Not magic dirt, not magic blood, but a magic idea

I finished the book An Equal Music by Vikram Seth. I read it because Michael, the main character, plays second violin in a string quartet that performs classical music – Haydn, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and such. Much of the setting is London. There are three primary threads to the story. The important one is life in a string quartet. What it’s like to rehearse, perform, and travel together. How to work out musical challenges. Working with a manager to get bookings. Another thread involves Julia. When Michael was a student in Vienna ten years ago he and Julia, a pianist, performed together and fell in love. But his relationship with his teacher soured and he returned to London and took too long to explain why to her. After a chance meeting in London he knows he’s still in love with her, but she now has a husband and son. The last thread is the quartet hires a pianist for a particular piece and discovers the pianist has gone deaf. The music is marvelous but they all have to adapt to visual cues rather than sonic ones. I quite enjoyed this one. The writing is beautiful and I appreciated all the musical references. That means if one isn’t a classical music fan a lot of terms won’t make sense. Jessica Huseman, in an article from more than a week ago for Votebeat posted on Daily Kos, reported that the nasty guy fired the two Democratic commissioners of the US Election Assistance Commission. The remaining Republican commissioner was allowed to resign. The other Republican commissioner had left earlier in the year to join the Heritage Foundation. There are supposed to be four members on the commission, two from each major party. Now there are none. The commission has workers that can keep current efforts going, but without people at the top it cannot take any official action. New members are nominated by the president and must be confirmed by the Senate.

The EAC was created by Congress after the 2000 election to help states improve election administration without federalizing elections. Its role is mostly supportive: distributing federal election funds, maintaining the national mail voter registration form, testing and certifying voting systems, and offering best practices and guidance to state and local election officials.

Yes, this firing happened just after the Supreme Court, in its Slaughter decision, granted the nasty guy the power to fire independent agencies simply because he wants to. An EAC that cannot act is also one that cannot alter voting registration and voting-system standards before the November midterms. Conor Murray of Forbes says that tarps have gone up around the North Portico of the White House. There is something about security upgrades to the White House front door that will take a couple months to complete. Or maybe the columns need repair. Or 150 year old paint needs to be removed. The White House is saying very little. That goes along with the helipad being built close to the south side. And the East Wing still showing little evidence of being turned into a ballroom.

$1.2 billion. That’s how much 18 major construction projects Trump launched across Washington, D.C., could cost, according to an estimate by the New York Times. It’s unclear how much of this is funded by taxpayers, but the Times reported a White House official suggested taxpayer money would be used for most of these projects.

David French, a columnist for the New York Times, tweeted (with a link to the full article):

Birthright citizenship is especially noxious to the populist right. They scorn it as relying on magic dirt — the idea that there is something inherent in American soil that makes a person an American citizen. Yet the same populists seem to believe in something like magic blood — that one’s lineage can make one superior. America doesn’t have magic dirt, and it certainly doesn’t have magic blood. But it does have a magic idea — the creed that declares “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Alix Breeden of Kos spoke with Brian Tyler Cohen, author of the new book The Day After: How to Wield Power in a Post-Trump World. Here’s some of what they talked about. The nasty guy gave a speech last week urging the Senate to pass his voter suppression bill he calls the Save America Act. As part of it he ranted again that the 2020 election was stolen. Cohen said this is laying the pretext that if Republicans lose the 2026 midterms he can claim they were stolen. Or ahead of time he can claim presidential powers to attempt to rig them. He’s doing this because Republicans are fully in control of the government and have failed to deliver on promises of lower costs, releasing Epstein file, starting no wars, and keeping prices down. He can’t credibly blame Democrats, though he is trying. The electorate was largely disillusioned with Democrats in 2024, which explains Republican gains. But Democrats are getting a second chance in 2026 because Republicans were “so focused on self enrichment and blind deference to Trump instead of delivering for their constituents” Democrats get a second chance. Republicans are tearing down the institutions of government. Democrats reflexively prop them up. But these institutions are part of the reason why Americans are struggling. Americans don’t want the institutions protected, they want them reformed to give them a better chance at life. Thankfully, the nasty guy got rid of the idea that institutions are sacrosanct. But he did it for self-enrichment. Democrats should not treat the institutions as sacrosanct, but should reform them to benefit those at the bottom. That means passing voting protections (including banning gerrymandering), taking serious action on climate change, and reforming the Supreme Court so they can’t veto what Democrats enact. In general, Democrats need a message that is more than being against the nasty guy. One way to do that is to urge the old timers who think they should die in office to step aside for younger people. Another is to create progressive media – Democrats had relied on mainstream media being liberal but the nasty guy is making them conservative. See CBS. Cohen believes there will be a world after the nasty guy. All of his cronies are also quite low in public opinion, especially the vice nasty. And the spirit of resistance (see No Kings protests) is still quite strong. Mark Kreidler, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Kos, reported that billionaires in California are spending big this election cycle, significantly bigger than before. Some of the reason is to defeat the one-time tax on their wealth. Some of it is to elect candidates who are favorable to unregulated AI and crypto. They donate to Republicans where they can and to business-friendly Democrats in races where Republicans don’t have a chance. A recent poll by NPR/PBS News/Marist shows the same thing as other polls back in 2023 have shown, that Americans love the idea of term limits in Congress. 80% to 90% want them. Andrew Mangan of Kos explains why term limits for Congress are a bad idea. Here are some of the reasons. Going back to 1975 American’s approval of Congress does not correlate with the average years of service of its members. Approval can fluctuate widely, average years of service fluctuates only a little bit. Yes, there are out-of-touch fossils (Grassley, Schumer). But being a member of Congress is a job and jobs take a while to learn and be good at. When a member is still new to the job (where “new” could be many years) they need to rely on experienced members and term limits would get rid of the experienced members. That means they would rely on lobbyists, the ones we don’t want them relying on. If a member knows their time is limited they have less of an incentive to learn the job, to delve into policy and procedures. Many of the most effective Democrats have been in Congress much longer than term limits would permit. Term limits appear to increase political polarization and to hamper economic growth. Enacting term limits would require changing the Constitution. Something just as effective to increase accountability and productivity with similarly high levels of public support is a lot easier to enact. That is to ban gerrymandering. Michigan enacted term limits many years ago. And, yup, the people who know how to make the legislature run are the lobbyists.

Democratic voters want someone as pissed off as they are

My Sunday movie was The Best Years of Out Lives, released in 1946. The story begins with three men on their way home from WWII, heading for the same city. Al had been in the Army, Fred an airplane bombardier, and Homer in the Navy. Homer had lost his hands in the war and has adapted pretty well to hooks as replacements. Al fits pretty well back into being a banker, though his seniors are concerned he’s giving too many loans to veterans through the GI Bill. He glad to return to his wife, daughter, and son. Before the war Fred was a soda jerk and his war experiences don’t translate to any other civilian jobs. He married his wife just before the war and she has come quite independent. They start to clash and he meets Al’s daughter. Homer had a steady girlfriend before the war. Now that he’s disabled he doesn’t want to burden her. The three have a lot to work out as they return to civilian life. According to IMDb trivia of the film:

The film deals with a hot-button issue of the aftermath of World War II: how to reincorporate traumatized war veterans into civilian life. The returning veterans of the film are struggling with PTSD-induced flashbacks to the war, alcoholism, life as amputees, and financial difficulties. They also struggle with finding jobs. A USAAF bombardier captain is reduced to working as a soda jerk, because he has no formal education or marketable skills. The film was reputedly inspired by a 1944 article of Time magazine about emotionally and financially struggling war veterans, who were facing constant hardships after being discharged.

Harold Russell, the guy who played Homer, actually did lose his hands in the war. He was spotted by the producer in an Army training video and given the part. The movie was made under the old Hollywood studio system and the bosses wanted Russel to have acting lessons. The director refused, preferring Russell’s natural talent. When the Academy Awards came around Russell was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. The Academy Board of Governors thought his chances of winning were low, so gave him an honorary award “for bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans through his appearance,” as recorded by IMDb. And then he won for Best Supporting Actor, the only actor to win two Oscars for the same role. The studio system had an unusual effect on the movie, according to IMDb. The character who played Al’s son concluded his studio contract after a couple early scenes were filmed. That contract was not renewed. So the lad doesn’t appear in the rest of the movie – the son disappears. I learned of this movie through the filmscore by Hugo Friedhofer. It probably showed up in a radio program devoted to filmscores. I have a CD of it and play it every so often. It’s good music – it won Best Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture. This is the first time I saw the movie. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos discussed what mainstream media got for bowing to the nasty guy. Short answer: Very little. Media has been propping up the nasty guy since 2015 with uncritical coverage. But since his second term started many are compromising their independence and try to appeal to his most ardent supporters. Yes, some of this is driven by the nasty guy suing news outlets if they say something he doesn’t like, but such cases would be dismissed if actually taken to court. The result is the outlets that compromised a lot, such as CBS, have lost their previous customers. They haven’t attracted nasty guy supporters because they already have conservative outlets such as Fox and Newsmax and have no need to switch to CBS. Even when a network promotes the nasty guy he still lashes out at their “fake news” and encourages his supporters to do the same. So for bowing to the nasty guy and his threats all they get is lower ratings. Willis reported that Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin got on Fox News to suggest immigrant women should be given a pregnancy screening. This is in response to the Supreme Court reaffirming birthright citizenship while conservatives still feel threatened by “birth tourism.” Mullin claimed travel in the last few months of pregnancy could be a health issue.

Neither Mullin nor the Fox panel explained how pregnancy would be determined. Would women have to be subjected to a pregnancy test before boarding a plane? Or would other, more invasive techniques be used?

Jenae Barnes started an article for The 19th posted on Kos with:

Anti-abortion advocates, including Republican lawmakers and state officials, want the EPA to review mifepristone as a water contaminant. Scientists say there’s no evidence it harms the environment or people. While there is no scientific evidence that abortion medication is contaminating Americans’ water supply, it has nonetheless become a central claim by the anti-abortion movement. Activists, Instagram influencers and Republican Party officials — including state and federal lawmakers — are doubling down on what experts describe as a disinformation campaign that mixes environmental policy and reproductive rights, and risks exploiting legitimate concerns about clean water.

The claim has been around for decades. It says mifepristone pollutes the water and puts the health of pregnant people at risk.

Environmental health experts dismiss these claims. These experts consistently point out that there is no scientific basis for treating mifepristone or other abortion medication as a water contaminant.

Experts point out that a small number of women take one dose compared to many other drugs taken far more frequently by a much larger number of people. The Environmental Protection Agency (at least under responsible presidents) has screened 700 medications for potential water contamination concerns. Mifepristone was not one of them. What this is really about is attempting to restrict abortion access. The claim distracts from actual pollution threats, such as PFAS chemicals. As for that birthright citizenship case, Kos of Kos wrote about conservatives who have spoken against the ruling. He ended with:

It’s especially rich to call faithfully reading the Constitution “lawless.” If the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment intended something different, they could have written something different. It’s crazy. Conservatives have spent decades attacking the idea of a “living Constitution,” arguing that judges shouldn’t reinterpret the Constitution to fit changing times but should instead follow the text as originally understood. Now they’re asking judges to disregard the plain language of the 14th Amendment because the modern world has produced outcomes they don’t like. That’s not originalism. It’s outcome-based jurisprudence.

Willis wrote about why Republicans hate the Constitution as part of his series on Explaining the Right. He begins with:

The right has spent decades associating itself with traditional imagery of the Constitution. That means years and years of Revolutionary War cosplay, references to the “original intent” of the Constitution, and right-wing figures claiming to be the last remaining defenders of constitutional order. But it’s all a lie.

Willis then gives many examples of the cosplay and the hatred that started well before the nasty guy. And the main point:

When it comes to the right and constitutional law, what matters is not the document they purport to revere, but rather the pursuit of power. ... The right’s actions show that securing, increasing, and attaining their own political power is more important than sticking to principles and tradition.

In Saturday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark discussing why Democratic Socialist candidates are winning. And the reason is simple.

DSA candidates are seizing on voters’ primal scream for Democrats to Do Something. In this climate, one of the worst things a candidate can do is act like these are normal times. Democratic voters want someone who seems as pissed off as they are and who is focused on fixing the problems that impact their material well-being.

Matt Royer tweeted a response to a tweet from Homeland Security that uses the words of Theodore Roosevelt to condemn immigration. Royer says they left out the following sentence from a speech in 1915. What Homeland Security tweeted:

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism... Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance.

The rest of the quote:

But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else. ... any discrimination against aliens is a wrong.

The American anniversary festivities were set up by Congress into the organization America 250. The nasty guy seems to have sidelines the official group, at least in DC, with his Freedom 250 organization. MSNOW reported:

Most notably, the authors of the report — Democrats on the Natural Resources Committee — raise questions about whether Freedom 250’s fundraising practices could amount to “potential wire fraud and charitable solicitation fraud.”

I’m not at all surprised. Ronald Brownstein quoted some nasty guy officials claiming Gen Z people don’t have real jobs, which is why they complain that everything is so expensive. Brownstein replied:

Yes the reason young people are not getting ahead, or reaching life milestones nearly as fast as their parents, is because there is a massive epidemic of sloth. No structural headwinds-just personal failure. Great messaging strategy as Gen Z reaches 1/6 of eligible voters in 2028.

Laziness has been a messaging strategy of Republicans ever since Reagan and the welfare queens. Down in the comments exlrrp posted a tweet from Robert Reich:

Just one day before he announced a 90-day pause on his sweeping tariffs, Trump’s investment accounts made stock purchase worth as much as $12.8 million. Then when Trump announced the pause, the S&P soared nearly 10% -- one of the biggest single-day gains in the index’s history. Trump pulled in at least $2.2 billion last year through schemes like this plus his crypto business. How are you doing?

A meme posted by exlrrp has the caption under a chart, “Here’s how many stock trades each president made during their term. Notice anything?” The chart shows Clinton: 0, GW Bush: 0, Obama: 0, Trump 1: 50, Biden: 0, Trump 2 (so far): 3642. By may quick calculations that’s 9-10 trades a day (excluding weekends). That sounds more like a day trader than an occupant of the Oval Office. In Sunday’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times.

As much as nationalists today imagine a whites-only world in 1776, that was the leadership, not the people. A fifth of Americans in the revolutionary era were Black — most held in slavery in the South, but still there. What would bind our nation together, sort of, eventually, was not race or faith, but the words on this document. “Certain nations are grounded in ethnicity or common religion, or a common language,” said Slauter. “But that has never been true of the United States. From the beginning it is a nation bound together by documents. Ink on paper is the medium of the United States.” That is really what we are celebrating on the 4th. A written promise. A check to be cashed. Not an end result — Americans had five years of bloody battle ahead of them before victory at Yorktown.

In the comments exlrrp included a tweet from The Politburo discussing the DC fireworks delayed by weather:

A bombastic display so ill conceived and delayed to placate his fragile ego until 1 in the morning on the 5th, the 850k fireworks vastly outnumbered the spectators and created so much smoke and haze to obscure itself. The obvious end to this poorly executed celebration.

In today’s roundup Dworkin included a tweet by Barry Malone that includes a photo taken by Cheney Orr. It shows the inside of a Washington Metro car packed with members of the Patriot Front (a white nationalist group) with shirts and caps with patches and faces wrapped in white – and one lone black person. Dworkin then quoted a thread by Adam Cochrane posted on Threadreader. I went to the whole thread that discusses far right groups grooming young converts.

They give them scholarships, internships, references and all kinds of support to help up their pedigree while exposing them to their specific school of thought. Then through donor networks, they call in favors to get these individuals placed as staffers on the hill. Young Republican staffers have a higher concentration of extremist views tied to lobbying groups and thinktanks than ever before. You can see it in office decorations and comms accounts, countless subtle callouts to white nationalist movements. And many times, this is all entirely unknown to the Congressional representative. These staffers don't really report in to the Congress person. They answer to a now indoctrinated ideology from their lobbying group - often with their own handler. The reason the Patriot Front wears masks isn't because they fear losing their jobs. It's because lobbying groups know if you knew what percentage of them were staffers, you'd realize just how deeply compromised the government is.

This is how they can quickly get 400 Patriot Front members to a protest. Dworkin quoted a tweet by Jonathan Martin:

There’s a growing recognition that the country’s soaring concentration of wealth and declining social mobility can’t be separated from America’s civic ills. Democrats as different as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, potential presidential candidates from opposing factions and generations, both say as much. “Economic instability and the collapse of democracy are intertwined,” Ocasio-Cortez recently told MSNOW’s Jen Psaki. “The moment the American dream became unaffordable, American democracy became unstable,” Emanuel has said for months as he scampers around the country, proposing a roster of targeted reforms on healthcare, education, housing and retirement.

A tortured bad-faith reading of the Constitution

I had lunch today with my friend and debate partner. He opened with a debate he had with others. He and they rejected tomorrow as the founding of the country because in 1776 we were just a bunch of argumentative colonies, not a united country. So when can we claim the start of America the country? How many states were needed to ratify the Constitution? Yeah, the version with the Bill of Rights. Three-quarters of the original colonies? Two-thirds? So I looked it up. New Hampshire was ninth when it ratified the Constitution on June 21, 1788. Virginia was tenth four days later on June 25, 1788. That was enough for either threshold. Rhode Island, the last, didn’t get to it until May 29, 1790, well after George Washington started his term as president on April 30, 1789. The Supreme Court ended its term and released its rulings on some big cases. A week ago Thursday Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported the Court was very good at supporting the nasty guy’s racism. Which means non-white immigrants will get the shaft. The decisions were: First, remove due process protections for green card holders. That will lead to deporting people who have come legally. Second allow the elimination of a way to apply for asylum. Refusing entry for people fleeing for their lives (which is why they are seeking asylum) is just cruel. Third, allow the nasty guy to eliminate Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians. TPS for these countries was set up because the countries are not safe and they aren’t any safer now than when TPS was granted. And Venezuela, likely next on the nasty guy’s list, just suffered a double earthquake that has killed at least 2,500 people. Needham wrote on the Mullin v. Al Otro Lado decision about asylum claims (though it could apply to all three) written by Justice Alito:

In the ruling, Justice Samuel Alito goes through a tortured bad-faith reading of immigration statutes to get to his decision that the administration doesn’t need to process asylum claims if it doesn’t feel like it.

In this case Alito wrote that an asylum seeker must actually enter the US and if a US agent prevents them from stepping a foot across the border, oh well, too bad.

On its face, this is a dispute about how to interpret statutes. In reality, it means that the United States is free to refuse to ever let anyone apply for asylum for any reason—which was always the goal of the Trump administration. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor points out in her dissent, this is an abandonment of the policies adopted by the United States and other countries following World War II.

Needham points out additional ways all three rulings are absurd. Alito had a goal in mind and reasoned his way to it no matter what law or the Constitution says.

It’s all disingenuous bigotry dressed up as even-handed, rational, sober-minded statutory interpretation. But it’s anything but. This is straight-up racism—and under this Supreme Court, it’s increasingly the law of the land.

Needham and colleague Alix Breeden review the TPS and asylum cases in more detail. They first give the legal view, then the human impact. In addition to tossing out a lot of Haitians and Syrians, on which many companies such as nursing homes depend, the ruling allows the nasty guy to end TPS for several other countries. On Tuesday this week Needham wrote about a couple more rulings by the Supremes. These two cases are about whether the nasty guy has the ability to fire at will the heads of agencies that Congress set up to be independent of the president. One case is about the Federal Reserve, the other about all the other agencies. For all the other agencies the ruling, written by John Roberts, says the nasty guy is free to fire who he wants to without supplying a reason. For the Federal Reserve Roberts said it is special and the nasty guy must show cause before firing.

Why is the Federal Reserve special here? You won’t find a genuine answer in the opinions, both of which are written by Chief Justice John Roberts. It’s honestly nothing more complicated than that Roberts is perfectly thrilled to give the most worm-brained toddler of a president free rein to remake the administrative state in his image, but not to give the most worm-brained toddler free rein to destabilize monetary policy. Gotta know what’s really important here.

The nasty guy certainly shouldn’t be allowed to destabilize the economies of the billionaires that give so lavishly to the Court’s conservative members. Of course, the nasty guy shouldn’t want his billionaire donors to be destabilized, but his thinking probably isn’t rational.

How does Roberts square this? He doesn’t, really. And why should he? This isn’t about what the law actually is. It’s what Trump and Roberts want the law to be.

The ruling says that though the Constitution gives Congress the power create independent agencies, that really isn’t true. The Court is simply restoring balance. Which means:

Indeed, that’s exactly what Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out in her dissent: “Today, this Court undoes centuries of political practice and concludes that all three branches of Government have been acting in open defiance of the Constitution all this time.”

I’m sure Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson are getting mighty tired that a major portion of their job is to call out the BS of the six conservatives.

What Trump now gets is nothing less than a return to the spoils system, where the whole of federal jobs are filled with allies, cronies, and failsons and faildaughters who need jobs, regardless of any actual qualifications.

As for the Federal Reserve and the nasty guy’s target Lisa Cook, the ruling says he can’t simply fire her. But the ruling does not say in any detail what he does have to do to legally get rid of her. The big case before the court was whether the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees whether a person born in America is a citizen of America. Kos of Kos wrote the ruling by the Court looked at the plain reading of the Amendment and said, yes, that’s what it says. But the decision was not unanimous. That’s scary. Kos quoted Alito’s dissent, in which Alito described a case of birth tourism in which the baby grows up to plot against the US. Then Kos wrote Alito’s argument is about policy, wishing the Amendment was written differently than the way it was. The Constitution asks whether they were born here, not whether they’re patriotic. The First Amendment says Americans are free to hate their government. If someone plots against the country, that’s what intelligence and law enforcement are for. And Alito’s hypothetical hasn’t “posed the constitutional crisis he imagines during the 158 years since the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified.”

What makes Alito’s dissent so striking isn’t simply that he reaches a different conclusion. It’s that he barely attempts a textual defense at all. His objection is that the Constitution produces a result he finds unacceptable. That’s a perfectly legitimate argument for amending the Constitution. It’s a terrible argument for pretending the Constitution already says something else. Every day, this hyper-partisan, hyper-ideological court proves that it has lost the moral authority that should accompany its constitutional role. More than ever, it is in dire need of reform.

The number of views this blog got in June didn’t quite top that of May, though for much of the month it looked likely. The number of views in May, not quite doubling the previous monthly record, was 313,818. For June the total was 298011. For three weeks in June the daily number of views was mostly near or above 12,000 with some days going up to 20,000. Then in the last week the daily number of views dropped to 2,000 and went down from there to about 1,200. I have no idea why there was a dropoff.

The responsible actor in contrast to the infantilized giant

This week the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the nasty guy’s attempt to rewrite the 14th Amendment to make birthright citizenship unavailable to children of immigrants. Part of the attempt is to eliminate birth tourism, in which a mother comes to the US primarily to give birth here so the child will be a citizen. Part of the attempt is he just doesn’t like people of color. On Tuesday Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reviewed how this case came about. Part of her focus is the white supremacists who developed the argument the nasty guy is using. On Wednesday Needham summarized how the oral arguments went. Before she got into that she noted the nasty guy attended the arguments, the first Oval Office occupant to sit in the Supreme Court chamber while arguments were heard. Perhaps he was trying to glare his appointees into submission. He left after his side of the case was presented so didn’t hear much of the other side, which was much better prepared. The nasty guy’s side was presented by Solicitor General John Sauer. He had a hard time answering questions from the Justices. Jackson: Do parents need to have citizen documents in the birthing room? Gorsuch: Do Native American children get automatic citizenship? Barrett: What if you don’t know who the parents are? Kavanaugh: Why consider whether other countries have birthright citizenship? – Sauer had claimed there weren’t any others when there are 32. While the final decision may not match the questions asked in oral arguments, this does not look good for the nasty guy’s position, which is good for the country. Given the rage tweeting afterward the nasty guy has the same opinion. Two weeks ago Mark Kreidler, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Kos, reported that Washington state passed a millionaire tax. It will go into effect in 2028 and will tax income above $1 million at a 9.9% rate. The tax will affect about 20,000 households or less than 0.5% of them. One reason for doing it is Washington relies on sales and business taxes, rather than income taxes, making it one of the most regressive in the country – the tax hits hardest on those least able to pay it. That system may have been great when the economy was based on timber and apples. But it is now based on defense contractors and tech giants. The advocates for the bill include Patriotic Millionaires, based in DC. Chuck Collins is one of their founders. They advocate for tax reform because the wealthy pay so little. The group is concentrating on the states because there is no action at the federal level. Massachusetts passed a wealth tax in 2023. New Jersey has had one since 2020 and Minnesota since 2024. California may vote on one this fall. Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Michigan, New York and Rhode Island are all debating a wealth tax. Data from Massachusetts shows a wealth tax does not drive the rich to move to other states, as is frequently claimed. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Paul Waldman, writing for his Substack.

Last weekend, Yonatan Touval wrote an essay in the New York Times with an explanation for the American and Israeli governments’ apparent failure to consider that if they attacked Iran, the Iranians might, you know, do things in response, making choices colored by their history, their beliefs, their culture, and their politics. “Our leaders preside over an extraordinary machinery of destruction, but they remain strikingly obtuse about human beings — about their pride, shame, convictions and historical memory,” Touval wrote. Donald Trump in particular is incapable of empathy, the capacity to see the world from the perspective of someone else, even only for a moment. Some responded to Touval’s essay by saying Trump has no theory of mind, no capacity to imagine how someone else thinks and makes decisions. But that’s not quite true. He has a theory, it’s just that it’s one in which all other minds exist only to regard him with awe. Everyone is a member of the his audience, watching him and reading about him and shaking our heads in wonder at him. You can see it in Trump’s obsession with the gaze of the crowd, which has gripped him all his life. The true measure of a person, an action, or an event, he believes, is that it is seen, and by how many. And the highest compliment one can pay, the greatest superlative imaginable, is that the crowd will say “We’ve never seen anything like it before.”

I note the emphasis on seen. Both the nasty guy and Pete Hegseth (and I’m sure many others) put their emphasis on being seen as smart, handsome, manly, and in power. They really don’t care whether they actually are any of those. The title of David Mastio’s article in the Kansas City Star is enough: “Pam Bondi was the best attorney general we’re going to get from Trump.” A tweet from PaulleyTicks plays on the old Star Trek idea that in a bad situation the characters wearing the red shirts are the one who will get injured or killed. This meme shows the nasty guy talking to Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth, who are both wearing Star Trek style red shirts – and, goodness, the sweat stains. In the comments exlrrp posted a cartoon by Winters showing men in a military aircraft:

Soldier: Where are we heading, Sarge? Sarge: Not sure. But @DonnieJunior just made a $150M Polymarket bet on Kharg Island beachfront futures.

A cartoon posted by paulpro and created by Daniel Medina shows Jesus talking for today’s world: “Blessed are the meek... Care for the poor... House the homeless... Feed the hungry... Love the immigrant and refugee for I was one, too.” A MAGA man: “Crucify him!” In the roundup for Tuesday, March 24, Chitown Kev quoted Andrea Rizzi of El País in English discussing American geopilitical suicide.

The first fundamental aspect of the self-inflicted blow to U.S. primacy is the destruction of the formidable network of alliances that Washington built, with bipartisan consensus, across the globe over eight decades. No ally trusts the White House anymore. Many are putting on a brave face for fear of suddenly being left without support—but all are organizing themselves to never again be so dependent on the U.S. In public, many leaders are opting for restraint, but in private, this writer has heard significant remarks that attest to an extraordinary level of distrust toward Washington from nominally pro-American sectors. The underlying logic is that the risks of dependence on Washington must be reduced, just as they must be with China, in a striking political equation. [...] The second crucial aspect is the devastation of the globalized economic system that has underpinned U.S. hegemony. It is true that, in recent decades, this foundation has allowed China to achieve astonishing growth by exploiting weaknesses in the system. But Washington’s furious assault shows no sign of correcting this situation. Instead, it produces damaging side effects for Washington, fostering distrust and disaffection that extend across the entire spectrum of the economic sphere. While some have caved in with unfavorable agreements and promises of investment, the reality is that everyone is now distrustful. And this is bad news. Because while Trump is obsessed with the manufacturing deficit, the U.S. was able to consolidate an impressive dominance in the services sector within that system. [...] The third aspect of this self-inflicted damage is the abandonment of an international order that the U.S. helped build more than any other nation. It is no coincidence that Republican and Democratic administrations, despite their differing sensibilities, agreed on the construction and maintenance of this project. It wasn’t due to a lack of vision, nor to the misguided concept of benign hegemony; it was because it benefited the U.S. Kennedy and Nixon, Reagan and Obama understood this. There must have been a reason. Now, its withdrawal from the system is causing a dangerous atrophy of many institutions. Some are becoming completely irrelevant. But the U.S. retreat also opens the door for others to build other things, for others to influence the development of initiatives while the White House is on its way out. China is seizing every opportunity to position itself as the responsible actor in contrast to the infantilized giant.

Krugman reminds us that the Strait of Hormuz is not the only important choke point in the world economy. Here are more: China could attack Taiwan, where 60% of all computer chips and 90% of advanced chips are created. North Korea could attack the South, a major exporter of memory chips. A dispute between the Netherlands government and Chinese chip company Nexperia could damage auto production around the world. India is a major exporter of vaccines. China is the largest source of rare earth elements needed in electronics. Over 40 years that global interdependence worked (though not perfectly) because the US supported it. And now the guy in charge is erratic.

A problem so consequential that his usual tricks don’t work

In the January/February 2026 edition of Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine Richard Lovett contributed an Alternate View column to explore an aspect of scientific research not usually reported in the news. This article is titled “AIs Unexpected Ability to Get You Out of the Rabbit Hole.” It is not online. It is based on an article in Science by Thomas Costello, Gordon Pennycock, and David Rand. What that means is for that annoying relative or friend stuck in MAGA world AI offers a way out. Yes, AI can do some good. The way it works is the annoying relative accesses this AI, then is prompted to start discussing favorite conspiracy theories. The AI, in a polite manner, is able to supply evidence to refute each claim. An example Lovett included is the claim that the collapse of the World Trade Center towers in the 9/11 attack must have been an inside job because steel melts at 1500C and jet fuel burns at 1000C. The AI responds by saying steel loses half its strength at 500C. These counter arguments are effective where humans are not because the AI has access to a lot more factual information than any concerned family member can hold in their head and the AI can use that info in a much more appropriate time than most humans could. Because it can respond to specific conspiracy claims it can prompt the wayward person to reconsider their beliefs, or at least reduce their certainty in them. The research shows those changed beliefs don’t revert when the AI is turned off or during the next week or month. Those changed views seem to be permanent. The Sunday, March 29 edition of the Detroit Free Press featured an interview with Ted Tremper in the Entertainment section. The interview is behind their paywall. He is a producer of the new documentary The AI DOC, or How I Became an Apocaloptimist. A reason for the film is that one group of people says AI is wonderful and will lead to humanity’s utopia and another group says AI is horrible and will lead to the extinction of humanity. Both sides attempt to drown out the other. But the film says both are right. AI can create great benefits for us and AI can be deadly for us. We have to give both voices a chance to be heard, then we have to take steps to encourage the good stuff and discourage or prevent that bad stuff. If we don’t we’ll be left with the AI leaders trumpeting the benefits of AI as they use it to cement their position at the top to the detriment of the rest of us. Artemis II has blasted off from Florida and has boosted its rockets to head to the moon! Alas, it will only loop around the moon before heading home. Even so, as in Apollo 8, this is a necessary step. An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos has details of the mission. As a lad who watched the Apollo moon missions half a century ago I’m pleased we’re going back. We’ve been away too long. I’ve got some articles about the war against Iran that have been in my browser tabs for a wile. I don’t think they’re out of date, even though the nasty guy seems to change his pronouncements every fifteen minutes. On Saturday, March 21, three weeks into the war (we’re almost five weeks in), Kos of Kos wrote:

You’ve gotta be f’n kidding me. President Donald Trump has roiled the world economy, driven gas prices and inflation higher, killed over 1,000 Iranians, lost 13 Americans, and could cost taxpayers $200 billion. And his administration’s big solution to end the war? A literal cut and paste of the deal that President Barack Obama made with Iran. “Any deal to end the war would need to include the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, address Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium, and also establish a long-term agreement on Iran's nuclear program, ballistic missiles and support for proxies in the region,” reported Axios. If only Trump hadn’t torn up the original deal, he wouldn’t have blundered into this idiotic war of choice.

I have no idea of the state of that deal two weeks later. On Friday, March 20, Emily Singer of Kos reported the results of the Qatari royal family’s gift of a $400 million jet to the nasty guy.

In exchange, Qatar got a pledge from Trump that the United States would come to the Arab nation's defense should it find itself under attack. But instead of being protected from attacks, Qatar is instead being attacked as a consequence of the ill-planned war Trump launched against Iran.

Because of the Qataris aligning themselves to the nasty guy the Iranians struck their largest liquefied natural gas facility, knocking out 17% of the facility’s export capacity, costing Qatar up to $20 billion in lost revenue. That may cause the Qatari economy to shrink by 9% this year. Yeah, the Qataris are pissed that the nasty guy ignored their warnings and bribe. They learned that aligning with a corrupt leader may not protect them from his cruelty and destruction. Again on March 21 Kos wrote:

But with Iran, he’s finally created a problem so big, so consequential, that his usual tricks don’t work. He can’t bluff his way out of it. He can’t tweet it away. He can’t bully reality into submission. He can’t bury it in lawsuits. This is a real crisis with real consequences, and he’s stuck with it. Trump is isolated, harming the global economy, without allies, all while undermining the rules-based order that delivered decades of prosperity and operating without even the pretense of an endgame in Iran. That Iran-fueled fracture isn’t theoretical—it’s happening in real time.

Kos then offers more than a half dozen examples, with the top of the list being Marjorie Taylor Greene’s criticism of him. Nicholas Kusnetz and Georgina Gustin, in an article for Inside Climate News posted on Kos, discussed how China has been developing its wind and solar energy and stockpiling crude oil so that it is shielded from some of damage of the oil blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. It is more vulnerable to natural gas as it doesn’t have a stockpile. This shows how deliberately China is preparing for a time when energy security and geopolitics are intertwined. And because China has worked to be self-sufficient it’s companies are now global leaders in green technologies. As other countries are hit by high oil prices they are turning to China’s expertise. Oliver Willis of Kos reported:

Billionaire Republican megadonor Peter Thiel is receiving international criticism, including from members of the Catholic clergy, for promoting his belief that the arrival of the Antichrist is near. The Antichrist is a figure in Christianity who has traditionally been seen as a herald of the end of the world and who operates in direct opposition to Jesus Christ.

Though not stated in this article this ties into comments by Pete Hegseth and some of the military generals who believe this war in Iran is part of the chain of events that will bring about those end times. On March 20 Danny (Dennis) Citrinowicz tweeted comments on the talk the nasty guy might take Kharg Island, through which 90% of Iran’s oil is transported, to force the opening of the Strait of Hormuz. But the attempt is a misunderstanding of Iran’s strategic doctrine.

Under pressure, Iran is more likely to escalate than concede. Reopening the Strait would likely require one of two extreme options: either regime change, or a large-scale military campaign to seize and secure the waterway. Such an operation would take months and still wouldn’t prevent Iran from disrupting traffic through asymmetric means. There is no silver bullet to the Iran problem. The regime will hold onto Hormuz the same way it defends every pillar of its survival—with persistence and escalation. If reopening the Strait is the strategic objective, policymakers should recognize the cost: a prolonged, high-intensity conflict, and likely retaliation against Gulf energy infrastructure.

On Monday, March 23 Singer wonders if the nasty guy is tweeting about various aspects of the war to manipulate the stock market. Over the previous weekend he tweeted that his conversations with Iran are productive and he presented an ultimatum that Iran would concede to his demands or he will hit their infrastructure.

It sure is curious how all of Trump's comments making it seem like the war is coming to a close happen when the markets are opening, and escalations of the war on Iran tend to happen when markets are closed. Despite having been made fools of by Trump chickening out in the past, traders ate up his comments. The post caused the price of oil to fall over 10% and led the stock market to rise 2% when it opened Monday morning. Of course, almost immediately after, Iranian state media said there were no talks with Trump. And an Israeli security official—which is the U.S.’s primary ally in the war—told Sky News that they believed Trump's comments were an effort to manipulate the markets. Not mincing words!

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Nicholas Grossman of MSNOW discussing the war.

Iran might not want to end the war yet. It can’t trust Trump to honor any agreement, since in his first term he broke the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the “Iran nuclear deal”) without cause, and he started this war while U.S. and Iranian representatives were negotiating. Iran’s rulers can’t be confident that the U.S. and Israel won’t pocket any gains and attack again later. That gives Iran an incentive to impose sustained economic pain, establishing a deterrent the U.S. can’t shrug off.

Ruchi Kumar of WIRED discussed a problem in the global shipping system. Because of the closure of the Strait some shipping companies are abandoning their ships. And, it seems, abandoning their crews. In the first comment The Geogre discussed the hearing before the Supreme Court yesterday about the nasty guy’s reinterpretation of the 14th Amendment’s granting of birthright citizenship. It’s a long comment, so I’ll let you read it. I mention it partly because a few other things are related. Michael Dorf tweeted:

Don't get me wrong: I'm relieved that this case is shaping up as either 8-1 or 7-2 against the Trump executive order. But the case is a gift to the Supreme Court. By rejecting an outlandish position, it will earn credibility as apolitical, even as the Overton window moves far to the right.

Stephen Wolf responded:

This. The court may even pair the release of the ruling in favor of birthright citizenship with the one gutting the Voting Rights Act, and the usual suspects will proclaim it’s a sign of moderation.

Every so often Brother will comment to something I write or say by asking whether I’ve heard about the Mud Sill theory. In a comment further down The Geogre says arguments by the nasty guy’s lawyer are similar to the Mud Sill Speech, which he quoted. Here’s part of it.

In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement. It constitutes the very mud-sill of society and of political government; and you might as well attempt to build a house in the air, as to build either the one or the other, except on this mud-sill.

Both Brother and I see this as an attempt by rich people to declare their oppression of poor people – including the necessity of keeping them poor – is vital for (their version of) society to work. A tweet by The United States versus Elon R. Musk also commented on the case:

The Trump administration is literally arguing the winning argument in Dred Scott. I hate it here.

The myth of the self-reliant, salt-of-the-earth American

Last Thursday Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had instituted a policy that any departmental expense greater than $100,000 required her approval. That meant FEMA could not do its usual pre-positioning of its Search and Rescue crews ahead of the central Texas floods. The floods happened on a Friday and Noem didn’t give her approval until the following Monday. A DHS tweet bragged that by Tuesday FEMA had deployed 311 staffers to help with state-led rescue efforts. On Thursday Noem was on “Fox & Friends” and declared CNN’s reporting of the delay was fake news. Abrahm Lustgarten, in an article for ProPublica posted on Kos, discussed the flooding and said things will get worse. The effects of global warming are just getting started. Each small increase in average temperature means a large increase in the amount of water the atmosphere can hold, leading to a large increase in the destructiveness of the storms when that water is released. Lustgarten wrote that President Lyndon Johnson was briefed about the coming climate crisis way back in 1965. Here we are ten presidents later still discussing the problem and doing very little about it. And the current guy in the Oval Office has revoked funding for data collection and research into what the climate is doing. Kos of Kos wrote another article on a topic I’ve written about a few times.

One of the most enduring conservative myths is that of the self-reliant, salt-of-the-earth, rural-dwelling American who pulls himself up by his bootstraps, wrestles a steer before breakfast, and builds his own house out of patriotism and chewing tobacco because, by god, they sure do love America! If that were ever true, it hasn’t been for a while. These days, rural America is largely dependent on the federal government it claims to hate. In fact, far from self-reliant, rural America is subsidized by blue states. And it’s not even close.

Kos discussed several of the government programs rural areas depend on because so many young people have fled to the cities over the decades. The big ones are, of course, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Government benefits are a good thing, so none of this is inherently bad, per se. But it does mean those rural areas are dependent on the very social safety net that Republicans are gleefully hacking apart with their cuts on Medicaid, food assistance, and the like. They’re also poorer than expensive urban regions, so they rely more on federal food assistance to eat. But hey, that’s what these voters asked for. Rural areas lean heavily Republican, and farming-dependent counties voted for Trump at an eye-popping average of 78%.

George B. Sánchez-Tello, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Kos, reported on ICE and Border Patrol agents at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. The park is in an area where a lot of people from Central and South America live and it has a lively scene. The agents thought the could sweep through the park and easily make their quota for the day. But the park was nearly silent.

The previous day, warnings appeared — single sheets of paper taped to light poles, trees and fences around the park — warning locals to stay away. They cited rumors of possible ICE raids at MacArthur Park. Word also spread on Instagram, as well as other social media apps such as Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp.

The park wasn’t completely empty. Local Spanish-language television crews were ready to film. Photographers from various newspapers were there. Dozens of organizers from anti-ICE rapid response teams and legal observers there there too, some using megaphones to warn people to stay away and to tell people their rights. By the time the agents had completed their sweep across the park they were surrounded by hundreds of people. Some yelled, “ICE out of L.A!” Many recorded the confrontation on their phone, livestreaming straight to social media. The agents retreated without making any arrests. Normal life in the park resumed. Signs had been taped to poles in the park:

Military Members Is this what you signed up for? Will you feel proud about what you’re being ordered to do when you look back on it? If you have concerns about mobilizing against civilians, you’re not alone. You have options. You have rights.

Lisa Needhan of Kos discussed the legal challenge to the nasty guy’s executive order banning birthright citizenship when parents are undocumented. The Supreme Court had ruled that lower courts (I think there were three of them) could not place a nationwide injunction against the EO without a class action suit. The previous injunctions were not based on class action cases. So the ACLU filed a class action case, covering the nation. And Federal District Judge Joseph Laplante quickly certified the case as one for a class of plaintiffs and issued a nationwide injunction. Isn’t that what the Supremes told him to do? Well, certifying a case as covering a nationwide class has rules that must be scrupulously followed. These rules take time. And Laplante couldn’t possibly have followed all the rules so scrupulously in so little time. Of course, it was Justice Alito that wagged that finger.

Getting nationwide relief this way is complicated, but it’s necessary. The plaintiffs are fighting the Trump administration, but lower court judges have also found themselves locked in a battle with a lawless Supreme Court, which essentially decided that lower courts are enemies who must be stopped from thwarting Trump. But the lower courts are the ones that are following the rule of law. Someone’s got to.

Oliver Willis of Kos wrote the nasty guy ranted on Truth Social that his base should not be criticizing AG Pam Bondi about the Jeffrey Epstein case. One reason is, contrary to claims the files don’t exist, the nasty guy claimed they were “written” by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. So his base should not waste their time on Epstein, “somebody that nobody cares about.” That Truth Social post brought out something quite rare – many more negative responses than positive. The base was not pleased. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Heather Digby Parton of Salon:

The appointment of Patel and Bongino — as well as Bondi, who jumped into pursuing the scandal with both feet, promising far-right influencers that she was personally overseeing the investigation — made MAGA true believers believe they were about to get their hands on what Glenn Beck called “the Rosetta Stone of public trust.” These new appointees were the very ones who had been chasing this scandal for years, and they were now in a position to blow the lid off the whole thing. All those who had mocked the MAGA movement as kooks would soon be proven fools. The Justice Department’s memo was a slap in the face to the MAGA faithful. They were stunned. And when Trump rudely dismissed their concerns in a cabinet meeting and then admonished them on Truth Social in a long rant blaming former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, demanding that his followers focus on the scandals he wants them to focus on, the crushing betrayal was personal. Never before has a Trump post received such a massive negative response on his own platform. Even his most loyal influencers, including popular MAGA commentator Benny Johnson and Fox News, were hostile. Trump’s loyal base has taken all that heat for so long, defending Trump through everything, and now it appears their Dear Leader is just another deep state operative covering up the crimes of his accomplices — and possibly his own. They are confused and angry and inconsolable. Have they had a mass epiphany and collectively awakened to the fundamental dishonesty and corruption of the man they worshipped for the past ten years? It’s hard to believe.

bear83 of the Kos community reported the Grand Canyon Lodge on the North Rim was destroyed by wildfire on Sunday. It was built in 1937. Dozens of other structures, including individual cabins, were also destroyed. The fire was started by lightning on July 4. It was initially managed as a controlled burn to clear away what could fuel a larger fire. But nine days later low humidity and strong winds and the fire was no longer under control. bear83 wrote that DOGE and the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, terminated a lot of jobs, including people who would have helped prevent and fight wildfires. The nasty guy had said the Los Angeles fires wouldn’t have been so bad if communities would clear the combustible undergrowth. Which the crew at the North Rim were trying to do with perhaps not enough staff to do it safely. The North Rim website has a photo gallery of before. I was at the North Rim as part of a family vacation decades ago. We stayed at the campground near the lodge, though I’m sure we went past it to peer down into the canyon. On the long drive from the main road a large deer jumped onto the road and paused. We had to brake quickly and did not hit it. I’ve been to the South Rim a couple times, much more recently, though still decades ago. The Grand Canyon is a beautiful and impressive place. In Wednesday’s pundit roundup Greg Dworkin of Kos quoted a tweet by Matthew Cappucci, commenting on a tweet by Marjorie Taylor Greene. First Greene:

I am introducing a bill that prohibits the injection, release, or dispersion of chemicals or substances into the atmosphere for the express purpose of altering weather, temperature, climate, or sunlight intensity. It will be a felony offense. I have been researching weather.

She’s the one claiming that Democrats can control the weather and she’s referring to jet contrails that Robert Kennedy Jr. is calling chemtrails, the release of chemicals into the atmosphere to do dastardly things. Cappucci’s response:

It’s not a political statement for me as a Harvard-degreed atmospheric scientist to say that elected representative Marjorie Taylor Green doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about. She’d be equally qualified to fly a Boeing-737, practice nuclear medicine or train zebras.

Dworkin quoted Jack Jenkins and Smietana of Religion News Service discussing the recent IRS announcement that churches can endorse political candidates from the pulpit. This is in response to a lawsuit brought by two Texas churches and religious broadcasters.

Americans — including religious Americans — generally take a dim view of political endorsements in the pulpit. According to an analysis of 2023 polling provided to RNS by the Public Religion Research Institute, majorities of all major religious groups oppose or strongly oppose allowing churches and places of worship to endorse political candidates while retaining their tax-exempt status. That includes white evangelicals (62%) as well as Black Protestants (59%), white mainline or nonevangelical Protestants (77%), white Catholics (79%), Hispanic Catholics (78%), Hispanic Protestants (72%) and Jewish Americans (77%). Researchers noted opposition to the idea among white evangelicals remains virtually unchanged since 2017, when they last polled on the topic. There was one outlier, however: People labeled by PRRI as “adherents” to Christian nationalism — people who agree with statements such as “the U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation” — were statistically more likely (45%) to support endorsements from the pulpit, with only a narrow majority (51%) opposed.

Dworkin added that pastors are wary of splitting their congregations so tend to avoid blatant politics. In the comments is a cartoon by Bill Bramhall. It shows a job interview and behind the boss is a sign saying, “Disclosure: The content of this interview will be used to build a chatbot we will hire instead of you.” In Thursday’s roundup Kev quoted John Timmer of Ars Technica:

From a distance, the gathering looked like a standard poster session at an academic conference, with researchers standing next to large displays of the work they were doing. Except in this case, it was taking place in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill, and the researchers were describing work that they weren’t doing. Called "The things we’ll never know," the event was meant to highlight the work of researchers whose grants had been canceled by the Trump administration. ... Many of the grants were focused on STEM education, and it's extremely difficult to imagine that people will be better off without the work happening.

In Friday’s roundup Dworkin included a tweet from Echelon Insights:

Where do most American voters fall on the political compass? Using nine questions on cultural issues and nine questions on economic issues, we mapped voters onto a political compass.

This is the start of a thread on X I don’t have access to. However, here’s the summary of the results:

Liberals, both economic and social: 43% Populist, economically liberal and socially conservative: 22% Conservative, both economic and socially conservative: 31% Libertarian, economically conservative and socially liberal: 5%

Dworkin added:

This is why Democrats on occasion (and warily) try to recruit populists. Conservatives won’t play and libertarians are too few. But the name of the game is a majority.

Aaron Astor tweeted:

Ever wonder why the CDC is based in Atlanta? The reason: its forerunner was the WWII-era Office of Malaria Control, based in Atlanta to fight malaria around rapidly growing US military communities in the South.

In the comments Zoli Osaze posted a cartoon by Lalo Alcaraz showing an ICE agent confronting a farm worker holding a box of produce on his head.

Agent: Keep your hands up! Worker: Don’t worry, they’re busy holding up your economy.

Not the land of the free, but the home of the caged

Lisa Needham of Daily Kos reported that the Department of Justice has issued a memo saying DOJ attorneys were to strip the citizenship of immigrants that have committed certain crimes. Yeah, this is a historical thing, though rarely used. It’s usually reserved for literal Nazis who hid their past when they became citizens. The memo lists the usual crimes that can trigger denaturalization – torture, espionage, trafficking – but they added a really bad one: any other case determined sufficiently important to pursue. Yep, that can be anything. To make all that worse denaturalization cases will be done in civil court where the burden of proof is lower and the victim doesn’t have the right to an attorney.

Of course, the Trump administration was never going to stop at deporting undocumented immigrants who’ve committed violent crimes. And it was never going to stop at deporting undocumented immigrants with no criminal records or immigrants with temporary legal status. The inevitable next step was to strip citizenship from those who already have it. And after that, who knows? But rest assured Trump will figure out another way to hurt people.

Thom Harumann of the Kos community and an independent pundit posted an essay comparing Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, to Alligator Alcatraz. This comparison further pushes my belief that “Alligator Auschwitz” fits better. Dachau opened just three months after Hitler took power. It was described as a place for political prisoners. From the beginning it was known for its brutality. The first people sent there were not criminals or traitors. They were people the regime considered a threat or a convenient enemy.

The Nazis didn’t hide Dachau. They advertised it. It was a warning. A message. Step out of line, and this is where you go.

Only much later did they add extermination facilities. Alligator Alcatraz isn’t just a deportation facility. It is a political prison to humiliate, dehumanize, and broadcast terror. It is a symbol that American democracy is being publicly dissected, cruelly, and with calculation. It is also proof-of-concept. If it succeeds – as political spectacle – there will be more. Another similarity is the ongoing state of emergency. Florida declared an immigration state of emergency in 2023. It allows the governor to act without oversight. The Nazis used the 1933 Reichstag Fire to give themselves emergency power, which removed democratic guardrails. A third similarity is location. Both are in isolated places. Escape is close to impossible. Oversight is nonexistent. Rights lawyers and journalists will find it hard to access.

The most dangerous thing about Alligator Alcatraz isn’t the alligators. It’s the message. The message that some people are less than human. That caging them is acceptable. That they deserve no rights, no hearing, no compassion. Just mud and barbed wire. That was the logic behind Dachau. And it’s becoming the logic behind Trump’s America. This facility is being built not to solve a problem, but to create one. To manufacture outrage. To train the public to see brown-skinned immigrants not as workers or families or survivors but as invaders. Intruders. Animals. And that’s when the door opens for something far worse.

There are ways to engage: Lawsuits to challenge it, using any statute possible. Journalists to document construction, conditions, and policies. Peaceful protests. Using proper words – not “detention center” but “political prison” or “migrant concentration camp” and people were not sent there “for their own protection.” Learn how Dachau started and what happened there. Teach your neighbors. Democracy ends with a shrug. We need to commit to human dignity, due process, and liberty.

If we wait too long, we may wake up one day and discover we are no longer the land of the free, but only the home of the caged.

Today’s pundit roundup for Kos has a couple good cartoons. One posted by Jon Cooper and created by Bagley shows handcuffed men in suits boarding an ICE bus. The caption:

Something you will never see: ICE rounding up the CEOs who illegally exploited undocumented workers...

Cooper added, “I wonder why we aren’t seeing this? A cartoon posted by paulpro and created by Geoff Coats shows the nasty guy handing a sack of cash to a rich dude while beside them is a MAGA hospital patient with a high bill. The nasty guy says, “Don’t worry, little buddy. We can still hate trans people together.” Needham also reported Republicans of North Carolina introduced a state bill to replace over a third of state election staff jobs with political appointees.

The new state elections director, Sam Hayes, had a very Trump-ish explanation for why he needs to eliminate experienced nonpartisan staff, NC Newsline reported: “These positions would just allow me the flexibility that I need to conduct that reorganization and make sure that folks that are surrounding me, certainly my direct reports and I, are aligned on the vision for the agency as I set forward.” That’s just code for “I want a bunch of stooges who will help continue the GOP project of undermining elections in the state.” But somehow, according to Hayes, this will also be nonpartisan. Yes, replacing nonpartisan staff with political appointees is totally nonpartisan indeed. It’s not surprising that Hayes only knows how to operate like a hardcore partisan, as his previous gig was as counsel for the GOP House speaker.

Any guesses to his “vision for the agency”? Dan K of the Kos community started a post with:

Lots of stories both here and elsewhere have been written in the past few days about how Republicans are committing political suicide by pushing the One Hugely Ugly Bill, how it will not only cost them the House but also the Senate. Very few if any have asked the obvious questions: Don’t you think they know this? And if they do, why are voting for it anyway? That’s because they may have come to the conclusion that they will not have to pay a political price because the next election is being rigged for them.

We don’t have one election system, we have fifty. And many of them are run by honest people dedicated to an accurate count no matter who wins (though see above). But Republicans have been tampering with elections since at least Nixon. Republicans may not be counting on this. There has been a lot of talk about cuts to Medicaid but no talk that the main cuts take place after the midterms. Three weeks ago Jeremy Kohler, in an article for ProPublica posted on Kos wrote that Republicans are getting annoyed with citizens undoing their work. The citizens have been passing state constitutional amendments and voter initiatives. So Republican led legislatures are trying to make citizen initiatives harder to pass. Missouri citizens led efforts on two big measures, one of them restoring abortion rights. Abortion was also the issue in Arizona. The other Missouri initiative was sick leave benefits, which also passed in Alaska and Nebraska. In those states the effort is to undo what citizens did. Republicans in Florida, Utah, Montana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Ohio, North Dakota and South Dakota are trying to restrict initiatives, making changing laws outside of legislatures harder.

Republican elected officials across these states make strikingly similar arguments: They say the initiative process is susceptible to fraud and unduly influenced by out-of-state money. What’s more, they say that they, as elected officials, represent the true will of the people more than ballot initiatives do.

I’ve worked on a couple citizen initiatives in Michigan and likely gearing up for two more. The only ones associated with fraud were Republican efforts, such as in 2004 getting a same-sex marriage ban into the state constitution. Signature gatherers said they were working for one initiative while the actual forms were for the harmful one. As for out-of-state money, Republicans are good at collecting cash for a cause from across the country. As for elected officials representing the true will of the voters, I’ll believe that when gerrymandering is outlawed and every state draws district lines through citizen commissions, as is now done in Michigan. Needham reported that California is in a tough spot – it’s regular fire season started swiftly over the weekend. And a good chunk of its National Guard, who normally serve as fire fighters, are being used by the nasty guy as his personal police force. Which means California is asking the Department of Defense if, pretty please, the state could have the use of its own National Guard. The original request was for 200 guardsmen. The DOD was magnanimous in offering 150. How can a state have enough guardsmen for state-level challenges if the president can yank them away at any time? Back in 2018 the nasty guy punished Washington state by deliberately delaying wildfire aid. This year he isn’t punishing through money, but by yanking personnel. He’s got lots of ways to punish blue states. Last week Wednesday Alix Breeden of Kos reported that Jeff Bezos planned to marry Lauren Sanchez at the 14th-century Grande Scuola Misericordia in Venice. But locals planned to form a blockade in the canals around the venue, in addition to other protesting. Protesters won and the venue was changed to Tese 91 of the Arsenale, which is described as a shipyard. Part of the protest was a huge banner laid out in St. Mark’s Square saying, “If you can rent Venice for your wedding you can pay more tax.” Though protesters got the wedding venue switched, Bezos’ visit still caused havoc. He kicked out all the other paying guests at his chosen hotel so that he wouldn’t be disturbed. Breeden then listed several ways Bezos has been bending a knee to the nasty guy.

Family Bible as proof of citizenship

A woman in Kansas was denied a passport renewal. She was told her birth certificate wasn’t good enough to establish citizenship. She was born in a farmhouse in the 1970s, so her birth certificate wasn’t issued by a hospital. She was told she needed more documentation, such as a border crossing card (her parents were born in the US) or a family Bible (don’t have one).

She said they won’t accept an official birth certificate and they do accept a family Bible? (Atheists and Muslims need not apply.)

She finally asked her senator to intervene and the passport arrived a few days later.

The website describing what documents are needed for a passport do not say the birth certificate needs to come from a hospital.

Sarah Kendzior commented:

Birth certificate is the essential document for completing certain transactions as well as obtaining drivers licenses, passports, etc. Which is why it's VERY disturbing that an admin led by the guy who lied about Obama's birth certificate is now lying about the validity of others.

The step beyond stateless

I recently posted that the nasty guy and his minions have started refusing to renew passports and even taken some away. Jennifer Wright, in an article for Harper’s Bazaar, takes it one more step. Revoking citizenship is a precursor to genocide.

Yeah, we’ll go there – in 1938 Germany declared passports held by Jews were invalid.

But genocide? Here? In America? Yes. Already happened. We slaughtered Native Americans. We kept autocratic policies, such as slavery and Jim Crow, in places for decades. And just this year we started stripping children from immigrant parents. All these cases, now and in the past, are about race.

After the Holocaust the Universal Declaration of Human Rights said, “Everyone has a right to a nationality.” The American Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that a U.S. citizen cannot lose his or her citizenship unless he or she willingly surrenders it. The nasty guy is disobeying the law.

So the solution is deportation? Germany tried that too. They proposed several deportation solutions, such as sending all Jews to Madagascar. Then they concluded one way to get rid of Jews is to kill them.

If that starts happening in American with Latinos as the target we probably won’t hear much. Despots usually don’t announce how they are persecuting minorities. But leading up to that we’ll hear a lot about “othering” – declaring them to be those people, who aren’t really human. Not like us. Asylum seekers have already been called people who want to “infest” our country.

Yeah, making a lot of noise about this is not fun. Especially since we have to keep doing it. Protesting isn’t fun. Calling Congresscritters isn’t fun. Anything else is more fun.

Now consider if your grandparents lived in Germany during the rise of the Nazis and did nothing. They might offer all kinds of reasons. But once you found out how would you think of them when you saw them at Christmas? Perhaps a tiny bit disgusted?

Now what about your grandchildren? How will they think about you?

I can’t tell you what actions you should take, because I don’t know what talents you have at your disposal. Do you have legal skills to help people who may be threatened by these new changes? Use them. Can you write about what’s going on? Write about it. Do you have a church or place or worship to help organize refuge for the persecuted? Do so. Do you have time to call your senators and congressmen? Call. Keep calling. Make them hear you.

Do something today to make your descendants proud.

Yeah, it is easy for me to say that because I don’t have descendants. Even so, the people watching me aren’t always related by genetics. And I’m writing about it.

Stateless

Yesterday I posted about Juan, born in southern Texas, who was denied when he tried to renew his passport. He was told that he really wasn’t a citizen. Alexandra Erin, in a long Twitter thread, delves into the implications.

Only affecting hundreds, maybe thousands of Latinx people so no need to worry? That’s way too many people. And if these people don’t have due process, nobody has due process. If the gov’t turned on you would your proof matter? Go read Kafka’s The Trial.

When the USA revokes your citizenship, it can’t bestow citizenship for another country. One becomes stateless, thrown into a legal limbo, an unperson. There is no home country to be sent to. I add that being stateless makes life quite difficult – and that cruelty is the point.

One person might be made stateless through a lack of due process. The gov’t need not do the same to others. If people like me are stripped of rights and arrested when applying for a passport, would I try to do the same? Would I go to the DMV or try to vote? Just having the threat of being stateless allows all sorts of bigoted people to enforce the rules on their own.

An example is a gay couple. When ant-sodomy laws were still on the books gay couples were assumed to be criminals because what they did in bedrooms was illegal. People felt justified in denying housing even if the gay couple is never convicted or even accused of anything.

Such an environment allows police to stop people on suspicion, at least people they don’t like. Increasingly broad rules applied to increasingly wider swaths of the population deployed by authorities when someone “looks” like trouble. Never mind there hasn’t been any trouble.

Refusal to renew passports is also happening to transgender people. This didn’t happen by Executive Order or even by a tweet from the nasty guy. It seems some federal employees decided it’s time to start doing it. There have always been bureaucrats “waiting for favorable winds to launch their warships.”

A lot of this enforcement is self-directed and from personal opinion (it also keeps the nasty guy’s hands clean). It is decentralized. And harder to block or attack.

But relax. The monster isn’t eating your whole body. It’s just eating a bite at a time.

What to do? “Make a lot of noise. If we are silent, we are complicit. If the only voices heard are those who support what's happening, they can claim universal assent.” Yell at your elected representatives. Vote. Talk is action, though it may not seem like it.



In a separate tweet Rep. Eric Swalwell commented on an article from Vox. House GOP made a list of nasty guy scandals. They’re afraid the Democrats will investigate these scandals if they win this fall. So that’s why the GOP had better stay in control of the House. Said Swalwell, “Umm, so if they know, why won’t they investigate?”

But I’m a citizen!

I’ve still got a few days of travelogue to go, but there are some news items that needs to be shared. Here’s one of them.

Melissa McEwan of Shakesville is getting real tired of being a Cassandra – a person who tells the truth but who is ignored. During the horrific news about children being ripped from parents at the southern border, she commented that while the action at that time was against immigrants (and people asking for asylum are not acting illegally!) the nasty guy and his minions would soon target those who have been here legally for a while and then also target US citizens.

On to the story of Juan, born in Brownsville, Texas. He applied to renew his US passport, and was denied. Note that he previously did have a passport. The reason for the denial – the State Department didn’t believe he was a citizen. Juan has a birth certificate. The gov’t says there is “significant incidence” of citizenship fraud (and the gov’t gets to define “signficant”).

Juan was told to bring supporting documentation – evidence his mother got prenatal care, his baptism certificate, rental agreements from the time he was born. Sure. Everybody has a copy of their parents’ rental agreement from 40 years ago. Also note that bit about baptism certificate – only Christians need apply.

So Juan was able to gather some of those records, but was denied again. The gov’t is the one who gets to decide that the birth certificate is fraudulent and also gets to decide whether supporting documentation is sufficient. So if you’ve been targeted there is no way to win this game.

McEwan and her various commenters remind us that it may be Latinx people along the Texas border now, but they’re only the first step. Then it might be on to all immigrants, the queer, trans, disabled, of a religious minority, visible dissidents, or any other marginalized class. The goal posts can be moved as far as needed.

Gov’t screws up, citizens accused

The nasty guy and his minions are becoming well known for their cruelty. Here is, alas, another example. And this one is quite vile.

Way back in March Melissa McEwan of Shakesville, Cassandra that she is, gave a warning back in March. The nasty guy and his minions had already tried the Muslim travel ban (perhaps twice by then). McEwan, always perceptive about what the nasty guy is doing, said that illegal immigration may have been the focus then, but legal immigration would also be a target. The nasty guy and his supremacist buddies don’t like *any* immigration – certainly not after they or their parents arrived.

There is a new Operation Janus run jointly by the Department of Justice and US Citizen and Immigration Services to revoke citizenship of those already naturalized. The process of getting citizenship is long and complicated and requires lots of forms over several years. It is easy (and likely routine) for some little detail to go wrong, such as fingerprints not getting filed the right way, or any one of the myriad steps that overloaded humans along the way must handle. And now the nasty guy’s minions are now saying if the whole process wasn’t perfectly pristine this is evidence that citizenship was obtained fraudulently. And that’s grounds for revoking the citizenship and leaving a person exposed to deportation.

It’s likely that a pristine application process is rare. A lot of people are going to get screwed. Citizens will be blamed when government employees aren’t perfect. Which, McEwan reminds us, according to the minions, that not a bug, that’s a feature.

Commenters remind us that this is the same tactic used to purge voter rolls.

In case you aren’t up on your Greek mythology, Cassandra had the gift of accurate prophecy but cursed so that no one believed her. McEwan has claimed that title because her predictions of the nasty guy have been pretty accurate, yet it seems no one believes her.

Seventeen Solutions – Get back on the field

Concluding my overview of Ralph Nader's book, The Seventeen Solutions. Click here to get the rest of the series.

17. Get Back on the Field – Literally

Yes, sports is one of Nader’s solutions. But not the professional sports of today which are all about two things, victory (at all costs) and profit (as much as possible). Professional sports distorts the lives of aspiring athletes, subjecting them to abusive coaches and parents with an anything-to-win attitude that reaches to ever younger athletes.

What Nader envisions is more community-based, perhaps a National Sports Commission. The NSC would make recommendations for a physically fit general citizenry, not just athletes. Here are some of the things Americans want changed in our sports culture.

* Instead of tax funded professional stadiums, there should be tax funded community sports centers. There are numerous health benefits to regular exercise. There are a lot of psychological benefits when sport is done for fun and social bonding rather than for the drive to win. These centers should have activities all ages, genders, and abilities. Get children used to doing, not spectating.

* Physical education reinstated in schools, but designed broadly enough that it fits the needs of all children.

This reminds me of my time in high school gym class (a few decades ago). We were supposed to learn how to play each of the major sports (thankfully, no hockey rink). A person like me who had no skill or interest in these sports didn’t fare well in class and didn’t get a lot of exercise. I’m glad gym didn’t count for my grade point average. It was bad enough that I didn’t want to exercise after high school.

Since then I’ve found swimming (though I don’t have a nearby pool), walking, and riding my bicycle. What if my gym class had been focused on enabling me to exercise in a way suitable for me rather than trying to indoctrinate me into the sports culture?

* More attention should be paid to the safety and health of the players.

* Sports for all Americans. Women’s sports still lag behind men’s sports. There should be plenty of opportunity for sports for people with disabilities.

* Get rid of the anything-to-win attitude so that college sports can get back to the primarily goal of education. That means getting rid of athletic performance targets in scholarships. It also means treating athletes ethically, safely, and humanely – no more bully coaches, no matter what their win-loss record is.

Seventeen Solutions – organize congressional watchdog groups

I am discovering several ways to resist the mess coming out of Washington. One is to make sure my senators and representative know my positions. Another is to join protest marches (though I haven’t done much of that lately). I can make sure a (slightly) larger audience knows the nasty things the nasty guy is doing by writing about them in this blog. I can discuss the ideas that build community – the opposite of ideas promoted in Washington. I can also resist by continuing my overview of Ralph Nader's book, The Seventeen Solutions. Click here to get the rest of the series. Alas, it has been two months since I last featured a chapter.

14. Organize Congressional Watchdog Groups

About 1500 corporations – ExxonMobil, Goldman Sachs, Walmart, General Electric, and the rest – are able to get Congress to do their bidding.

But only we have the votes that send these 535 men and women to Congress.

So if we hold the reins, then, why is it that the corporations control the horses? Because they know what the horses like to eat. Because they are there day after day, plying the corridors of Capitol Hill. Because they fund, socialize, play, drink, and vacation with these lawmakers. Because they have nice, cushy, high-paying jobs waiting for these legislators (as well as their assistants and their relatives) when they retire from their seats. Because they can apply a lot of pressure when these carrots don’t work. Because if a legislator doesn’t serve their interests, they can run someone more accommodating against him or her. Because they can make these legislators look bad – or undeservedly good – through deceptive advertisements and other seedy slanders or puffery.

Still, they don’t have a single vote. And you do.

Only We the People have the vote.

But too often too many of us don’t vote or vote for the same party no matter the current conditions or are too disengaged to make a meaningful choice.

And both major political parties (though GOP far more than Dem) are good at exploiting the disengagement or otherwise twisting the vote. I’ve documented many through the years. These tactics include gerrymandering, strict voter ID laws, and laws that obstruct smaller parties from getting on the ballot.

Safe seats mean lawmakers pay less attention to voters. That makes the voters cynical and tends to make them withdraw from the process – why bother? Which is exactly what the corporations want.

But that cynicism is sparking a renewed discussion of fairness (the book was published in 2012 when the Occupy movement was in the news, though examples from this year abound). And that is prompting a resurgence.

One way that resurgence can channel its efforts is through Congressional WatchDog groups. A CWD would form in a congressional district with a thousand people signing a pledge to work for the people’s agenda (all those policies that are favored by 65% of the voters, but which Washington is working hard to ignore). These thousand would also raise or donate $200 and volunteer 200 hours a year. The money would be used to set up an office and pay for full-time advocates, whose main jobs would be to (1) lobby Congress, (2) coordinate with CWDs in other districts, and (3) make sure the citizens know what the advocates are doing and how to help. The volunteer time would be to be that help and to recruit more members. Most citizen efforts are amateurish. We need professionals, but ones responsible to us, not corporations.

Lawmakers and their corporate masters are good at the long game, good at sensing their opponents show signs of flagging interest. An important part of the work of a CWD lobbyist is to stress this is for the duration. Once the advocates begin to show their representatives are listening, more citizens will join the process. The agenda of a CWD needs to be concrete and specific to withstand corporate backlash.

In a presumed democratic republic like the United States, the ultimate governmental power is supposed to reside in the people. In the interest of practicality and expertise, the people delegate much of the daily exercise of this power to elected legislatures, which on the national level means Congress. But this delegation of authority shouldn’t mean disengagement from the responsibilities of citizenship. Our system can only work if our citizens are organized and vigilant in monitoring the ways of our 535 representatives, who each year speak for larger and larger populations, are using the power we grant them. Otherwise delegation will become abdication – first by the people, and then inevitably by Congress, until it falls conclusively into the hands of the corporate supremacists.

I like this idea. It seems sensible and practical. I could put some money behind it. I’d even volunteer. Many of the ideas in previous chapters, such as getting corporations off welfare, depend on Congress to implement. Under the current Congress, these ideas ain’t gonna happen. However, this chapter shows a way to make Congress listen (though it would still be a long slog, emphasis on being in it for the duration).

But Nader leaves out an important part. Who should get it going and how does the effort start?

Personally, I’m not one to go out and find a thousand people to pay for and volunteer for a CWD. So… who?

How about you Mr. Nader? With your position and influence have you worked to get a CWD going, perhaps proclaiming it as an example and template? Since you don’t mention it in this chapter I suspect you didn’t put any skin in the game. All talk and no action? How do you expect others to run with your idea?