When it comes to becoming part of the Trump regime, there’s been only one litmus test, at least until now: total loyalty to Trump. Pass that test and nothing else matters.

But Senate Republicans have now set a limit to how low Trump loyalists can go if they want to be confirmed.

At least five Senate Republicans just opposed the nomination of Paul Ingrassia to lead the Office of Special Counsel — enough to block his confirmation.

Ingrassia was among Trump Republican operatives who have been exposed exchanging racist, sexist, Nazi-loving text messages — calling Black people “monkeys” and “watermelon people,” talking about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide, lauding Republicans who they believe support slavery, imagining putting political opponents into gas chambers and subjecting them to “the greatest physiological torture methods known to man,” calling rape “epic,” and writing “I love Hitler.”

JD Vance brushed off the messages: “Kids do stupid things, especially young boys. They tell edgy, offensive jokes. That’s what kids do. And I really don’t want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke — telling a very offensive, stupid joke — is cause to ruin their lives.”

Jokes? Not funny.

Kids? Members of the group range from 18 to 40. One is a state legislator. Others are in their 30s and well-established in Republican politics.

Ingrassia, age 30, is now the Department of Homeland Security’s liaison to Vance and Trump’s White House.

In his text messages, Ingrassia described himself as having “a Nazi streak” and suggests Martin Luther King Jr. Day should be “tossed into the seventh circle of hell.”

But because of his utter loyalty to Trump, Trump nominated Ingrassia to lead the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates whistleblower complaints and allegations of political interference in the civil service.

Vance has responded quite differently toward anyone making negative comments about the late Charlie Kirk.

“Call them out,” Vance angrily demanded, “and hell, call their employer.”

Many who have expressed critical views about Kirk have now lost their jobs.

At least 21 teachers in school districts across the country have been fired, put on administrative leave, or placed under investigation by their employers for comments allegedly critical of Kirk. Firefighters, members of the military, a sports reporter, an employee of the Carolina Panthers, and a city council official in Indiana have faced similar treatment or calls to resign.

The State Department has even revoked visas of foreign nationals who have made slightly negative comments about Kirk on social media, including banal statements such as “Kirk won’t be remembered as a hero.”

Senate Republicans apparently don’t share Vance’s hypocritical tolerance for racist, sexist, and Nazi-loving comments by people Trump wants to confirm for positions in his regime.

Unlike Vance and the GOP operatives who feel that their loyalty to Trump allows them to promote the sickest and most hateful views imaginable, Senate Republicans have a bottom below which they won’t sink.

It’s low but, hey, it’s a bottom.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

“Why is MLK Day not worthy of a fee-free day anymore?”

That’s what Kati Schmidt, communications director for the National Parks Conservation Association, wondered in an email to SFGATE, which reported Thursday on the National Park Service’s recently announced free admission days for 2026.

“That has become a day of service throughout the country as well as celebrating an American hero who has several park units celebrating his legacy,” Schmidt noted of the federal holiday honoring Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. each January.

In addition to MLK Day, three other previously free days were left off the US Department of the Interior’s announcement last week about “resident-only patriotic fee-free days.” Visitors will now have to pay park fees on National Public Lands Day, the anniversary of the Great American Outdoors Act—which President Donald Trump signed in 2020—and Juneteenth.

In 2021, Congress passed and then-President Joe Biden signed legislation designating Juneteenth as a federal holiday to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States. After returning to the White House in January, Trump declined to recognize it on this past June 19.

As SFGATE reported:

“This policy shift is deeply concerning,” said Tyrhee Moore, the executive director of Soul Trak Outdoors, a nonprofit that connects urban communities of color to the outdoors. “Removing free-entry days on MLK Day and Juneteenth sends a troubling message about who our national parks are for. These holidays hold profound cultural and historical significance for Black communities, and eliminating them as access points feels like a direct targeting of the very groups who already face systemic barriers to the outdoors.”Moore told SFGATE that his organization works to push back against “these kinds of systemic attempts that disguise exclusion as administrative or political decisions.”
“Policies like this reinforce inequalities around access and visibly show how systems can create obstacles that keep communities of color from feeling welcomed in public spaces,” he said.

Olivia Juarez, public land program director at the advocacy group GreenLatinos, said in a statement that “we condemn the omission of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, Juneteenth, National Public Lands Day, and the anniversary of the Great American Outdoors Act from the list of free entrance days.”

“The Great American Outdoors Act permanently funded the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which enhances outdoor recreation access for all people from national public lands to neighborhood parks,” she pointed out. “These observances are patriotic days that celebrate freedom and safety in the outdoors. They should be celebrated as such by removing a simple cost barrier that can make parks more accessible to low-income households.”

Other critics have ripped the free day decisions as “truly disgusting” and “literally the sort of thing dictators do.”

Journalist Jennifer Schulze said: “I love our national parks but don’t go on his birthday. Find a state park to visit instead.”

Along with the free admission changes, the Trump administration is under fire for putting the president’s face on the new “America the Beautiful” annual passes—a display that may be illegal—and for hiking prices for foreign visitors to national parks.

Utah-based Juarez and GreenLatinos California state program manager Pedro Hernández both denounced price hikes for noncitizens—a move that notably comes as the administration pursues Trump’s promise of mass deportations.

“By imposing higher fees on people without state-issued ID,” Hernández said, “the Trump administration is advancing a xenophobic policy that disproportionately harms vulnerable populations like international students, newly arrived immigrants, and families seeking asylum.”

“This approach eviscerates the true meaning of public lands and sends a clear, exclusionary message that our most cherished national parks have become yet another pay-to-play system,” he added. “People should be welcomed—not priced out from our public lands.”

About a year ago, at the start of the Trump regime, a woman was about to pass me on the sidewalk and then stopped, turned toward me, and almost shouted, “It’s a f------ nightmare!”

It has been a “f------ nightmare.”

But sometimes a nation needs a nightmare before it can fully awaken to long-simmering crises.

Martin Luther King Jr. mobilized the nation against racial injustice by making sure almost everyone in the United States saw its horrors — on the nightly news, watching peaceful Black people getting clubbed and arrested for exercising their rights.

Were it not for that painful national exposure to racist brutality, we wouldn’t have gotten the Civil Rights Act or the Voting Rights Act.

Something similar happened in the first years of the 20th century, when muckraking journalists revealed the monopolies, corruption, and public-be-damned arrogance of the robber barons.

Were it not for that painful national exposure, we wouldn’t have gotten the reforms of the Progressive Era.

A similar dynamic is playing out as Americans witness the nightmare of Trump’s neofascism: its mindless cruelty, blatant attempts to silence critics, wanton destruction of much of our government, open racism and misogyny.

Trump has revealed himself in ways his first-term handlers wouldn’t allow — as a sociopath who posts AI cartoons showing himself s------- on millions of Americans who marched against him. A malignant narcissist unable to respond to the tragic killings of Rob and Michele Reiner without making it all about himself. A chronic liar who says prices are dropping when everyone knows they’re rising.

As Americans see all this, outrage has been growing. We are beginning to mobilize — not all of us, of course, but the great majority.

Record numbers of us marched on October 18, No Kings Day. Democratic candidates have won just about every recent special election and mayoral and gubernatorial contest and a remarkable number of down-ballot races in bright red states and cities. MAGA is coming apart. Trump’s polls are tanking.

We are organizing and mobilizing with a resolve I have not seen in my lifetime.

America had to come to this point. We couldn’t go on as we were, even under Democratic presidents. For 40 years, a narrow economic elite has been siphoning off ever more wealth and power.

I’m old enough to remember when America had the largest and fastest-growing middle class in the world. We adhered to the basic bargain that if someone worked hard and played by the rules, they’d do better than their parents, and their children would do even better.

I remember when CEOs took home 20 times the pay of their workers, not 300 times. When members of Congress acted in the interests of their constituents rather than being bribed by campaign donations to do the bidding of big corporations and the super-wealthy.

I remember when our biggest domestic challenges were civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights — not the very survival of democracy and the rule of law.

But over the last 40 years, starting with Reagan, America went off the rails. Deregulation, privatization, free trade, wild gambling by Wall Street, union-busting, monopolization, record levels of inequality, stagnant wages for most, staggering wealth for a few, big money taking over our politics.

Corporate profits became more important than good jobs and good wages for all. Stock buybacks and the well-being of investors more important than the common good.

Democratic presidents were better than Republican, to be sure, but the underlying rot worsened. It was undermining the foundations of America.

Trump has precipitated a long-overdue reckoning.

That reckoning has revealed the rot.

It has also revealed the suck-up cowardice of so many CEOs, billionaires, Wall Street bankers, media moguls, tech titans, Republican politicians, and other so-called “leaders” who have stayed silent or actively sought to curry Trump’s favor.

America’s so-called “leadership class” is a sham. Most of them do not care a whit for the rest of America. They are out for themselves.

The “f------ nightmare” is not over by any stretch. It’s likely to get worse in 2026 as Trump and his sycophants, and many of America’s “leaders,” realize 2026 may be their last unrestrained year to inflict damage and siphon off the spoils.

But the nightmare has awakened much of America to the truth about what has happened to this country — and what we must do to get it back on the track toward social justice, democracy, and widespread prosperity.

I’d like to believe that the horrific darkness of this past year is a necessary prelude to a brighter and saner future.

Be well. Be safe. We will prevail.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

The quote is attributable to a 1965 sermon Martin Luther King Jr. gave the day after “Bloody Sunday,” when civil rights protestors were attacked and beaten by police on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. In a period rife with ugliness and hate, King exhorted his beleaguered congregation to live with moral courage when faced with grave wrongs or die with soul-killing silence long before you take your last breath.

“A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.” King’s prophetic words should reverberate off the walls in this fraught moment for American liberty and justice as the tyrannical hammer of Project 2025 methodically pounds down the rule of law.

But they don’t. Not to a wide swath of apathetic Americans. Not to their spineless and largely muted political leaders. Nothing drove home the point more than the stunningly suppressed reaction to the presidential pardon of Jan. 6 convicted police beaters who violently stormed the U.S. Capitol to hang the vice-president, hunt lawmakers and stop the peaceful transfer of power through mob savagery. Crickets and meh is what we got.

Although the brazen felon holding court in the Oval Office campaigned on pardoning the “patriots” who bashed, tased and blinded overwhelmed law enforcement officers defending the Capitol, few expected that clemency to include those videotaped beating the hell out of cops in front of the whole world. Former DC cop Michael Fanone was beaten unconscious, suffered a heart attack, concussion and traumatic brain injury:

“I’ve been betrayed by my country, and I’ve been betrayed by those that supported Donald Trump, whether you voted for him because he promised these pardons or for some other reason, you knew that this was coming.” He and others who testified in Jan. 6 cases fear for their lives again now that the insurrectionists have been released.

Yet sheeplike Republicans gave Trump a pass on freeing even the most violent Jan. 6 offenders and far-right militia leaders convicted of seditious conspiracy — “to overthrow, put down or destroy by force the government of the United States.”

Ohio’s newly minted U.S. Senator and Trump bootlicker Bernie Moreno defended the pardon of armed rioters on the seat of democracy — “because nobody’s been treated worse” — then, with a straight face, proclaimed himself and Trump big backers of the Blue.

“Nobody is a stronger supporter of law enforcement than President Trump, myself, or JD Vance. We honor and respect law enforcement. When I walk in every morning, I look at the guards, I say ‘Thank you. Thank you for being here, thank you for helping out.’ But these people [the pardoned police beaters] have been treated horribly.”

No, Bernie, the tried and convicted thugs had their due process in court. The gruesome videos of Jan. 6 document who was really treated horribly by MAGA combatants summoned, assembled and sent to the Capitol by Trump to “fight like hell” over his baseless lie of a stolen election. The police who were dragged down the steps, beaten with everything from flag poles and pipes to fire extinguishers and baseball bats, are the victims Moreno sold down the river with sympathy for their attackers. Thanks for nothing.

Some GOP leaders, including Vance, who had previously argued that “obviously” violent protestors should be excluded from any presidential reprieve, were notably mum after Trump’s sweeping amnesty of the horde that pulverized officers and desecrated, defecated and plundered its way through the Capitol while lawmakers ran for their lives. Other cowardly Republicans, like Ohio’s Jim Jordan, hid their disagreement to Trump’s decision with a walk-off line that the pardon was his to make.

No point in decrying the glorification of political violence in service to a sore loser. Trump might invite the insurrectionists to the White House. Not a peep from Ohio Republicans about the hundreds of vindicated criminals released into communities, including Ohio hometowns, or the emboldened paramilitary leaders who threaten to “bring the heat” on those who held them accountable. One pardoned Ohioan considered his crimes for Trump “an honor.”

It’s sick. The horrendous siege of America’s citadel of democracy on live television repulsed the nation four years ago. Today the man who incited that siege to steal a second term recasts it as a “peaceful day” with skirmishes that resulted in “minor injuries” (not critical injury and death) and portrays his rioting red shirts as heroes imprisoned as “hostages.” George Orwell must be spinning in his grave.

Opposition to Trump’s fanciful narrative is nonexistent from Republicans and most of the country doesn’t seem to care. Jan. 6 was bad but whatever. Are we all the walking dead in this country? Trump’s blanket pardons of his most vicious foot soldiers on a mission to forcefully overturn a democratic election was, as an enraged Ohio Democrat Marcy Kaptur said, “a sacrilege against our republic and our constitution…an affront on decency and a violent attack on the rule of law.” Be outraged.

Take King’s sermon to heart. Stand up for what is right in “the fierce urgency of now” because staying silent on what matters will kill your soul.

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com.

As President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown elicits stark condemnation from leaders in the Catholic church, which says the administration's policies clash with religious liberty, Pope Leo has emerged, writes David French in The New York Times, as the anti-Trump.

"If you examine the new pope’s pronouncements, there is a consistent through line. He defends human dignity and condemns government brutality. In addition to his defense of the human rights of migrants, he’s decried Russian abuses in Ukraine, and he’s called for a cease-fire, hostage release and compliance with international humanitarian law in Gaza," French writes.

Pope Leo's concerns, French writes, also extends to the tech sector, as seen in a November 7 post on X, in which he wrote, "Technological innovation can be a form of participation in the divine act of creation. It carries an ethical and spiritual weight, for every design choice expresses a vision of humanity. The Church therefore calls all builders of #AI to cultivate moral discernment as a fundamental part of their work—to develop systems that reflect justice, solidarity, and a genuine reverence for life."

That post, French says, drew immediate ire from tech billionaire and Trump supporter Marc Andreessen, "who posted (and then deleted) a meme mocking the pope’s statement," French notes.

Despite the pope's obvious dismay with Trump and his policies, French says that's probably where his own involvement ends.

"When I said that the path past Trumpism is beginning to emerge, I did not and do not mean that the pope will somehow enable the defeat of any particular politician or program at the ballot box," he writes. "American Catholics are true swing voters. A majority voted for Trump in 2024, but a majority disapprove of him now."

That being said, French also notes that there are "many devout Catholics who are deeply embedded in the MAGA movement, including Vice President JD Vance."

Noting the volatile mix between church and state, French writes, "Partisanship is poisonous to the church," adding that "when partisanship becomes part of your identity — much less part of your faith — it has a pernicious effect: It causes you to highlight the deficiencies of the other side while tempting you to rationalize or minimize the injustices on your own. Partisanship makes hypocrites of us all. I know it made a hypocrite of me on my worst partisan days."

Pope Leo, he notes, manages to rise above the fray, putting "virtue outside and above politics. His declarations are the living embodiment of Martin Luther King Jr.’s admonition that the church “is not to be the master or the servant of the state, but the conscience of the state.”

However, French says, it's almost impossible for religious voters today to put politics aside.

"When Democrats win the White House, then evangelicals tend to feel more defensive and fearful, as if their churches are at the edge of extinction," he writes.

French explains how Trumpism became a "thoroughly religious movement," saying that "the result is a relentless one-way cultural ratchet that amplifies Democratic sins and minimizes Republican vices."

"It elevates politics to the place of religion because it is only through politics that many evangelicals can feel confident and secure in the practice of their faith," he adds.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) recently issued a rare, near-unanimous rebuke of Trump's immigration policies, specifically condemning the "indiscriminate mass deportation of people" and the associated "dehumanizing rhetoric and violence," but they did not specifically mention Trump by name.

"Since Trumpism is a religious phenomenon, it requires a religious answer. But it can’t be a partisan answer. That’s why it was wise for the bishops not to directly mention Trump in their statement," French notes.

Pope Leo has done the same, French writes, but, he says, "I'm under no illusions that Pope Leo’s example will matter to the evangelical political class. It is so far gone that many of its leading lights advance the absurd claim that Christians cannot vote for Democrats."

Despite that doubt, French says, "a pope’s moral witness can — and should — still matter to Christians of every tradition."

"Unless the values behind Trumpism are defeated, the man himself will be replaced by another like him — Republican or Democrat — and our culture will continue to slide into cruelty and depravity," French says.

The pope's own words, he writes, speak volumes.

"To quote Pope Leo, 'justice, solidarity, and a genuine reverence for life' ought to be the touchstones of our public engagement. There is another spiritual victory to be won — this time over the in these United States."

What are the No Kings protests about?

It’s a natural question if one has never been to a large protest. I’ve seen many of my friends on the right, especially after the first No Kings protests in June, wonder why people choose to do so. Let me offer a view.

I was at the first Boise No Kings rally in June and will be at the next on Saturday … which would surprise some people given my long Republican past.

I spent decades being active and working in GOP politics, at the local, state, and federal levels, including working for a Republican U.S. senator and President George W. Bush.

And I want nothing to do with the presidency of Donald Trump.

Some critics of No Kings question the value of peaceful protests. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, et. al. disagree. Critics also get hung up on the “No Kings” name and argue we don’t have a monarch, so what’s the point?

We don’t have a king, but we do have a hot mess in this country thanks to a chaotic and impulsive president and his administration.

We have an unlawful and economically damaging tariff regime that both changes on a whim and has sent us into a jobs recession while stoking more inflation.

We have publicly ordered, flimsy prosecutions of political enemies, even as veteran U.S. prosecutors and Justice Department officials are being fired and resigning rather than follow unlawful and unethical orders.

We have equally unlawful firings of federal employees during a government shutdown, happening because a Republican president and GOP majorities in both houses of Congress can’t govern. Ironic firings since many similar layoffs during the failed DOGE experiment (remember that?) were reversed in court because – and I believe we have a pattern here – they were unlawful.

But not just unlawful, incompetent too. The Trump administration’s war on public health continued last Friday with mass layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But mirroring the failures of DOGE, hundreds of those firings were rescinded within hours. Maybe someone figured out laying off people with important jobs working on epidemics and infectious diseases is a bad idea?

Proving the point of the incompetence, one CDC employee currently working on measles outbreaks (caused by the anti-vaccine thinking now touted by the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) was one of the recent, quickly rescinded layoffs, even after she experienced the same, “now-you’re fired, now-you’re not” whipsaw under DOGE while working on Ebola earlier this year.

All of which gets to part of what is driving protests like No Kings: These are not just protests about policy disputes, they are protests about the very nature of how our government is being run.

And there is no clearer example of that right now than the conduct of ICE and other federal agents, lawlessly detaining and abusing U.S. citizens and others legally in our country because of how they look, not because of probable cause that such persons have committed a crime.

I remember from my decades in Republican politics that the right used to object to the idea of masked, unidentified agents of the federal government roaming the streets of America in unmarked vehicles going after people they think don’t look like real Americans.

That’s as good a reason to protest as any if you believe in the Constitution and our Bill of Rights.

Some on the right will claim No Kings is just “antifa” or that such protests are riots. That’s laughably false. I’ve spent enough time in politics in the Northwest, especially around Seattle, to know what is called “antifa” is a tiny, motley collection of anarchists and far left activists who think Bernie Sanders is a bit too conservative.

I’ve also been to enough protests and have friends around the country who have done likewise to know the No Kings protests are legal, permitted events in public spaces to exercise the right of free speech. There were millions of Americans at those protests in June. There will be millions more at hundreds of protests around the country on Saturday.

Some may disagree with the anti-Trump motive for these protests, but that is their purpose, and as U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, encouraged to: “Be peaceful, patriotic, and joyful.”

Today, I will be typing to you with fire, and helping you deal with the excess hell that is being hand-delivered to us daily by the most lawless, bigoted, corrupt, heartless collection of sub-humans in American history.

I bring you those loaded words, and wonder if I still have somehow underestimated the revolting Republican Party.

I know that you are the true patriots in America who have the guts to pay attention, and then pay a terrible mental price for it. I know that you are the people who can be counted on to rush to the latest political fire, and if necessary use your bare hands to put it out.

I know that you are the people who deserve better than what you are getting both from the party you stand and fight for, and from the one that so obviously and consistently stands against Americans.

Every damn hour we are under steady assault by a repugnant collection of Republican, subservient thugs — a cult of knuckle-dragging hyenas — which are fronted by a gruesome man, who is so completely dead inside, the bile is starting to ooze out of him leaving bandaged hands, swollen ankles, and burnt-orange puddles wherever he was last seen sleeping in public.

The sickly Donald Trump does not have much time left, but then neither does the United States of America.

In fact, the only thing we have in common with this grotesque, abusive monster is that we are all locked in a battle for our survival.

Who’s going to die first? Our country or Trump?

There isn’t a single thing the bought-off Trump, aided by his subservient cult, won't do to end us, as he strangles a never-ending list of enemies, chokes the life out of America, and pockets millions and millions of dollars before he finally takes his last breath.

Our health care, food security, and clean air and water are all under steady assault. Our safety nets are gleefully being pulled from underneath us by lifeless billionaires who can never get enough. Our vote and humans rights are being incinerated. Prices are going up, and a lawless, bought-off conservative Supreme Court is doing everything in its seemingly unlimited power to drag us down.

Our military is being perverted into a partisan tool, and we are steaming toward the breaking point where it will be necessary to ask whether they are with us, or against us.

Trump will not stop until he is convinced he can snap his fat little fingers, and his military will do his heinous bidding. That’s what this is all about, because that is what this was always going to be about when he seized power last year.

This is a takeover, and an attack on a fragile democracy that has survived for centuries, but only because it could trust its president and courts not to unify with the odious intent of dismantling it.

Authoritarianism isn’t some fictional thing, people, it is A THING, and it is happening right in front of our tired eyes.

It is the laziest, most oppressive political system known to man, because it isn’t fueled by enlightenment or better ideas. No, instead it is all about the control by the few over the many, and rammed down our throats with brute force whether we like it or not.

It marches to the monotonous, banging drum of nonstop, state-run propaganda that props up evil, subservient agents in places like our Pentagon, Justice Department, the FBI, and that blasted court ...

You know what I am bringing to you this morning is true, because you have the audacity to pay attention. If you are reading this all-too-sober accounting of our current state, you can plainly see it, feel it, and most importantly: are wondering just what in the hell we are supposed to do about it.

Because if this is our reality, shouldn’t we all be sounding the alarms every chance we get, and supporting each other as we do the work to save the United States of America from itself?

I have great faith in you, dear reader. You give me strength simply by knowing you are out there. By God, there are millions of us, and we are our only chance to put this attack down, and save America.

So now an important question: Do you think the leadership in the Democratic Party is taking all this as seriously as you are?

If you are, we are done for the day. I wish you strength and peace of mind ...

Most of you will know that I am not a party man, because my work as a journalist prevented it, and because after observing political parties and their politicians closely, I trust most of them only as far as I can throw them with my old, tired left arm.

While we the people are fretting, and screaming, and voting, and marching, and hollering, and devouring all the warnings like this one, the leadership of the party we have assigned to save us, is at best badly misreading situation, or at worst, accepting too many horrible realities by the hour, that when piled atop each other will ultimately bury us — and most likely sooner than later.

Right now, like it or not — and man, I absolutely hate it — we are being asked to make the best of our tragic situation in America, while a trio of inaction figures spend the better part of each day rubbing the sleep from their eyes, and reacting instead of taking our righteous fight to the people 24/7.

How is it Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries and Ken Martin have been assigned to lead the Democratic Party in this historic hour of vital resistance?

Why are we STILL accepting this?

Isn’t it clear by now that time and again they have let us down since last year’s horrible elections? Isn’t it clear by now they have proven they are simply incapable of rising up to meet this dire situation?

Look, I don’t hate these men. I don’t even dislike them. I thank them for their service.

But now it’s time they return to the important ranks of the foot soldiers and backbenchers, because they are NOT leaders.

The irony is, we were always invariably going to be better off when we stopped with our absurd idolatry of politicians. It has been a weakness of the Democratic Party my entire professional lifetime, but that makes it no less a reality.

Here’s a fact: Most people simply don’t trust politicians, and that is actually a strength of a thriving Democracy. When one man or woman gains too much power we begin swerving toward what we fought to avoid more than 250 years ago.

Welcome to our current nightmare.

But since we are here, I will readily concede that occasionally, politicians can truly inspire. I have seen these rare folks and been sparked by them. Four come to mind in my lifetime: John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Michelle and Barack Obama.

In action and words, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) is my current favorite.

Lord knows, we have never needed inspiration more.

Schumer, Jeffries and Martin simply aren’t delivering it.

They have proven they lack the guts and talent to make our case to the American people. And making our case to the American people is what needs to be happening from sun up to sun down — from North Carolina to North Dakota — every single day.

We must grab the pulpit and shake it. We need to bring thunder to this war for our survival.

Tell me: When was the last time Schumer did that? As he ever done that?

Now tell me why Jeffries was siding with Trump earlier this week in the pardoning of Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), who was indicted by the Biden Justice Department on bribery and money-laundering charges. Just last month, Jeffries slammed Trump for being “completely and totally out of control” with these relentless, lawless pardons.

Does Jeffries mean what he says? Too many times I am not sure what the New York Congressman is thinking, and that has become a big, damn problem for such a public figure.

I won’t waste too much of my my breath on the Democratic National Committee (DNC), because its pretty clear they quit really giving a damn the minute they had all our phone numbers, and could just sit back and batter our cell phones with never-ending fundraising requests.

It’s still hard for me to reckon how Ben Wikler didn’t get that job, given what he did to help rescue the Wisconsin Democratic Party from the abyss the past decade or so.

Look, if you told me 13 month ago, coming off the most catastrophic election losses in America history, the Democratic Party wouldn’t change a thing with its Congressional and Senatorial leadership, I would have slapped some self-respect into you.

But here we are with black eyes, because any party that trots out the same losers to lead it after absorbing a thorough beating like the one we got last November can’t respect you if it can’t even be bothered to respect itself …

Nothing, and I mean NOTHING would energize the Left more than putting new, invigorating leadership in place. It would show the party listens, and believes in action, not just empty words. It would invite millions of people in, instead of stiff-arming them away with the same old bulls--- …

CHANGE.

Too many people don’t trust the party, because they don’t think it is listening to them. This simply has to be rectified, because we don’t have any time left.

If we don’t win big next year, we can kiss it all goodbye. There will be no more do-overs. We simply must do EVERYTHING we can to ensure we win.

So one more question before I go: Why do we expect so damn much from ourselves, and so damn little from our leadership?

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