• 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.
• 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 the American people,” Bookbinder said.
Richard W. Painter, a professor at Minnesota Law who served as the chief ethics lawyer in the White House Counsel’s Office under President George W. Bush, told us that Trump’s ballroom fundraising crosses several ethical lines.
“First,” Painter said in an email, “this is use of public office for private gain in violation of federal ethics rules.” He cited the Code of Federal Regulations, which says government employees “may not use or permit the use of their Government position or title, or any authority associated with their public office, in a manner that is intended to coerce or induce another person, including a subordinate, to provide any benefit, financial or otherwise, to the employee.”
Painter also said the ballroom project raises a “problem under the Antideficiency Act.” The act “prohibits federal agencies from receiving voluntary services or other gifts from outside sources to ‘top off’ funds appropriated by Congress,” Painter explained.
• Trump has lowest 100-day approval rating in 80 years: POLL (Gary Langer ABC News, 4-27-25) Majorities of voters disapprove of many of Trump's policies, the poll found. Seventy-three percent said the economy is in bad shape, 53% said it's gotten worse since Trump took office and 41% said their own finances have worsened -- which is as many as those who said so under President Joe Biden last summer.
---Gallup will no longer measure presidential approval after 88 years (Dominick Mastrangelo, The Hill, 2-11-26) The previous low in approval for a president at or near 100 days in office was Trump's 42% in 2017. (Comment: Run and hide Gallup.....before Trump sues you, too.)
• The Big Lie: Nazi propaganda, Antisemitism, and the coming of the Third Reich (course at Wichita State University, Reestablishing Reality)
Holding on to a particular narrative is related to holding on to power. What truth do you accept?
After losing the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, Donald Trump spent months falsely claiming the election had been stolen from him. And despite all evidence to the contrary, many of his followers believe him (still).
The historical parallel to this conspiracy were Nazi efforts to blame Jews for German defeat in WWI. During the 1920s and 1930s, the Nazis fulminated against the Jewish ‘traitors’ and ‘November Criminals’ who supposedly ‘stabbed Germany in the back,’ and through such falsehoods, generated tremendous popular support. In both cases, propaganda was essential in magnifying dishonest claims. In exploring how the Nazis used ‘the Big Lie’ to gain support, this talk examines the role which propaganda and antisemitism played in the coming of the Third Reich, and the lessons which historical comparisons can provide for the present.
• Trump has lost the country (Ross Douthat, video, NY Times opinion, video) (Transcript)
Columnist Ross Douthat on “the truth that you won’t hear” when it comes to Trump’s vanishing coalition.
“The majority of voters believe the country is worse off today than it was a year ago.” “Approval rating at 37 percent, the lowest of his second term.”
From the first days of DOGE through the debacle in Minneapolis, the Trump administration has consistently governed as if swing voters aren’t part of its coalition. And now, guess what? They’re not.
“Republicans faced a major loss over the weekend, when Democrats were able to flip a reliably red State Senate seat.”But here’s the thing. It isn’t moderates and swing voters who lose out when the Trump administration becomes unpopular. It’s people on the right. People like me, and certainly people further to my right who support many of the things the Trump administration has tried to do, from securing the border to pressuring American institutions to become more ideologically diverse, to resetting and rolling back D.E.I.
All of that, all of that agenda will just disappear if the Republican Party can’t win elections. And it will disappear especially rapidly because it’s an agenda that has been pushed primarily through executive power, without congressional buy-in and support. In the long run, you just can’t have a transformative agenda, large or small, if you don’t keep moderates and the general public on your side.
• The One Tiny Problem With Trump’s Affordability Agenda (Rogé Karma, The Atlantic, 2-26) His proposals to lower prices are all more likely to raise them.
"Even in the one area in which Trump has notably succeeded at lowering some prices, he has still managed to make life less affordable overall. Last year, his administration announced a series of deals with pharmaceutical companies to lower prices of a few dozen drugs, including some eye-popping decreases of anywhere from 55 to 98 percent. But as with drug commercials, one must pay attention to the fine print. In order to qualify for the discounts, individuals must buy the drugs directly from the manufacturer through a government-run platform called TrumpRx and, crucially, cannot use insurance to do so, making the program basically irrelevant for 85 percent of Americans. (The order also claims that the new prices will be made available to “every State Medicaid program,” but there is no evidence that has happened or will.)
"These one-off deals haven’t altered the behavior of the pharmaceutical industry. Drug companies raised the prices of nearly 1,000 drugs at the beginning of this year, and the median overall increase, about 4 percent, was the exact same amount they raised prices by the prior year. The Trump administration has also handed them some major concessions. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act that Trump signed into law last year includes a provision that exempts or delays several drugs, including some of the most popular and expensive cancer medications, from having to participate in price negotiations through Medicare. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that taxpayers will pay $8.8 billion more over 10 years for these drugs relative to what they would have paid if negotiations had taken place on schedule."
• A sickening moral slum of an administration (George F. Will, Washington Post, 12-2-25)
Regarding Venezuela, Ukraine and much more, Trump and his acolytes are worse than simply incompetent.
According to the laws of war, survivors of a sunken ship cannot be attacked. If Trump is telling the truth about Hegseth, and Hegseth is telling the truth to Trump, it is strange that (per the Post report) the commander of the boat-destroying operation said he ordered the attack on the survivors to comply with Hegseth’s order.
• Vanity Fair Goes to the White House: Trump 2.0 Edition (Mark Guiducci, Vanity Fair, 12-16-25) “Is this the part where you say we’re all evil?” the vice president asked. (Sadly, VF doesn't share the article; you have to subscribe for a year to read it. First year, $1 a month.)
---https://www.threads.com/@thedailybeast/post/DSX-dflDmT6/media Daily Beast photo of the White House staff, on Threads, with the caption "Moment Trump goons realized Vanity Fair shoot was career suicide."
• Is it unkind to describe our president as a racist pig? (Robert Reich, 2-3-26)
His insults have become an odious staple of his presidency. You may remember his AI-generated video of himself as a fighter pilot dumping excrement on No Kings Day protesters. Or his AI-generated video of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries as mariachi performers. Or “an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King.”
• Trump’s New “Prison Camp” Threat Unleashes Fury Even in MAGA Country (Greg Sargent, Miller's Crossing, TNR, 2-4-26)
The next phase of ICE’s big ramp-up: a nationwide network of vast detention facilities. But guess what? Even parts of Red America are saying no.
Right now, more than 70,000 migrants are languishing in detention—a record—but the administration is running out of space. Add another 80,000 beds, and it would supercharge expulsion capacity. To put a ghoulish twist on the oft-discussed ideal of bureaucratic “capacity”...
When Stephen Miller offered his first big rollout of Donald Trump’s immigration agenda during the 2024 campaign, he demonstrated great enthusiasm for the idea of giant migrant camps. He gushed about creating “vast holding facilities” built on “open land,” which would enable Trump to escalate the volume and speed of deportations to unprecedented heights.
In "New Jersey, the Republican-dominated Roxbury Township Council, in slightly-Trump-leaning Morris County, recently voted unanimously to oppose ICE’s plans to buy a warehouse there, with some locals sharply protesting the scheme for humanitarian reasons. The Republican mayor of Oklahoma City came out against a proposed ICE warehouse, with the owner also nixing the sale. Officials in places like Kansas City, Missouri, and Salt Lake City, Utah, are also dead set against plans for ICE camps in their locales."
The pushback has come together surprisingly quickly. What explains this? A recent Pew Research poll finds that a huge majority of Americans oppose mass immigrant detention. Huge majorities are against keeping immigrants in detention while their cases are being decided. This is a decisive repudiation of a key pillar of MAGA ideology. Majorities oppose deporting longtime residents with jobs and no criminal record and view immigration as a positive good for the country.
And this was in his first term:
• Donald, This I Will Tell You (Maureen Dowd, Opinion, NY Times, 3-25-17)
[This was in his first term.]
You know how you said at campaign rallies that you did not like being identified as a politician? Don’t worry. No one will ever mistake you for a politician. After this past week, they won’t even mistake you for a top-notch negotiator.
Your whole campaign was mocking your rivals and the D.C. elite, jawing about how Americans had turned into losers, with our bad deals and open borders and the Obamacare “disaster.” ...
You dragged that motley skeleton crew into the White House and let them create a feuding, leaking, belligerent, conspiratorial, sycophantic atmosphere. Instead of a smooth, classy operator like James Baker, you have a Manichaean anarchist in Steve Bannon.
You knew the Republicans were full of hot air. Republicans have been running on repealing and replacing Obamacare for years and they never even bothered to come up with a valid alternative. And neither did you, despite all your promises to replace Obamacare with “something terrific” because you wanted everyone to be covered.
Instead, you sold the D.O.A. [dead on arrival] bill the Irish undertaker gave you as though it were a luxury condo, ignoring the fact that it was a cruel flimflam, a huge tax cut for the rich disguised as a health care bill. You were so concerned with the “win” that you forgot your “forgotten” Americans, the older, poorer people in rural areas who would be hurt by the bill.