The New York Times reported, “The Labor Department’s inspector general’s office is nearing the end of a monthslong investigation into a whistle-blower’s allegations of professional misconduct by Ms. Chavez-DeRemer and her closest aides, including claims that she was having an affair with a member of her security team and that she used department resources for personal trips.” (Several other aides have been forced out based on the same complaint.) The report added that Chavez-DeRemer’s departure came just days before she was scheduled to sit for an interview. Her husband has also been ensnared in sexual harassment allegations.

Following Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi, she is the third Cabinet secretary — and third woman — to get dumped. The question is not whether these officials should have been fired; all had serious, multiple allegations pending. (And Democrats certainly pushed for Noem and Bondi to go.) The more interesting issue is why the women are the only ones to get booted from a merit-free administration filled with unfit, unqualified, dishonest, and scandal-plagued characters.

If removing embarrassing and disreputable characters were the object, there is no reason Pete Hegseth (mired in Signalgate, accused of denying women and minorities promotions, engaged in extrajudicial killings and arguably other war crimes, Christianizing the Pentagon, etc.) should still be there.

Kash Patel, who recently sued The Atlantic over a deeply sourced report alleging that he is a drunk, has been plagued by a slew of scandals (e.g., using funds to fly his girlfriend around, misleading Congress about firing FBI agents who investigated Jan. 6, speaking out of turn/spreading inaccurate information in the aftermath of shootings) and widespread complaints of utter incompetence (including gutting the FBI’s counterintelligence staff).

Then there is Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. a crank who has systematically undermined our public health system; spread disinformation about vaccines, vitamin A, and autism; fired qualified scientists who refused to adopt his anti-science policies; and slashed grants and critical research.

Run through the list: from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (a buffoon who misrepresented his contact with Jeffrey Epstein) to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy (who spreads chaos, appears oblivious to conflicts of interest, and presides over a meltdown in our airline system) to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (the most gaffe-ridden and least credible Treasury secretary in memory, who spends time acting as Trump’s attack dog). None of these people would have been nominated or confirmed for their positions in any other administration. A stable, competent president would have fired them multiple times over.

And yet, the men plod along, shuffling in oversized shoes and groveling in front of their boss. (One benefit the male Cabinet members have: Social and sporting event opportunities to suck up to him. Secretary of State Marco Rubio knew enough to hang out with Trump at a UFC event rather than negotiate with Iran.)

Plainly, a double standard is at work, heavily influenced by the toxic misogyny coursing through the veins of the MAGA movement and deeply embedded in Trump’s psyche. There is less tolerance for Chavez-DeRemer’s petty scandals than for Hegseth’s blunders that endanger our national security. Mike Walz got a different job after Signalgate; Bondi got shown the door. As Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Tex.) observed after Bondi was canned, “Well … first it was Kristi Noem, now it’s Pam Bondi … it would be too much like right that Pete be next. I see a theme. He will throw the incompetent women under the bus a lot faster than the incompetent men.”

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Now, before we shed a tear for these women, remember that “Bondi, Noem, and the other women in Trumpworld knew exactly what they were getting themselves into,” as Jill Filipovic wrote. “It is not a secret that this president has asked his attorneys general and other high-ranking officials to break the law and defy the Constitution; it is not a secret that he is quick to anger, and who he fires and retains is often scattershot.” One is hard pressed to disagree with Filipovic’s conclusion that they are “villains of their own making,” unworthy of our sympathy.

That said, it is not as if his venom toward women is a new phenomenon. Trump gets especially enraged with women (reporters, members of Congress, presidential opponents) who displease him. Invectives against women fly from his lips, especially when he is facing criticism. The man credibly accused of multiple instances of sexual harassment and found liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll infamously stated, “when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” Women are objects whose disobedience and independence are an affront to him.

When women commit the cardinal sin of performing poorly on TV (as Bondi and Noem did), they put a target on their backs. (Hegseth might have been onto something in refusing to testify about the war.) Trump, who is fixated with women’s appearance and considers TV the true training ground for high office, expects these women to get rid of his messes. When they don’t, they are useless to him.

In short, none of these women “deserve” the jobs they held. Once there, they did not serve the American people. However, we would be blind not to recognize that Trump’s tolerance for women who mess up is much lower than for men. (Note that he is also allegedly contemplating canning Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.) “Under Trump, women will always have a ceiling they will hit before being discarded; the only power they have presumably acquired has been conditionally given and therefore can be taken away,” wrote Andrea González-Ramírez. “But that is the deal you make when you are willing to be a public shield for a man who rarely, if ever, sees women as fully human.”

We have always known that. Apparently, it is only now dawning on the Cabinet women who thought they were different.

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Joe Kerr wants to fix that — it’s why he’s running for the U.S. House of Representative in California’s 40th Congressional district. Kerr joins Jen to discuss his leadership as a firefighter, protecting the interests of working class families in Congress, putting reforms on ICE, and more!

To learn more about Kerr’s campaign, click here.

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Joe Kerr is running for election to the U.S. House to represent California’s 40th Congressional District. He is on the ballot in the primary on June 2, 2026. Joe Kerr is a second-generation firefighter who served as a Fire Captain with the Orange County Fire Authority for 34 years. As a labor leader, Joe helped get over 200 bills and initiatives passed and signed into law by five CA governors and 2 U.S. presidents.

The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.

Jen Rubin

Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of The Contrarian. I am delighted to welcome Joe Kerr. Who is Joe Kerr? Joe Kerr is a lifelong firefighter, but he is also running for Congress in the redistricted Congressional 40th District of California. Welcome, Joe, it’s great to meet you.

Joe Kerr

It’s a pleasure, Jen. Thank you so much for having me.

Jen Rubin

So you have two Republican incumbents of a sort in the race. Tell us about them and why you think you’d be a better choice.

Joe Kerr

I appreciate it. Well, under Prop 50, we had redistricting in the state of California. There’s, you know, 6 districts that are going to be in play here. Ken Calvert’s been in Congress for 33 years, has decided to abandon his old district near Palm Springs to run against Young Kim in the Orange and Riverside area. And she’s been in office for a while. Both of them are hardcore Trump supporters.

Right now, they’re actually trying to out-Trump each other. To see who’s more Trumpy. And they now have two MAGA incumbents running against each other in the primary. Now, the fun thing about that is they will expend all their money in the primary, which will give us a fair fighting chance in November. It’s just a matter of getting through a crowded primary field to get on to November.

Jen Rubin

Absolutely. Why did you decide to run in the race rather than continue your career in firefighting? I think most people think firefighting is a great job.

Joe Kerr

I would tell you, firefighting is a lot more safer than politics, to be honest. In a house fire, you can only die one death. In politics, it’s every day. Because I don’t want to stand on the sidelines. I want to give people hope. Right now, we have a constitutional emergency, I believe. We’re in a crisis. Firefighters, first responders, they’re problem solvers. They deal with a citizens’ worst emergency in their entire lives in a 40-minute sound bite, and they try to save them, cut them out of the car, bring them out of the burning building, help them with a heart attack, get them breathing again, and then get cleaned up and get ready for the next emergency and the next emergency.

And as a pragmatic problem solver, the best place I can be where I can help America and our constitutional republic is being in the United States Congress. And I’ve been going back to D.C. since the 1990s, representing first responders in the United States and California on a whole host of issues, so I’m very familiar. With how to get things done back there.

Jen Rubin

And you have, you’ve been a part of many legislative efforts. Tell us a little bit about those and what you’ve done for the California firefighters, police, first responders.

Joe Kerr

Well, I’ll tell you the truth, Jen. When I started, you know, I was a fire captain, and the county of Orange went bankrupt back in the 90s, and a week later, I was the union president. We had mass layoffs, all of our paramedics were going to be fired, laid off, privatized, our pensions were stolen from us, and I didn’t know what to do. I must have been asleep during civics class. I picked up the phone and called, you know, 202-555-1212 and asked to speak to the White House. I wanted to speak to a guy who lived there. I was too embarrassed to say president. I wasn’t familiar with legislation and political action. And I didn’t talk to the president. I talked to intern after intern. They got younger and younger. I was thinking they should have gotten older and older. And 18 months later, the president, Bill Clinton, signed a bill to protect all public employees from ever having their pensions stolen to pay off for a bankruptcy debt.

And then we got involved with 5 governors, 2 presidents, 200 bipartisan bills were signed, and we did that with a lot of unions, public safety folks, protecting firefighters who were killed in the line of duty from cardiac events, doing staffing studies nationally, and for the first responders with FEMA and Urban Search and Rescue that go to 9-11 and go to Katrina. After Katrina, they were no longer properly funded because of the Great Recession. So we went to… we had to learn about appropriations, and how we get funding for all 28 national teams, from New York to California, and we had great success, but it was always broad coalitions. It wasn’t just me alone, and it was a lot of people throughout the country making sure your first responders were properly funded.

Jen Rubin

Absolutely. Many people in Congress are millionaires or billionaires, and they haven’t worked for a living in a long time, or they’re lawyers. What do you think your perspective, as someone who’s been a firefighter, someone who’s not independently wealthy, can bring to the U.S. Congress that really isn’t present right now?

Joe Kerr

I’m a second-generation firefighter. My brothers were military, Marines, Navy SEALs, firefighters, police officers. My mom was a reverend. We come from a working-class family. I had my name on my shirt my entire career. What we bring is the perspective of working families. If you can take care of working families, then you can take care of everybody in the community, in the economy. Working families spend money in the district. You protect their healthcare, you protect their wages, you protect their pension, and you take the burden off of society and so forth.

There’s less than 4% of the 435 members of Congress have any union background. And when it comes to unions and collective bargaining, unions are on the front lines of protecting civil rights. 40-hour work week, the 8-hour day. Protecting immigration status, protecting citizen rights, and so forth. As goes organized labor, so goes democracy, and I believe that. So as a working families representative for years, I just want to bring some common sense to you as Congress.

Jen Rubin

Absolutely. What is the biggest issue that you hear from voters, as you travel around the district, the president seems to think affordability is a hoax. But a lot of people seem concerned about prices, and now gas prices, I know, in California are through the roof. Is that what most people are concerned with?

Joe Kerr

Yeah, I was in the district yesterday, in the Riverside County portion, talking to a lot of folks. One was a former military veteran, female veteran, fully disabled from the United States Navy. Another was a teacher from Compton, and a grandma, and they have two things. They have two things that are very, very important to them. One is the cost of living emergency. It’s very important. Gas is $6 a gallon. in California. And it’s a crisis right now. Gas, groceries, housing, and healthcare. It’s not sustainable. 18- to 35-year-olds can’t buy a house, and my 22-year-old son says, Dad, will I ever be able to afford a house? And what about healthcare in the future? So the cost of living emergency in California is at a crisis level.

The other issue, and both folks wanted to talk to… all the folks that I talked to yesterday wanted to talk for a long time about the constitutional emergency we’re under right now. and democracy being under attack, and to start having the Congress push back against the President of the United States and anybody that doesn’t follow constitution or statutory law. And they’re tired of the United States Congress abdicating their authority to the White House. There needs to be a sense of balance and give and take, whether it’s war, or budget, or tariffs. or healthcare funding, they want the craziness to end, and on one hand, they say, I don’t even know why I want to vote, and on the other hand, they say, I wish voting was tomorrow, because I… they need hope. Everybody here needs hope, and they know that now, after talking to them.

When we get through this election, we will take back the House. We will be able to push back, we will be able to get some semblance of normalcy, but we’re gonna have to get through the election, and people can’t stand on the sidelines. If you want to hope, you gotta vote.

Jen Rubin

Exactly. One of the other things that I hear a lot from voters is just the outright corruption, whether it’s cryptocurrency donations or Jared Kushner getting investments from sheikhs and princes while he negotiates the Iran deal. No one begrudges anyone from getting rich, but getting rich at the expense of others or on the public payroll is a different manner. How concerned are you that just the quality of our government has been corrupted under this president, and that we’re now operating, more like a mob than a government?

Joe Kerr

We need to have oversight. People tell me, Ken Calvert’s been in Congress for 33 years, and he’s now worth $20 million. Now, how did he do that? And people tell me, we believe he used appropriations money to help, you know, with real estate and so forth. But we need to make sure there’s no insider trading with the folks in the United States Congress. We need to have term limits, we need to have guardrails. You know, my friends and neighbors in the neighborhood are getting stuff like this from Young Kim. And instead of saying, you know, I just got off the phone with somebody helping them with Medicare Part B on Form 44, they didn’t know because they lost a lot of their income, and they’re still getting exorbitant fees on Medicare. Instead of young Kim putting out mailers saying, hey. Let me help veterans. Let me help Medicaid recipients. Let me help Affordable Care Act subsidies. Let me help Medicare.

What she’s putting out is, I vote 100% with Trump. And if you look on the back, it’s paid for by us. It’s paid for by the United States taxpayer, which is a violation of the franking privilege. These folks need to be held accountable, and we need oversight on everybody on both sides of the aisle. And right now, you’re right, there’s a lot of corruption going on, and people are sick and tired of it.

Jen Rubin

There are a lot of people in your district, obviously, who voted for President Trump, but they may be disillusioned. They may not have voted for what they’re getting. What do you hear from independents, from Republicans, who may have been Trump voters, but now they’re concerned about the way things are going?

Joe Kerr

You know what, I talk to a lot of folks, they’re pretty much common sense, too, and I’ve gotten all the union endorsements. I’m very proud to have the California Labor Federation, Inland Empire Building Trades, Orange County Labor Fed, teachers, and so forth, and firefighters. And a lot of… some of those folks did vote for President Trump, and now they’re realizing, if you’re in the building trades. You’re driving further and further to work. And I know we’re gonna have a change in the economy when you have an iron worker, instead of driving a half hour from his home, or an hour from his home, he’s now driving to Arizona. Or he’s driving to Central California. And I asked the leaders of the unions, I go, you’re members that voted for Trump? Because I had, when I was union president, I had a lot of members of Republican. And he said, well, they’re a lot quieter now, because they realize that the infrastructure money that kept a lot of folks employed was from Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and the Build Back Better dollars. And the money that used to go to the infrastructure for the roads, the highways, the freeways, clean water, I was on the governor’s water control board, all that money is starting to dry up, and now some of these folks are worried about their jobs. So we used to tell people, vote your pocketbook.

For union members, it’s wages, hours, conditions of employment, and for fairness, and so forth. But they’re also pragmatic, they’re also realists, they get to vote for who they want, but they realize they made a mistake. And frankly, I think the messaging from the Democratic Party last go-around on the economy wasn’t spot on. I think we’re all over the the map, and I knocked on a woman’s door, I’ll just be real brief. She was a single mom in the city of Orange, and she said, Joe, all your issues on climate and LGBTQ, on pro-choice, they’re all very important. But unless and until I can put food on the table, and a roof over my two kids. then it doesn’t matter. And my mom used to say, charity begins at home. If you can’t take care of your own family, then you can’t afford to take care of anyone else. And that’s what people are feeling right now, especially. those who voted for Trump in the last election. And they’re very pragmatic about it.

Jen Rubin

Absolutely. Donald Trump, has tried to discontinue all kinds of green, renewable energy. He’s tried to ban the windmills, which he doesn’t like. He doesn’t understand how the green energy market really operates. So China has soared ahead of us. And of course, that makes us more dependent upon fossil fuels. California has always had a very diverse economic and energy portfolio. What’s your view in terms of, energy? What does California need? What should be our energy policy going forward?

Joe Kerr

Well, when we move to those other fields, I’m 100% in support of clean tech and green tech. And I think, actually, Southern California, Riverside, and Orange counties are really poised to move into those areas and help with manufacturing and distribution and so forth. I love California’s policies on that, as far as cap and trade and so forth. I just don’t want to see any jobs lost. As we move to clean tech and green tech, and I think we can do that, I think we need to do that, and I think Trump is way off base as far as ignoring those two fields.

But I also recognize, when it comes to climatic extremes and climate change. All those areas are very important, but unless and until we control our wildfire problem. We’re never going to be able to control climate change. 18% of CO2 greenhouse gases is from wildfire. UC San Diego studies tell us that 100,000-acre wildfire is equivalent in CO2 greenhouse gases to 7 million cars running continuously for a year. We’ll get 40 of those fires in California in a bad year. Canada will get 400 of those fires. They’ll burn thousand-year-old. Boreal forests. 40 million acres that have been there containing CO2 for millennium, and then it’s gone, and it’s in the atmosphere… it’ll be in the atmosphere for the next 100 years. So I believe in cleantech and green tech, and I want to push those spaces for solar and wind. But I also believe that we have to contain these wildfires. People are losing their homes, and I’ll be honest with you, Jen, one of the top three issues in this district is fire insurance. I just talked to somebody who’s paying $2,000 a month for fire insurance for their home. How do you afford that?

Jen Rubin

That is wild. And Donald Trump, by the way, just, now wants to decommission the Forest Service, so, those folks are gonna be, unemployed as well. California has a very vibrant economy, and much of that economy has been affected by Donald Trump’s raids on hardworking immigrants, frankly. Whether it’s agriculture, whether it’s construction, as you know. And he said he was going to get rid of the worst of the worst. He’s actually going after the workforce that is the glue that holds a lot of California industries together. What’s your concern? What’s your view in terms of immigration, border safety? What should we be doing, and what shouldn’t we be doing?

Joe Kerr

Well, I’ve got extended family members that live in Mexico that visit, and they’re scared to death when they visit, and they keep their passport and their visa, and they try to never leave the house. I have close friends, that have been trying for 7 years to get to an immigration judge. 7 years. We need to expand the courts, and we need to expand the judges. And it’s a hypocrisy, because first-generation Americans and immigrants pick our groceries, they take care of our services, they’re some of the most hard-working people on the planet. We need to get back to reform. I don’t want to see folks in masks terrorizing folks. They shouldn’t be in roving bands. They shouldn’t be masked. They should have their name tag on. They should follow the law. It should be proper warrants, not administrative warrants, but proper court warrants and so forth, but we need to have reform. These folks are being terrorized. Some are being hurt.

I saw a video of an 80-year-old man A Mexican-American in Los Angeles, thrown to the ground by ice, where he had to go to the emergency center, the trauma center. This isn’t America. This isn’t us. We’re better than this. We need to follow a law. And by the way, if you’re in this country. quote-unquote, illegally, it’s a misdemeanor. It’s a misdemeanor. The vast majority of these people, you know this, Jen, they’re not criminals. They’re hard workers. They pick the fruit, they mow the lawn, they serve the tables, they’re here for the American dream, just like my grandparents came here, and other people’s parents and grandparents came here. We need to follow the law, and they are entitled to constitutional protections under the Constitution. So, we’re working with a lot of people to make sure that happens, and again, a lot of unions are stepping up. To make sure that immigrants, immigrant rights, first-generation Americans, their rights are protected under the law.

Jen Rubin

Absolutely. Joe, if people want to learn more about you, about the campaign, about the issues, where do they go?

Joe Kerr

Go to JoeKerrforcongress.com, joeerforcongress.com, and if you want to volunteer, if you want to contribute, if you want to have a conversation with me, I’d love to. We do that all day, every day. This is one of the most vital races in the country, and we could flip this seat, we could take back the House, and we could protect democracy. And I appreciate you, Jen, and all your team.

Jen Rubin

Thank you. And folks, this is right. This is one of those critical districts. If Democrats can take this, it’s that much closer to winning the House. And by the way, they need to win by a good margin, because Donald Trump is going to be up to all kinds of shenanigans in November. Joe, it was an absolute pleasure meeting you. We’re going to be following the race. Best of luck in the primary, and we’ll, hopefully see you in the general election, too. Take care.

Joe Kerr

Jen, thank you so much. Thank you to you and your team. I appreciate you very much.

Jen Rubin

Bye-bye.

Steve Cook, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Jen talked about the enduring impact of Trump’s war of choice, how China is learning lessons on what not to do, and why Europe can no longer look at the U.S. as a reliable partner.

Michael de Adder is an award-winning editorial cartoonist. You can find him on Substack here.

If he isn’t the Antichrist, he’s giving it his best shot.

In the latest episode of “You can’t do that, but we can,” Catholics and MAGA members who believe in God and voted for Donald Trump are in yet another predicament that is exposing their flawed beliefs.

The president’s attack on Pope Leo XIV, his posting of a now-deleted image depicting himself as Jesus healing people, and his cancelation of $11 million in contracts that helped Catholic Charities shelter and care for migrant children are stories that aren’t going away as quickly as other catastrophes from this administration. They’re also reminders of how Trump’s presence in American politics has stripped the decency and decorum previously associated with the highest office in the land.

In his initial presidential run, Barack Obama had to do some soul-searching. He ultimately decided to do what was best for his chances at becoming America’s first Black president: denounce his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who had a history of saying uncomfortable things.

Wright once suggested that HIV was invented by the government to use against minorities. “Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything,” he said. Wright also insinuated that Obama participated in political rhetoric. “If Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected,” he declared. “Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls.”

Eighteen years ago, this country wasn’t cool with a Black pastor from Chicago (who had been Obama’s spiritual advisor) saying things like that. “I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday,” Obama said about Wright at the time.

In a country that supposedly values the separation of church and state, Obama chose his country over his pastor and his pastor’s sometimes radical views. Given that precedent set almost 20 years ago and the current president’s recent actions, it’s clear what Catholics and faith-based Christians who support this regime must do.

But will they?

Heavens, no.

“Pope Leo said things that are wrong,” Trump said when explaining why he won’t apologize to His Holiness. “He was very much against what I’m doing with regard to Iran.”

“I think he’s very weak on crime.”

The idea of the pope wanting peace with the potential of a nuclear war hanging over our heads and the president treating him as if he’s a Democrat who deserves condemnation is a terrible campaign message from the right. Especially when you realize that this is a political party that wants prayer and the Ten Commandments in schools while demanding the pope stay out of politics. However, that has not stopped the president’s allies from falling in line. Vice President JD Vance laughably believes that the situation is not “particularly newsworthy” and that the Vatican should stick to “matters of morality.” FOX News’ Sean Hannity questioned whether the pope “even reads the Bible.” And Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) didn’t have the fortitude to side with this heavenly father nor his political one.

“Woe to those who manipulate religion and the very name of God for their own military, economic, and political gain, dragging that which is sacred into darkness and filth,” Pope Leo declared recently. He said the world is “being ravaged by a handful of tyrants” a day after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth quoted a fake Bible verse from “Pulp Fiction” at a Pentagon prayer service.

Unsurprisingly, there has yet to be a major public rebuke from a prominent Republican religious leader, as the words of Matthew 7:3-5 are playing out before us. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, however, released a statement defending one of their own in Pope Leo, in which they referenced the belief that a just war “must be a defense against another who actively wages war.” Consequently, Father Edward Beck, a Chaplain at Manhattan University, added further context during a recent appearance on CNN.

“I’m just really struck by the fact that you have the Pope visiting the poorest countries in Africa, the most war-torn regions, really being a follower of Christ, and you have a president who’s depicting himself as actually being Christ. It’s very ironic to me,” he explained.

An old comedian once said, “Black folks want to be ‘Christlike.’ White people want to be Jesus.”

Last fall, a book about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright focused “on his patriotic promotion of inclusion within the church and society.” For many, Wright is a minor footnote in history. But, at a time like this, he serves as a case study in what is deemed acceptable at the intersection of politics and religious doctrine, particularly while this country is being led by a man who once claimed that the Bible was his favorite book while being unable to share what his preferred verses and testaments were.

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” — John 10:10.

Carron J. Phillips is an award-winning journalist who writes on race, culture, social issues, politics, and sports. He hails from Saginaw, Michigan, and is a graduate of Morehouse College and Syracuse University. Follow his personal Substack to keep up with more of his work.

Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist whose cartoons have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. Find him on Substack at nickanderson.substack.com.

When Péter Magyar emphatically ended the 16-year reign of Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán earlier this month, his message was clear: It’s time to clean house. “The regime is over,” Magyar declared as he called for a raft of senior-level resignations, including the presidents of the supreme court, the judicial council, the state audit office, the competition authority, and the media authority.

Magyar’s bold pronouncement reflects the insight that if he and his Tisza party are to deliver on their mandate to restore the rule of law to Hungary, it will first be necessary to purge the country’s governing institutions of infestations by the Orbán apparatchiks who helped Orbán “carr[y] out an autocratic revolution with exquisite legal precision.” As scholar and Contrarian contributor Kim Lane Scheppele has documented, Orbán’s success at constitutional manipulation through institutional capture made him the archetype for a new breed of “legalistic autocrat” — leaders who are “elected by democratic publics and then use their electoral mandates to dismantle by law the constitutional systems they inherited.”

Much ink has been spilled illustrating how Trump’s second-term Project 2025 playbook for dismantling and weaponizing the executive branch borrows directly from Orbán’s model. Less appreciated is the extent to which, thanks to Trump’s first-term judicial confirmation efforts and those of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and the Federalist Society, the constitutional skids for Project 2025 have been greased by a Trumpian federal judiciary that is carrying out its own autocratic revolution.

Just over a year into Trump’s second term, the impact is striking. Even as district court judges across the country have resoundingly rejected Trump’s unconstitutional overreach, the judges Trump appointed have been reliable rubber stamps, ruling for him in nearly 70 percent of cases. At the court of appeals level, where McConnell and Federalist Society judge-picker Leonard Leo did the bulk of their damage during Trump’s first term, the “rule of law” has, not surprisingly, devolved into bare party politics. Across 114 circuit court orders ruling on Trump’s second-term policies, Republican-appointed judges ruled for Trump fully 87 percent of the time, compared with his 78 percent loss rate before Democratic-appointed judges.

Sitting atop this decaying judicial infrastructure, the Roberts Supreme Court — itself deeply shaped by Trump’s three appointments and McConnell’s constitutional hardball — has emerged as Trump’s enabler-in-chief. Despite high-profile showdowns over Trump’s egregiously unconstitutional tariffs and his assault on birthright citizenship, the Roberts Court handed Trump sweeping immunity, ushered in his return to power, and has quietly deployed its shadow docket to greenlight Trump’s policies in over 84 percent of cases.

As in Orbán’s Hungary, then, a clear picture emerges of a captured judicial branch that is steadily dismantling by law the constitutional system it inherited. If we are to restore the rule of law in the United States, a housecleaning like the one Magyar has called for in Hungary will clearly be in order.

Yet even as we reckon with the broken justice system Trump and McConnell have locked in, the pipeline remains open — and the second wave is worse. The first Trump term produced judges vetted for right-wing ideology; this one demands personal loyalty to Trump. That shift — from Federalist Society orthodoxy to Trumpian fealty — now extends beyond the bench to U.S. Attorneys as well. The result is a dual threat to the rule of law: prosecutors who will weaponize the Justice Department against Trump’s enemies, and judges who will rubber-stamp their overreach. That’s not rule of law. It’s rule by law.

Case in point: The slate of Trump cronies currently under consideration by the Senate Judiciary Committee for confirmation as federal judges and U.S. Attorneys.

Consider the insurrectionists. Darin Smith, current interim U.S. Attorney for Wyoming and Trump’s nominee for the role, attended the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on our Capitol. Smith has made clear that he has no regrets, telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that he believes that the rioters were victims of “conditions resembling entrapment” created by unidentified “agitators.”

Similarly, Dan Bishop and Phillip Williams Jr., nominated to U.S. Attorney posts in the Middle District of North Carolina and the Northern District of Alabama, respectively, have their own records of Jan. 6 revisionism and election denial. Bishop, a former congressman who lost the North Carolina Attorney General’s race in 2024, voted against certifying the 2020 election and has advocated for criminally charging Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and former Special Counsel Jack Smith, among others who prosecuted Trump. Williams, for his part, called prosecutions of the Jan. 6 rioters “the Salem witch trials on a national scale” on his right-wing talk radio program—his day job until he was tapped to serve as an interim U.S. Attorney.

In Smith, Bishop, and Williams, Trump has nominated attorneys who have made clear that their primary professional commitment is to Donald Trump personally, not the American public or the Constitution. They have consistently attacked the people who have tried to hold Trump accountable, and they’re being handed the power to prosecute those people themselves.

We’ve already seen how this goes. The U.S. Attorneys who have so far passed Trump’s loyalty test have been staggeringly incompetent and shown egregious disregard for the rule of law. Alina Habba, Trump’s former personal lawyer who was unlawfully installed atop the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey, spent her tenure going after the state’s Democratic politicians, investigating the state’s governor and attorney general and bringing charges against Newark’s mayor and a sitting congresswoman.

Lindsey Halligan, another of Trump’s personal attorneys with no prosecutorial experience, took the helm in the Eastern District of Virginia after Trump forced out the career prosecutor who refused his personal command to indict former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Halligan dutifully followed orders, only to have a federal judge void both cases and a second judge order her to stop “masquerading” as U.S. Attorney — rulings the Department of Justice promptly ignored.

But installing crony U.S. attorneys is just one part of the plan. To make up for those attorneys’ ineptitude and have their sham prosecutions succeed, you also need friendly courts — judges whose orders you don’t have to defy. And despite Trump’s occasional spats with Leo, the judge-picking machinery Leo built remains aligned with the president’s ambitions.

See, for instance, Justin Smith, Trump’s latest nominee to the Eighth Circuit. Smith is deeply intertwined with Leo’s network, but he also has the president’s favorite credential — like Habba and Halligan, Smith served on Trump’s personal legal defense team. It’s a resume line that they share with Judge Emil Bove, Second Circuit nominee Matthew Schwartz, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, and Solicitor General John Sauer.

The very attorneys who have spent years protecting Trump from accountability are now charged with protecting us — or at least, under a normal government, that’s what their mission would be. Under the Trump regime, their job description is unchanged from their time as his personal attorneys.

For every nominee in this slate that the Senate confirms, we will find ourselves falling deeper into a justice system in which federal prosecutors’ role is to punish the president’s personal enemies and federal judges’ role is to rubber-stamp the punishment.

Though the Senate cannot easily undo what Trump’s first term and Leo’s dark money have already locked in, it can refuse to confirm nominees who would push deeper into a Trumpian legalistic autocracy. It should start by rejecting these nominees.

Alex Aronson is executive director of Court Accountability, which you can find on Substack here.

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Trump lacks skills essential in high-stakes negotiation (grasp of details, understanding of what his opponent needs, appreciation of his opponent’s leverage, awareness of his limited military options, and patience). His equally ill-equipped negotiators — Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — seem hopelessly outmatched by the savvy, experienced Iranian negotiators. The Americans show no appreciation for the time, attention to arcane technical detail, tenacity, and hard work it takes to craft even a temporary arrangement.

Moreover, with the Strait of Hormuz under Iranian control, Iran maintains the ultimate bargaining chip (which it played on Saturday) — the ability to open and close the Strait at will and extract tolls from ships seeking passage. (Neither side bothers to mention Iran’s missile program or support for regional terrorist groups, items that Trump once demanded must be part of any deal.)

Trump’s habitual lying about the status of negotiations might be pure market manipulation. (Indeed, the stock market soared on Friday based on Trump’s lies. When will traders learn?) Alternatively, given how comically oblivious he is to his own lack of credibility, Trump may think his imaginary “agreements” put some sort of pressure on Iran to match Trump’s exaggerated claims. The most frightening explanation: Based on snippets of TV coverage and happy talk among his sycophants, Trump may actually believe that Iran is acceding to his demands.

He has no doubt become accustomed to spewing lies to the American press, confident that right-wing media will clean up any discrepancies, while legacy media won’t say flat out that he is lying. Iran does not play along. Instead, the Iranians seem to delight in calling out his lies. On Saturday, the Washington Post reported:

“The President of the United States made seven claims in one hour, all seven of which were false,” chief Iranian negotiator Mohammad Ghalibaf wrote on X late Friday. “They did not win the war with these lies, and they will certainly not get anywhere in negotiations either.”

“Media warfare and engineering public opinion are an important part of war, and the Iranian nation is not affected by these tricks,” Ghalibaf said, adding: “With the continuation of the blockade, the Strait of Hormuz will not remain open.”

A Foreign Ministry statement, posted by state broadcaster IRIB, said: “The Americans talk excessively and create noise around the situation. Do not be misled! There is no new agreement.”

When the Iranians sound like Daniel Dale, CNN’s master fact checker, one must grudgingly acknowledge they are more credible than the Trump regime. Trump, deep into self-delusion, insists Iran’s debunking is simply catering to its domestic audience! He simply will not accept “no” as an answer. So desperate to avoid the economic calamity he unleashed and his plunging poll numbers, his fictional agreements amount to magical thinking (arguably, another sign of his raging narcissism and mental decompensation).

Trump continues to make several fundamental errors, all of which reinforce the Iranians’ view that if they hang tough, Trump will eventually walk away from his pie-in-the-sky demands, maybe even lift sanctions if Iran reopens the Strait of Hormuz. (Yes, that would also be a catastrophic blunder, since after weeks of war, Iran would have obtained the economic relief it desperately wants simply by returning to the pre-war status quo on the Strait of Hormuz.)

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First, Trump may be convinced his lies are some clever maneuver to box in the Iranians. To the Iranians, his fantasy deals signal his desperation to reach a deal that he can tout. They could reasonably conclude that to prevail on key issues (e.g., keep its enriched uranium and missiles, gain sanctions relief, achieve diplomatic recognition of a regime led by leadership as fanatical as its predecessor), all they need is some gauzy window-dressing to keep Trump happy.

Second, Trump inadvertently helps the regime gain credibility with its people. Sending Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to throw around threats and spout fire and brimstone only convinces Iranians that their despotic government is the only thing standing between them and obliteration. Likewise, Trump’s casual references to returning to his military campaign of civilian destruction (i.e., war crimes) cement Iranians’ conviction that the U.S. poses an existential threat to their country. For this reason (and its experience with decades of war and sanctions), Iran’s ability to absorb economic pain surely exceeds Americans’ willingness to tolerate high gas prices.

Third, each time Witkoff and Kushner enter the negotiation room, the Iranians must breathe a sigh of relief. The Iranians know the pair lack the background, knowledge, and patience to negotiate a deal that would actually bind Iran to any real restrictions. Any abbreviated “deal sheet” will leave plenty of room for Iran to drag out “technical” negotiations for months, if not years. Empty statements, like “Iran won’t pursue a bomb” (which are identical to the sort of vague promises Iran has made for years), may impress Trump and his negotiators — but the Iranians know it is pure fluff. As with every other policy issue, Trump does not much care what is in the “deal,” so long he can claim he made one. The Iranians undoubtedly have caught on.

In sum, whenever Trump says Iran “agreed” to some amazing concession, you can bet it hasn’t (especially if Trump attaches a telltale absolute that signals he is fabricating: “never,” “everything,” “totally”). As time goes on, the likelihood that Iranians will agree to nothing (or merely approve a list of meaningless generalities) increases. It is certainly reasonable for them to bet Trump will simply pack up and go home rather than restart a hugely unpopular war.

The Iranians won the war by surviving, inflicting damage on its neighbors with cheap drones, and capturing the Strait of Hormuz. They are not about to forfeit their victory to feckless, deluded Americans led by a compulsive liar.

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But Swalwell, like so many before him, hungry for more — more money, more power, more cachet — flew too close to the sun.

And, like the mythical Icarus, he came crashing back down to Earth, undone by his own hubris and the apparent belief that he, unlike the women he allegedly violated, was untouchable.

Young, generically telegenic, and an outspoken critic of the corruption and chaos of the Trump regime that made him a favorite of the cable and online news circuit, Swalwell’s national profile had risen in recent years. With current California Gov. Gavin Newsom term-limited and unable to seek a third term, Swalwell decided to run to succeed him, a huge role given the state’s population and massive economy, which ranks fourth-largest in the world.

Despite being targeted by Donald Trump’s FBI in what initially seemed like yet another retaliatory fishing expedition, Swalwell was leading in polls for the June 2 primary.

And then five brave women found the courage to tell their stories, accusing Swalwell of sexual abuse and rape and persistently sending them explicit messages.

Within days, Swalwell’s nascent political career was gone. First he withdrew from the governor’s race, and then, under bipartisan pressure, he resigned his seat in the House, though he has denied the worst allegations against him.

Underscoring his belief that he could fly higher without consequence, Ian Calderon, one of Swalwell’s former competitors in the gubernatorial race who endorsed him after dropping out, told Politico that Swalwell was “indignant and adamant” there was nothing when Calderon pressed him on whether there was anything of concern that could come to light.

Sen. Reuben Gallego (D-AZ), who had called Swalwell his best friend, told reporters that Swalwell had become “extremely professional” at lying to his friends, family, and community.

Hours after Swalwell left Congress in disgrace, Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) followed him out the door, though it took weeks for things to get hot enough for Gonzales that he had to, in his words, “retire” from his seat.

In February, the San Antonio Express-News reported on a 2024 affair between Gonzales and an aide in one of his district offices; Gonzales had sent the woman multiple text messages requesting sexually explicit photos, even after she pushed back. The woman later died by suicide. A second woman, who worked on his 2020 campaign, has since come forward with texts allegedly showing that Gonzales repeatedly asked her for nude photos and sent numerous other crude messages.

Sadly, it’s not surprising that Gonzales continued to work on Capitol Hill as usual for as long as he did after news of his alleged misdeeds was reported; he is, after all, a member of the Party of Trump, a man who was found civilly liable for sexual assault by a jury of his peers, has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least 28 women, and still was elected president.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who presents himself as über-pious and was already angering women in the Republican caucus for noticeably keeping them out of leadership roles, further drew women’s ire for mishandling the allegations against Gonzales. Johnson told Gonzales to end his reelection bid but did not support the calls for his resignation.

Similarly, Johnson has done nothing in regard to Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL). Over six months ago, a judge issued a restraining order against Mills for repeatedly harassing and threatening an ex-girlfriend. Earlier in 2025, police in Washington D.C. responded to a 911 call made by a different woman, who alleged that Mills had grabbed her and pushed her out of a door.

With Gonzales now out, the pressure to oust Mills — who also allegedly grossly exaggerated his military record — is intensifying.

It is not a new concept. Swalwell and Gonzales are not the first men of a certain stature to allegedly use their power to get what they want. And some will continue to do so, regardless of who leaves Congress and who drops a bid for office.

Swalwell’s exit from politics may have happened much quicker than Gonzales’s, but we have since learned that there had long been whispers about him in Washington.

Still, as one California lobbyist told Politico, when it came to Swalwell, “Did people see what they want to see or hear what they want to hear or not ask the questions they didn’t want the answers to? One thousand percent.”

They believed him when he repeatedly, flatly said there was no truth to all of the rumors.

Though Gonzales eventually admitted to the affair with his staffer, he painted the revelations as a smear campaign by his primary opponent.

Swalwell has been even more forceful in his denials.

Swalwell was relentlessly pursuing the limelight — until those women, set aflame by the thought of his further ascension, would cause his Icarian fall.

Shalise Manza Young was most recently a columnist at Yahoo Sports, focusing on the intersection of race, gender and culture in sports. The Associated Press Sports Editors named her one of the 10 best columnists in the country in 2020. She has also written for the Boston Globe and Providence Journal. Find her on Bluesky @shalisemyoung.

Steve Cook, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, joins Jen to unpack the various negative impacts that will result from the ongoing war in Iran. Importantly, Cook notes how China is certainly looking at us for lessons on what not to do, and how Europe has determined that the U.S. is no longer a reliable partner.

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Steven Cook is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations specializing in Middle East and Africa studies. He is an expert on Arab and Turkish politics as well as U.S.-Middle East policy. Dr. Cook is the author of multiple books.

The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.

Jen Rubin

Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of The Contrarian. We are delighted to have back with us Steve Cook from the Council on Foreign Relations. Welcome, Steve!

Steven Cook

Hey, great to be back with you, Jen.

Jen Rubin

You know, every day, we spend time trying to figure out what part of a statement that Donald Trump made is actually true. Because he keeps saying, we’ve got a done deal, or we’re gonna attack them, or they’ve agreed to everything. Is he just trying to bluff them into a deal, as if Iran is simply going to agree because Trump said it? What is the strategy behind that?

Steven Cook

Yeah, I think this is, the Iranians are a group of people that Trump has never confronted before. And, they are going to stick to their positions no matter what. They have taken a lot of damage. And they haven’t capitulated on the battlefield. And in the negotiation, I guess it was now a week and a little bit ago, in Islamabad, they weren’t willing to capitulate at the negotiating table. So, none of the president’s usual kind of stratagems have worked. He threatens escalation, they say, bring it on, he says… and now we’re at the point where he… I think he’s trying to, you know, Roy Cohen the Iran conflict, where he says, they’ve agreed to X, and then they feel that they have to go along with it, but they’re an adversary, and he generally is successful doing that with friends.

I mean, he’s able to do that with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, because Prime Minister Netanyahu’s beholden to him. It works with much weaker countries who are not in conflict with the United States, because they really have no other choice. The Iranians, they’re gonna fight it out. We’ve eliminated everybody in Iran who would have, at least theoretically, you’d think, might have been interested in making a deal. And now we’ve got the hardest of the hardliners, and they’re not susceptible to the president’s rhetorical strategy here.

Jen Rubin

Exactly. John Bolton, who I don’t always agree with, said something that I totally agree with, which is, every time Trump does this, he conveys desperation. And the Iranians can smell blood in the water, pardon the phrase. And they know they have him on the run. So, I think they’re right, I think he is desperate, and I think they’re also right. Why should they give anything up at this point? Trump probably, most likely, doesn’t want to go back to war. He can read the polls, he can read the gas prices. And what else is he gonna do? Just kind of stamp his foot? So, if you’re from the Iranian standpoint, what would be the best outcome? That Trump just packs up and leaves? That he gives them some kind of diplomatic recognition? What’s the best case scenario from their standpoint?

Steven Cook

Well, I think the best case scenario for them is, they get him wrapped around the axle of a negotiation on… nuclear issues, missiles, which much of which has been, you know, the manufacturing, much of which has been destroyed, proxies, but in exchange for sitting down, they get sanctions relief.

Why is that happening? I mean, these plans that keep floating up and percolating up that have been leaked from various different places, most recently, the Israelis, have leaked this plan. For the Iranians, it’s about sanctions relief. Then they can negotiate forever, forever, and ever and ever. But Trump will say, look how wonderful, we won, it’s a new regime, and so on and so forth. So that’s the best-case scenario for him.

Meanwhile, for the Iranians, meanwhile, the Israelis would be quite concerned about sanctions relief, the Emiratis, quite concerned, the Saudis are all quite concerned about sanctions relief, but Trump, now having gotten himself into it and desperate to get out of it, you could see, would be willing to do that, and then leave the details to others. Isn’t that the way he does stuff?

Jen Rubin

And this would be the worst of all possible worlds, both before and after the JCPOA, because at least we had the sanctions there, or alternatively, we had measures to control the nuclear program and now we would have nothing. And, oh, by the way. What about the Strait of Hormuz? Is Iran ever giving that up?

Steven Cook

I keep saying this over and over again, and, you know, because the president keeps juicing the market by saying one thing and then the other, none of which is really true, is that if the Strait of Hormuz opens. And I don’t think it’s gonna be open for quite some time. I mean, I’m talking 3, 4, 5, maybe even 2 months, that is gonna be the result.

The result will be that the Iranians have some say in the operation of the Strait of Hormuz. When previously they didn’t, it was notional, it was theoretical, that they could, or they could try to close it, but because the president thought that this thing would end in 3 days, and he would find his Persian version of Delcy Rodriguez, I don’t think that the contingencies for the Strait were as front and center for the military as they might otherwise have been. So now the Iranians have this tremendous amount of leverage, almost better than a nuclear program, because they stand to potentially make money off of it. Why would they give that up?

Jen Rubin

Right, so now they have two points of leverage. A nuclear program that they’re gonna race to the bomb, and the Strait of Hormuz. So they come out much better than they arguably were, aside from, obviously, tremendous damage, they’re gonna have costs. They’re going to be able to recoup that if they’re charging a billion dollars or so per tanker.

Steven Cook

Again, and they, you know, these are the hardest of the hardliners. They’ll eat dust before capitulating to the United States. So they’re not gonna give it up, they do smell desperation. I think the theory, if there is one, or at least people who are kind of backfilling for the president, will say you could do this because this regime is so weak.

They’re not likely to survive for a long period of time, and, you know, they won’t enjoy the sanctions relief because the Iranian people will ultimately rise up and bring them down. That’s possible, that should be among our range of possibilities, but it also should be among our range of possibilities that the Iranian leadership enjoys the sanctions relief, have been willing to use heavy-caliber weapons against their own people, and have the President of the United States in a pretty desperate position, so that they may very well hang on.

So, again, there is the possibility, and we’ve discussed this before, I think, that this thing ends, and the United States in a worse position than it was then before it started.

Jen Rubin

Absolutely. Now, some of our Gulf State allies are coming with their hand out and saying, you know, we’ve had to spend a lot of money here, we’ve had a lot of damage. We’d like you to help us out. Now, I don’t know if Trump is going to do that or not, but that points to another consequence of this, which is the Gulf states are not really thrilled with us at this point. We dragged them into a war, they took a beating, and at the end of the day, they’re not going to get anything, and worst of all, the Strait of Hormuz may be in Iranian hands.

Steven Cook

Yeah, this is not a good outcome for them at all. I mean, whether they were for or against the war remains kind of an open question, you know? Right. John Hudson had that interesting piece in the Washington Post early on in the war that suggested that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman lobbied vigorously for the campaign.

Regardless, they’re now left with a situation where they could be left in the lurch. That’s why a subsequent article was demonstrated that they wanted President Trump to finish the job. They don’t want to be left with an Iran in control or partial control Strait of Hormuz, and the means to threaten them physically with drones and missiles, and they’ve certainly been threatened and taken a lot of damage.

The Emiratis have as a contingency. I don’t think that they’re in a real problem, but they’re exploring the idea of a currency swap. that’s usually done with the Fed, and the Fed is likely to say no, because the Fed, basically gauges these things and weighs a swap on how it would affect the US economy. And since the Emiratis aren’t really that big a player in terms of trade. None like that happened, so they’ve gone to Treasury which they did with Argentina.

But right now, it’s not really interesting. The country in the Gulf that really has suffered the most is Bahrain. And Bahrain, not having a lot of resources to begin with, has taken a tremendous amount of fire. The Iranians believe Bahrain to be part of Iran. And they just don’t have the same kind of capacity as either the Saudis, or the Emiratis, or the Qataris, for that matter. So, I can imagine if there’s positive noise coming from the Treasury Department about the Emiratis, the Bahrainis will be right behind them. You know, all of a sudden, we’re helping out a whole host of countries that we think of as wealthy countries.

Jen Rubin

And you have to appreciate the irony that Trump is so mad at the Europeans, because from his standpoint, it’s take, take, take. Now he has a whole other set of dependents who have their hands out because of his bungling.

Steven Cook

Which, going back to the 1980s, all of those countries, he had demanded they pay for their security. These old, you know, New York Post and New York Daily News ads that he took out in the 80s, saying that, you know, all these wealthy countries should pay the United States, and that’s… that’s been his message in his three runs for president. We may end up, actually, he may be leaning on Scott Bessent, the Treasury Secretary. to throw these guys a lifeline. The ironies are astounding.

Jen Rubin

The only people who may be more upset than the Gulf states, and those people who understand American geopolitics. are the Israelis. they are not in a good position. Now, they’ve made some headway in Lebanon at the cost of enormous casualties and damage. But the regime is still there. The regime has lots and lots of missiles, which they have learned they can be replenished. There is no sign that they’re giving up their nuclear program. And they have the strength. So what does Bibi say to his domestic audience, look what I got you? They’re also in a slightly worse position.

Steven Cook

Right, I think that the… I think the Israeli government could probably live with the outcome in Iran. And the kind of cold calculations of, you know, Israeli security establishment, we have destroyed, you know, X amount of Y, and we, you know, and the Iranians can’t do Z for 5 years, that buys us time, those kinds of calculations that are being made. Lebanon, I think, is a different story. Because, right before Trump declared the ceasefire, the Israel Democracy Institute released a poll that showed 80% of Israelis supported the operations against Hezbollah. Then INSS, the Institute for National Strategic Studies in Tel Aviv, released another poll that showed not quite as many, but 65% of Israelis supported the operations against Hezbollah, because Netanyahu has said we’re gonna do this after Hezbollah fired on Israel, after the Ayatollah was killed in the opening round, that that’s it, we’re gonna solve the Hezbollah problem.

And for some Israelis, they’ve come tantalizingly close. Yes, the damage to Lebanon has been tremendous, and the Israelis talking about occupying Lebanon is a very, very bad idea. But they did enter into this town, Bint Jbeil, that was a stronghold of Hezbollah, and then they’ve suddenly been pulled back. So there’s a lot of frustration in Israel today across the board. There’s lots of, support, both for the operations against Iran and Hezbollah, and what’s happened is, Netanyahu has done a lot of work to try to spin this, but it looks like if the elections were held today, he would be 11 seats short of the majority that he needs to become the president.

That doesn’t necessarily suggest that his opponents have the 61 seats, minimum 61 seats they need immediately, but he was looking to capitalize on Iran and for those things to carry him back to the Prime Ministry.

And after all, this is Iran in particular has been what Bibi has talked about since he first became Prime Minister in 1996. You know, two weeks, the window is closing, this is all the language of Netanyahu run, you know, Israeli governments over many, many years. So, the Israelis are in a very uncomfortable position. One Israeli friend of mine said to me. is there anything that we can salvage from this? We essentially lost this. For all of the tactical brilliance of the IDF, they’re gonna lose this. I mean, and one other point on this is that, you know, the president made a big deal about, a ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel, but Hezbollah said, we’re not a party to it, Israel keeps hitting Hezbollah, and there’s supposed to be some meeting between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Joseph Aoun of Lebanon. I was burning up the WhatsApp this morning, and either people are ignoring me or getting… there’s no date yet. Which means, again, the president is saying things that aren’t actually going to happen.

Now, he’s able to get the Israelis to stop, because I said before, Netanyahu’s beholden to him, and so you can declare a ceasefire before the security cabinet has an opportunity to debate it, and the Israelis have to abide by it, but I don’t think we’re getting much further in Lebanon.

Jen Rubin

And that’s another negative for Bibi, by the way, because Trump forced him to stop when he didn’t want to. See, this idea that he has Trump wrapped around his finger, not.

Last question I want to ask you, I wrote about this today. The big winner in all of this, from my standpoint, seems to be China. The reason being that they are chomping at the bit to make all kinds of economic and other deals with our allies who are disaffected. We have screwed up the region. They’re going to be more than happy to be the reconstruction crew that comes in. They are dominating the green energy field because we have ceded ground to them. And what’s more, they seem normal, and stable. And reliable, and we seem like a bunch of clowns! Beijing is pretty happy about where things have landed.

Steven Cook

It’s amazing when we’ve made the CCP look, like, professional and competent and non-ideological, because we’re, like, six ways till Sunday. I mean, it’s crazy. The president is out there saying things that everybody knows are not true.

I do think, in a way, I think on an economic level, certainly the Chinese have, an advantage here. They’ve had an advantage for a while because they have state-owned enterprises that can bid, you know, 40% at a discount on what American and other Western firms can bid. But I do think, like that period of time, like 10 years, where both Democrats and Republicans talked about pivoting away from the Middle East, and going to Asia, and that we didn’t really have strong interests in the Middle East, that, you know, Emiratis, Saudis. others, Israelis kind of hedged their bets with the Chinese, but it was mostly on economic stuff.

I think the Chinese, they want to learn the negative lesson from us, which is, don’t get wrapped around the axle of regional conflicts. you want to be neutral on these things, because otherwise, you get bogged down in a region that is critically important to you, but it saps your power, and so on, and we see this kind of thing happening with the United States. I don’t get the sense, and again, I don’t speak Mandarin, I don’t read Mandarin, I talk to people who do. And so this is secondary. I don’t get the sense that the Chinese want to replace the United States as the provider of security. the region. They do want to rebuild Bahrain. the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.

Jen Rubin

Exactly. The last thing I’ll say is the most interesting thing that happened last week, to my mind, is when the Italian Prime Minister and Trump had a falling out over the Pope. Coincidentally, the Italian delegation happened to be in China, negotiating an economic and trade, you know, cooperation agreement. The Chinese practically bear-hugged the Italians, as if to say. about those crazy Americans? You’ve got it! We’ll be your friends, we’ll be reliable, don’t worry. Not that suddenly Europe is going to be in the pocket of China, but when you think back. I think they had made some progress in getting the Europeans to begin to stand up to China. That, I think, is gone. They really have to play both sides at this point, because the Americans are so undependable!

Steven Cook

I mean, to say the least, I mean, I would suspect that after this, Trump, you know, maybe it’s Cuba, but I think he might say, we’re done with NATO, and I think that the Europeans have come to the conclusion that the United States is totally unreliable. But can we go back to one thing? I’m not an expert on this, but I have to say this. I mean, of all the things, of all the things, why would you pick a fight with the Pope? That seems to be, politically, the dumbest thing that you could possibly do. The Pope!

And then lecture him! Then lecture him about theology. I mean, that’s his one job. And so, like, it just seems to me totally crazy. It’s totally crazy. And it speaks to where we are, which is why, if you’re an Italian prime minister, and you’ve been close to Trump, but you’re objectively observing the geopolitical environment around you. you see a president of the United States basically disintegrating, an administration around him saying very nasty things about the Pope, and about Europe, who are… Whether you like it or not, whether you agree with Pedro Sanchez or not, these are the people who share our values the most. and who… and it’s a core interest of the United States for Europe to be whole, prosperous, and free. These people don’t, in the administration, don’t seem to care about this at all. Europeans are gonna have to play a multipolar game here. It’s not just about the United States any longer. And it’s our own fault. It’s our own fault.

Jen Rubin

Exactly. This is completely self-inflicted. So, last question for you. If you have to bet. It seems like they’re going to Islamabad. I guess the Iranians are showing up, at least as of this moment. Is anything gonna happen this week, or everyone’s gonna go home?

Steven Cook

You know, I’ve been impressed that the… not impressed in a, like, wow, I want to be like that, but impressed that the Iranians have not come off their demands, which have been the same all along. And they firmly believe that Trump is gonna blink. So, that’s the variable here. Is Trump going to blink?

And if he does, how is he going to spin it? all things being equal, he sticks to where he is, we’re still gonna have the problem in the Strait of Hormuz, which may, as the Iranians have threatened, move to the Bab al-Mandab, which their allies, the Houthis, had done post-October 7th, 2023. So, I’m gonna stick to my guns here and say I’m not hopeful that anything real will come out of Islamabad. These are really big issues that require lots of time, lots of attention, lots of patience. This administration doesn’t have it, and the Iranians believe that they’re winning.

Jen Rubin

I think that’s right, and the only logical or possible alternative I see is one little piece of paper with something at the top saying, we’ll agree to talk in the future by Trump, I won! And that’s it.

Steven Cook

Well, we’ll see where the markets are. You know, that could be the thing that he does, you know, because it’s been clear he’s been juicing the markets with the things that he’s been saying, and market players fall for it every single time.

Jen Rubin

It is a fascinating story of utter and complete self-own and incompetence, but great for people like you, so…

Steven Cook

I hate that bad news is good for me. I have a smile on my face, I generally have a sunny disposition, but it really does gnaw at me that bad news is good.

Jen Rubin

Yes! I know, I know. Well, as always, Steve, it’s a pleasure. Thanks for coming and sharing your knowledge, and I am sure we are g

This is just one example: MSG’s intense surveillance has reportedly been tracking journalists, lawyers, and even a Girl Scout. Pablo Torre, host of Pablo Torre Find Out, broke the news in partnership with Wired. Now, he sits down with Jen to parse through the disturbing details behind MSG tracking its attendees. The two also talk LIV Golf’s demise, Arsenal’s collapse, and the World Cup’s battle with the state of New Jersey and it’s own fans over money.

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Pablo Torre is an American sportswriter, podcaster, and television host. He contributes to various programs at ESPN, including Pardon The Interruption and Around The Horn. Keep up with Pablo on his Substack and podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out .

Sure, he might ascend to the presidency sooner rather than later if, one way or another, Donald Trump leaves office before January 2029. But even if Vance is an incumbent by 2028, is there a path for him to win? I’m betting no.

It may be foolhardy to make predictions like this (as my husband constantly reminds me). But history and the facts suggest the odds are with the appalled and far-from-silent majority. No matter what their struggles with the boss’s baggage, previous veeps in White House races were dealing with one or two metaphorical carry-on bags — not Trump’s crushing cargo-hold of pretty much every scandal, screw-up, and grievously wrong decision a president or administration could possibly bequeath.

The bad luck piling up for Vance in just the past 10 days is notable. He failed at his ridiculous assignment to end Trump’s Iran war in 24 hours or less (and at this writing, was about to try again). His star turn at a rally for Hungary’s far-right Viktor Orbán, Trump’s friend and role model, apparently fired up Orbán opponents instead of supporters. He’s promoting his upcoming book about converting to Catholicism amid Trump attacking the first American pope and posting a disturbing image of himself as Jesus.

In the beginning — a decade ago — Vance called Trump “unfit” and an “idiot,” and rose to celebrity with his best-selling Hillbilly Elegy memoir. Then, after displaying his non-interventionist cred in a 2022 debate by opposing a NATO-enforced no-fly zone over Ukraine, he won an Ohio Senate seat with a surprise endorsement from Trump. Both have done 180s since then — Vance becoming such a Trump devotee that he secured the 2024 VP slot, and Trump showing his true colors as a war-mongering interventionist.

It’s complicated. But, for vice presidents, it always is.

Fifteen of America’s 50 vice presidents have become president—eight of them after a president’s death and a ninth, Gerald Ford, after Richard Nixon’s 1974 resignation. They haven’t proven particularly competitive in general elections, however. In 1988, George H.W. Bush became the first vice president to directly succeed his boss since Martin Van Buren in 1836. There hasn’t been another since.

An out-of-office term or two worked for Nixon in 1968 and Joe Biden in 2020. At the same time, from 1960 to 2024, six sitting or former vice presidents became their party nominees and lost their general elections — Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Ford, Walter Mondale, Al Gore, and Kamala Harris.

Vice presidents seem like they should do better, given their on-the-job experience, but that’s often overshadowed by troubling aspects of an administration’s record. Humphrey had Lyndon Johnson’s increasingly controversial Vietnam War, which played out at a 1968 Chicago convention remembered for “brawling delegates, billowing clouds of tear gas and police batons flailing at long-haired protestors,” as NPR put it 56 years later. Nixon beat him — then resigned amid the Watergate scandal and looming impeachment. Ford pardoned him, then lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Bill Clinton — impeached on charges of perjury and obstructing justice related to sexual misconduct, yet presiding over a healthy economy and popular among voters to the end — posed a sticky problem for Gore. In 1999 he called Clinton’s conduct and lies “inexcusable” and said in his convention speech that “I stand here tonight as my own man.” Clinton did stump for Gore in Black communities in the final days of the close race after a campaign in which the pair rarely appeared together—a possibly fatal mistake by Gore.

Harris was best positioned to become the nominee after Biden’s disastrous debate and late-breaking exit from the 2024 race. But he had not elevated her or her role, and she didn’t have much time in her 107-day campaign to introduce herself. There was no time to meet voters and workshop ideas in Iowa living rooms; she was under klieg lights immediately.

So was her dilemma over whether or how much to break from Biden. He had a solid record on many fronts, but persistent inflation and his fading capacities were nagging at voters, and his job approval rating was low. When asked on The View what she would do differently, Harris missed a huge opportunity with her reply: “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”

The ultimate sign of doom for Vance is Mike Pence, Trump’s first-term vice president. He broke hard with Trump after Jan. 6, launched a White House bid against his former boss in 2023, and suspended his campaign five months later before the first primary contests began.

Still, the previous vice-presidential losers — even Pence — had glide paths compared with Vance. That’s because the second Trump administration doesn’t have one or two of the problems they faced; it has all of them combined: An unpopular war (60 percent disapprove in a new poll). A sex scandal (the forever taint of his long, close friendship with sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein). Economic woes (consumer sentiment at a record low as Trump’s tariffs, military aggression, and budget cuts drive higher prices for gas, healthcare, and much else). Watergate-style government weaponization on steroids. Majorities upset about Trump’s immigration policies. Election denialism and manipulation, and majorities who don’t trust him “at all” to handle democracy. Majorities who say these adjectives apply to him “a lot”: arrogant, opportunistic, reckless, dishonest, corrupt, hypocritical, and divisive.

The main problem for 2028 Democrats will be choosing which of many urgent problems to talk about. They’ll have to sift through the countless humiliations, hypocrisies, brutality, corruption, national security risks and broken promises of this administration, and the corrosive acquiescence of Trump’s team and the Republican Congress — including any and all presidential hopefuls — in the face of it all.

Vance has no choices and no escape. He’s handcuffed to Trump and MAGA as they run full-out toward a political cliff.

Jill Lawrence is the author of The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock. Read her work here: JillLawrence.com.

As we prepare to celebrate Earth Day Wednesday, it’s worth noting that the State of the Global Climate report sounds an alarm, even if our government would prefer to ignore it.

In the American West, March is traditionally the month of the “peak”—the moment when the mountain snowpack reaches its zenith, acting as a frozen reservoir that sustains millions through the heat of summer.

But this year, the satellite images tell a different story. They show a landscape stripped bare, a record low that should terrify anyone who drinks water from the Colorado River Basin or lives in the shadow of a forest.

This isn’t just a bad winter. This is a reckoning. The eleventh hour is upon us.

While we watch our water supply vanish before it even has a chance to melt, findings from the most recent World Meteorological Organization (WMO) State of the Global Climate report are a gut-punch to the collective delusion that climate change is a “future” problem.

We’ve just lived through the 11 warmest years on record in human history. In 2025, the planet sat at 1.43°C above pre-industrial levels. We’re teetering on the edge of the 1.5°C threshold we once swore we would never cross.

The science is no longer just “settled”; it’s screaming. For the first time, the WMO has highlighted Earth’s dangerous, unsustainable energy imbalance.

We’ve broken the equilibrium between the energy we receive from the sun and what we radiate back into space. We’ve turned our atmosphere into a heat-trap, with greenhouse gas concentrations at their highest levels in 800,000 years.

For decades, the ocean has been our silent savior, absorbing 91% of that excess heat and about 30% of our carbon dioxide emissions. But that thermal buffer is breaking.

Ocean heat content has reached a record high, warming at double the rate it did just 20 years ago. The consequences—irreversible changes to deep-ocean pH and marine heatwaves—are no longer theoretical. They’re the new baseline.

The cost of this imbalance is being paid in human lives and economic stability. We aren’t just talking about polar bears anymore; we’re talking about the 1.2 billion people who now face life-threatening risks from climate change.

We’re talking about the explosion of mosquito-borne diseases like Dengue and the billions of dollars lost to “natural” disasters that are increasingly man-made.

Yet, in the United States, we continue to treat the climate as a secondary issue, a special interest topic to be debated during election cycles and then shoved to the bottom of the legislative pile.

We argue about the how—the policy mechanisms and the economic transitions—while ignoring the what: that our current path is physically unsustainable.

We are a species on a perilous trajectory. The window of opportunity isn’t a metaphor; it’s a physical reality dictated by the laws of thermodynamics. As UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres noted, “climate chaos is accelerating and delay is deadly.”

The bare peaks of the Rockies this March aren’t just a weather anomaly. They’re a flashing red light on the planetary dashboard.

We can no longer afford to treat the survival of our ecosystem as a political luxury. If we don’t move climate change to the absolute top of our national priority list today, the future generations we claim to worry about won’t have a stable world to inherit. They’ll simply be left to survive in the wreckage of our procrastination.

Jeff Nesbit was the public affairs chief for five Cabinet secretaries or agencies under four presidents. “Digital Dust,” his new book on the creation of the mass surveillance state in America, will be out in early summer this year.

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In our latest Contrarian episode, Norm Eisen, Norm Ornstein, and Jen Rubin join Harry to assess new flashpoints in Trump’s nonstop quest to escape accountability and his hasty efforts to claw free of his war in the Middle East. The group takes stock of Trump’s stumbling attempts to find a deal with Iran, which seem likely to leave the U.S. weakened and isolated. The panel also weighs the bombshell state charges against an ICE agent and the odds that Trump could name two new Supreme Court justices before year’s end.

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Nowhere is Trump’s penchant for self-owns more evident than in his determination to blow up alliances. Long ago, Trump alienated progressive leaders in Europe (e.g. Spain, UK, France), and now has become toxic to ones on the far rightwing. Politico reports that far-right French leader Marine Le Pen warned her party “to keep our distance” from Trump. Ouch. Not even the neo-Nazi AfD party in Germany wants to get too close to him, observing that Vice President JD Vance’s visit “hung like millstones around [the former Hungarian leader’s] neck.”

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, once Trump’s biggest supporter in the EU, had enough when Trump attacked Pope Leo. “I find President Trump’s words towards the Holy Father unacceptable,” she said in unusually harsh terms. “The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church, and it is right and normal for him to call for peace and to condemn every form of war.” Given that her voters abhor Trump and he has diminished the value of the U.S. as an ally (by launching tariffs, abandoning Ukraine, and cozying up to Russia), her move after losing a recent referendum makes perfect political sense.

The deterioration in U.S. standing with the public in democratic countries, which in turn affects leaders’ decision-making, is breathtaking. When Politico pollsters asked if China or the U.S. was a more reliable partner, “57 percent of Canadians, 40 percent of Germans, and 42 percent of Britons said China — a sharp decline in America’s perceived trustworthiness,” Robert Kagan wrote recently. “In the past, America’s alliance relationships have survived waves of public disapproval because governments knew that whatever errors the United States made and however unpopular Washington might be, it remained fully committed to defending the order that protected them.” Well, not anymore.

And here is where China makes its move. When Trump snapped back at Meloni, declaring, “She’s the one who’s unacceptable,” China was quick to rush forward. At a meeting in China on economic and trade cooperation, Minister Wang Wentao told Italy’s delegation: “China is willing to work with Italy to further tap into the potential for cooperation.” He added, “Italy is expected to play a constructive role in promoting the healthy and stable development of China-European Union economic and trade relations.”

Time and again, China has shown finesse in capitalizing on Trump’s compulsion to offend and attack allies. Trump’s moves to bludgeon trading partners with tariffs and leave them to bear the brunt of a reckless, counterproductive war with Iran (then threatening NATO when Europeans refused to back him) opened the door for China to present itself as a model of stability in a world of Trumpian chaos.

The Iran war certainly intensified the shift in power and influence away from the U.S. Trump’s decision to move assets to the Middle East furthered China’s strategic objectives, ceding (at least temporarily) the U.S.’s ability to project force and offer protection for its allies. China did not lift a finger to push U.S. forces out of the Indo-Pacific.

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As Andrew P. Miller and Michael Clark explained, Trump’s adventurism in Venezuela and Iran have served “to deplete U.S. resources, tank the United States’ reputation, and raise fuel prices,” as well as force the U.S. to reposition personnel and material away from Asia. “With the U.S. military bogged down in the Middle East, China has a freer hand in East Asia,” they wrote. “China can present itself as a responsible peacemaker … [after] the United States has injured its reputation by acting unpredictably, betraying its allies, and starting a war that has done serious damage to the global economy.”

China’s position, if anything, will only improve after (and if) the fighting stops in the Middle East. China no doubt will eagerly offer to participate, if not lead, reconstruction in the region. Trump has given it a golden opportunity to make itself a more attractive partner than the United States, which caused the wreckage. Given resentment toward the U.S. over casualties and physical destruction, its deceptive promises (Regime change! Gulf allies will be fine!), and virulent anti-Muslim language, Middle East leaders may be quite receptive to China’s overtures.

Consider China’s advantage (facilitated by Trump anti-green energy derangement) in clean energy. Its ability to sell EV’s and solar panels throughout the Middle East, Asia, and Africa is now unmatched. “It’s not hard to imagine policymakers from across the developing world looking at examples like these and concluding that betting on Beijing isn’t actually the riskier option,” Bloomberg reports. Given Trump’s hostility to green energy and his bewildering international conduct, if “the only options are dependence on predictably mercantilist Beijing and on an erratic, self-centered and disruptive U.S., the choice is obvious.”

If there were any doubt as to the fallout from Trump’s war, diplomatic cables show the damage the war has done to U.S. relations with Muslim countries such as Azerbaijan, Bahrain, and Indonesia, Politico reports. “Some of the cables describe anti-U.S. sentiment that is having an immediate impact, while others raise concerns that relationships could be in danger if the war continues much longer.”)

In sum, Trump has never understood that U.S. power and prestige rely on our long-standing alliances, technological prowess, attractiveness as a destination for the best and the brightest, and moral stature. Whether isolating the U.S. from European allies, waging a reckless war, burning through U.S. munitions, ceding China the lead in green energy, undercutting our university scientific research system, chasing away immigrants, or destroying our moral authority (hence, our standing to pressure China on human rights), Trump has unilaterally disarmed the U.S. By jettisoning our inherent strengths, Trump boosts China, which never had those advantages.

When historians look back on this period to understand how the U.S. lost global preeminence to China, the question will not be “Who lost China?” but “Who lost superpower status to China?” We will pay the price for decades for an ignorant, mentally unwell U.S. president’s sabotage of America’s distinctive assets, stupidly abetted by cowardly Republicans.