Donald Trump’s war and tariffs and deficits = new inflation highs. “US wholesale inflation jumped in September to its highest level in more than four years, marking the second hotter-than-expected inflation reading this week and adding to concerns about the economy just weeks before the midterm elections,” CNN reported. “The Producer Price Index rose 1.3% from the month before and 6.3% from the year before, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Thursday morning. It’s a sharp upswing from August when wholesale prices rose 0.5% to an annual rate of 5.6%.”

The DOJ is desperately trying to suppress voting, discredit expected losses. Former Maricopa County, Arizona, Recorder Stephen Richer took apart DOJ’s letter making unsubstantiated allegation of noncitizens on California’s voting rolls, noting possible violations of the Supreme Court’s order in the SAVE case, and reminding the Trump regime “voter roll–wide citizenship checks within 90 days of the election … would violate the NVRA [National Voter Registration Act].” DOJ’s suit is a last gasp of a losing, corrupt regime.

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Hegseth has proven himself utterly unfit to uphold his oath of office or to defend the rule of law, the honor of the U.S. military, and the storied tradition of decency, nonpartisanship, and excellence that made it the envy of the world. But in this case, Hegseth went too far even for many Republicans — including Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). Public revulsion was immediate, bipartisan, and widespread. “Only 18% of Americans strongly or somewhat favor having executions broadcast live to the public, while 69% oppose this,” The Economist/YouGov poll reports. In fact, the majority of Republicans (52% oppose / 31% favor), MAGA Republicans (48% / 36%), and death penalty supporters (55% / 32%) opposed such a spectacle.

Most noteworthy were the objections from the military itself, as WTOP reported:

More than 60 soldiers have stated they don’t want to be involved in the livestreamed firing squad execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, according to a religious freedom organization that assists members of the U.S. military.

Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, told WTOP he expects up to 180 soldiers stationed at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas, will ultimately seek guidance to avoid being a member of the team that will execute Hasan at 1 p.m. on Dec. 3, on the basis of their religious beliefs….

Weinstein said a wide variety of soldiers have expressed their religious objections to being part of a live-streamed spectacle.

As a preliminary matter, no one should minimize the courage it took to register objections of any type to this abusive, cruel, and vindictive regime — which has retaliated against senior officers by denying promotions, firing Stars & Stripes journalists for writing negative accounts, and attempting to prosecute members of Congress for telling military personnel to reject illegal orders. To stand up to Hegseth and Trump on religious grounds, revealing the degeneracy of a White Christian nationalist secretary who revels in death and oozes Islamophobia, showed extraordinary character.

The military personnel’s aversion to carrying out a stunt so at odds with the traditions of the military and of the moral sensibilities of our democracy (at least those that existed before the descent into MAGA debasement) spoke well of their moral fiber. “It’s one thing to carry out an order of execution. It’s quite another to have it streamed, where every second grader, at this stage in 2026, with the ability to get to the internet, can watch it happen,” Weinstein told WTOP. “It’s grotesque and barbaric.” He added, “Most of them that have come to us are Christians, but we have Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, we have agnostics and atheists — they feel this is an example of the sinful pride of execution.”

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The troops’ objections came on the heels of a public statement released on October 12 by Archbishop Timothy Broglio, responsible for the spiritual guidance of Catholics in the military. He declared that “it is my duty to express my disapproval of what is proposed regarding the execution of the terrorist Hasan in the Archdiocese entrusted to my spiritual care to be done by those for whose salvation I have been constituted as the Archbishop for the Military Services, USA.”

After reiterating the Catholic Church’s opposition to capital punishment — he issued a heartfelt plea:

[D]o we really want to imitate the terrorists of this world and make a public spectacle of barbarically killing our adversaries? The crime committed by Nidal Malik Hasan was heinous, but does exposing the public to his execution serve any purpose? Has the potential moral injury, which the members of the firing squad might experience, been considered? Will the exposure of a live-stream to the young and impressionable during the 250th anniversary year of our independence be able to be repaired? The US military generally enjoys a good reputation in the world. Is there really a value to throwing them in the same boat with terrorists by broadcasting the image of the execution of a man in a wheelchair to the whole world? Does this decision reflect the dignity of the human person?

Broglio asked for the decision to be “reconsidered” and, in any event, to do whatever “is possible to keep the exposure to the live-streaming of the proposed execution from the vision of the young and impressionable.” That, as the archbishop undoubtedly knew, would have been virtually impossible in an era of ubiquitous screens, which only underscores the moral insanity of putting out such images. In a noteworthy analogy that should have touched a nerve with those in the Trump regime who identify as pro-life, Broglio concluded by asking that “[a]s I would in the case of a procured abortion, I oblige any Catholics assigned to the firing squad to request to be excused from this action contrary to the teaching of the Church.”

On one level, as heinous as this may be, Hegseth has been guilty of much greater sins and crimes against humanity (e.g., ordering reckless strikes that killed nearly 240 people on the high seas, and 156 innocent people at an Iranian school). However, the gratuitous barbarity and determination to drag junior personnel into a travesty of this sort marked, in some respect, a new debasement of the military.

By stark contrast, we should herald the decency and ethical resoluteness of military personnel who — at risk to themselves and their livelihoods — refused to participate in this depraved act. We salute those, including the archbishop, who provided spiritual and religious guidance. And those who resisted may have been instrumental in forcing Trump’s about-face.

At a time when the president and a flock of his minions, indeed an entire political party, so abjectly fail to serve as decent role models, we are particularly appreciative of the undaunted moral bravery of those who serve in the armed forces, risking their lives to maintain our freedom as they maintain the highest, truest tradition of military honor and human decency.

Real talk on the economy. From Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA): “Inflation data came in and Donald Trump’s failed economic agenda has raised prices for Americans by 5.9%. That means families are paying $3,772 more thanks to inflation under Trump.”

The inflation number is truly worrisome. “Headline inflation is up again, as expected given the ongoing energy crisis induced by the Iran War,” said former car czar Steve Rattner. “Equally concerning, core inflation is up too, indicating that high energy costs are beginning to bleed into everything else.” Moreover, “Real wages are shrinking year-over-year for the sixth month in a row. The Iran War brought an end to three years of real wage growth.”

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When the White House and federal agencies remain in Donald Trump’s hands and the MAGA majority on the U.S. Supreme Court peels aways decades of protections from Americans on everything from voting rights to abortion access, state governments can provide critical protection for fundamental services, ranging from healthcare to housing to food assistance. Maintaining state vaccine requirements, instituting moratoriums or strict regulations on data centers, and backstopping schools and food banks hit by federal cuts can insulate residents from rotten federal policy choices.

States can also act as essential bulwarks to shield residents from federal government abuse. In its September 2026 report, the ACLU listed critical policy arenas — including immigration, free speech/data collection, and voting and civil rights — in which states can play a critical part in preventing grave constitutional abuses.

On the immigration front (as we have seen in states such as Illinois), state and local authorities can opt out of the “Trump’s deportation machine by minimizing local entanglements with abusive and discriminatory immigration enforcement programs,” refusing to contract with ICE to provide detention space (where we have seen rampant abuses), and/or refusing to allow their law enforcement personnel to be dragooned into assisting abusive ICE actions.

In addition, as is happening in Minnesota, state and local officials can investigate excessive use of force and pursue prosecution of federal officials who violate state law. They can likewise gather information, hold public hearings, and create a complete public record that can be used by federal officials in a future administration.

Governors also can refuse to turn over to the Trump regime their national guard troops to patrol other states and, as California, Oregon, and Illinois did, go to court to block federal invasion of troops to conduct rogue, violent immigration raids in their own states.

In California, for example, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed a bill that “prohibits military personnel from another state, territory, or the District of Columbia from entering California to perform military duty or law-enforcement functions without the permission of the Governor” while preserving the exception for “forces lawfully called into active federal service under Title 10 and acting under the authority of the President or Secretary of Defense.” Every state can pass such protection.

When it comes to privacy protection, we have already seen more than two dozen states successfully sue to prevent the feds from collecting unredacted voting roll data containing sensitive personal information on millions of Americans. Likewise, though the Supreme Court has authorized the SAVE database, a massive federal data collection bank replete with errors that has sucked up Social Security information, states can decline to access it, ban dissemination of such material in their jurisdictions, and reaffirm state privacy protections for residents.

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We have witnessed an all-out assault on voting rights from the Trump regime on multiple fronts (e.g. attempting to wreck mail-in voting, re-redistricting, threatening state and local officials who do not purge voting rolls, cutting funding for election administration). In addition to litigating against federal abuses, states can expand and protect voting rights by adequately funding election operations, passing stiff laws against voter intimidation, providing ample time for early voting (and cure periods for ballot errors), redistricting to level the playing field (e.g., New York, Virginia, Maryland), using state referenda to defend fair maps (e.g., Missouri) to counter Republican gerrymandering, and insulating vote-counting and certification from partisan shenanigans.

Finally, though the U.S. Constitution should prove that broad equal protection and due process rights apply to all Americans, when the MAGA hacks on the Supreme Court strip away those protections, state governors, legislatures, and courts can fill in the gap. That entails protections for reproductive rights (including protection for medical providers whom MAGA state officials may attempt to sue or even prosecute), nondiscrimination guarantees for LGBTQ+ residents, and defense of state higher education institutions from attempts to impair diversity efforts.

In this area, Just Security recommends that states “follow the example of former Republican California Governor George Deukmejian, who 40 years ago signed into law a broad right for any individual to sue anyone who interferes with, or attempts to interfere with, their constitutional or statutory rights through threats, intimidation, or coercion,” with enforcement powers afforded to the state attorney general. These entities can provide protection against private, local, state, or federal actors who violate civil rights. States may need not only new laws but also new agencies/entities to “with explicit authority to enforce — including through litigation and other legal means — the constitutional and statutory rights of state residents as against any entity that violates those rights.”

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Some states have already pioneered models for civil rights enforcement, but it takes will and leadership for them to be effective. (“For example, in fiscal year 2023, the state of Iowa operated a civil rights commission with seven part-time commissioners to hear cases, four attorneys, and 15 civil rights specialists. That body held 13 meetings, one hearing, and issued zero reports. In contrast, California employed 315 positions in its Civil Rights Department and launched 5,765 investigations, secured 788 settlements regarding discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations, and secured some $154 million in monetary relief for complainants.”)

A patchwork system of civil right enforcement is not ideal, but it is preferable to civil rights deserts. Given that “the federal government is not reliably fulfilling its responsibilities and that it is itself now an affirmative perpetrator of harm against residents,” as Just Security said, Democratic governors and legislatures can take up the task of creating systems to ensure that “all people, every day, have access to the country’s guarantees of equality.”

In sum, elections for governors, other statewide offices, and state legislatures will be critical to the everyday lives of millions of Americans. The “laboratories” of democracy envisioned in the Constitution can maintain vital services and provide urgently needed protections when it comes to immigration, privacy/data collection, and voting and civil rights. Flipping states from red to blue will ensure that millions of Americans find protection from the privations inflicted by the president in a downward spiral of cruelty, incompetence, and vengeance.

Worst timing for worst economic news. “Higher energy prices drove up inflation in the United States in September, a warning shot to President Trump ahead of midterm elections that have centered primarily on affordability concerns. The uptick in consumer prices will also keep the Federal Reserve under pressure to raise interest rates again after last month’s move,” the New York Times reported. Donald Trump insisting affordability is all a “hoax” just destroys MAGA candidates’ credibility.

The outlets Trump kicked out of the White House win a preliminary injunction prohibiting their exclusion. U.S. District court Judge Timothy J. Kelly found they will likely succeed on Due Process and First Amendment grounds. Trump’s own words show that he banned the outlets “because he believes that their reporting is generally inaccurate and biased against him … [and] there is no evidence in the record that President Trump made the decision to revoke Plaintiffs’ hard passes on national security grounds from the get-go, nor at any time has he directly stated that national security was the reason for his decision.”

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Do you really want to do this? More specifically, potential contenders need to decide if they want to undertake this massive effort now. If they are under fifty years old, they have 4-5 presidential cycles before anyone will consider them past their prime. If they are over seventy years old, they should strongly reconsider, given the experience of two geriatric presidents and the public demand to turn the page vigorously on an era of misguided Middle East wars, economic disaster, and government dysfunction.

If they want to continue public service, they should keep in mind the plethora of more attainable positions, elected and non-elected, and the critical role of civil society. After the Trump regime is gone, the country will need devoted public servants to rebuild the federal government, lead higher education (reestablishing its independence and crafting a new relationship with the federal government). There will be plenty of critical non-governmental positions that require support, as well as international posts in organizations that have been decimated by neglect, war, and corruption.

By definition, everyone who runs for the nomination (save one) will lose — and may find that future opportunities have dimmed or diminished thanks to a failed run. Also, those mulling running should not think they must run for president to get on the ticket. (Sen. Tim Kaine did not in 2016, former Sen. Al Gore did not in 1992; both were picked as VPs.)

Run to lead the party and the country. If potential candidates aim to show that Democratic socialists have no business running the country, or, conversely, that establishment Democrats are the bane of the party, they probably should not be running for the nomination of the Democratic Party. There will be plenty of spirited policy debates, but ultimately the winner will need to unite the party and lead it to victory in 2028. Constant internecine warfare is as tiresome as it is irrelevant to ordinary voters. There will be plenty of credit to go around after November for wins, so fighting over who was “right” about which candidates will be a pointless exercise.

More importantly, 2028 aspirants should focus on voters enraged enough with Trump’s status quo to move the needle. With Democrats having regained ground with Hispanics, regained rural voters in the Midwest, and seen elevated Black engagement as both candidates and voters in the deep South, it would be a grave error to neglect these crucial voters or expect them to welcome the Democratic nominee in two years. Serious 2028 contenders should continue to foster ties, maintain voter engagement, and encourage ongoing organizing efforts. Considering the new Democratic primary calendar features a prominent southern state, South Carolina, then states with significant Hispanic voting populations — e.g., Nevada, New Mexico — these efforts will have both short- and longer-term benefits.

Run for commander in chief. Donald Trump has taken a wrecking ball to the United States’ standing in the world, our alliances, our military readiness, and our force cohesion/morale. (Due to the disastrous Iran war, there is a robust debate about whether we should largely withdraw or merely modulate our engagement in the Middle East. Neither these issues nor our complex relationship with Israel are going to solve themselves.)

Contenders for 2028 should use the time before the campaign starts in earnest to travel, re-establish relationships with allies Trump has alienated (e.g., Canada, the EU), develop a game plan for rebuilding U.S. leadership in the world — where friends and foes now have every reason to doubt our dependability — and consider how to reconstitute an honor-bound, inclusive, nonpartisan military command structure. The binary choice between isolationism and American domination is neither viable nor desirable, but it is far from clear what sort of American foreign policy framework can replace what Trump and his minions have managed to destroy.

It may not be the most decisive issue in selecting a nominee, but national security bona fides will be essential for anyone who wants to lead the party and restore America’s national security.

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Get a reform agenda. There will be plenty of time to develop detailed proposals on everything from healthcare to taxes to green energy, but with Democrats likely coming to power in Congress, focus will soon turn to anti-corruption measures. Savvy 2028 contenders should be prepared to add their voices to press for passage of a strong reform agenda now, daring Trump to veto it.

Stock trading bans and full financial disclosure for all branches (including the president, vice president, and Supreme Court justices); elimination of all “side hustles” for the president and vice president; stringent enforcement and penalties for the Hatch Act; disgorgement of ill-gotten gains in violation of the Emoluments Clause; and an enforceable mechanism for implementing the 25^th Amendment are a few of the basic elements of an immediate reform package. Candidates for 2028 will want to champion these, as well as far-reaching proposals (such as Supreme Court reform and Voting Rights reauthorization), to underscore a willingness to constrain themselves, should they get elected.

Address accountability. Democrats will spend the next two years conducting oversight and attempting to use the power of the purse and legislation to curtail Trump regime wrongdoing and hold accountable those who have abused Americans’ rights, stolen from the taxpayers, and violated an array of laws. However, the job of cleaning up the executive branch and federally prosecuting criminal wrongdoers will have to wait for a Democratic president.

Candidates should have, at bare minimum, an overarching approach for addressing malfeasance. Without repeating Trump’s sin of vowing to prosecute his predecessors, viable candidates can establish some general standards. Appoint a special counsel to investigate past crimes; review all Justice Department lawyers’ records for ethical and legal impropriety; offer to bridge service for civil servants who have been improperly fired/forced out; beef up new protections for inspectors general; set up a system to systematically gather whistleblower complaints/evidence of Trump-era wrongdoing; enhance congressional contempt powers; champion legislation to provide a private right of action against federal officials who abuse civil liberties; release all ICE records to local and state prosecutors to review excessively violent cases; and undertake military review of violations of the laws of war.

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Running for president in the wake of a fascist regime that will leave behind a host of policy and constitutional dilemmas demands seriousness of purpose, vision, and optimism. It will not be enough to clear away the wreckage of the preceding era. The 2028 contenders who show preparation, fight, imagination, insight, and daring will stand out in what may be a large field.

Voters should set a high bar for leadership — and choose wisely. Our democracy’s restoration will depend on it.

Outrageous weaponization of DOJ continues. Executing a Department of Homeland Security search warrant at the home of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) apparently based on old immigration paperwork (!) within the 60-day window “when the Justice Department has historically avoided such investigative steps related to political candidates” stinks to high heaven. Another reason to keep impeachment of Attorney General Todd Blanche on the table.

They simply cannot contain their fascism. “Stephen Miller’s podcaster wife had to double back after overplaying her hand,” the Daily Beast reported. “Katie Miller quickly deleted a post on X gloating over the ICE raid on Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Washington, D.C., home on Monday, seemingly realizing that her comment was not a great look. ‘Promise made, promise kept,’ Miller, 35, wrote in a now-deleted post replying to a New York Post article about the Monday morning raid.”

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Included in that group is Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), who is currently hawking his book on his way out the door of a Senate career marked by repeated instances of abject cowardice and hypocrisy.

Paige Masten writes about Tillis’ confession that he “regrets” his vote to confirm Pete Hegseth when he knew Hegseth to be unfit:

[Tillis] was concerned about his lack of qualifications, as well as allegations about his management style, treatment of women and excessive alcohol use. After doing his due diligence, Tillis found “compelling evidence” that those allegations did, in fact, have substance. Nothing was able to convince him that Hegseth was the right guy for the job….

“My vote would be the one to sink him, and in the first weeks of a new administration, for a president I supported and for whom this meant so much, I just couldn’t do it,” Tillis wrote. “When the time came, I voted yes.”

Wut?! Why not uphold his oath of office and keep out of power someone so clearly unqualified for a critical post? Why not summon the courage to do the right thing? It remains a mystery why he lacked the decency to defend the troops, the country, and the Constitution.

But Tillis has been a habitual coward. Masten also relays the account of his capitulation to confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for secretary of Health and Human Services:

Tillis had “serious doubts” about Kennedy’s qualifications, and his own conversations with Kennedy did little to assuage them. Still, though, Tillis wanted a “good reason” to vote against the nomination, because apparently Kennedy’s inexperience and questionable judgment weren’t enough. Tillis told his Republican colleagues, some of whom were medical doctors, that he would be happy to join them in opposition to Kennedy if they gave him an excuse to do so. But none of them had the courage to vote no, so Tillis didn’t, either. “I wasn’t going to be the lone voice in the wilderness keeping the president’s pick from getting across the finish line,” Tillis wrote. “I had no intention of letting my colleagues outsource their courage to me while they pretended to go along with the questionable nomination President Trump had put forward.”

He had no intention of doing the right thing because everyone else was behaving despicably. That’s the bottom line.

Tillis shares the blame for a reckless, illegal war that Hegseth has waged; the deaths of American service personnel and innocent Iranian civilians — including dozens of schoolgirls who were murdered by the strikes; the extrajudicial killings on the high seas of suspected drug runners; the existential damage to the military’s reputation; and the billions in material losses incurred in an irresponsible war. He is also complicit in upending the lives of hundreds and thousands of people, Americans and others, who suffered physical injuries or saw their careers undeservedly and prematurely ended because of Hegseth’s blustery incompetence.

Tillis also bears the responsibility for the measles deaths and illnesses enabled under RFK Jr.’s watch, for the generational damage to our health system, and for the loss of thousands of skilled doctors, researchers, scientists, and public health officials forced out under the manifestly unqualified and dangerous HHS secretary Tillis installed.

But how much does Tillis truly regret? And when did he develop this pang of conscience? Tillis could have demanded these officials’ removal, sought to hold them in contempt for refusing to cooperate with congressional investigations, or voted against the Iran War (before he finally broke with Trump in September). He did none of those things, so count me as utterly unimpressed by any belated political deathbed confession.

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Even worse, Tillis showed precisely the same level of moral cowardice even after announcing his retirement when, despite replete evidence of Todd Blanche’s unfitness, he voted to confirm him for attorney general. He did so over the objections of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, who have pleaded to end the coverup and follow the law to disclose the files of his pedophile racket. Tillis has learned nothing from past episodes of moral cravenness. He was presented with the opportunity to thwart a deputy attorney general who refused to follow the law, participated in the coverup, helped concoct a Jan. 6 slush fund/immunity scam for Trump, pursued baseless, vindictive prosecutions, presided over the debasement and corruption of the Justice Department, and showed every indication he would be a political pawn of the president. Instead, Tillis rubber-stamped his nomination, shedding crocodile tears that his vote would bring criticism. As it should.

Tillis would like us to think he has “regrets.” But if those regrets were sincere, we would have seen some evidence of a change of heart, or some modicum of political spine. We have seen none of that and, indeed, when presented with chances to make amends by standing up to Trump and his MAGA party, he caved. Again. So spare us the talk of “regrets.”

Tillis’s legacy will be one of betrayal, cravenness, and hypocrisy. The only ones with some legitimate claim to “regrets” may be the voters of North Carolina who last elected him, hoping he’d show some fidelity to them or to his oath of office. At least they have a chance to make amends by voting against Republicans in November.

Blue wave polling rolls in. Cook Political moved 18 seats in Democrats’ direction, noting money only gets you so much. (“In the final weeks of the election, Republicans have hoped that a massive ad campaign effort could dent Democratic candidates’ images and shore up Republicans struggling to free themselves of the anchor of President Donald Trump. With less than four weeks to go, that heavy spending has yet to move the needle.”)

Darline Graham might be the worst Senate candidate ever. In a debate between the candidates for Senate in South Carolina, she asked, “Why in the world would we stop now when they are still dangerous and we are so close to ending the war?” Huh? I thought they were obliterated. But does anyone else think we are “so close”? Democrat Annie Andrews: “The war is the exact reason we now have record-high gas and diesel prices. Farmers are getting crushed, and everything costs more. My opponent is the only one who had the opportunity to vote to end the war, but three times in a row she voted to continue it.”

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Vice President JD Vance has lamely tried to redefine “socialism” as having something to do with “replac[ing] American workers with foreigners workers” and wanting “boys to play in girls’ sports,” a formulation that bears no resemblance to any real-world political platform and that has nothing to do with socialism. But he cannot talk about actual socialism given that Republicans are the ones who, among other blunders, have resorted to a control-and-command economy and run up the debt.

Vance’s nonsense reminds us of the bankruptcy of any Republican political “philosophy” and its betrayal of traditional party views. This intellectual incoherence is especially evident in three key areas.

Trump decries ‘communism’ but acts like a Marxist. Donald Trump talks a good game about capitalism. “We will defeat the communists, and that’s what they are. They’re not socialists, they’re not Democrats, they’re communists,” Trump said at the Republicans’ midterm convention.” He vowed in an illegally taxpayer-funded ad to “defeat communism, socialism, and Marxism in America.”

But, in practice, he has acted like a communist central planner. NPR reported recently, “The Trump administration has announced equity stakes in more than 30 private companies, imposed dozens of tariffs, and taken the unusual step of trying to lower interest rates via the Treasury Department.” It has not gone unnoticed that in the past a discrete crisis (e.g. the collapse of the car companies) necessitated government action, but now the only urgency is Trump’s frantic race to grab as much graft as possible before leaving office and to bully private actors into flattering and supporting him (e.g. intimidating news/media companies).

What he and his Republican flunkies will leave behind, however, is not merely a hobbled economy but the wreckage of a party that once demanded markets, not governments, direct economic activity. Cronyism, corruption, and protectionism are about as far from market capitalism as one can get.

Trump has created a fiscal disaster. The Congressional Budget Office reported last week: “The federal budget deficit totaled $2.0 trillion in fiscal year 2026, CBO estimates, $218 billion more than the deficit recorded in fiscal year 2025.” A president who vowed to balance the budget (!) and a party that has scorned every social spending proposal as unaffordable have rung up unprecedented debt that will put intense pressure on interest rates, create a drumbeat to slash vital spending (domestic and defense), hamstring the ability of future presidents and Congresses to meet policy challenges (e.g. rebuild the military Trump wrecked in the Iran war), and deprive the feds of fiscal spending capacity when a recession does arrive.

The fiscally conservative Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget last Wednesday explained that depending on the future trajectory of debt spending, “debt would grow to between 124% of GDP and 133% of GDP” (emphasis in original). In comparison with the overall size of the economy, “Deficits by 2036 would grow to as high as 8.8% of GDP by 2036 — nearly three times the 3% target — based on our estimates and relative to CBO’s February baseline.”

Trump may want to direct his wrath at the Fed when it comes to interest rates, but he should try looking in the mirror. “Long-term interest rates have been marching upwards — and not because of anything that the Federal Reserve is doing,” former car czar Steve Rattner explained. “The rise brings higher costs for mortgage-seekers and businesses and may signal increasing worries about the state of federal finances.”

Rattner observed:

Trump came back into office promising to reduce the national debt and even begin to start paying it off. But the opposite has happened. A variety of policies — particularly his signature tax legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill — are adding to the deficit, at a time when we should be reducing it.

This looming debt creates a “premium” — investors will demand a higher long-term return on investment for the added risk. (Foreign investors may also pull back on U.S. holdings, leaving the burden of debt funding on an even shakier ground.)

For someone who worships the stock market, Trump should understand that higher Treasury and other debt rates make stocks comparatively less attractive, Rattner pointed out. And though stock prices are elevated for now, “if you separate out the artificial intelligence related stocks from the rest of the public companies, the market is actually down more than 5% from its peak just over a month ago.” (That might explain why Trump continues to hawk AI. It’s all that is holding the stock market together.)

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Republicans wreck the military. While betraying conservative economic principles, Trump has obliterated any Republican claim to be the pro-military, strong-on-national-security party. He and his depraved secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, have lost a war and weakened U.S. military posture in the Middle East and globally (forcing us to beat a humiliating retreat from the UK [!] because we can no longer defend our bases against threat of Iranian drones). As Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said on Face the Nation, “Donald Trump was so fundamentally unprepared for this war that within days of the war starting, our billion-dollar air bases and naval bases in the region were obliterated by the Iranians. Every single American should be furious about that.”

Moreover, Hegseth is doing generational damage to the military, as AEI’s Kori Schake explained, by “importing the culture wars into the force in a way that damages both the military and the public’s trust in it.” She recounted:

He convenes troops for partisan purposes. . . . He relieved or coerced into retirement without explanation 23 senior officers, and in at least two cases replaced them with dramatically less qualified successors. He removed 80 officers from merit-based promotion lists, and precipitated the resignation in protest of the secretary of the Army. He attempted to censure and court martial a sitting senator. He revoked press access to the Pentagon. The U.S. has been at war for five months without a single Pentagon press briefing. Most dangerously, as the Quantico meeting demonstrated, he and the president are corroding the chain of command by encouraging disrespect for “the generals” and inculcating loyalty to themselves instead. Such politicization of the military destroys republics.

Democrats, once back in power, will uncover Hegseth’s malfeasance (e.g., potential war crimes, critical depletion of munitions). Repairing the damage will take years, and the Republican Party’s reputation as the party “strong on national security” may never recover.

In sum, MAGA’s fiscal recklessness, cronyism, corruption, spasms of central control, and military malpractice will be its enduring disastrous policy legacy and rob the party of any coherent conservative purpose or direction. Perhaps Republicans’ decision to hand their party and souls over to an unhinged, narcissistic ignoramus was ill-advised.

Fox ‘News’ is trying to save Trump from himself. CNN’s Brian Stelter: “Fox News keeps choosing not to air [Trump’s] rallies live. It’s a programming decision with huge political and cultural significance.... The implication: Fox agrees with the GOP candidates and strategists who are privately fretting about Trump hurting their chances in the midterms. Fox’s response is to basically turn him off. Perhaps the Murdochs believe the network’s opinion hosts are better messengers for the party than the president himself, especially now, as Trump’s approval ratings are hitting record lows.” Pathetic. This isn’t a news outlet, folks — it’s a campaign arm of a losing regime.

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However, two reform-minded groups have wasted no time in exposing the extent of the autocratic abuse and beginning to formulate reform plans. With their help, our task of restoring and bolstering our democracy will be less onerous.

Let’s start with Common Cause, which has — among other things — been front and center in the effort to expose ICE abuse and regime-wide corruption. In April, Common Cause’s Senior Policy Director for Anti-Corruption & Accountability Abigail Bellows wrote:

President Trump has turned the White House into a gold mine, earning more in the last year than he did in his entire first term. Long-established forms of self-enrichment — such as emoluments violations — have been paired with a dazzling new array of money-making schemes. Many of these tactics are, shockingly, legal, despite their combined effect: a president getting rich off the presidency, a government increasingly captured by the wealthy, and the American public absorbing the costs. . .

From memecoins to real estate investments to licensing deals for the president’s name, the Trump family is cashing in on the power of the presidency in ever more creative ways. Issuing presidential pardons to campaign donors. Soliciting crypto investments from foreign governments. Hosting political events at Trump properties. Demanding settlements from tech and media companies awaiting federal regulatory decisions. Plus the Qatari jet, the Vietnam golf course, and the Melania documentary. These pursuits may not all constitute “corruption” in the narrow legal sense, but they reflect how most Americans use the term – to refer to a rigged system, where self-serving politicians are above the law.

The schemes and scams have only expanded since then. For example, the array of conflicts involving Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff has recently come to light.

Rather than play whack-a-mole trying to bat down each new scam and legislate in dozens of areas, Common Cause has come up with a devastatingly simple proposal; a clean anti-corruption reform every pro-democracy advocate should support:

Its idea has intuitive appeal:

By curbing any outside income during the presidency, a profiteering ban would provide much more comprehensive coverage than just restricting “improper” or “illegal” enrichment. A flat ban would also be more likely to endure in the face of future profiteering tactics, avoiding a whack-a-mole approach. Drafters could create multiple avenues for enforcing the profiteering ban, in addition to the ban’s inherent deterrence value. And a federal ban could help prevent a cascade of profiteering by state officials, where there are myriad opportunities for graft plus far less scrutiny.

In addition to its legal impact, such a proposal could have narrative impact — providing a powerful counterpoint to the cynical ways in which Trump is seeking to monetize public office. It is simple by design, making it easily understandable for public audiences that have grown despondent about government corruption. It also resonates with the older notions of public service, patriotism, and morality that many Americans still hold dear. The idea of a profiteering ban is already popular: recent polling indicates that 77 percent of Americans believe a sitting president should not be allowed to profit from his business ventures while in office, including majorities across all parties.

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Meanwhile, the ACLU has taken on another area of despotic abuse. Its new study on the reign of ICE and CBP abuse is chilling: “Among the administration’s most powerful and frequent tools in executing on its dangerous, anti-democratic vision is the mass deportation agenda.” The report tracks 76 ways the Trump regime has used its mass deportation agenda to undermine America’s multiracial democracy and civil rights and liberties. This includes “mass de-legalizing more than one million people, stripping them of legal status and work authorization.” It has literally created more than one million “illegal immigrants,” providing a pretext for uprooting them, devastating families and communities, and sowing fear among the broader non-white population.

The report breaks down the abuses into three areas: attacking civil liberties (e.g., targeting journalists, infiltrating and surveilling organizations engaged in peaceful protest and activism, expanding deadly immigration detention and offshore detention); attacking our democracy’s integrity and structural checks (e.g., deploying federal patrols indefinitely in American cities, racially profiling targets, using excessive violence and then lying about deaths, evading court orders); and attacking pluralistic, multiracial democracy (e.g., de-legalizing more than one million people, attacking birthright citizenship, attempting to “exclude non-white people from entering our country through extensive visa and travel bans and the exclusion of all but white South Africans from the refugee program,” disrupting naturalization and legal immigration processes).

The ACLU also offers a set of reforms that will be essential to repairing the damage and fixing our longtime dysfunctional immigration system. These include a broad-based path to citizenship process; abolishing and replacing ICE; modernizing border control and our asylum system to “create a workable border entry process, address the case backlogs and ensure that vulnerable people can get protection and an opportunity to rebuild their lives”; and creating mechanisms to hold federal officials responsible to Congress and the public for abuses, including the right of private legal action.

Its recommendation for an ICE abolition and replacement is especially noteworthy:

Congress should conduct rigorous oversight of abuses committed by immigration agencies across our nation. Oversight has already shown the need for reform. Congress should build on the immigration enforcement reforms it debated during the 2026 Department of Homeland Security funding negotiations. While important, reforms such as banning law enforcement masking and requiring the use of body-worn cameras are insufficient to address the myriad abuses and threats to our civil liberties.

Beyond those measures, Congress should amend our laws to dismantle, once and for all, the national deportation policing force, which cannibalizes federal, state and local agency personnel and diverts them to a single force that can be wielded not just against immigrants, but those who disagree with a government’s actions.

In its place, the ACLU recommends setting up a new immigration management agency that would set “clear rules to qualify for termination of removal proceedings and lawful status, including a pathway to citizenship.” (A fuller ACLU blueprint for such a system will be forthcoming.)

Both Common Cause and the ACLU have done essential work in exposing some of the worst aspects of the Trump regime, but also in beginning the process of formulating systemic, long-term reforms that will permanently insulate democracy from the abuses we have endured or witnessed. Their undaunted, unwavering, unabashed, uncompromising efforts to expose wrongdoing and set us on a path to reclaim our democracy deserve our gratitude and support.

Republicans’ blank check for Trump’s war bounces. In Iowa’s Senate debate, Democrat Josh Turek took it to Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson, who repeatedly voted to back Donald Trump’s disastrous Iran war. “Mr. Turek criticized her for those votes and spoke about his father’s exposure to Agent Orange in the Vietnam War. As a result, Mr. Turek noted, he was born with spina bifida, a birth defect. ‘I’m an example of the generational consequences to these forever wars,’ said Mr. Turek, who uses a wheelchair. He also sought to tie the Mideast conflict to voters’ daily lives: ‘Iowans out there, when you’re struggling at the pump, that is because of Ashley Hinson,’ he said near the end.” Devastating.

Bessent is a mini-Trump. A deeply reported Wall Street Journal piece documented Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s bullying of subordinates, incompetence, restricting himself to a close coterie of suck-ups, retaliating against the press for negative coverage, and rotten economic results. (He also melted down in a restaurant in response to peaceful protestors, spitting in his own food!?!) Utterly unsurprising that Trump feels so close to him.

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The reaction to his hissy fit was priceless, as an Alabama online outlet pointed out that “Trump has 292-word meltdown on Ohio rally flop: ‘Narcissism ... incomprehensibly off the charts’”:

Trump critics mocked the president’s grievance and his description of the Ohio venue as an “arena.”

“The trump rally was at a … high school gym,” posted Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA).

“Grandpa is melting down again because he couldn’t fill a high school gym,” added another user on X.

“The narcissism is incomprehensibly off the charts. And he’s the president of our country,” posted author Jennifer Erin Valent. “This is such a tragic era of American self-destruction.”

In a similarly petulant vein, Trump’s handpicked MAGA cultist Texas attorney general Ken Paxton was caught whining to supporters about his imploding race. Politico revealed that Paxton apparently cannot even run his own campaign:

“I’ve never been in a race where I felt less control over the campaign and, like, what issues are going to matter because it’s all coming — you know — from D.C.,” Paxton said during a small fundraising event last month, according to an audio recording obtained by POLITICO from a person in the room who does not support Paxton, and verified by another attendee.

“I don’t control message or what we’re doing.”

It’s a mystery why Trump cannot direct his own people. But the irony of the acknowledged helplessness of a candidate who impugns the masculinity of his opponent, Democrat James Talarico, should not be lost on anyone.

The outbreak of sniveling and petulance in MAGA ranks is widespread. Vice President JD Vance has begged voters to give the Republicans a second chance. Unable to deflect questions about Republicans’ sagging polls or his own cruddy performances, he has now taken to embodying a Mean Girl. Sniping at another Republican, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Vance groused, “It is really obvious to me that, at this very moment, Ted Cruz is running for president.” He added, “At this moment, I’m not. I’m trying to help elect Republicans. That’s what I’m going to keep on doing.” Well, the VP who leaked to the New York Times a tale to explain his secret opposition to the Iran war is almost certainly thinking ahead to 2028. Regardless, why spend time backbiting about a fellow Republican? He’s “insecure,” was Cruz’s explanation.

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All the sobbing and bellyaching does not seem very, well, high-T masculine, which has been a major theme for a party that has marinated in toxic misogyny for years. Bullies who accuse their opponents of feminizing the country (especially the military) and target trans kids seem ever so frail and helpless when things do not go their way.

Keen political observers have watched Trump and his ilk manipulate the fears and insecurities of American men who feel they are “losing” out in society and in the economy specifically. “When you can’t envision a sustainable career based on your skill set, you may be putty for a demagogue who evokes idealized memories of a past where you fit in—however racist or sexist that past may have been, and sometimes because of how racist and sexist it actually was,” wrote Harold Myerson in 2024. “You can be putty for a demagogue who blames your plight on MAGA’s usual suspects. You can be putty for Donald Trump.”

Resorting to temper tantrums to explain away one’s own shortcomings (in the case of Trump, his abject unpopularity born of failure; in the case of many of his followers, loss of economic and cultural stature in a shifting economy that deprioritizes physical labor, existing in a culture that liberated women from dependence on men). As Myerson put it:

It was only with Trump that the Republicans found a candidate whose own insecurity and rage at the elites who scorned him, and at the out-groups he deemed to be inherently undeserving, made him susceptible to some of the same phobias that define Precarious Manhood, and made him its avenging champion.

But by “remaking the Republican Party in his image, he transformed it in this way as well. The Grand Old Party is now the Party of Precarious Manhood.” Now, they risk becoming the party of whiny, complaining, male, self-assigned victims.

As historian Ruth Ben Ghiat has researched and written about, “strongmen” live in fear and weakness of being exposed, which is precisely what is happening now. “[T]hey have a constant need to feed their ego because they are weak and fragile people,” Ben Ghiat has explained. “The secret of strongmen is that they live in fear. And this is why they build their bunkers. And Trump’s always talking about, you know, not only the ballroom where people can adulate him and he can get money, but the bunker underneath; that’s his safe space.” It’s also why he surrounds himself with incompetent sycophants who will never upstage him, including the creepily rapturous Natalie Harp. But when daily confronted with evidence of his fading power and popularity, Trump falls into a pit of fury.

As is the case with many raging narcissists, Trump ping-pongs between self-pity and aggressive, violent ideation. From the Access Hollywood tape to his liability to E. Jean Carroll to his sympathy for the unnamed Cornell accused rapists to his selection of multiple men for his Cabinet accused of sexual assault to his non-stop badgering of female reporters who ask hard questions, Trump’s animosity toward women has never been a secret. But what has become increasingly apparent as he declines in vigor, impulse control, and overall health is the degree to which he and his followers fall prey to the victim mentality, excuse-mongering, and wallowing in their own rage.

Taking a step back, we can recognize Trump and his minions’ shrieking as the pathetic last yelps of a dying autocratic regime. As a pragmatic, political matter, it must be a turn-off for all those guys who thought they were getting a tough guy and instead received a feeble hysteric. No wonder they no longer bother showing up to his campaign rallies.

Affordability is no hoax. KFF’s tracking poll found: “Democratic voters [are] much more likely than Republican voters to say they are ‘more motivated’ to vote this year than usual (63% vs. 38%). … [T]he Democratic Party has a clear edge over the Republican Party on who voters trust to handle many top issues in the election, including the cost of health care (42% vs. 22%) and the cost of living (39% vs. 25%). Notably, the size of the gap between the Democratic and Republican parties on health care costs has increased since April of this year, when 37% said they trusted the Democrats and 26% said they trusted the Republicans.”

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The Associated Press reported that Trump dwelled on data centers in his campaign stop in Ohio over the weekend, where Democrats are leading in polls in the Senate and gubernatorial races. Trump insist the centers “benefit local communities”:

“Look, there’s so much money to be made for Ohio. You can’t just turn them off. They’ll go to China,” Trump said, repeating his defense of data centers that he had made before. The crowd, which had reacted enthusiastically as the president talked about other policies, was far more muted during the data centers remark.

The massive warehouse campuses generating energy for AI projects have become a toxic political issue, drawing bipartisan opposition in races across the country, with voters concerned about their impact on electricity prices, farmland and water supplies. It’s become especially acute in Ohio, where [Republican Sen. Jon] Husted has been repeatedly attacked for his role in attracting data centers to Ohio as lieutenant governor.

Democrats can barely hide their delight. “‘Senator Jon Husted gave billions in tax breaks to Big Tech to make sure they would build their data centers in Ohio,’ [Sherrod] Brown wrote on X on Friday, ahead of Trump’s visit. ‘Now, he’s making Ohioans foot the bill.’”

Trump’s cheerleading came the day after Suffolk University/USA TODAY Network’s Ohio poll showed Brown leading Husted by 3 points and Democrat Amy Acton trouncing Vivek Ramaswamy by 9 points in the race for governor. Included in the results: “Voters overwhelmingly disapprove of Ohio continuing to provide tax incentives for new data centers. The opposition crossed all party lines with consistent opposition from Republicans (52%), independents (76%), and Democrats (92%).” So much for cheerleading for data centers.

Husted, desperate to get out from under the issue, introduced a pathetic bill that would have done nothing to guarantee relief for taxpayers. Unsurprisingly, it failed on the Senate floor. In a floor speech last week, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) slammed the lame effort as a “fig leaf”:

It says that states can consider adopting a federal standard that would hold data centers responsible for rising electricity bills, and then they get two years to consider that. Candidly, they could do that today. We’ve already taken some action in Virginia. And what happens if nobody takes up that offer? Anything happen to these data centers? Does anything happen to those communities? Well, nothing.

I think we need real legislation on this. We need legislation that actually has some boundaries. This should not be optional. We have seen communities hit by skyrocketing electrical costs. We’ve seen communities where a lot of their water usage has gone up dramatically, and they’re concerned, concerned about the water table. We’ve seen these data centers sometimes literally intrude right into neighborhoods.

Trump’s cheerleading for unregulated AI in Husted’s home state made clear that Husted was not offering any kind of serious regulatory effort, just a last-gasp plea to save himself from voters’ wrath.

At a campaign stop, Brown ridiculed the idea that bill would “ask” utility companies to do something about rate costs. “‘We’ll hope they do better’ does not do anything,” he said. Brown’s campaign spokesperson slammed Husted on the issue, telling Newsweek Husted “led the charge to bring data centers to Ohio, forcing Ohioans to pay thousands more in higher electric bills and giving giant out-of-state corporations billions of dollars in out-of-control tax breaks.” She blamed Husted as the “face of the data centers,” and declared that taxpayers “should never be forced to subsidize the electricity costs of big corporations.”

Brown has said data centers should be required to pay the full cost of their utilities, without taxpayer subsidies, and that local communities should have input into whether centers are built. (“I start with this, that I have a healthy skepticism of big corporations that come into Ohio and demand tax breaks and then override any local concerns and then try to raise our electric rates,” he told a local TV outlet.)

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Ohio, a red state that Trump won handily in 2024, is hardly an outlier on data centers. A CBS News/YouGov survey found that, by a stunning margin of 56 to 14% percent, voters said they would favor a candidate who opposed building a data center in their area over one who favor building one. Opposition to building local data centers includes a plurality of Republicans (37 to 26 percent) and an overwhelming majority of independents (58 to 12 percent).

Data centers may not be the top issue in Ohio or nationally, but they have come to serve as a stand-in for a host of issues — affordability, the outsized power of high-tech companies, soaring energy issues, Trump’s utter cluelessness, Republicans’ inability to cross their cult leader on issues that matter to constituents, and the looming divide between the rich and everyone else. The stubborn refusal of Trump, Husted, and other Republicans to listen to ordinary voters and respond to their genuine concerns about cost of living and quality of life has come back to haunt them. The result may be a stunning shift in Ohio from red to blue in just two years. And if that is where Ohio is heading, a state Trump won by 11 points in 2024, then we are heading for a historic blue wave.

Imagine what the polling must have looked like. The backlash to Donald Trump’s creepy taxpayer ads was so intense he is now saying his super PAC will pay for them. (We will need to monitor whether he follows through with that promise!) The power of public opinion when galvanized is something to behold.

Look whose brand is toxic now. “New Gallup data finds 50% of Americans now identify as Democrats or lean Democratic, compared with just 39% who identify as Republicans or lean Republican,” Political Wire reported. “That’s an 11-point Democratic advantage — the largest quarterly gap since the first quarter of 2009, when Barack Obama had just taken office.”

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Legacy media’s sanewashing of Trump’s campaign appearances as “speeches” bears less and less resemblance to the reality of his verbal incontinence, evidenced in recent campaign blather about Iran:

We did it in one night with those beautiful B-2 bombers. They left Missouri. They flew both ways, 37 hours. They were refueling. We have the greatest tankers. We have the greatest military in the world. They went from Missouri and then at one o’clock in the morning, with no moon, dark as can be, these unbelievable machines led by the most incredible pilots in the world, they unloaded every single bomb, went right down air chutes into this, uh, drug factories, really. That’s what they were doing. They were nuclear and drugs. They were doing drugs, but they were doing the nuclear. These drug factories/nuclear factories were hit so hard.

When he unilaterally dragged us into a war, did he think we were attacking “drug factories” (or did he think the Iranians were “doing drugs”)? Examination of his unedited verbal vomit should provoke further, frightful questions about the 25^th Amendment.

What we get from legacy media, instead, is the sort of New York Times’ light-hearted trip down nostalgia lane in lieu of exacting coverage of his crazed appearance in Mobile, Alabama on Friday. One had to search for independent media to uncover full accounts of his crazed rants.

Trump was more unhinged in Ohio on Saturday, where Trump blathered about James Talarico: “I see that ‘Tala-freako’ in Texas. So he’s been a vaygan' all his life. He’s a vaygan vaygan, I didn’t even know what the hell a vaygan was. A vaygan is vegetables. A vaygan is eating a piece of lettuce all day long.” Ignoring his apparent ignorance of the word ‘vegan,’ the nature of his obscene, irrelevant insults suggests a complete loss of impulse control. These are not “speeches,” but rather psychological breakdowns. But, unfortunately, you would not know it from mainstream media coverage. He was back at it in Nebraska on Monday with more unhinged rambling. (“With the war, it’s just artificial. It’s a little bit high. It’s a small price to pay ... let them take out Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay.”)

Similarly, Trump’s encounter last week with TIME was routinely labeled an “interview.” But an “interview” denotes responsive answers — not a stream of non sequiturs, insults, and outbursts. A few commentators ventured that the session was “grievance”-filled or “emotional,” but even those descriptions falsely suggest some orderly presentation of reality-based complaints in response to questions.

By lopping off his full replies and interweaving explanatory narrative, reporters often wind up sanitizing Trump’s babbling, as TIME did:

He said he regretted appointing Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, after they ruled against him on tariffs, mail ballots, and birthright citizenship. “I gave them the position of a lifetime,” he said, “and they voted against me often.” On his expectation of fealty, he was unapologetic: “I do like loyalty, yeah.” Again and again, he returned to the condition of the White House itself, complaining that his predecessors had left the building in disrepair and deriding Barack Obama as someone who “doesn’t know if something’s dirty or clean.”

They also posted the original, “lightly edited” transcript, which was exponentially crazier:

You said [Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Coney Barrett] were like shells of their former selves. Do you regret nominating them?

Yeah. Yeah. What can I do? I put them in. They voted against me too often. I was very—I gave them the position of a lifetime, and they vote against me often. They vote for me too. The Democrats stick like glue—those three, they virtually never vary. You can come up with the worst thing in the world and they’ll vote as a group. And while I don’t like it, there’s something I admire about it: there’s loyalty. So they have loyalty to Barack Hussein Obama. They have loyalty to Biden, even though Biden doesn’t even know who the hell they are. He wouldn’t know. He doesn’t even know what the Supreme Court is. And me, I gave them the chance of a lifetime, and it’s unfortunate what they did.

Is that—

It’s unfortunate what they did—not to me, to our country. Birthright citizenship. It’s becoming a major industry now. People are making millions and millions of dollars, and we’re losing trillions of dollars. And it’s become a corrupt business, all because of the Supreme Court decision. That decision was for the babies of slaves. Look at where it was—look at where it was approved. It wasn’t for Chinese people, wealthy or unwealthy, coming, you know, pouring into our country. And this tariff decision again, all they had to do was a little clause saying any money paid does not have to be paid back…would have saved $400 billion. They chose not to save that.

You mentioned the word loyalty a moment ago. Is that what you want from your Supreme Court picks?

I do like loyalty, yeah.

Is that what you want from your Supreme Court justices?

No, I don’t want loyalty. I want good decisions. The tariff decision was disastrous for the country. I want good decisions for the country.

Sir, do you care about—

They’ve treated me. . . . Look, I put these people in. It is what it is. Very disappointing, very disappointing for the country—their decisions. And the country knows it. Very disappointing for the country. The other ones—they stick like glue. It’s unbelievable, right?

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The Mob boss mentality, lack of logical connection between sentence fragments, self-contradictions, and elementary-school-level vocabulary in a froth of vicious anger reflect a deeply unwell mind — albeit notably less so absent in the sanitized version. Obsessive efforts to explain what Trump must mean are indicative of PR; not journalism. It takes a heavy hand and no small amount of spin, for example, to transform his rant on his disastrous war into: “In Trump’s telling, he is simply doing what has to be done, even when that means breaking foundational promises to his voters. He campaigned as a president of peace, but is now waging a war he says was necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”

Aaron Rupar, who assiduously records and posts Trump’s and his minions’ remarks arguably more thoroughly than any journalist, recommended (of the transcript) that we “read this to get a sense of the president’s grave cognitive impairment.” As he put it, “Trump is either unwilling or unable (or maybe both) to answer the questions he’s actually asked, so he just rants and raves while the interviewers do their best to provide structure to his random brain firings.”

As he ages, Trump’s decline will continue (maybe accelerate), meaning this is likely the “best” version of Trump we will see from here on out. Billionaire-owned media has essentially covered up that national crisis, refusing to acknowledge that he is deteriorating mentally and emotionally, just as he is physically (evidenced by bruising, swollen ankles, consistent somnolence).

Responsible coverage would highlight his mental unfitness daily, provide ample extracts of rants, and play them back to Republicans’ faces. Conscientious journalists, at the very least, could stop calling unhinged rants “speeches” and vitriolic outbursts “answers to interview questions.”

Polling disasters keep coming for MAGA. Charlie Cook moved the Florida and Texas governors’ races in Democrats’ direction. The New York Times has Democrats leading in Senate races in Ohio, Texas, and Alaska, and as statistically tied in Iowa (although most other polls have Democrat Josh Turek leading), and Kansas, where a second former Republican governor has endorsed Democrat Adam Hamilton for Senate.

Donald Trump’s inroads with Latinos in 2024 has been lost. “A greater share of Latino voters hold negative views of the Republican Party than at any time since 2016, and Democrats have leads on issues like dealing with the economy, immigration, the cost of living, corruption and healthcare,” NBC News reported. Trump’s approval among Latinos is a dreadful 27 percent, with two-thirds saying deportations have “gone too far,” 78 percent disapproving of his handling of cost of living, and 74 percent giving a thumbs-down on his handling of the economy, according to a new NBC News/Telemundo poll.

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These rotten jobs numbers, the last monthly jobs report before the election, will prove difficult for all but the most indoctrinated MAGA cultists to spin. The New York Times reported, “Yes, it’s a hard time to be looking for a job — the average unemployed worker has been looking for a job for nearly six months.” But even people with jobs are struggling given the “weakness in wage growth.”

For millions of workers, salaries have not kept up with inflation, and with mortgage prices now streaking past 7.3 percent, dreams of purchasing a home any time soon have evaporated for many Americans. Heather Long, a former economics reporter and now chief economist of the Navy Federal Credit Union, explained, “The financial pain is real: Wage growth fell to 3% (y/y) in September. That’s the lowest in 5 years.” With wage growth at 3 percent but inflation at 3.4 percent, “Inflation has eaten up all wage gains for the average worker since April. Many people are having to make hard choices about what to buy and what to skimp on right now.” Though consumption is still sustained by richer Americans, “a lot of people have to think hard about every dollar they spend,” she explained. “Notable: Wages only ticked up 0.1% in the month of September. That was the weakest monthly gain since December 2025.”

No wonder Trump’s economy approval numbers are cratering. The latest AP-NORC poll reported:

Sixty-five percent of adults overall say higher-than-usual prices are the result of Trump’s policies, while 67% of Republicans say higher prices are due to factors beyond the president’s control….

Trump is also falling short of expectations on the cost of living, with 69% of the public saying his handling of the issue has been worse than expected, including 52% of Republicans.

More than half of adults say the country as a whole, the national economy, and their local economy are worse off since Trump was reelected in 2025. Forty-six percent say they and their families are worse off since the start of Trump’s second administration. Most Americans (73%) say the country is heading in the wrong direction, including 92% of Democrats and 47% of Republicans.

This is no outlier. In the most recent Quinnipiac poll, Trump’s approval on the economy is at an all-time low (31 percent). Likewise, Fox’s September poll showed “nearly two-thirds of voters (63%) say the Trump administration has made the economy worse, including a quarter of Republicans.”

Democrats were quick to underscore the lousy job numbers. As Yahoo Finance reported: “Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts calculated that Trump’s economy has added an average of 33,000 jobs a month since Inauguration Day in 2025 — ‘far below the 120,000-a-month average in 2024’ of the last year of former President Joe Biden’s time in office…. Like other Democrats, Warren also zeroed in on weak wage growth, writing that ‘since the start of Trump’s war [in Iran], real wages have fallen.’” Former Biden official Gbenga Ajilore added that “in the broader context, lower wage growth is a warning sign given the administration’s harmful policies.”

The regime’s utter contempt for voters’ economic woes (Vice President JD Vance lectures them to stop worrying about “little things”) leads Trump and his flunkies to make ever-more cringeworthy comments that, if anything, will only infuriate voters. After the miserable September report, Kevin Hassett, the National Economic Council director, when asked if he was disappointed in the jobs report, told Fox Business, “No, not even a little bit.” Well, for now, he has a job.

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Trump makes even more appalling gaffes in instructing Americans not to believe their lived experiences. Last week en route to Texas, he declared, “I give us an A+ on the government, on economics, on everything.” Voters struggling to decide whether to pay medical or grocery bills will recoil at that grade inflation. Likewise, Trump’s insistence that energy costs are “worth” his unpopular, disastrous war is of little consolation to those paying sky-high prices for regular gas and all-time high prices for diesel.

With Trump’s poll numbers so dismal and his self-congratulatory pronouncements so jarring, Democrats are no doubt delighted that Trump has announced he is heading out to campaign for Republicans, although his focus on already-safe red areas means the amount of damage he can inflict on his fellow Republicans may be less than we hope for. (A Republican president going to Alabama, for a shockingly sparse crowd, this close to the election, as Trump did on Friday, should be a flashing siren that things are terribly amiss for his party.)

Indeed, a flock of vulnerable Senate Republicans wants nothing to do with Trump. The Hill reported on an anonymous Republican senator warning it was a mistake for Trump “to campaign in Midwestern states where higher costs caused by the Iran war and Trump’s tariff policies are fueling voter anger.” That senator confessed, “We need our voters to turn out, but the ones that are making the decision, really, are those independent voters. And right now, they’re not looking favorably at President Trump.”

As Democrats make their final pitches to voters, they will no doubt emphasize that House and Senate Republicans are wholly responsible for Trump’s inane tariffs, Iran war, huge deficits, chaos-generation (e.g. ICE wreaking havoc with local economies, incompetent financial advisers spooking the markets), and self-indulgent graft (building monuments to himself while ordinary voters cannot pay the bills). They could have taken back tariff authority. They could have cut off authorization and funding for the war. They could have reined in ICE to, among other things, protect hard-hit industries rocked by loss of workers (e.g. construction, agriculture, hospitality, tourism). They could have refused to confirm unfit Cabinet secretaries and a weak Federal Reserve chairman. And, most of all, they could have rejected the Big, Ugly bill which took away SNAP benefits and healthcare coverage, doled out trillions to the ultra-rich, and sent the deficit soaring.

Republicans did none of those things, and now they will have to face the voters with an economy that cannot be blamed on anyone but them and their addled president. And if they now dread Trump coming to their district/state or appearing in ads paid for by the taxpayers (another egregious affront), that’s simply political karma.