Writers and Editors

Read reports on and responses to Trump's first state-of-the-union speech of his second administration from nine reputable sources:
• ABC News
• BBC News
• CNN
• Factcheck.org
• The Guardian (UK)
• NBC News
• NPR 
• PBS (fact-checking Democrats' responses)
• USA Today (focus on ending eight wars)

 

Selected examples: 

 

TRUMP CLAIM: "In the past nine months, zero illegal aliens have been admitted to the United States."

     FACT CHECK: False, but crossings are down drastically.

 

 TRUMP CLAIM: "In many cases, drug lords, murderers all over our country. They're blocking the removal of these people out of our country," Trump said of illegal immigrants and sanctuary cities.

     FACT CHECK: Most DHS detainees have no criminal record.

 

TRUMP CLAIM: "I want to stop all payments to big insurance companies and instead give that money directly to the people so they can buy their own health care."
    FACT CHECK: The first Trump administration halted direct federal payments, but "The Great Healthcare Plan" appears to reinstate the payments to insurers.

 

TRUMP CLAIM: "Moving forward, factories, jobs, investment and trillions and trillions of dollars will continue pouring into the United States of America because we finally have a president who puts America first."

     FACT CHECK: (NPR:) President Trump argues that high tariffs will spark a renaissance in U.S. manufacturing. But it hasn't happened yet. Factories have been in a slump for most of the last year, shedding 108,000 jobs in 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    No doubt Trump's taxes on foreign imports have allowed some U.S. factories to raise their prices. But the vast majority of factory managers, many of whom rely on foreign components, say tariffs have been a drag on their business. Read More 

• Uncooperative Responses (The Weekly Sift, 2-9-26)

     Trump’s assault on American democracy. This week he threatened to “nationalize” vote-counting in 15 states, and continued the violent occupation of Minneapolis.

     Climate change. Trump’s war against renewable energy is having results: Last year, for every new dollar committed to renewable energy projects, three dollars were rolled back.

     Gaza. The ceasefire is holding more or less, but it can’t hold forever if Gazans’ lives don’t start improving.

     Ukraine. The question is less who is winning than who will crack first. Russia’s economy is in serious trouble, and Ukraine is running out of soldiers.

• Donald Trump’s Draft Deferments: Four for College, One for Bad Feet (Steve Eder and Dave Philipps, NY Times, 8-2-2016)

   "For many years, Mr. Trump, 70, has also asserted that it was “ultimately” the luck of a high draft lottery number — rather than the medical deferment for bone spurs — that kept him out of the war. But his Selective Service records, obtained from the National Archives, suggest otherwise.

    Mr. Trump had been medically exempted for more than a year when the draft lottery began in December 1969, well before he received what he has described as his “phenomenal” draft number."
---Was Trump a 'draft dodger'? (PunditFact,7-21-2015)

    With his signature flair for controversy, billionaire Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump challenged the Vietnam War service credentials of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

    "He’s a war hero because he was captured," Trump said July 18, 2015, during an interview in Ames, Iowa. "I like people who weren’t captured." McCain ended up in a Hanoi POW camp after his Navy dive bomber was shot down in 1967.
    Ronald Kuby, a criminal and civil rights lawyer and talk show host, appeared on WABC-AM in New York City on July 15, 2015, three days before Trump made his controversial comments. Kuby highlighted the multiple student deferments Trump received, and how he finally got a medical exemption that staved off the draft. Trump "was a Vietnam draft dodger," Kuby said. 
---Deferments Helped Trump Dodge Vietnam: How the presidential candidate avoided combat (The Smoking Gun)

 
• Trump gave broad clemency to all Jan. 6 rioters. See their cases in 3 charts

   (Annette Choi, Alex Leeds Matthews and Marshall Cohen, CNN, 1-26-25)

    On his first day in office, President Donald Trump granted sweeping clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.    

    Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of everyone convicted of January 6-related crimes, including hundreds who were guilty of assaulting police. He also ordered the Justice Department to dismiss all pending cases.

    The move was the crowning achievement in Trump’s yearslong effort to whitewash the history of January 6, when a mob of thousands of his supporters violently stormed the Capitol and disrupted Congress’ certification of the 2020 election, which he lost.

• There Is a Very Good Reason Why Donald Trump Thinks Everything Is Rigged

    (David Corn, Mother Jones, January 2024)

In business, he was a master of gaming the system.
    "As a businessman, he generally did not use his influence and wealth to advance the interests of the government or any cause. He mostly cared about one thing—himself. But essential to his own rise to wealth and power was a core component of oligarchy: exploiting a rigged system. And during both his private sector career and his time in the White House, he has been friendly to oligarchs, cutting deals with them, cozying up to oligarchic regimes, and stacking his own Cabinet with the super­rich. It’s this world of immense wealth and power that Trump wishes to rule."

• A Case Against 6 Democrats Lacked Urgency. Then Came a Swift Bid for an Indictment. (Alan Feuer, Glenn Thrush, and Michael S. Schmidt, NY Tmes, 2-18-26) Senators Elissa Slotkin and Mark Kelly were among the Democratic lawmakers targeted by federal prosecutors after recording a video informing troops that they could refuse illegal orders President Trump said they should be charged with sedition for issuing the video.

    The botched attempt to prosecute the lawmakers for what was essentially an act of political dissent, critics say, was an egregious misuse of the grand jury system even for a Justice Department that has repeatedly trampled over prosecutorial norms in its efforts to satisfy Mr. Trump’s pursuit of vengeance against his adversaries.

 

• Epstein Dumps on Trump Again (Robert Reich, and I quote just part of this particular YouTube video, editing to tighten it, 1-21-26)

   "Pam Bondi and the Justice Department have tried to get  their hands on voting rolls in every state. They're suing half of the states because the states are not turning over their voting rolls as readily as Pam Bondi wants it. In Minnesota, she told Tim Walls that she wanted the voting rolls there. What's the excuse for for getting the voting rolls? I don't know, but this is a serious attack on democracy."

   We don't know exactly how much the Democrats are going to be able to get in terms of constraining ICE and the Border Patrol and making them more legal and respecting the rights, the civil rights and the constitutional rights and the first amendment rights of Americans of people who are here legally and of anybody....What worries me is that the Democrats did allow the rest of the federal agencies, the other five or six departments that were together in the original appropriation bill with the Department of Homeland Security. The Democrats said, "Okay, we agree you can you we'll let you go on and be fully funded."

    Well, that that reduces their bargaining power hugely. The Department of Homeland Security and ICE already has more money than it knows what to do with because it got it in the big ugly bill, remember? 

     The Trump sons, the two eldest Trump's sons and Trump are suing for 10 billion dollars. I mean, how does that work? Well, first of all it doesn't work. Legally, technically, I suppose a president has the right to sue, but look how he has abused that right. With the defamation suits against ABC and CBS, with his lawsuit against the New York Times,  and now he sues his own executive branch for 10 billion dollars. Who's going to represent him? And who's going to represent the government? Who is going to represent us, we taxpayers.

     And this release of Melania Trump's movie. Talk about corruption and sycophancy. Disgusting.  He pays $40 million [a bribe] to Bezos and Melania Trump is executive producer. Do you know how many of the licensing fees went to the Trumps? It was something like half the budget.

     There are reasons for being hopeful. When you look at what the people of Minneapolis have accomplished, at the solidarity, the community  that they have they have created. There was already a very strong community there but so many of the people of Minneapolis are doing so much to help others in Minneapolis... taking the children of vulnerable people to school, taking them to court, driving them places so that they don't have to be afraid, driving to food stores, creating food pantries. This outpouring of civic consciousness so heartening. Not only are we in this vile tipping point toward fascism, toward a dictatorship, toward a reign of terror. But we at the same time are seeing the rebirth of a kind of community in America, of a democratic spirit of self-government that we really desperately need in this country. We've needed it even before Trump.

     On the days that I'm particularly positive, and there aren't that many, the feeling is that the positives will outweigh the negatives, that our community and solidarity and this renewed democracy will last longer and deeper than the dictatorship we are now in. Let me thank all of you out there for just sticking with it, for not giving up. What they want most of all is for us to give up hope, to become so cynical that we are immobilized and we are not going to do that. We're going to continue to fight."

 

• The East Wing of the White House is destroyed, it can never be replaced, and Trump probably won't be allowed to put his precious ballroom there either. But he *did* pocket $400 million in bribes from his "donors" to build…absolutely nothing. If that doesn't thoroughly enrage you, check your pulse.

---Arts Panel Packed With Trump Allies Approves White House Ballroom Project (Luke Broadwater, New York Times, 2-19-26) President Trump has taken several steps to eliminate any pocket of resistance to his plans for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom. The National Capital Planning Commission received more than 2,000 messages in opposition to it, “comments were that they were concerned about the illegal demolition without permits or oversight, inappropriate scale that will dwarf the White House, the violation of historic preservation principles, a lack of transparency in funding and contracting and a fundamental miscarriage of democratic principles.”
---Trump’s White House Ballroom Sparks Questions About Funding and Ethics (FactCheck, org. 10-23-25)

   Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told Axios that the White House fundraising dinner could affect public trust in government.

    “All of this money that they’re giving for something that’s important to the president could influence his decision making, and he could be thinking about that instead of thinking about what’s  best for  Read More 

Originally published 5-2022, updated 2-11-26.

 

"I don't like paying higher gas taxes either but it's incredible that people will buy GOP outrage on gas that's $5 instead of $3.50--but then excuse GOP for keeping minimum wage at $7.25 instead of $15, insulin at $1200 instead of $35, & paid leave at 0 weeks instead of 12 weeks." ~ Qasim Rashid

 

First, some surveys of differences between the two parties. Note: GOP stands for Republicans ("Grand Old Party")

• Democrat vs. Republican (Diffen) Examines the differences between the policies and political positions of the Democratic and Republican parties on major issues such as taxes, the role of government, entitlements (Social Security, Medicare), gun control, immigration, healthcare, abortion, environmental policy and regulation.

• Byjus's chart showing differences between Democrats and Republicans

Dems: liberal ideology, minimum wages, higher tax for the rich.

Repubs: Conservative, free market, flat tax.

---Dems advocate for stricter gun laws, do not want greater spending on the military; Reps not in favor of stricter gun laws, prefer to increase spending on defense.

---Democrats believe that the threat of climate change is real and therefore actions need to be taken to mitigate the negative impact of climate change.

    Republicans have cast doubts on the negative impact of climate change. They had rejected the findings of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

---Chart shows many further differences--not just between Democrats and Republicans.

---Dems strongly believe that governments can support and provide universal healthcare (e.g., Obamacare).

    Repubs think private companies can run healthcare services more efficiently than the government.

 

Byjus: Which of them is most likely to close the Kennedy Center for two years?

 

• Democrat vs. Republican (Diffen's excellent comparison chart, plus a history and explanation of the parties' basic differences)

 

• Qasim Rashid, Esq. @QasimRashid tweeted(4-29-22):

Just so we're clear
Far Left:
• Living wage
• Universal healthcare
• 4-year public college
• Police demilitarization

Far Right:
• Big Lie
• Pro Putin
• Billionaire tax cuts
• Speak at Nazi/white nationalist events
• Ban all immigration, books on racism, & LGBT

• Both Republicans and Democrats prioritize family, but they differ over other sources of meaning in life

   (Laura Silver and Patrick van Kessel, Pew Research Center, 11-22-21)

  

•  'Everything that gets labeled "far-left" in the US is common sense policy in the rest of the industrialized world.

"Guaranteed health care. Paid family leave. Government drug price negotiation. Gun control.

"It isn't radical. We're talking about the <!--more--> basics of a functioning society."

        ~ Public Citizen @Public_Citizen 

 • Some political issues disproportionately concern political partisans. Immigration is a key issue for Mr Trump's Republican base, as are taxes and government spending. Democrats are more worried about health care and climate change.

        [Clipped from somewhere, but I failed to note who said it! They said Trump was bringing up the topic to distract from the Epstein conversation. If you know who said it, please share in Comments.]

 

 • Why Republicans are obsessed with pedophilia, gender identity, gay people, and abortion

   (Robert Reich, 5-7-22)

"Voters, don't be deflected by “culture war” messages intended to deflect the public’s attention from how badly big corporations and the super wealthy are shafting them. Americans won’t understand how these economic abuses all relate to record amounts of income and wealth at the top, and what must be done to reverse this imbalance (break up monopolies, enact a windfall profits tax, raise taxes on large corporations and the super wealthy, strengthen labor unions, reform campaign finance, stop corporate welfare, and so on).
      "Oh, and by focusing on pedophilia, gender identity, gay people, and abortion, Republicans don’t have to talk about Trump and January 6."

• "Being open to data, facts, and science doesn't make you a liberal.

    It makes you literate. Scientifically literate.

    It means you favor data, facts, and evidence over conspiracy theories, manufactured misinformation, and spin."

           ~ Paul Douglas, quoted by St. Albans Episcopal Church, El Cajon, CA

• Letters from an American (Heather Cox Richardson, 7-13-23)

    "The upcoming election is in the news not only because of the role of disinformation in our elections, but also because of voting challenges. Today, Sam Levine and Andrew Witherspoon of The Guardian reported that Florida Republicans are cracking down on voter registration groups that focus on people of color, levying more than $100,000 in fines since September 2022 on 26 groups for errors like submitting an application to the wrong county.

     "In Reliable Sources, CNN journalist Oliver Darcy reported today that three men associated with Rupert Murdoch in the early days of creating the Fox Corporation expressed their “deep disappointment for helping to give birth to Fox Broadcasting Company.” Preston Padden, Ken Solomon, and Bill Reyner wrote that they “never envisioned, and would not knowingly have enabled, the disinformation machine that, in our opinion, Fox has become.”

       "A study by Doug Bock Clark today in ProPublica showed that about 89,000 of close to 100,000 challenges to voter registrations in Georgia were filed by just six right-wing activists. Most of the rest of the challenges came from just twelve more people. Those making the challenges were helped by right-wing organizations, and they appeared to target those believed to vote for Democrats.

       "Washington Post legal columnist Ruth Marcus sees McConnell’s attempt to minimize his own transformation of a center-right Supreme Court into a hard-right body as a sign that he recognizes the extremism of the court might well cost him the chance to regain the position of Senate majority leader....

     "Two seats that should have gone to Democratic presidents were instead handed to Trump,” Marcus notes. “Thank you, Senator McConnell.” She continued: “And the new justices delivered. Abortion rights, gone. Affirmative action, gone. Gun rights, dramatically expanded. The administrative state, deconstruction underway. Religious liberties, triumphant; separation of church and state, not so much. Does this sound ‘ideologically unpredictable’ to you?”

[Back to Top]

•  Viktor Orbán’s “Christian democracy” vs. “democracy,” as explained by Heather Cox Richardson (6-4-23) Read More 

• Laura Field On Trump's Intellectuals (Andrew Sullivan, The Weekly Dish, 1-2-26) Her new book is a genuine engagement with the ideas of the new hard right. We dig in. The book: Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right.

   "Laura K. Field's political science survey Furious Minds is about the intellectual underpinnings of authoritarianism in the US.

Describing in detail the different strains of elitist far-right politics that came together in the past decade, this is a meticulous, nuanced study of the patchwork of the US's far right. Rather than focusing on the popular phenomenon of rank-and-file voters swayed toward MAGA authoritarianism or on the conspiracy theorists who built a cult of personality around Donald Trump, the book focuses on the academics, theorists, and other powerful figures whose far-right ideologies coincided with Trump's rise, but whose names are not always tied to it. The John Birch Society, Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign, and the radicalization of conservative groups including the Claremont Institute and Hillsdale College are all considered."

 

• They Used to Rule the West. Now They’re Dying.

    (Anton Jäger, the author of Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization without Political Consequences

"Others, to be sure, have looked at the larger social forces that pushed Mr. Trump to the fore — the backing from key sections of business, the fissuring of American society and the toll of decades of deindustrialization and economic inequality. These must be part of any adequate analytical picture. Critics have often focused their ire on Mr. Trump’s enablers, too, including the G.O.P. grandees who accommodated him.
    "Yet there has been less talk about the Grand Old Party itself, now solidly regrouped around its redeemer.

 

• The Political Gap in Americans’ News Sources (Elisa Shearer, Kirsten Eddy, Michael Lipka, Katerina Eva Matsa, Pew Research Center, 6-10-25)      

    For years now, Democrats have been much more likely than Republicans to say they trust the information that comes from national news organizations.

   Republicans and independents who lean Republican get news from a fairly concentrated group of sources, and one rises to the top: Fox News.  Scroll down to page 9 of this article for chart that shows Republicans and Democrats drastically differ in which news sources they trust and distrust. 

    Behind Fox, where Republicans get most of their news, Republicans are most likely to say they regularly get news from the three major broadcast networks – ABC News (27%), NBC News (24%) and CBS News (22%) – New York Post (15%) and The Joe Rogan Experience podcast (22%). While not among Republicans’ most-consumed news sources, several sources are more likely to be regular sources of news for Republicans than Democrats, including Newsmax (15% vs. 1%), The Daily Wire (12% vs. 2%) and Tucker Carlson Network (9% vs. 1%).

    Democrats get news from a far wider range of sources, with these at the top: ABC News (61%), NBC News (60%), PBS (59%), CNN (58%), CBS News (56%), BBC (52%), Associated Press (47%), Wall Street Journal (37% vs. 23%), MSNBC (45%), NPR (47%)

• A sickening moral slum of an administration (George Will, Washington Post, 12-2-25) Regarding Venezuela, Ukraine and much more, Trump and his acolytes are worse than simply incompetent. No operational necessity justified Hegseth’s de facto order to kill two survivors clinging to the wreckage of one of the supposed drug boats obliterated by U.S. forces near Venezuela. A nation incapable of shame is dangerous, not least to itself. As the recent “peace plan” for Ukraine demonstrated.

 

• A look back at Americans’ reactions to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol

   (John Gramlich, Pew Research Center, 1-4-22)

Americans expressed shock, horror and anguish over the riot at the Capitol, but partisan divides were clear even in the first days after Jan. Republicans were divided in the wake of Jan. 6 over whether then-President Donald Trump bore responsibility for the actions of some of his supporters that day.

   March and September 2021, Americans became less likely to say it was important to find and prosecute the Capitol rioters, with all of the decline occurring among Republicans. While some GOP elected officials publicly rebuked Trump in the wake of Jan. 6, Republicans in the U.S. became less open to intraparty criticism of the former president in the months after the riot. As of September 2021, there were wide partisan differences over the severity of the criminal penalties imposed on the Jan. 6 rioters and whether the House’s investigation of the riot would be fair or not.

• Trump, in an Escalation, Calls for Republicans to ‘Nationalize’ Elections ( Reid J. Epstein and Nick Corasaniti, NY Times, 2-2-26) The comments, made on a conservative podcast, follow a string of moves from his administration to try to exert more control over American elections.

• The differences between Republicans and Democrats (blog post on this website)

• Trump’s Obama Derangement Syndrome (Maureen Dowd, NY Times, 2-7-26)

• Politico: News, Analysis, and Opinion from Politico

--- The GOP is losing one of its best issues (Adam Wren, Politico, 1-29-26) Immigration was a solidly winning issue for Republicans. Trump’s deportation campaign is changing that.
---Republicans narrowly fend off bid to limit Trump on Venezuela (1-22-26) GOP lawmakers pulled out all the stops to manage a tie vote and keep a war powers effort at bay a week after Senate Republicans quashed a similar measure.

---GOP lawmakers denounce Trump’s threats to seize Greenland (1-7-26)

   “This is a topic that should be dropped," said Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker.

• Why Donald Trump Was Nominated by the Republicans (Alan Ware, Political Quarterly UK, 8-18, 2016)

     "Donald Trump’s selection by the Republican Party as its presidential candidate is one of the most controversial nominations in American electoral history. In living memory only the National Convention’s choice of Barry Goldwater in 1964 might conceivably rival it at the presidential level. Trump’s style, involving personal attacks on fellow candidates, not only alienated most of the Republican political elite but also exposed fissures in American society that all candidates are usually keen to ignore or attempt to discuss in banal terms. How could someone like Trump have ever become the nominee of a major party? The answer lies partly in the peculiarities of the Presidential candidate selection process and partly in fundamental developments affecting the Republican Party and the voting public at large....

   "All his rivals for the nomination believed for far too long that Trump could never be selected and therefore the last remaining alternative to Trump would inevitably become the nominee. For them the key to being selected was to remain in the race as long as their candidacy remained credible. This misjudgement meant that during the early stages of the primary campaign Trump benefitted from the persistence of a multi-candidate field. He could remain the leading candidate even though his supporters were then still only a minority of Republican voters. The longer that all but one other candidate remained in the race, the easier it was for Trump eventually to convert that minority base into a majority of Convention delegates."

These podcasts about book publishing, marketing, and the behind-the-scenes workings are listed in no particular order.

 

GENERAL DISCUSSIONS OF BOOK PUBLISHING
• Behind the Book Cover for "industry secrets" (Apple) Hosted by Anna David, this podcast shares behind-the-scenes insights/secrets from both traditional and independent publishing, featuring interviews with authors and industry experts.
• The Business of Content with Simon Owens How publishers create, distribute, and monetize their digital content (he's terrific)
• The Book Marketing Action Podcast Featuring "actionable promotion advice"
• Publishers Weekly podcasts  Several of them and they know what they're talking about.
• Writer, Writer Pants on Fire Host Mindy McGinnis interviews writers about craft, the agent hunt, query trenches, the publishing industry, and more.
• Writers, Ink Hosts J.D. Barker, J. Thorn, and Zach Bohannon interview authors for insight into the business of writing
• The Writing & Editing Podcast (YouTube)
• Print Run explores what it means to be a book worker and to explore the ways we can work together to create a more equitable industry that publishes better books. 
• Sell More Books Show with Bryan Cohen and H. Claire Taylor

 

DISCUSSIONS OF SELF-PUBLISHING:.
• Self-Publishing Authors (SPA Girls) podcast Discusses the pros and cons of different publishing platforms and distribution methods.
• Books, Blogs & Business Jewell Nicole's Book Marketing + Self-Publishing Tips

• Learn Self-Publishing  Co-hosted by Mark Dawson and James Blatch, covers the financial and marketing aspects of self-publishing. 

     Was Mark Dawson's Self Publishing Formula

 

DISCUSSIONS OF BUSINESS BOOKS 
• Steph's Business Bookshelf Podcast
• The Extraordinary Business Book Club (Alison Jones explores helping business owners, speakers, and experts write and publish a book to build their authority.)
• Books, Blogs, and Business

 

Tell me if anything is missing or is not very good.~ Your host, Pat McNees

      (whose supply of books exceeds her supply of other worldly goods and who originally worked in book publishing)