80 billion more. The Republicans will have to explain why they will pay for that but not Obamacare subsidies, food stamps or WIC. How do you think that will play out?

The price tag will probably end up a lot higher, especially if we include lost economic activity. That said, Republicans were never going to fund Obamacare subsidies, food stamps, WIC, or other things that help struggling Americans, no matter what happened in the Iran war. The US government is perfectly capable of funding both the military and social programs, and it's not as if reductions in military funding would automatically increase social spending.

The Democrats were already planning to run on affordability, and the US economy will likely be in mediocre-to-poor condition this November. Pointing to Trump's attack on Iran as a waste of money (on top of all the other downsides) will boost that argument.

It seems to me that the Democrats need to link Trump's weakness with the pain felt by the American people, which is to say, we're paying for his weakness.

I think so too. In a way, it's the basic playbook of every opposition party in midterm elections: "Hey voters, are you unhappy about something? It's the president's fault, vote for us." But this time it's especially fitting. American voters usually blame the economy on the president, and it often isn't the president's fault — at least not primarily — but this time it's clearly his doing with the Iran war and to a lesser extent tariffs.

The reality of Trump 2 has done more to break the Trump mystique than anything Democrats could say. But yes, I agree that "strength" and "good for the economy" are core parts of that mystique — never deserved, always based on lies and misconceptions, but still helped him get elected — and emphasizing how the Iran war shows the opposite sounds like a good political move. "We're paying for Trump's weakness" strikes me as a good line.

Trump admitted he knew the war would end only when Iran said it would. "The strait would never open," he said, if he did not make a deal. And in knowing that was the case, it seems to me eminently impeachable.

So much about this is impeachable, not least launching the war without Congressional authorization and continuing hostilities beyond the 60-day limit in the War Powers Act.

Under US law, the president can order military force without Congressional authorization in an emergency, such as an attack on US forces. Nothing like that happened, so Trump attacking Iran was illegal from the start. Then if the president uses force without authorization, he has 60 days to get the authorization, and if he doesn't, he must end the war. We're past that 60-day threshold, and the White House tried BS-ing that they changed the name of the military operation so the War Powers Act doesn't apply. Utter contempt.

A self-respecting legislative branch would impeach him over this to assert its Constitutional authority. But we don't have that at the moment. We have a Congress that is controlled by maga loyalists who put Trump above the Constitution.

Maybe after midterms.

Do you think Trump will be persona non grata if the Democrats take the House and Senate? And if so, will a narcissist accept being persona non grata for two years?

I seriously doubt it. If Democrats manage to take not only the House but also the Senate, I expect a mix of showy fighting and open defiance from the White House. We'll likely see even more lawbreaking, usurpation of Congress's power of the purse, and rhetoric rejecting Congress's Constitutional authorities. Congress can check the president, but can't govern. Even with Democrats in full control of Congress, the Trump White House will have more power, and swaths of Washington will continue gravitating towards power, as they always do.

I will not repeat what that UFC fighter said about Michelle Obama. Instead, I will say Josh Hokit did more than reiterate a "conspiracy theory," as USA Today put it. It cannot be "debunked," as there is no real question about the former first lady's gender. What he did was defamation, plain and simple. He wanted to discredit the good name of a revered Black woman. Moreover, he and others like doing it. It's fun. As I often say, sadism is the point.

Some believe we should not talk about what Hokit did, as giving him more attention has the result of enlarging his defamation of Obama. While I'm sympathetic to this perspective (it seeks peace, after all), I think it's wrong. We can't ignore the trash. Eventually, it piles up and takes over. It stinks. Everyone hates it. Someone's got to take it out. May as well be me.

First, bear in mind the larger context in which Josh Hokit's insult took place. He is, as you know, part of the broader movement toward "male supremacist and fascist politics," as Alan Elrod put it in Liberal Currents, in a December piece looking ahead to the White House UFC fight. Alan said it offers "a violent, cutthroat society where the loser is scorned and victor takes the spoils. And it’s precisely the kind of order Donald Trump wants to put on display."

Alan went on: "Such an event is both an assertion of fascist politics and a tacit acknowledgment of how far we have already fallen. It promises to be a spectacle of toxic male supremacy, put on by an administration that touts the male 'war fighter' as the peak of physical fitness. It’s an obsession, as I’ve noted, with both male power and male bodies."

But the male supremacist vision of an America in which the "war fighter" is seen as the peak of physical fitness looks different when you know something about Hokit, which is why we should give him more attention, not less. After a promising career playing college football and wrestling, Hokit tried to make it as a pro football player, but couldn't. He washed out.

In 2020, the San Francisco 49ers signed him to the practice squad. By 2022, they cut him. Hokit later signed with the Arizona Cardinals. That same year, they cut him. By 2023, he was fighting, but not because he trained for it, or because he had a desire to test his meddle. The reason was he couldn't cut it elsewhere. The NFL wouldn't take him. The UFC would.

So already, the male supremacist vision is looking, well, less than supreme. Turns out that Josh Hokit is one among thousands of young men with big dreams who failed to reach that highest "peak of physical fitness." He was forced to find alternatives. But male supremacy takes another blow when you consider an additional fact. Hokit's opponent at the White House UFC fight was 14 years his senior, with a fight record three times as long. Apparently, Derrick Lewis used to be a big deal. He holds the UFC's record for most knockouts. But at 41 and out of shape, he's clearly a spent force. All you got to do is watch the fight to see that.

Which is what I did.

The entire bout is about four minutes long, from the opening bell through Derrick Lewis going down by technical knockout in the second round (which means the referee called the fight). If you want to watch it, click here. But trust me. These five clips are representative.

A minute and change into the fight, both men are already gassed:

Courtesy of UFC.

The exhausted couple shares a moment. Hokit pitterpats Lewis' belly, which wobbles:

Courtesy of UFC.

Here, both have hands down. Exposed, vulnerable, spent:

Courtesy of UFC.

Here, Lewis throws weary haymakers. Hokit watches them go by:

Courtesy of UFC.

When it's over, Hokit, who did not take a solid punch, can barely stand:

Courtesy of UFC.

I'm walking you through these scenes, because they point to a paradox within the male supremacist movement, as represented by the White House UFC fight. Combat sports do not make a man. They reveal him – and his true inner character. On watching his fight, everyone can see who Josh Hokit really is: a 27-year-old man who's so unprepared, so undisciplined and so unskilled that he barely beat a fighter a decade-and-a-half older and well-past his prime. If this is male supremacy's test of manhood, Hokit failed it or it's no test at all.

Combat reveals the truth, so a male supremacist project built around combat must be careful about outcomes. Given that its power arises from the appearance of strength, not actual strength, Hokit can taunt rivals for being "fat and slow and lazy" but never face the consequences of being fat and slow and lazy. Lewis did not make solid contact, and Hokit is badly depleted by the end, but the commentators hype him anyway: "Despite all the crazy freak stuff, the man can fight," one says, as if we're all looking at the same fighter. Merit doesn't matter, the Bleacher Report suggested after the fight. Hokit has "a few things going for him that could see him fighting for the title sooner than later. For one, he knows how to generate attention." It would be bad enough for male supremacy to be a social order in which "the loser is scorned and the winner takes the spoils." But if the Hokit-Lewis fight is any indication, it's more like a social order that's been rigged to make losers look like winners.

In a follow-up piece Tuesday, Alan Elrod said that, "Hokit singled out a prominent Black woman for humiliation ... and in doing so reiterated the maga belief that there is really only one right way to be an American. That is, to be male, white, heterosexual, and willing to do violence to anyone who isn’t these things. [The White House UFC fight] was not, and never could be, for everyone. It was always ... for the most vicious and barbarous among us."

Let's add, however, that if Josh Hokit is maga's idea of male supremacy, supremacy isn't the point. Fraud is, which brings me back to this: we can't ignore the trash. These men can't live up to their stated ideals. They don't intend to try, because they don't believe in ideals. If they did, they would commit to improving themselves, as men, through greater skill, discipline and mastery in preparation for the moment when the truth about them will be revealed.

But why do that hard work when there is a system already in place – call it whiteness welfare, if you wish – that rewards failure, punishes integrity and allows "fat and slow and lazy" men to pretend to be noble "war fighters"? It's so much easier, and so much more fun, to defame a revered Black woman who actually earned her place in American history. The viciousness and the barbarism are signs of weakness – of male inferiority. We should say so.

I think the most important thing you need to understand about the president's so-called peace deal with Iran is that the complete terms won't be known until after it's signed. The Post today: "Iranian leaders said Sunday that the terms of the deal would be published only after it is signed Friday — a decision that insulates the agreement from outside lobbying but may also increase the risk it falls apart as negotiators continue to discuss details."

I think the second most important thing you need to understand is the fact that the White House has not presented an alternative to the 14-point "memorandum of understanding" that the Iranian government has already made public. According to a career intelligence analyst I interviewed this morning in the wake of the news, the absence of his own terms of peace strongly suggests that Donald Trump is prepared to give Iran everything it wants.

Shipwreck, as he's known on Bluesky, wouldn't say Trump surrendered.

More like he "caved," he said, "but I guess you could interchange them."

Among other things, here are some of the things Donald Trump agreed to, according to the Mehr news agency, which speaks for the Iran government: a "permanent and immediate" end to the war; lifting the US naval blockade; "a commitment to withdraw [US] forces from around Iran"; lifting oil sanctions; paying Iran $300 billion for reconstruction; "a 60-day negotiation period to reach a final agreement on the nuclear issue"; no new military forces around Iran; no new sanctions on Iran; and unfreezing $24 billion in foreign-held assets.

What does the president get in exchange for giving Iran everything it wants, plus $324 billion in makeup money? Iran "reopens" the Strait of Hormuz "under Iranian arrangements," which means "tolls." (Reuters, today: "Iran's Fars news agency, citing an informed source, said the draft deal recognizes Iranian-Omani authority over navigation services in the strait. Tehran had agreed to allow free passage only for 60 days, after which it plans to collect revenue.")

You will recall that the strait was open before Trump started his war. So in that sense, his "peace deal" is, as the Post said, "a return to a version of the status quo." But that's a rosy interpretation. Thanks to Trump's arrogance and stupidity, Iran’s regime is now harder and more powerful than it was prior to February 28, both domestically and internationally. It is now more threatening to Israel, not less. It is going to be rewarded for holding the strait for ransom, and as a consequence, it has the incentive to hold it for ransom again. As for their nuclear program, who's going to stop them? The superpower Iran brought to its knees.

Donald Trump is weak. He's a loser. And he's terrified we'll find out. So he's rushing to sign a "peace deal" while keeping details secret long enough for him to lie about them. He wants us to think he's tough, and that if the deal goes sideways, he'll start over. "We've done a great job," he said today. "Hopefully, it's gonna be a good relationship and we're gonna get along. And if we don't, we go back to where we started." He won't. The bully got bullied and caved. The defeat is so humiliating, especially to a maga base that values the appearance of strength, that some Republicans are looking around for a fall guy and finding JD Vance.

That's not going to work, Shipwreck told me. Vance and Marco Rubio have kept their distance, probably suspecting how everything would end in humiliation. In any case, he said, "Trump will spend the next 60 days spinning this like crazy and watering it down ... to keep [the peace deal] out of the headlines." And while he's doing all that lying, Shipwreck said, "the globe will be paying for [the war] for years to come in higher prices. It will take many months to recover. But as with all things, we will likely never see the same price levels as before."

Here's the rest of our conversation this morning.

Let's set things straight from the start. Did Trump surrender?

I would use the term "caved," but I guess you could interchange them. From what has come out so far the memorandum of understanding (MOU) is basically the Iranians' 14-point plan. The fact that the US hasn’t released an alternate version to counteract Iran is telling. The White House is saying [the Mehr report on Iran's terms] isn’t correct, but has yet to release their “version,” which, again, is interesting and likely an attempt to cover up the money being exchanged. Iran wouldn’t agree to the MOU unless some form of funds were promised.

So the bully got bullied? That will encourage the bully (Iran) to bully some more, won't it?

Exactly, and it’s why they are negotiating from a position of strength in their mind, and won’t concede much in the 60-day period. The tolls are likely going to be negotiated into some form of face-saving fee to appease both sides. Trump has clearly moved on and doesn’t want to strike anytime soon, likely earliest is late summer or even possibly post-midterms. They will agree to not produce a weapon and restart their program as a clandestine one, just like the [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action under President Obama]. Iran is likely desperate to get a nuke to ward off any future western intervention.

The Israeli piece is the interesting dynamic. They will attempt to use Mossad to continue to disrupt the program. But in the end, they may determine a future round of strikes may be needed if Iran gets too close.

As I have said previously, think Hamas-Israel pre-Oct 2023. We are going to have rounds of escalation followed by periods of calm, likely for years to come.

Israel is clearly not happy and may be forced to go at it alone, which would be difficult, but not impossible.

Trump only cares about himself. This whole thing blew up in his face and he is going to lie his way out of it. I think both Iran and Israel realize they can’t take his word seriously and will operate along those lines with Iran ignoring his threats and Israel acting on its own, which is why this isn’t going away anytime soon.

The bigger issue is the globe will be paying for this for years to come in higher prices. It will take many months to recover. But as with all things, we will likely never see the same price levels as before.

Some Republicans understand the problem of Trump being seen to have rolled over for Iran. Some are pinning the blame on JD Vance. Is anyone gonna buy it?

Nope. I figure they will look for a fall guy. It does appear even some maga folks aren’t happy with this mess. But in the end, Vance and Marco Rubio both attempted to stay on the sidelines as much as possible.

But Trump will spend the next 60 days spinning this like crazy and watering it down to try and avoid it.

The late summer window when those 60 days expire will be the next checkpoint, so to speak. We will see if they attempt to extend and keep dragging this out to keep it out of the headlines.

I have doubts we ever see the level of action that occurred during the main conflict. Skirmishes and small-scale stuff, but nowhere near what we saw during the war. Trump has moved on, and he wants to avoid it going forward. The ambiguity over the next two to three months is the headache we all have to deal with.

Trump and his team committed war crimes to achieve their "goal" and got nothing for it. Death, destruction, misery the world over – all because of Trump's weakness. Seems impeachable to me. You?

Doubt it, with the current control of Congress by the Republicans, don’t see any chance that occurs. Also proving a war crime can be difficult, I served under multiple D and R Presidents, neither side wants to sign up to scrutinize the level of military ops that way. Obama, Clinton, Bush, Biden and Trump all authorized ops that you could twist into that if you wanted. Not saying it’s right, just saying it’s unfortunately the reality.

This week, the president canceled a planned attack on Iran intended to pressure the regime into making a deal. Donald Trump said he canceled, because a deal was already close at hand. It was the 39th time he said peace was imminent since the war started. CNN ran a super-cut:

The regime denied a deal, but it did leak to Iran's state-run media text of the demands that it said the president had agreed to. The Wall Street Journal's Yaroslav Trofimov said:

"It will keep the Strait of Hormuz under Iranian control, will promise Iran $300 billion in reconstruction money in addition to an immediate cash transfer of $24 billion, a suspension of sanctions and the withdrawal of US forces from the Middle East. Also a commitment not to bother Iran again about its missiles and proxies, and restraining Israel in Lebanon. The US gets in exchange a pinky promise to respect the [existing nonproliferation treaty]."

It's "like Hirohito’s surrender," journalist Bill Grueskin commented. (Trofimov added: "Let’s just say it would be very difficult for Trump or any US president to explain such a deal.")

In response to the suggestion that he was handing over the store and surrendering in humiliation, the president of the United States did what he does best: he threw a fit.

But reporting by Axios suggests the opposite.

Iran's foreign minister said today that a deal to "to extend the ceasefire, reopen the Strait of Hormuz and launch negotiations on Iran's nuclear program 'has never been closer.'" Trump told Axios that "he considered Araghchi's post 'very positive.'" Moreover, Axios said:

• "Trump said he'd demanded a public clarification over the state media reports, which claimed Iran stood to receive billions of dollars in frozen assets immediately after signing.

• "Trump also claimed Iran had privately "apologized for putting out false information."

• "The president said he still thinks a deal could be signed over the weekend or on Monday."

These are clearly face-saving demands.

Because when the president said that the leaked text had NOTHING to do with the terms he agreed to, he was actually saying that it had EVERYTHING to do with the terms he agreed to. Moreover, leaking that text seems to have been crucial to forcing him to commit to them.

As I'm writing this, Reuters is reporting that "while there were minor differences in the accounts [of the draft texts], all appeared ⁠to offer Tehran much of what it has demanded so far, with Trump appearing to win little of what he has sought beyond the reopening of the strait, which Iran shut after the US and Israel launched attacks in February."

Also from Reuters, draft terms include:

• "the US would immediately begin releasing billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets and waive sanctions on its oil exports, in return for Iran opening the strait.

• "Iran's nuclear program would be addressed during a 60-day period of talks.

• "discussion of possible war reparations for Tehran and dropping longstanding US demands for limits on Iran's missile program."

• "Israel ... has not been part of the negotiations. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country would not be party to the agreement."

More details of peace terms are forthcoming, and those made public could be inaccurate, but I'm not the first to note that Trump is desperate to end this war. He thought he could roll over Iran's regime like he ran over Venezuela's. Instead, Iran's leadership turned more extreme and took over the strait by threatening ships passing through it. (No one underwrites insurance in a war zone.) Oil prices have soared, burning up the US economy. Trump is now -50 percent on inflation, per CNN. Eighty percent disapprove on gas prices.

"They better get their act together" he said of Iran.

Or what – burn up more of America?

Despite talk of tactics, there was never a way to end the war militarily. All Iran has to do is hit one tanker with one drone to bring shipping lanes to a halt. The only way to end the war was through deal-making. However, given that Trump is the world's worse deal-maker, despite a reputation to the contrary, we may end up seeing a deal that really is "like Hirohito’s surrender." That's why Shipwreck, a pseudonymous account run by a career intelligence analyst, said today: "I am betting we never see the full text of the deal from the White House."

"No other way to sell it beyond a US surrender," he said.

"Iran is the winner," Iran's foreign minister said on state TV, according to Reuters.

There is indeed no way to sell it, but Donald Trump will try.

His ego is too great, his feelings too fragile. He can't allow himself to be known as the president who took a knee before an insurmountable enemy. He and his allies will spin surrender so that it doesn't look like Iran got everything while America got nothing, except perhaps some relief from the pain of high gas prices. In the end, Trump is what he accuses his enemies of being: old, weak and ineffective. Given all the death, destruction and misery he has caused, with nothing to show for it, that alone should be worthy of impeachment.

Some progressive Democrats are of the opinion that Donald Trump has changed American politics so fundamentally – that the system is now so corrupt and the dangers to liberal democracy are now so severe – that questions of moral character no longer count like they used to. As one progressive Democrat recently told NOTUS, "I get really tired of Democrats being held to some lofty moral standard when Republicans are just ‘boys will be boys.'"

Therefore, for instance, if there's a chance for the Democratic Party to take back control of the United States Senate, it shouldn't matter that Maine's Democratic primary winner Graham Platner lied about being a "working-class Mainer"; lied about not knowing about the origins of his Nazi tattoo; cheated on his wife by sexting as many as a dozen women; allegedly abused and acted violently toward former girlfriends; among other scandals.

"I think when you look at politics in general, there are no saints in the United States Senate," US Senator Bernie Sanders, a progressive, told CBS News Monday. "People can argue about this aspect of Graham or another, but to my mind right now, we need allies in the United States Senate who have the guts to take on the big money that is dominating this country."

In other words, he may be a dirtbag, but he's not a fascist.

So it's OK to elect a dirtbag.

But it's not OK and we all know it.

That's why some progressive Democrats are spinning Platner's story so he doesn't look like a dirtbag but a man of integrity who struggled to overcome his past and redeem himself. California Congressman Ro Khanna appeared at a campaign rally in Maine the day after the Times reported on Platner’s toxic behavior toward numerous former girlfriends. One of them alleged that "this person does not respect women" while another alleged that he physically assaulted her and that he knew his tattoo was a Totenkopf, because he told her what it was.¹

"Khanna’s appearance [during last week's Platner rally] was an exercise in tightrope walking," according to Politico this morning, "simultaneously condemning Platner’s behavior while espousing faith in the former Marine’s redemption from troubled times in his past."

Khanna told the same redemption story on "Face the Nation": "His actions were misogynist. They were shameful. They were wrong," he said, "but ... he took accountability. He himself has said it was shameful and he had redemption. And now he’s running on a platform of national health insurance, while Susan Collins is voting to cut it. He’s talking about taxing billionaires. Susan Collins is for tax breaks to billionaires. And he’s opposed to this foreign war where Susan Collins supported the war in Iran. That’s why I’m still supporting him."

Khanna's redemption story sounds convincing, but it runs into the fact that Platner cheated on his wife throughout 2024, years after his "dark period" in the aftermath of the Iraq War. PTSD might have explained, for instance, Reddit posts blaming victims of rape for the crimes against them, but what explains his bad judgment and untrustworthy behavior now?

The redemption story also runs into the fact that Platner never accepted full responsibility for his Nazi tattoo. He claims he did not know what it was, only that it was a skull and crossbones. But even if he didn't know at the time he got it, in 2007, he knew by 2009. That year he tried to return to active duty service. The Marine Corps' anti-hate symbol policy would have meant that an enlistment officer explained what it was and why it prevented him from returning. (Importantly, he could have, at that point, chosen to cover it up, but did not.)

The Washington press corps often compares Graham Platner to the president. Platner won yesterday's Democratic Senate primary in Maine despite his baggage, much as Trump won the White House twice despite his. But the men are not comparable. Trump is a sadist who wants to hurt people whom he believes are weaker than him, as do allies like Ken Paxton in Texas. Their vision for themselves is an America that's structured from the top down, with rich white Christian men dominating everyone under them. They will use force if they get the chance. They don't wear Totenkopfs on their skin, but they are fascists to the bone.

There seems to be a broad disinclination to admit openly that "a dirtbag is better than a fascist," even though that's a pretty good argument in favor of voting for Platner.

Platner isn't of that ilk. He's a talker, a bull------- a man who failed at adulthood but found compensation in the pleasures of saying shocking things. (A former girlfriend told the Times that he once said "if anybody ever broke in here, I would rape them.” She recalled him adding "not in a gay way.” “He was like, I would rape them to show them that I’m dominant,” she said.)

I agree with this characterization from a Bluesky account I follow: "I don't think Graham Platner is a Nazi. I think he's a dumbass edgelord who fetishizes violence and 'dominance,' and on account of being a dumbass edgelord, [he] is critically vulnerable to slopulism and Hitler particles." I also agree with Public Notice's David Lurie, who said: "He is no Nazi ... He is, however, a dirtbag, and was proud of it until opportunity knocked. Then he became mendacious about it." He is, as the Times' Jamelle Bouie put it, more on "the John Fetterman continuum than he is on the Trump continuum, which is just, eh, kind of dirtbaggy."

It's worth asking why such candor is missing in progressive discourse about Platner. There seems to be a broad disinclination to admit openly that "a dirtbag is better than a fascist," even though that's a pretty good argument in favor of voting for Platner. (Susan Collins may not be a fascist, but she supports pogroms.) Instead, there are endless attempts to overlook the obvious in the hopes that he will bring change to the Democratic Party, therefore change to America. “His wife stands by him, and I don’t think we have any option but to trust that at this point,” one Democratic voter told NOTUS. "The tattoo, the sexting — which I thought was ridiculous as far as an issue — and a couple other things, they don’t look good, but he’s a realized man,” another said. "In a way it’s, ‘Do you believe in redemption?’” said another.

Of all people, Bernie Sanders comes off as the most sincere of Platner's progressive supporters. Instead of phony redemption stories, he suggested that the United States Senate is full of dirtbags and asked: Who cares about them when America needs the courage "to take on the big money that is dominating this country"? The problem, of course, is one of faith. If Mainers send Platner to the Senate, can they trust their dirtbag to fight the other dirtbags?

Platner's progressive supporters are right to chafe at comparisons between Platner and Trump, as they are morally distinct, but their man still benefits from the comparison, as it provides cover for questions of character and integrity that would otherwise dog him, and the questions of judgment and trustworthiness that are a consequence of that. Instead, they can shout "vote blue no matter who" without taking full responsibility for their goals. It's better to tell tall tales about redemption while blaming Trump for the overall degradation of politics. Fact is, however, character still counts, for a lot, but in pretending that it doesn't, Platner's progressives end up playing by the rules of fascism even as they claim to fight it.

You have probably heard the news about journalist Scott Pelley. This week, CBS News, under the leadership of Bari Weiss, fired the longtime anchor and 60 Minutes correspondent. What you may not know about is his parting shot. Here's the section that stood out to me.

New management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism ... have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.

From a man of Pelley's standing, this is pretty much like a summary execution. In another time and place, it would be the end of Weiss's career, as her reputation would be irreparable. (Ditto for Nick Bilton, whom she hired to run 60 Minutes.) Forget about politics. Their team can't get the details right. Pelley is calling out a mortal sin with the authority of the pope.

And then, as if to confirm the allegations against him, Nick Bilton actually wrote to Pelley explaining his reasons for firing him. Of course, they are not good reasons, as you can see.

You hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt. I welcome a diversity of viewpoints and respectful debate among the team, but this was nothing of the sort. Yesterday's performative display of hostility enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation demonstrated that you have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress. I am here to deliver first-in-class news programming, not to make headlines about newsroom drama. I am eager to work alongside those who share this goal. Despite yesterday's misconduct, I had hoped that in sitting down with you today we could find a path forward together. You made clear that you are not interested ...

You can read about the details of that meeting in the Times – Scott Pelley accused the "new management" of "murdering" 60 Minutes – and judge for yourself. From where I'm standing, however, Nick Bilton got mad that Pelley made him look like a putz, because, well, the truth is often painful. Nick Bilton is a p---. According to the Post, the newsroom literally laughed at Bilton and applauded after he left. There isn't enough room at CBS News for him and an award-winning journalist who commands the respect of millions. P--- stays. Pelley goes.

Bilton's letter to Scott Pelley got its own Times page yesterday (meaning, there's nothing on the page but a copy of the letter with a hed.) From that kind of exposure perhaps there will be broader public recognition that merit no longer matters in elite news media in the era of Donald Trump. Weiss isn't a hard news reporter, nor is Bilton. Neither has experience managing newsrooms of any size, much less those as big and consequential as CBS's. They went to the right schools. They schmoozed the right people. Those are their qualifications. Scott Pelley is their antipode. He is a model of high standards of excellence and professionalism. Naturally, he had to be eliminated. His mere presence was humiliating.

You might think this whole thing is so embarrassing that Weiss and Bilton can't recover. I regret to inform you they will be fine. Everyone working in elite news media knows the score: connections trump integrity. They know this, because they are, like Weiss and Bilton, products of elite schools where everyone is taught to think of themselves as members of a ruling class. There is a fast-track from Yale to the Times, for instance. You don't have to work your way up the ladder. There is no ladder. Weiss may be driving CBS News into the ground, but she is still touched by the hand of Larry Ellison. She may be a failure, but she's still a "winner." Elite journalists will still answer her calls. That Scott Pelley said she instructed him to "inject falsehoods and bias" into his reporting will make no difference at the White House Correspondents Dinner. The moral? Hard work and playing by the rules are a sucker's game.

The consequence of all this corruption is a softness of character that gets little attention. Elite newspeople cannot be challenged without falling to pieces. (The Post said Scott Pelley was fired because he "interrogated" his unqualified boss and "questioned his credentials and demanded answers about fired colleagues." In response, Nick Bilton said Pelley "hijacked my first meeting" with "a performative display of hostility.") And if they are, they get vindictive quick. (Bari Weiss leaked to the Post a recording of a newsroom meeting in which she accused Pelley of breaking the bonds of "trust and mutual respect," bonds that she herself undermined by leaking the recording to the Post.) Meanwhile, the truth is plain to see: they are soft because they did not earn their place, and they are vindictive because they are soft.

Merit doesn't matter, so neither does character. I think that explains the decrepit state of our media better than any other theory. When the Times' David Sanger asked a challenging question about the Iran war, Donald Trump accused him of treason. "You're a fake guy," the president said. "We had a total military victory. I actually think it's sort of treasonous what you write. You should be ashamed of yourself. I actually think it's treason." When CNN's Kaitlan Collins asked a hard question, Trump said: "Be quiet. You should be ashamed of yourself. You used to be conservative from Alabama. CNN does such false reporting, but now they have new ownership, so maybe it'll straighten it out. It’s hard to straighten garbage out."

Did Sanger stand up for himself? Did Collins? No. To be sure, they responded, but feebly, as if they had a snowball's chance of correcting Trump's assertions of fact. But that's not the same thing as standing up for oneself, is it? That would require a strength of character acted on in spite of the consequences, like what Scott Pelley did when he told off his nepo-baby boss. Sorry, but a man like the Times' Sanger, who doesn't respond to being called a traitor, is a coward who deserves what he gets, whether that's more insults from Trump or greater loss of credibility with the news-consuming public. I mean, forget about politics. (Liberals focus on that too much.) Why would anyone trust a weakling who refuses to defend himself?

As long as elite journalists stick together, however, they will never face the consequences of being soft. They can pretend collectively to be speaking truth to power when the actual truth is obvious and sad. And they will stick together, because merit doesn't matter. (David Sanger went from Harvard straight to the Times. Kaitlan Collins went from the University of Alabama to CNN after a brief stint at The Daily Caller.) Everyone knows connections trump integrity. With Scott Pelley gone to pasture, everyone also knows integrity has no future.

Either the nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump believes a cognitive test is an intelligence test or he's lying about his mental health. I don't think there's a gray zone here. If it's the first, he's demented. If it's the second, he's hiding something (probably dementia). Either way, it's bad.

It happens too frequently to ignore. The president brags about passing a cognitive test to the point where he seems to believe it's a measure of his IQ. In public remarks, he often puts special emphasis on the word "cognitive" as if to stress that it demonstrates his intelligence. Here's what he told the New York Post after a third trip in a year to Walter Reed. "I do physicals because I think I have an obligation to do it. I took a cognitive test and I got 100 percent on it. The doctors told me very, very few people can ace it. It's actually a tough test."

That's only the latest iteration. I went to the Bluesky feed of Aaron Rupar, founder of Public Notice. Aaron watches most of Trump's public appearances. I searched for "cognitive."

On May 22, during a rally, Trump said:

I said, how many presidents have taken [a cognitive test]? "None." I said, well, is it tough? "It’s a tough test. It starts off easy, then it gets very, very tough." I said well, you know what? I’m gonna take that test. ... This was in my first term. I took it and I aced it. ... So the first question was, you have a bear, a snake, an elephant and a horse. "Name the horse." That’s the horse. ... The New York Times story ... only use[s] the first question that you go into. The other questions they didn’t go into. ... It had a question like "pick a number, sir, any number." Okay, 203. "Multiple by 9. Divide by 2. Add on 1,324. Subtract 1,292. Sir, multiply it out one more time by 19. What is the answer, sir?" I got it right. And the one doctor said, "I've been doing this test for 20 years. I've never seen anybody ace it."

On May 4, during a presser, Trump said:

In my opinion, anybody running for president or vice president should take a cognitive test. No president has ever taken one, except me. I’ve taken three and I’ve aced each one. One in the first administration, two over here. And whenever they get a little sassy like, "Does he still have what it takes?" I say, all right I’ll take another one. They are hard. There are many people in this room I know that are smart. They’re not gonna ace them. The first question is very easy. You have a lion, a bear and alligator and a squirrel. "Which is the squirrel?" ... The first four or five questions, they get a little more difficult. By the time you get to the end, I don’t wanna be insulting, I’m not gonna do what Gavin Newsom [did] ...

On May 1, during a speech, Trump said:

I took three of them. Aced all of them. ... I’m the only president to take a cognitive test. I don’t think Obama could pass it. ... Well, Biden – give me a break. The first question is very easy. It’s a lion, a giraffe, a bear and a shark. Which one is the bear? It's a very standard test, but very tough around those 10 questions. ... I’m in a room of brilliant people, but a lot of you wouldn’t have been able to answer. When I got the score of the test, the doctor said "wow." ... I’ve had different phases. They’ve said "he’s a mad genius" and I didn't mind that too much. They said "he’s a horrible human being" and I didn't like that much. Then they said "he’s really not a smart person at all." I really hated that, so I took a cognitive test. ... Dr. Ronny ... had a whole team of doctors at Walter Reed. I said, should I do it? He said, "well, it’s a tough exam, actually. Those last 20 questions they get tough. A lot of people can’t do them." ... I said, I do well on things, so let’s do it. I got every one right.

On March 26, during a Cabinet meeting, Trump said:

I’m the only president that ever took a cognitive test. I took it three times. It’s actually a very hard test. It wasn’t hard for me, but it’s a cognitive test. It starts off with an easy question and by the time you get to the end ... very few people can answer those questions. They get very tough, mathematical equations and things. I took it three times. I aced it all three times. ... Doc Ronny told me ... "if you take it, it’s Walter Reed ... and if you do badly, it’s probably gonna get out." But I aced it. I got them all right. One doctor said "I’ve never seen anybody get them all right. I’ve been doing the test for 20 years." ... I would love to see anybody that’s a president or a vice president ... take a cognitive test.

On December 2, 2025, during a Cabinet meeting, Trump said:

They said, "would you like to take a cognitive test?" I said, is it hard? They said, "yes." ... I said, who is the last president to take one? "No president has ever agreed to take one." When you get into the mid questions, meaning, question No. 10, 11, 12, 28, 30, they get harder and harder. ... They said, "sir, the problem is this is Walter Reed Hospital, and that's a military hospital and that means that things are sort of open. You could do poorly." I said, I won't do poorly. I’m a smart person. I'm not stupid person. As the doctor will tell you, I aced it. I got every question right. These are questions that I would say 99 percent of the people that I’m talking to, meaning the people from the fake news, would not do well in this exams. But I’m the only one that took it. I got every single question right.

On October 9, 2025, a day before going to Walter Reed, Trump said:

I also did a cognitive exam, which is always very risky, because if I didn’t do well, you’d be the first to be blaring it. I had a perfect score and one of the doctors said he’s almost never seen a perfect score. ... When they asked, would I like to do one, I asked, did Obama do it "No." Did Bush do it? "No." Did Biden do it? Biden would’ve gotten the first three questions. ... I’m actually a person that believes that if you're president, you should do a cognitive exam, but last time I took a cognitive exam, and it was a perfect score. ... The first few questions are pretty easy. Once you get into the middle, it gets a little tricky. And there aren’t a lot of people in this room that we get every single question right.

On April 14, 2025, in the Oval Office, Trump said:

I took my cognitive exam and I got the highest mark. One of the doctors said "sir, I’ve never seen anybody get that kind of ... mark." I hope you’re happy with that, although they haven’t been bugging me too much to take a cognitive, but I did do my physical and it was released. I hope you’re all happy with it. But the cognitive. They said to me, "sir, would you like to take a cognitive test?" I said did Biden take one. "No." ... What about Obama? Let me be the only one to take one. I've actually taken them three times already."

There are only a few examples drawn from Aaron Rupar's vast archive, and I hasten to add here that I'm sorry for making you read the same story over and over. However, that's the point I'm trying to make. The sheer mass of repetition is itself a sign of age-related cognitive deterioration – or, to use a catch-all term, dementia. The president can't remember the last time he told the story and doesn't care, because the purpose of telling it is there's nothing wrong with him. Indeed, the purpose is more than that. It's proving his genetic superiority.

A cognitive test is not a test of intelligence and any man of modest intelligence would understand that from having taken a cognitive test. Trump, however, is not that man. He is famed for being stupid, a fact that he's exquisitely sensitive to. I suspect it literally causes him pain when his narcissism collides with the reality of other people's opinion of him. He believes he is superior by dint of his genes and if you disagree, you must be crushed. As his mind slips away, however, the gap widens between his view of himself and everyone else's. And the wider the gap gets, the more he must attempt to reassert dominance. As he said: "they said 'he’s really not a smart person at all.' I really hated that, so I took a cognitive test."

Think of it this way. By passing "the cognitive," Trump believes that:

1. nothing is wrong with him;
2. indeed, something is very right with him;
3. it's better than all other presidents combined;
4. his enemies are intellectually inferior and;
5. it's evidence beyond a shadow of doubt of his genetic superiority over lesser mortals, who in turn have no right to challenge him. Donald Trump is a Very Special Boy. He aced it three times! The doctors were wowed! Science proved it! Enemies can now shut up.

That's not just narcissism. That's dementia, too. They can't be separated. Indeed, as he grows more demented, he will grow more narcissistic (as hard as that it to believe). That he appears to have given up on being president illustrates the point. While the war against Iran burns up the American economy, Trump talks about reflecting pools being taller than the Empire State Building. He posts deranged images of enemies on social media. He falls asleep on live television. None of that matters. "The cognitive" affirms his right to rule unchallenged.

I didn't want to talk about this today. I had planned on writing a very clever and highly nuanced commentary on American patriarchy. But the man who runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the Affordable Care Act, forced my hand.

Mehmet Oz is a moron or a liar. It's unclear which. In any case, he's wrong. You cannot – literally cannot – commit Obamacare fraud. Anyone saying otherwise is scamming you.

Tuesday, Oz said:

We believe that 35 percent, roughly, of the people that are using the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, exchanges, because they’ve never used the program once, they never filed a claim, may not be legit. And that actual number may translate to benefit of 5, 6 million people, we could be paying premiums for, because they don’t have to contribute anything, so they don’t even know they’re getting it. These are people who are on Medicaid, and someone, often a broker, dishonestly enrolling them in the Affordable Care Act. They're in two states at once getting full insurance, paid for by us, in multiple states at once. So we have evaluated these numbers. They are extremely concerning. ... If you care about the ACA, then you want us to take the fraud out.

Virtually everything here is fiction, but I'll start with this. People who earn so little that "they don’t have to contribute anything" are on Medicaid, not Obamacare. They cannot be on both. If they are bumped down to Medicaid but still get Obamacare subsidies, they must pay them back. They cannot "not know they’re getting it," because the IRS won't let them not know.

Meanwhile, people on Obamacare contribute. Indeed, paying is the point. Otherwise we would be on Medicaid. During open enrollment, we estimate how much we are going to earn over the year. The subsidies are based on that estimate. If we earn less, we might get a refund at tax time. If we earn more, we might owe. We pay up front with monthly premiums. We pay on the back end if our estimates are off. Either way, we pay. Enrollees cannot "not be legit."

Moreover, the IRS gets its due. Rightwingers leave law enforcement out of their dystopian portrayals of Obamacare. They want you to believe that enrollees are getting government handouts while taxpayers are getting fleeced. They don't mention the fact that the IRS will come a-calling if your numbers are off. I know this personally. One year, I earned much more than expected, but failed to adjust my "premium tax credits." Trust me, the IRS got its due.

As for "they never filed a claim," I hesitate to explain for fear of insulting your intelligence, but here goes: If there are no claims, it's because your doctor didn't file one. If your doctor didn't file one, it's because you were healthy enough to skip seeing your doctor. Moreover, as a (former) Obamacare enrollee, I have never filed a claim, because I am not a doctor. That Oz cites this as evidence of fraud is so stupid that you have to wonder what's really going on.

What's really going on is the president and his party need plausible cover for what they want to do – what they are in fact doing – which is deliberately making the people of this country sicker, poorer and meaner, which in turn makes all of us, including healthy Americans, much easier to control. Of course, they can't just come out and say that softening resistance to social domination is their goal, so they say things like "the ACA’s dwindling enrollment is the result of necessary initiatives to cut waste and fraud after Democrats focused on growing the program but did too little to scrutinize who was signing up," according to the Post.

Last year, Trump and the Republicans chose to allow subsidies to expire. The immediate result was monthly premiums doubling, tripling and even quadrupling. Since then, millions have dropped out, not because they didn't belong, but because they couldn't afford it.

The president and his party want you to think the fraud is getting something for nothing. But in their minds, the fraud is something much more threatening to their goal of social domination: a government that honors and advances individual liberty. That sounds terrible to decent law-abiding people, especially with their own – red states use Obamacare more than blue states – so they claim that their treachery is actually a noble thing worth sacrificing for. As Oz said, "if you care about the ACA, then you want us to take the fraud out."

It's not noble. It's sadistic. They take pleasure in inflicting pain, an aspect of American politics that does not get the attention it deserves. The destruction of Obamacare is part of a larger project by which the elites of this country (the Epstein class, if you wish) have exacted their revenge on meritocracy. The democratic process, equal treatment under law, economic policies expanding the middle class – these and more conspired to not only elect the first Black president but empower generations of women to believe they control their fates. To the GOP's reactionary mind, such a consequence is a perversion of "the natural order." Sacrificing their own people – deep-red Kentucky is seeing the fastest rate of Obamacare dropouts – in the restoration of America as a white man's country is a small price to pay.

I am no longer on Obamacare and I can't decide which is worse: getting priced out of my health insurance or being lied to about why. Perhaps even more galling is the fact that few reporters seem to understand what's really going on, as if they are so immune to rightwing sadism that it doesn't occur to them whether to ask Mehmet Oz if he's a moron or a liar.

I have a pitcher full of ice water and I'm ready to use it on liberals and Democrats who are prematurely celebrating the Senate primary victory of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Yes, he's deeply immoral and corrupt. Yes, he's a cheat and a liar. (Liberal Currents' Alan Elrod said he's "a paragon of the Trumpian politician – a man whose fascism flows as much from his prejudices as his own adolescent, libidinal self-indulgence.") But Texas is still gonna Texas, and like Democrat Graham Platner's supporters in Maine, who are willing to overlook his Nazi tattoo in order to oust Republican Susan Collins, Paxton's supporters are willing to overlook a multitude of sins to stop Democrat James Talarico from going to the US Senate.

Within hours of Paxton's defeat of incumbent Senator John Cornyn, the right began attacking Talarico – and making it very personal. "Tala-freako is a creep and he thinks he’s a vegan," RNC chairman Joe Gruters said. "He thinks God is nonbinary. He wants to mutilate children. He wants to put boys in girls locker rooms. ... All those things and the fact that they are openly supporting communists and socialists." A GOP strategist called Talarico an "emasculated vegan dweeb." Stephen Miller said he was "first transgender Senate candidate."

The ad hominem attacks were so immediate, so intense and so insane that some observers took it as a sign of Talarico's advantage over Paxton. "Interesting, if not surprising, that rightwingers have collectively agreed that their line of attack against Talarico is that he's supposedly feminine," James Surowiecki wrote on Twitter. "Not a trace of substance, just culture war bull----. Because how, on substance, do you defend voting for Ken Paxton?"

In speculating about the reasons Talarico is suddenly and "directly confronting attacks on his masculinity," according to NOTUS, I think liberals and Democrats still give rightwingers too much credit. They are not smearing him because of his strengths (which are many) or Paxton's liabilities (also many). They are smearing him because that's what they do.

As was the case during Donald Trump's three campaigns, what matters to many voters isn't leadership or policy or character. What matters is the collective desire to punch down on people whom the mob believes are deserving of it. (In this case, Talarico is associated with LGBTQ folks.) GOP campaigns are now like Vegas: what's done there stays there. They are vacations from morality, excuses to indulge in deviance and depravity. That Texans would suffer by electing Paxton doesn't change the fact that slandering "Soy Boy" is going to be fun.

Sadism is the point. We should draw attention to that moral failing by defending Talarico, not only on ethical grounds but on unambiguously religious grounds. This is not an easy thing to ask of some of my liberal brethren, as religion to them is frequently the problem in American politics, not a solution. But if nothing else, let this convince you: the most extreme smears against Talarico are not explicitly gendered. They are explicitly religious. He represents more than a viable Senate candidate who might – might! – turn Texas purple. Talarico embodies a viable path toward breaking the right's monopoly on faith, especially the Christian faith.

On Wednesday, this is what US Senator Mike Lee posted on Twitter, quote-tweeting a post by the DNC that said: "Texas: James Talarico is the only candidate who will put you first."

To the most conservative Christian sects in the United States (Mike Lee is a Mormon), Moloch is probably second only to Satan (or maybe the Antichrist) among figures of evil in the Bible. Secular liberals see this comparison and shrug. (It's just more of the same kookiness.) Religious liberals, however, see it as bad faith designed to prevent Talarico from attacking his political opponents where it hurts most. If Talarico is allowed to explain himself and his theological views, free of the slander against him, the most conservative religious voter might come to the conclusion that despite being a Democrat, he's still a good Christian.

Hold that in your mind as I remind you of the time, three months ago, when the Trump administration threatened to punish late-night comedian Stephen Colbert for airing an interview with Talarico. (This threat came after CBS had caved to Trump's bullying and cancelled his show.) In effect, the government banned Talarico. (The interview was posted online.) But what did it ban? Two decent men discussing the corruption of faith by politics.

"For 50 years," Talarico said:

the religious right ... convinced a lot of our fellow Christians that the most important issues were abortion and gay marriage, two issues that aren’t mentioned in the Bible. Two issues that Jesus never talked about. Jesus in Matthew 25 tells us exactly how you and I and ... our fellow believers [are] going to be judged and how we’re going to be saved: by feeding the hungry, by healing the sick, by welcoming the stranger. Nothing about going to church. Nothing about voting Republican. It was all about how you treat other people.

He continued:

Don't tell me what you believe. Show me how you treat other people and I’ll tell you what you believe. And I think in our faith we’ve got to get back to those fundamentals. My granddad was a Baptist preacher in South Texas, and when I was little, he told me that Christianity is a simple religion, not an easy religion, he would always clarify, but a simple religion, because Jesus gave us two commandments: love God and love neighbor. And there was no exception of that second commandment. Love thy neighbor, regardless of race or gender or sexual orientation or immigration status or religious affiliation.

I suspect Mike Lee was reacting to Talarico's biblical defense of abortion. He said God asked Mary for consent before impregnating her. Therefore, Talarico reasoned, a mother's life has privilege over that of an unborn child. While there is indeed a history of Protestants (though not Catholics) taking that view for granted, it's beside the point, as Talarico makes plain. Abortion is a modern concern, not a fundamental one. He pushes it out of the realm of religion and into the realm of politics. That, for the religious right, is deeply threatening.

Rightwingers want the public to believe that being a liberal and being a Christian are incompatible. Yet here's a man from inside the church (Talarico is a Presbyterian) speaking for a legitimate, though often ignored, theological tradition. Not only does that frustrate efforts to maintain the view that being a good Christian requires opposition to the variations of "race or gender or sexual orientation or immigration status or religious affiliation." It suggests that the Messiah himself might have been liberal. (He was, relatively speaking.)

No wonder Lee calls him Moloch.

This is why sadism is the end, not the means. Rightwingers must smear Talarico. They must make him seem like a perversion of Christian virtues, not an evangelist for them. He must not be allowed to speak for himself, only to react to the allegations against him. And that's why liberals – even secular godless liberals – should defend him, not only on ethical grounds but on unambiguously religious grounds. You don't have to care that a mob slandered Christ, too.

But Christians should.

Yesterday, the White House went to its favorite gullible reporter to once again create the false impression that the president's war of choice against Iran is going to end any minute now. "Negotiators have reached an agreement on a 60-day memorandum of understanding to extend the ceasefire and launch negotiations on Iran's nuclear program," Barak Ravid said.

Sounds fabulous, except for two premise-cancelling details: "President Trump has yet to give his final approval" and – oh, by the way – "Iran has also not confirmed its acceptance."

For those keeping track at home, this is pretty much the same story that Axios published three weeks ago, on May 6, when Ravid said "the White House believes it's getting close to an agreement with Iran on a one-page memorandum of understanding to end the war."

That story also sounded fabulous, except that Marco Rubio didn't believe the agreement was going to happen. After all, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were negotiating, not him. The details are a bit different, but the goal of each report is pretty much the same: to kick the can down the road and encourage everyone to believe everything's going back to normal soon.

There is no going back to normal. Iran has gained too much from Trump's folly. Forget nukes, the real prize is control of the Strait of Hormuz. Is Iran likely to give that up in peace talks? Never, a career intelligence analyst told me, who goes by the Bluesky handle Shipwreck. "This is the new norm. [Control of the strait is] almost a replacement for their nuclear deterrent."

This is Trump's Catch-22. He can't keep the war going. Iran is burning up the American economy, thus burning up his party's prospects in the coming congressional elections. But he can't stop either. He's deathly afraid of the humiliation of losing a war he started. He keeps chasing after Iran's nuclear program, as if it symbolized victory, but he's too vain to admit he's already given Iran something far more valuable. It now has such a good thing going that other countries want a piece of the action. Oman has said it wants to charge tolls, too.

Whatever our feckless president does, the consequences of his choices will land on us. If Iran throttles the strait, we will pay. If it charges tolls, we will pay. (The cost of paying tribute to Iran, as much as $2 million for each tanker, will be passed on to consumers.) It's so bad investors believe gas prices won't fall to their prewar levels until 2032. That is not a typo.

Trump has lost. He just won't admit it. He will not take his fingers out of his hoary ears long enough to hear anyone say otherwise. His people keep going to reporters like Barak Ravid to maintain the illusion of negotiations proceeding apace. Meanwhile, Iran is said to be able to outlast the US naval blockade for months. If it can hold out until August, a "looming summer oil shock" could threaten "a 2008-style recession," according to the Times of London.

In the end, what has been accomplished? Not much, according to Shipwreck.

The president will try to claim victory, but the real consequences of this war will be "a future in which Iran preserves the ability to build a bomb, its proxies continue harassing Israel, the United States and Gulf neighbors, and another round of fighting becomes inevitable."

"This is the scenario where we see repeated cycles of conflict until the current regime is gone. The problem is that the US has no interest in removing them, so the cycle continues."

What has America gained? Nothing but higher prices on everything.

Here's my interview with Shipwreck.

Is the president believable? Is this war ending?

No, he’s certainly not believable, and the war is not ending. I’d say we’re in a tactical pause, a lull that’s likely to stretch well into the summer and possibly into the fall, marked by short bursts of kinetic action followed by brief negotiation windows.

The Iranians are well‑known for dragging out talks; the [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, aka Iran nuclear deal] negotiations alone took nearly nine months before they were finalized. I expect them to continue stretching this process for as long as possible, aiming to weaken US resolve and extract concessions along the way.

The Iranians are masters of this approach. They know how to play the long game, and they will keep at it as long as it serves their strategic interests.

Why do markets keep accepting his lies?

The markets are way too reactive and don’t spend the time to look beyond the immediate future. This is going to drag out. I also think the markets may know this and play the fluctuations to make money. All part of the game.

Will Iran give up control of the strait? It seems too valuable to give up now. What would they ask for in return for "reopening" it?

Never will. This is the new norm. It’s almost a replacement for their nuclear deterrent. The only way they give it up is if we take it by force and we clearly have no appetite for that.

If Iran won't give up its nuke program and won't give up control of the strait, what can be done? Is the naval blockade enough to force Iran to accept a deal? And what would that deal look like?

The naval blockade is impacting them. The longer it goes, the more damage will be done. They are not completely blockaded. Some stuff travels over land and through Caspian Sea, but it has limited their revenue.

Honestly, that’s the million-dollar question and explains the current stalemate. They won’t budge. Their plan is to hope the longterm economic pain softens the US and Trump bails with a bad deal. They are banking on US gas prices going up in the summer and upcoming midterms.

The deal will likely be bad. Trump wants out and will find a way to shape the deal to his constituents. We still may see another round of fighting, but the Iranians are dug in and prepared for that. This will likely drag out until one side blinks. Who that is remains to be seen.

What would the outcome of a bad deal be? Seems to me that Iran would want the price of oil to remain elevated. They would do that by squeezing the straits, charging higher tolls etc.

Likely outcome: some form of Iranian control or influence over the Strait of Hormuz, a nuclear program kept in a diluted or semi‑paused state, and no meaningful limits on proxies or missile forces.

The result is a future in which Iran preserves the ability to build a bomb, its proxies continue harassing Israel, the United States and Gulf neighbors, and another round of fighting becomes inevitable because Israel will not allow Iran to reach a nuclear weapon.

In effect, this is the scenario where we see repeated cycles of conflict until the current regime is gone. The problem is that the US has no interest in removing them, so the cycle continues. Think Gaza and Israel, but on a larger, regional scale going forward.

From the point of view of normal people the world over who are paying for gas, who are paying for things related to gas, this sounds like a future that's not sustainable, all things being equal.

Unfortunately, I think that the prices have been so high for a period of time that the average American has accepted the new norm.

The price is elevated but somewhat stable at its current level, if it goes up dramatically more then I agree, the anger will spill over, likely into the midterms.

On a personal note, this is why I have driven an EV since 2021. The Middle East is too unstable for my liking.

On Monday, I went to the Stop & Shop and had that old familiar feeling. I spent over $80 on a bag of groceries. Nothing fancy, just regular groceries, not even everything I need for the week. One bag. Eighty United States dollars. Something's gotta give. Maybe it already has.

The Times said last week that 61 percent of Americans are cutting back on food. Another 59 percent are cutting back on extra spending. Three-fourths have forgotten about Joe Biden and blame the current president for the disaster. Economic confidence hasn't been this low since 2022. A stunning 80 percent blame him for gas price spikes, according to a Fox poll.

Donald Trump was already burning us up with tariffs, but the burn rate has accelerated dramatically since the start of the war. He won't end it, because he can't. He's a terrible war president. His idea of a deal is "I get everything; you get nothing." Iran knows this about his nature, exploits it, and here we are: in war that could stretch into the summer and fall.

Yet Trump is not acting like he's in trouble. He yak-yak-yaks about ballrooms, about gas prices being "peanuts," about how the Democrats made up the word "affordability" to make him look bad. (He is hosting an ultimate fighting circus at the White House, for God's sake.) He created a nearly $1.8 billion slush fund to pay J6 insurrectionists for their service to him. His party is practically begging him to take the midterms seriously. "We need Republicans to do well in November," Thom Tillis told the Times, “but the stupid stuff is killing our chances.

"Stupid stuff" might be too generous. Trump will not end his illegal war. He will not end his illegal tariffs. He will not pretend to care about the hardship Americans are experiencing as a consequence of both. (Nor does he not care about the optics of asking taxpayers to pay for a ballroom when they can't pay for food.) On top of that, he's endorsing primary challengers to incumbent Republicans who would otherwise coast to victory in the coming midterms.

Reporters say he's "tightening grip on the GOP."

But it looks more like he's sabotaging it.

After all this time, we still interpret the president through a partisan lens that attempts to explain his behavior. Everyone assumes he wants his party to keep the House, at the very least to avoid impeachment. It's because of this assumption that Republicans are growing frustrated. “The president was elected to juice the economy, to bring down inflation, to stop illegal immigration and to get away from woke culture,” a GOP pollster told the Times. “If his highest goal were to maintain control of Congress, he would not be doing what he is doing.”

We should consider the alternative: that control of Congress is not his highest goal.

Anthony Scarammuci suggested as much in an interview with Bloomberg. He was the White House communications director during Trump's first term whose tenure famously lasted 10 days. He told Mishal Husain that we're misreading the president. His personality is such that he doesn't want the GOP to succeed. Success would mean there's life after Donald Trump.

And, according to Donald Trump, that's impossible.

"His personality is 'you guys were nothing before I got on the stage and I’ve carried you for the last 12 years, and the 2020 election was rigged and everyone knows it, and I should’ve won that election, and I’ve returned to the presidency carrying all the Republicans on my back, and when I leave ... you’re going back to nothing' ... that’s Donald Trump's personality."

Scarammuci added that "we try to normalize him, sane-wash him, and put him into a bucket. 'Oh, he’s a Republican, he'll want a Republican to succeed him or he’ll want JD Vance or Marco Rubio.' He doesn’t want those guys to succeed him. Let's say he has a successful remaining two years of his presidency, which seems unlikely, but let's say he did. He wouldn’t want those guys taking any credit for anything that happened in the administration.

"It’s an administration of one person and there’s one spotlight on," he said.

We assume Trump wants to end the war, because we assume he wants the Republicans to win in November. But what if he doesn't care about ending it any more than he cares about his party? It might even be in his interest to prolong it, as it boils the GOP down to its pure maga essence, making it even more dependent on him. Indeed, victory would suggest his party doesn't need him anymore. And that, according to Donald Trump, is impossible.

During today's made-for-TV cabinet meeting, the president claimed that he had the advantage in negotiations with Iran. "They thought they were gonna outwait me. You know, ‘We’ll outwait him. He’s got the midterms,'" Trump said. "I don’t care about the midterms.”

We all assume he's lying. We had better hope he is. If Donald Trump really doesn't care about losing the congressional elections, the last remaining partisan constraints have fallen away.

The war could go on indefinitely.

An $80 bag of groceries could soon look cheap.

This week, the president has hit the floor in his support. A new Reuters poll found that Donald Trump's approval is 35 percent. A new Q poll found that it's 33 percent. Nate Silver said it's lower than Joe Biden's was after the Disaster Debate. While there's hope his numbers will keep falling, they probably won't. A third of America is descended from the original confederates. Trump is burning up their lives and fortunes, but they're stand by their man.

I could be wrong, but whether his numbers keep falling may be beside the point. The real question is whether Trump's supporters show up in defense of his administration in the coming congressional elections. Tuesday's primaries suggest an answer in the affirmative, as they knocked off Republicans Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

However, their defeats might say more about them than about Trump. Cassidy voted to removed him after the J6 insurrection. Massie has been a vocal Trump critic. Both men were marked by maga. Anyway, the point of the movement was to be anti-Republican. They show up to punish Trump's adversaries, not necessarily to support Republicans. Polls suggest that maganites are hardcore partisans, but what made maga a movement is that many are not.

Trump took supporters on a decade-long moral vacation. He freed them from the ordinary constraints of decency. He vowed to punish their "enemies," especially uppity women. And he promised they would all get rich. In turn, they believed Trump would spare them from the consequences of their own desires.¹ In the end, he didn't. Their cost of living is soaring higher. The pain of tariffs and war is increasingly intolerable. And now they feel betrayed.

Some of them even feel like Joe Biden was better. A recent poll found that six in 10 Americans think the economy was better under the former Democratic president. They are right.

That said, the likelihood of a Trump voter picking a Democrat in November is very low, but the likelihood is very high of Trump voters returning to their natural state as nonvoters. Trump didn't woo swing voters. He amassed winning coalitions by adding people who did not vote prior to his entry onto the political scene. What they desired was Trump and everything he represented to them. That desire has backfired and now they lost hope.

"They’re s------- themselves because nobody is going to vote," a Trump voter told NOTUS. "You will have your boomer Republicans who watch [Sean] Hannity and all that stuff go out and vote. But people like me, normal people, dealing with the cost of living, we’re not voting."

The demoralization that's pushing maga back into nonvoter-hood is compounded by Donald Trump's other big problem – the activation of Americans who might otherwise be oriented toward the Democratic Party but who stayed home during the last presidential election. The couch can no longer hold them down, as gas prices are surging, food costs are soaring and health insurance is impossible. The magnitude is such that Mike Duggan ended his bid as an independent candidate for Michigan governor, because "our internal polling showed the intense anger over gas prices and Iran was boosting Democrats in every office nationally."

Maga is demoralized. Democrat-leaning nonvoters are energized.

There's room for independent candidates.

I don't know if we can trust nonvoters who say they're going to vote. (CNN's Harry Enten said they are "p----- off" and "absolutely" will, while noting that only 48 percent of them said they were "almost certain to vote.") The fact remains, however, that anger is highly motivating. Beyond other considerations, anger has probably determined the outcomes of all but one presidential election since Barack Obama's victory. That year's panic brought a ton of nonvoters to his side. (A Democrat has not won Indiana since.) Moody's says odds of a recession are reaching 50 percent. It's only mid-May. Voters are mad. Nonvoters are madder.

The Democrats talk a lot about how to win over Trump voters, but not about how to harness the compounding rage of nonvoters, and then turn them into Democrats. The presumption seems to be that Trump voters will stick around, but hardcore partisans, who make up his floor of support, will never vote Democratic. Trump was the reason many maganites surfaced in the first place. He's the reason they will likely go back underground. That leaves some swing voters to fight over, which is fine, but there are 90 million people in this country who did not vote in the last election. A bunch of them now say they will vote this year.

The Democrats act like there's only so many voters to go around, so they have to be careful about the kind of message they send. It can't be too "anti-Trump," whatever that means, and it can't be too "progressive," whatever that means. Apparently, there has to be a sweet spot between pro-democracy and pro-"working class," which may be the lesson of 2024, but 2026 is made profoundly different by the fact that Trump is burning up the economy. Inflation is expected to reach 4 percent next month. Chris Murphy said the key to winning over Trump voters is to "unrig the economy and unrig the democracy," but forget about Trump voters. Say it to the millions of new voters who are about to demonstrate how p----- off they are.

Donald Trump has never described himself so perfectly. At 10:52 last night, he posted this on his social media site: "Colbert is finally finished at CBS. Amazing that he lasted so long! No talent, no ratings, no life. He was like a dead person. You could take any person off of the street and they would be better than this total jerk. Thank goodness he's finally gone!"

He was talking about Stephen Colbert, of course.

But allegations are confessions when they come out of Donald Trump's mouth.

The celebrated comedian shuttered his show Thursday, a year after Paramount surrendered to the president's bullying. Trump got what he wanted from his corporate toadies, but unsurprisingly, that wasn't enough. No words are too shameful, or as screenwriter David Simon put it: "The smallest, most soulless creature to ever be over-stuffed into a human form has thoughts about quality television. With a world and nation in disarray and requiring remedy, the president of the United States feels the need to opine on this passionately.

"Our republic is so debased."

"The 'Late Show' crew, [Colbert] said, always referred to the program as the 'joy machine,'" according to the Times' James Poniewozik. "The daily grind means the production has to be a kind of machine, he said, 'but if you choose to do it with joy, it doesn’t hurt as much when your fingers get caught in the gears.'" That way of thinking, Poniewozik said, gave "an energy to Colbert’s satire that I think of as 'hopeful despair.' ... When you suffer a loss, you pull yourself out of the rubble, you dust off your clown suit, and you put on a show."

In an exchange about faith and grief, Dua Lipa once asked him if religion and comedy ever come in conflict. "Does one of them ever win out?" Colbert answered by referring to Belfast, a movie he said evoked his Catholicism. "It's funny and it’s sad and it’s funny about being sad in the same way that sadness is like a little bit of an emotional death, but not a defeat if you can find a way to laugh about it, because that laughter keeps you from having fear of it, and fear is the thing that keeps you from turning to evil devices to save you from the sadness."

The comedian went on to quote Robert Hayden's famous poem:

“We must not be frightened nor cajoled
into accepting evil as deliverance from evil.
We must go on struggling to be human,
though monsters of abstraction
police and threaten us."

Colbert concluded by saying: "So if there’s some relationship between my faith and my comedy, it’s that no matter what happens you are never defeated. You must understand and see this in the light of eternity and find some way to love and laugh with each other."

Does that sound "like a dead person" to you?

Of course not. Donald Trump was talking about himself.

Given that Trump's poll numbers are sinking and that even some Republicans are standing up to him, there's lots of enthusiasm right now. Even so, I don't have much confidence in justice being served in the end. I fear the Democrats, once they reclaim power, which seems likely, will take a few steps toward accountability, then move on. I will gladly accept being proven wrong. However, all things considered, I don't think I am. Justice won't likely come.

That said, I take comfort in knowing one thing.

Donald Trump is dead inside.

More than that, I take comfort in knowing that he knows it, and that also he knows everyone, including his family, will celebrate the day of his demise. "Amazing that he lasted so long!" people everywhere will say. "No talent, no ratings, no life. He was like a dead person. You could take any person off of the street and they would be better than this total jerk.

"Thank goodness he's finally gone!"

Such is the fate of tyrants. To illustrate, I'm going to quote from Stephen Greenblatt's brilliant 2018 book about them. I'm going to put Donald Trump where Richard III's name is.

What excites [the tyrant] is the joy of domination. He is a bully. Easily enraged, he strikes out at anyone who stands in his way. He enjoys seeing others cringe, tremble, or wince with pain. He is gifted at detecting weakness and deft at mockery and insult. These skills attract followers who are drawn to the same cruel delight, even if they cannot have it to his unmatched degree. Though they know that he is dangerous, the followers help him advance to his goal, which is the possession of supreme power.

His possession of power includes the domination of women, but he despises them far more than desires them. Sexual conquest excites him, but only for the endlessly reiterated proof that he can have anything he likes. He knows that those he grabs hate him. For that matter, once he has succeeded in seizing the control that so attracts him, in politics as in sex, he knows that virtually everyone hates him. At first that knowledge energizes him, making him feverishly alert to rivals and conspiracies. But it soon begins to eat away at him and exhaust him.

Sooner or later, he is brought down. He dies unloved and un-lamented. He leaves behind only wreckage. It would have been better had Donald Trump never been born.

Our tyrant has caused irreparable harm. Beyond the death and war, beyond the crimes against humanity and the Constitution, beyond him literally making all of us poorer, sicker and meaner, there's this – the end of those decades between the conclusion of the Second World War and last month, when the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Acts, therefore bringing to a close the chapter in our history in which America failed multiracial democracy.

It isn't coming back in our lifetimes. Future elections alone can't revive it. But at least there's solace in knowing the man who destroyed multiracial democracy knows how much he's hated. In the end, he defeated himself. He's soulless. He's friendless. He's not even going to his own son's wedding. For all his power, he's the loneliest, most miserable man in America.

Some progressives believe "the people" don't know the truth. Since 2000, a Democratic president has handed off a pretty good or very good economy to a Republican, and that Republican has ruined it. It was a lie that Donald Trump was a successful businessman. It was a lie that tax cuts spur investment and growth. These progressives believe that once the lies are exposed, "the people" will reward the party that has a record of bringing prosperity to all.

It's a good story, but it says more about the (white) progressives telling it than anything else. They want it to be true that success and failure are understood in strictly economic terms. They want it to be true that "success" is rewarded, that "failure" is punished. They want it to be true that voters are a kind of "referee" who sits in judgment. The progressive story is deepened by the fact that Trump is polling badly. (Nate Silver said Monday that Trump's averages are worse than Joe Biden were after the debate.) The GOP seems headed for a wipeout. To some (white) progressives, that's proof that "the people" are seeing the truth.

The problem is the progressive story does not make room for an alternative possibility: that "the people" elect Republicans not in spite of the Democrat's success but because of it. In America, prosperity is inextricably linked to race. Policies that benefit the "undeserving," a label that always includes Black people, are always under threat. In time, a Republican is elected to restore "justice." The progressive story insists "the people" don't know, but truth is, they probably do, and they have acted on that knowledge three straight times since 2000.

This is not to say that Republican presidents are rewarded. Quite the opposite. The restoration of "the natural order" – in which the dominance of white people in America is preserved and protected – requires ruining the economy. That is what Donald Trump has done. A new Reuters poll shows a mere 35 percent approve of his job performance. He's burning up the country and Americans are rightly mad as hell. But the reaction is not rooted in economic policies per se. It's rooted in the complexities of whiteness. White majorities punish Democrats for helping everyone. Then they punish Republicans for hurting them.¹

You have probably heard of something political scientists call "thermostatic politics." It's the theory that policy and public opinion are at odds with each other. Parties can't go too far left or too far right without triggering a backlash. (When it's too hot, the public turns the thermostat down. When it's too cold, it turns it up.) "Thermostatic politics" explains why the president's party always loses the House in the first midterm after a presidential election.

But I think "thermostatic politics" as it's generally understood is missing the same thing the progressive story is missing: whiteness, especially its paradox. White majorities want the upsides, not the downsides. They want Republicans to make whiteness prosperous for them. They want Democrats to make whiteness stop backfiring on them. They want it both ways, though they have never had it both ways. Whiteness and prosperity are polar opposites.

To the extent that pendulum swings exist – when a majority gives one party control of the White House, then two years later gives the other party control of the House – I think it's because white majorities can't decide. They want Republican policies that hurt Black people but they also want Democratic policies to save them from the consequences of Republican policies that hurt Black people. We often talk about the electorate's tendency to resist extremes – not too far left or too far right – but it's not a kind of trans-partisan equilibrium. It's two sides of the same coin: desiring whiteness but hating the results of desiring it?

Some (white) progressives believe the way to break the cycle is by revealing the destructive nature of GOP economic policies. The economy falters, said Michael Tomasky, because "Republicans peddle an economic fairy tale. That cutting taxes increases revenue and spurs tremendous economic activity (sic). It’s a lie. A fantasy." The solution, Tomasky wrote, is a Democratic standard-bearer who will make the truth plain to "low-information swing voters."

But "low-information swing voters" don't mind destruction. That's what they have voted for since 2000.² That's what they got. What they minded was destruction reaching them. So the solution is not pounding "the truth" into the heads of low-information swing voters, as Tomasky said, because they already know. The more likely solution is breaking the consensus that permits them to believe they can have it both ways. That doesn't call for exposing the "fairy tale" of supply-side economics. It calls for exposing the "fairy tale" of whiteness.

Whiteness is the animating force that pushes the electorate back and forth, producing cycles of boom and bust that harm lives and decimate fortunes. There have been 11 recessions since 1945, all but one under GOP presidencies. Instead of facing the truth about "the people," however, some (white) progressives would rather hold onto the belief that voters are being lied to and that rational self-interest will kick in once the facts are convincingly laid bare. At that point, "the people" will reward the party that brings prosperity to all. Eleven recessions are not the exception. They are the rule. But you can't tell that to the willfully colorblind.

Whiteness always amounts to a pay cut. That should have been the conclusion from data released last week showing that inflation is so high that it wiped out wage gains over three years. A majority picked Donald Trump because he said implementing tariffs and deporting "illegals" would make whiteness great again. However, the result of those policies, in addition to his war against Iran, has been inflation climbing to nearly twice the target rate.

Some economists expect it to reach 4 percent next month and stay there for the rest of the year.

Again, the lesson should be clear: If you choose whiteness, you choose to cut your own pay (and the pay of everyone who did not choose whiteness). But that won't be the lesson most people draw, especially Democrats who are courting disillusioned Trump supporters. They won't believe whiteness backfired, because they believe that's not supposed to happen.

In America, whiteness (or proximity to whiteness) often yields real material results. Some deny that reality, but we all know it's true. Kamala Harris was right. Tariffs are taxes, deporting migrants is inflationary, and Trump was vulnerable to foreign entanglements. However, it didn't matter, and not only because it was a Black woman warning us. It didn't matter because the idea of whiteness as wealth is deeply ingrained in the American psyche.

Ironically, it's thanks in part to Joe Biden that the idea of making whiteness great again had mass appeal after 2020. The Democratic president and his party grew the economy from the bottom up and middle out. Wages rose. Unemployment fell. The policies of multiracial democracy put the government on the side of workers and consumers. That resulted in Black prosperity (as well as in prosperity for nonwhites generally) – and there's your problem.

If whiteness is wealth, Blackness is theft.

When some white people saw Black people doing well, they thought they were witnessing a crime. Trump's reelection restored "justice."

But now those same people are very, very confused. Instead of the restoration of glory, as advertised by the Trump campaign, gas prices are soaring, groceries are extortionate, health insurance is out of reach, and everyone is getting a pay cut, even as jobs are getting scarce. The president returned to their proper places the virtue of whiteness and the vice of Blackness, but it's not working!

Something is seriously wrong! Someone do something!

Whiteness has led the American economy to ruin every four to eight years for the last 50 years. If there's a Republican president, expect a crisis. Yet most political commentators won't put whiteness at the center of their thinking. It's as if doing so would violate a kind of unwritten agreement to believe collectively that everyone wants equality, no one has bad intentions, and anti-Black prejudice is a thing of the past. It's punditry that treats white people as if they were children who can't handle the truth about themselves or their country.

A minority of Democrats choose to play along with the myth of "the people" as pure and innocent. Playing along is less risky than taking the responsibility of slapping these voters into adulthood, for their own good. But the make-believe can run so thick that some Democrats make a serious mistake. They convince themselves that Trump supporters who are angry about whiteness backfiring on them are going to be open to Democrats. Fact is, they think Democrats stand for Blackness. These voters will most certainly stick to the devil they know. Their expressions of anger are not a sign of openness. It just means they're mad.

I may sound hopeless, but I'm not. Though their dream turned into a nightmare, they won't give up on it. However, they might stay home. Liberals and Democrats should spend less time asking themselves how to appeal to disillusioned Trump voters with this or that economic policy. They should spend more time asking themselves how to deepen the disillusionment. They are not going to trade whiteness for prosperity because, to them, whiteness is prosperity. That whiteness ruins prosperity does not change the fact that they want it both ways. They can't not want both, even though they have never had both, yet liberals and Democrats keep trying to change their minds. We should use their minds against them.

Let me put it like this. Whiteness is a drug. Only the addict can choose to be free of it. That doesn't mean everyone else in our political community doesn't have choices. It just means we should be careful with the choices we have. Among Democrats, the current trend is to accuse Donald Trump of breaking his promise to America. However, that doesn't help break the addiction. It affirms it. It suggests that if Trump were a better president, the whiteness he promised on the campaign trail would have increased pay. We should not enable addiction. We should treat each other like adults. Whiteness has never increased pay, but multiracial democracy has. If adults can't handle that truth, they should stay home.

In the absence of fundamental change, especially among Democratic leaders, I can't say I have a lot of hope these days. That's in spite of all the polling showing that Donald Trump is the most unpopular president ever. He was unpopular the first time. That he's unpopular the second time should not be surprising. What is surprising is he was elected again despite being unpopular. More surprising is we keep believing unpopularity will doom him.

Don't get me wrong.

It could be that Trump's policies burn up so much of the American electorate that voters storm the polls in November to put Democrats back in charge of the Congress. But what if they storm the polls and nothing changes? Not because Democratic leaders are squishes, though that's true enough, but because John Robert's US Supreme Court, and now state courts, legalized cheating. We all believe in our bones that you win when you're popular, lose when you're not. But white-power gerrymandering takes that foundational belief and perverts it.

Trump admitted this week that he doesn't care about the economic effects of his war against Iran. (Inflation hit 3.8 percent. In effect, that means we all got a pay cut.) To what extent are Americans' financial situations motivating him toward a peace deal? "Not even a little bit," the president said. "The only thing that matters is ... they can't have a nuclear weapon. I don't think about Americans' financial situation. I don't think about anybody. I think about one thing. We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That's the only thing that motivates me."

That clip was shared widely by liberals and Democrats, as it seemed to be more evidence of the growing backlash against the president and his party. (Most Americans were not concerned about Iran's nuclear program before the war.) But what if it wasn't evidence so much as foreshadowing – of the kind of dystopian future we can expect to experience in which the American president has been fully liberated from the consequences of his choices, in which he can do virtually anything he wants without fear of democratic accountability.

I'm talking about immediate material stakes here, more than ideological stakes. Complaints about an executive branch acting like it's above the law are going to feel almost quaint in a context of food shortages. But the longer Trump's war goes on, the more likely we are to face such a crisis. Overseas markets have dried up. Fertilizer is scarce. The price of diesel is soaring. Crop-pickers are getting deported. And farms are going bankrupt at alarming rates. If we're lucky, saying he doesn't care will be a warning to future presidents to never, ever, ever say that. If we're unlucky, however, it won't be a warning. It will be an abomination.

Last week, Virginia's supreme court struck down a ballot measure that would have redrawn the state's congressional maps, giving Democrats an advantage. The referendum was lawful and legitimate, yet the court overturned the law in a blatant act of usurpation, following the lead of the US Supreme Court. The response by Virginia Democrats should have been a declaration of war against unelected legislators, knowing that a majority was behind them.

But instead of leading an effort to force out the judges (by lowering the retirement age) and bringing the law to a refreshed court, Virginia’s state Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell told Greg Sargent there were practical obstacles. But beyond that, Surovell said, "wiping out the entire supreme court is an incredibly extreme step to take over a decision you don’t like." He added that his party will appeal the decision to the US Supreme Court, but short of a favorable ruling there, he still expects voters to put Democrats in two of four lost seats.

In other words, don't worry.

"The people" will come through.

Praising "the people" is patriotic propaganda with a long history in America that feels good, but it's wrong, even dangerous. Joe Biden hoped the 2024 election would be a trial of sorts of a treasonous former president. He hoped that his administration would not have to take the risk of criminally prosecuting him. Look where that got us. The lesson should be to never ask "the people" to make sound moral judgments. They won't do it. Instead, they will give a traitor a second chance, then complain about the ruinous consequences of giving it to him.

Sadly, it seems some Democratic leaders still have not learned this lesson. They hope "the people" will do the work for them, saving them from the risk of doing what needs to be done. In the Virginia case, it would be good to remove anti-democratic judges anyway for the fact that they exposed themselves as anti-democratic judges. Indeed, the Virginia case is a microcosm. There no such thing as democratic progress if rogue courts go unpunished. As Jonathan Bernstein said today, even if the Democrats have a trifecta after 2028, "there’s just about nothing Congress could do to prop up healthy democracy in the US (or, for that matter, to pass any other policy agenda the Democrats might have) that is safe from the six Republicans on the Supreme Court. There’s simply no way to court-proof anything."

Like everyone else, I hope "the people" correct their error. (The Bulwark's Jonathan Last says don't worry, the "panicrats" are, well, panicking.) But despite what Democratic leaders say, electoral victory is not the same as saving the republic. That requires cold-blooded partisans using their legitimate authority to change the institutions that have corrupted democracy.

Donald Trump, the Republicans and their rightwing allies in the courts have rigged the system, through white-power gerrymandering, so that being a monumentally unpopular party might no longer be an impediment to rule. (Ordinary people could face food shortages, for God's sake, while Trump shrugs.) The Democrats cannot hope that "the people" can overcome a rigged system, because "the people" cannot overcome one. Indeed, they have proven capable of making things worse. Democrats like Virginia's Scott Surovell fear being too extreme. My hope is in Democrats who realize they haven't been extreme enough.

American politics is full of uncertainty, but one thing that the Democrats completely trust is this – eventually, a Republican president will wreck the economy. His failure paves the way for the Democrats' return to power. This pattern has been so regular as to be predictable over the last half century. An entire generation of Democratic leadership counts on it.

These pendulum swings may seem comforting, as they suggest a kind of equilibrium at the heart of the American electorate. They should not be comforting, as they enable America's worst instincts. The Democrats don't really need to present an ideal vision of the future. They don't really need to fight for it. To win back power, all they do is wait. At some point, the Republican will blow up the economy. The outcome will be a Democratic comeback.

The Democrats have sound policies. The problem is they collectively lack is a unifying moral view. They do not ask Americans to be better. They do not invest in infrastructure that rewards public virtue. They do not go to war for the greater good. Instead, they tend to privilege the victimhood of disillusioned voters, even when they are victims of themselves.

In the run up to the midterm elections, the Democrats accuse Donald Trump of broken promises. Among other examples, they cite rates of inflation that have wiped out wage gains. But the president kept his promise. A majority of voters wanted whiteness to be dominant again. That's what he's doing. The problem is that whiteness causes ruin, even for those who vote for it. You can't have one without the other, but they didn't believe it, because, to them, whiteness is prosperity. What they're mad about now is their own desire backfiring on them.

If the Democrats win in November, which seems likely, the leadership will have incentive to control everything rank-and-file Democrats say for the purpose of seeming reasonable to these voters, therefore retaining hopefully their support in advance of the 2028 election.

The problem is there's no way to seem reasonable to Americans who desire freedom from consequences. To use the old cliche, Trump voters wanted to touch the stove. What they didn't want was the first-degree burns. Appeals to their self-interest will have limited effect if they are not accompanied by an ethical reaction. The Democrats need to get evangelical on voters, not only with a unifying moral view but an information infrastructure to transmit it.

Can the Democratic Party do that?

Yes, according to Matthew Sheffield. The holdup isn't money. There's plenty. The holdup is lack of will. "I have come to the conclusion that the current highest level Democratic leaders would rather lose than change their approach fundamentally," Matthew told me last week.

An expert of political media, especially on the right, Matthew was a source in a Post report about Ashley St. Clair, a former maga personality who recently revealed the extent to which rightwing media is directly paid for by billionaire Republicans. Matthew is also a Republican apostate (he left on moral grounds), so I asked if he thinks St. Claire is being genuine.

"She seems to," he said. "Having walked away from the easy money, I can recognize that's what she's done. I'm going to have to do a crowd-funding campaign, because there's no one willing to pay for media on the left. And the audience mostly just wants doomerism."

The left wants doomerism? I asked.

Here's his reply and the rest of our conversation.

Can you expand on that? The left wants doomerism?

I think a lot of the audience genuinely believes in some sense that Trump is inevitably going to destroy democracy. They think that there is no money available on the left, and that is why Republicans have been strong when he's on the ballot.

This seems to be an easier conclusion to believe rather than the actual facts: that Democrats at the elite level have wasted their money on poor campaign strategies, and that they are not very good at what they do.

It's very discomforting to have to face the fact that Kamala Harris was not a very good candidate, and that neither were the people who ran her campaign at the highest levels and the affiliated super PACs.

I have come to the conclusion that the current highest level Democratic leaders would rather lose than change their approach fundamentally. They are so obsessed with controlling the message at all times that they don't want to direct money or influence to people who are not under their control. But that way of doing politics doesn't work in the age of social media, because everyone can see that the messages that are pushed in this way are obviously coordinated and inauthentic.

The party leaders are thoroughly bought into neoliberalism. Rather than talk about how they're going to tear down monopolies and tax the billionaires who have destroyed our society, they talk about relaxing zoning laws and new tax credits

Is there a consensus among leaders or is there competition?

Inside DC, there seems to be a consensus. There in the thrall of amateur commentators like Matt Yglesias who have punished no serious political science work, or even a work of political theory.

But it seems that some Obama alumni have begun to realize that the Clinton way of doing things has failed. I wrote about this recently.

The problem for Democratic longterm thinking has been that Republicans destroy things invariably when they get the White House and so Democrats can win almost regardless of what they do.

So instead of building a longterm generative vision, the party is dominated by small-minded amateurs who think that recapitulating Bill Clinton in 1992 is a great idea. Never mind that Clinton himself did not get a majority that year.

Having seen the inside of both parties, there's such a dramatic contrast in terms of vision. Republicans are planning for the next five, 10, and 30 years. Democrats are only thinking about the next election.

And the media that they encourage largely reflect that. Everything is about reacting to whatever happened in the news that day, rather than developing a coherent vision of how we got here and how to fix it.

That reactivity would explain their obsession with independent voters, no? As in: let's put all our energy into appearing reasonable to people who feel alienated. That plays by the GOP's rules, rather than they own.

Yes. Republicans have a larger vision, whereas Democrats are policymakers. They don't have a vision of the future or how to get there. To the extent there is one, it's "moar capitalism," which isn't how you win as a left party.

What do you think the Democratic vision should be? And should they pay influencers to help spread word of that visions?

I think that citizens should stop paying for candidates so much, because the money is wasted on ads.

As to the vision, it's not a simple question. We need political vision, philosophical vision, and metaphysical vision. I'm working on the latter two actually with a book manuscript in outline form if you want to look at it. Here's a very compressed overview of some of the political and philosophical parts.

Pretty much all "futurism" discourse is fascistic. And it's reflected in the films that get made and the cramped vision of "global class struggle" or "bean-counting capitalism" that get advanced.

We need to openly talk about beauty, love, knowledge and freedom. The rightwing talks of these things, and gets to own that discourse because we say nothing in response. As the Book of Proverbs puts it, "Where there is no vision, the people perish."

I boil it down by saying that we need a liberalism that aims to make lives better at every level. Everyone deserves to laugh easily, think clearly and love freely.

For almost a month, I have been limping around my apartment, thinking this has got to be a metaphor for something. It's from one of those household injuries. I missed a step going down the stairs, landed on my foot with all my weight, and popped a calf muscle*. The first thing I thought of was the pain. The second thing: Oh, Jesus, I don't have health insurance.

Like I said, a metaphor. Lots of people are like me. According to the Times, as much as 20 percent of Americans who were enrolled in their state's Obamacare exchanges have dropped out. The percentage is expected to get bigger by the end of the year, some analysts say. It's not because of anything we did. It's because of what the president and the Republicans did.

Or rather didn't do, which is to say, they didn't care. They knew last autumn that premiums were going to double, triple and even quadruple. They knew their own people would suffer. Still they did nothing. The result is going to be more than lost Obamacare enrollees. It's going to be higher insurance premiums for everyone, as the risk pool gets smaller and sicker.

Adding insult to injury (in my case, literally) are the endless allegations of healthcare fraud. Somehow, it's a good thing that me and 1.2 million other Americans have dropped out, because (I'm guessing here) we're scammers. The idea appears to be (again, guessing) that I was getting something for nothing. That tells you that the Republicans have no idea what they are talking about, and how detached they are from the lives of ordinary Americans.

Obamacare enrollees can't commit fraud. First, because we pay up front, out of our own pockets. Second, because we pay on the back end if we don't pay enough up front. We have to guess how much we are going to earn for the year. At tax time, the IRS crunches the numbers. The amount owed can be large if we miscalculate (if we earn more than expected). Believe me when I say the pain of that experience makes you obey every letter of the law.

The Republicans refused to renew federal subsidies under the Affordable Care Act that were expanded during the COVID pandemic. Those subsidies cushioned the blow of ever-rising health insurance premiums. Once they expired at the end of last year, premiums soared and more than a million people dropped out. However, that's only the most recent development.

Less well-known is the fact that the Republicans are responsible two times over. Once for failing to renew those subsidies. Twice for causing premiums to soar. In 2017, they repealed what was known as Obamacare's "individual mandate," a small tax intended to widen and deepen the risk pool. The tax was working. Costs were going down. From the moment the mandate was repealed, however, costs began rising again to reach their current levels.

Beyond the GOP's carelessness and gaslighting, I guess what bugs me most is their scapegoating. Donald Trump and the Republicans are complicit in the failing state of the American healthcare system yet they're always accusing some poor bastard who cleans toilets for a living. Despite federal law explicitly blocking non-citizens from receiving government assistance, they blame "illegals" for a crisis that they themselves created.

The Republicans do this wholesale. Name a current social problem in America and they will tell you the cause is "illegals." The whole truth, however, is almost certainly the opposite.

• "Illegals" didn't take away anyone's health insurance through their negligence.
• They didn't impose illegal taxes (i.e., tariffs).
• They didn't extract wealth and raise income taxes (i.e., the One Big Beautiful Bill Act).
• They didn't start an illegal war.
• They didn't send gas prices soaring.
• They didn't spike the cost of groceries.
• They didn't bring the American economy to the brink of recession.

The essential message beneath all the rhetoric used by Trump and the Republicans is that the "illegals" are taking something from you, especially your shot at the American dream.

They scapegoat because it works. In America, it often doesn't matter that the Republicans reveal their ignorance of healthcare policy. It often doesn't matter that they expose their detachment from the lives of ordinary Americans. What matters isn't leadership but more often a collective desire to punch down on people who are on the margins of society and who, they believe, deserve violence. Trump's campaigns were a consequence-free chance to indulge that desire. They were vacations from the normal moral constraints of society. That Trump supporters are now facing consequences doesn't change the fact that they had fun.

There is new debate among liberals and Democrats about the need for a new New Deal. In exchange for normal people working hard and playing by the rules, the government promises to create and maintain conditions so that anyone can manifest his or her destiny. That's a welcomed debate, but I think it's already too abstract. Liberals and Democrats spend a lot of time talking about the problems—low wages, high inflation, scarce housing, inaccessible health insurance—but not nearly equivalent time spelling out who is doing what to whom.

Me and 1.2 million former Obamacare enrollees were not priced out due to faceless economic forces. We were priced out systematically by a party whose goals are protecting insurance profits as well as the power of employers to control their workers. Obamacare aims to manifest the American dream. By sabotaging it, the Republicans sabotage the dream.

Trump and his party always spell out who is doing what to whom. They say "illegals" stop ordinary Americans from manifesting their destinies. Immigrants are doing no such thing, but it's not enough for liberals and Democrats to say so. We should tell the same story but in reverse. Everyone can see their dreams come true—if the Republicans get out of the way.