We need Congressional Republicans to come to their senses. Some have. See Feathers of Hope. Jerry Weiss. https://jerryweiss.substack.com/
Tariffs. We need to thank the 7 Republican cosponsors to the senate bill that would strip Trump of tariff authority. S.1272 — 119th Congress (2025-2026) Cantwell, D, WA is main sponsor.
It is a nice sentiment, but to make this into law requires 2/3 of the House and 2/3 of the Senate to come up with a veto-proof majority. I don't see that many spines appearing in either house... The rethuglicans somehow thought getting their idiot-king into the Whitehouse would assure them the winning hand in their culture wars. Maybe it did, but they are going to find destruction of the US economy to be their Waterloo.
Perhaps more time actually spent in their States and Districts will help them come up with some courage. We won't know until after the current recess. But tRump is already defying multiple court rulings. He is also refusing to spend money Congress appropriated. The Constitutional Crisis is well under way.
"Being wrongfully identified as dead in Social Security records “can lead to benefit termination … and severe financial hardship and distress to affected individuals.” Because the DMF is leveraged by many federal and state agencies to determine eligibility — and by the Treasury Department’s government-wide “Do Not Pay” system to prevent improper payments — false inclusion of a death date can lead to an individual losing their health coverage through Medicare, having their tax return delayed, or having their Social Security or other eligible benefit payments cancelled, among other harms.
"The DMF is also used by some private-sector companies with a legitimate business or anti-fraud need for the data — including financial institutions, credit agencies, insurance companies, and pension administrators. As a result, being inappropriately listed as dead can result in severe financial consequences like disruption in bank account access, credit cards being cancelled, pension benefits being paused, insurance coverage being cancelled or claims being denied, rejected employment applications, or denial of credit.
"The first group of people to be wrongfully and knowingly declared dead by the Trump Administration are reportedly being targeted in an immigration enforcement effort focused, at least in part, on people who were lawfully present and eligible to work until the Trump Administration abruptly terminated their lawful status. These individuals would have been correctly issued Social Security numbers (SSNs) upon obtaining their lawful immigration statuses, and any change in those statuses should not limit their access to their own financial resources in U.S. banks."
This is a rogue regime which is making the wheels turn backwards to further their goal of making abject cruelty the SOP of the US Government. When enough of the citizenry finds out that the Government no longer has any intention of keeping its promises, we will have a humanitarian disaster in this wealthy country.
I agree, but the Battle of Waterloo was the final battle in a war that lasted for 23 years. Trump has been president for 87 days. My primary concern right now is about the two ultraconservatives who have had the most impact (aside from Musk) on Trump, but are rarely, if ever, seen with him. They are Kevin Roberts, CEO of the Heritage Foundation, and Leonard Leo, Chair of the Federalist Society.
It was Kevin Robert's idea to dismantle the "deep state" (our government) by firing all the civil servants and replacing them with Trump loyalists. He also is responsible for eliminating the Department of Education, and wants to reduce the scope of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, roll back renewable-energy programs to create a regulatory environment that favors the fossil fuel industry, limit mail-order abortion pills, and remove DEI hiring policies from federal programs, among other things. https://www.newsweek.com/project-2025-promises-second-revolution-1920506
This is all too long for a comment, but Leonard Leo was responsible for stacking SCOTUS with conservative Justices, including John Roberts so they could overturn Roe v Wade. In 2022, he received $1.6 billion dollars from an ultraconservative donor, and is using it to weaponize conservatives. https://www.axios.com/2024/09/12/leonard-leo-conservative-groups-funding
I think it is safe to say that people with money and cultist agendas have been instrumental in tRumps ascension. Some - a few - cultists have the knack and ravening greed to become major tRump supporters. We are very far into the rabbit hole and whether we can be extracted becomes more problematical every day.
Let's not make too much of what may lead to nothing in terms of a sweeping realignment of more Republicans. Thr Party has been a criminal insurgency since its hostile take-over by Trump in 2015. It refused, with a few honorable exceptions, to even consider the evidence in two impeachments when Trump was clearly guilty as charged. The Republicans played fast and loose with SC nominations to block Democrats and rush in Trump's picks. They are responsible along with the SC Republican majority for giving America its current dictatorship in consolidation. Most Republicans stayed loyal to Trump even after his failed January 2021 coup. They are like Nazis, they will only go down with their leader. Hope is delusory - a way to feel better, a drug to avoid facing the dark reality. America is being swept by a Neo-Fascist criminal wave flooding over it and destroying all its institutions. Look at anything - weather forecasting, cancer research, the National Science Foundation, the NIH, the CDC, the IRS, the Departments of Agriculture and Education, the DoD, the DoJ, the CIA, the FBI, the Smithsonian, the Kenedy Ceter, illegal abductions and deportations against court orders, coercion of media, of universities, the delibersate cult of fear-induced obedience and sadism-porn (e.g. in Kristi Noem's poses and photo- ops), the tariff wars and attacks on allies, the de facto alliance with Putin's Russia.
Where are the Republicans? Not even WW2 did so much harm to America's basic institutions - science, technology, and the economy grew stronger then. Even though there were abuses such as the internment of Japanese-Americans, FDR and his Cabinet didn't glory in sadism. If America ever recovers, it will be broken and seriously wounded. That's what happens when a long-time associate of gangsters, a criminal foreign operative, is allowed to become president, that too for a second time after a coup attempt. Everyone should know that a failed coup is only a dress rehearsal for the next one. This time, the enemies of Anerican democracy - Musk, Thiel, Andreessen, etc. - were ready. As Putin's domestic partners, they only want to rule for their own benefit and tear down the Federal government. Trump’s foreign investors - Netanyahu, bin Salman, and Putin - use him for their regional aims.
The only certainty about the future is, someone said, that it's uncertain. There lies the possibility that we can change and shape the future, make it better than it would otherwise be. Perhaps at this point it makes a lot of sense to support the Democrats who are vocal and organizations like Indivisible who represent the resistance. Even more, to push the Democrats who are equivocal or want to compromise. Also, to do what we can, each in our way, to organize and spread the message to stand up to the deranged tyrant, his billionaire backers, and his henchmen(and women): Never to give in. Never to compromise and obey immoral orders and pressures. To work in every way to bring down the Republicans now in power, including by persuading those we can not to vote for them. There will be lots of battles. Some will be lost, including in court decisions, there are already those in universities and law firms and media have given in. But the message of Thoreau and Gandhi and Martin Luther King is still valid: Do not obey immoral laws and orders, don't cooperate, even if there are costs. Help those we can to organize and rise up against tyrants and oppressors. For what it's worth, Gandhi's repeated agitations against payment of land revenues to the oppressive imperial government brought the British in India to the point where they could only collect taxes using military force. That could not last.
Another ray of hope - tyrants are also mortal men, they will not be there for ever, and their seconds-in-command don't often have the same following. When the power of the cult is broken, it will be a different game. Perhaps economic chaos and military mistakes (a US armada has gathered in the Indian Ocean within striking distance of Iran, so war with Iran?) will bring the regime into disrepute and humiliation soon. We don't know and can't predict events when there is a mad king in power who only searches how to satisfy his greed and spite and need for vengeance, or to please his foreign and domestic deep-pocketed sponsors.
You're welcome, Josephine. Thank you for your kind response. Perhaps we should consider one more possibility: If and when the economic situation worsens to the point Republican Senators and Representatives fear they will lose their seats and are under immense continuing pressure from their constituents, enough may turn and join the Democrats to bring down the despot.
In addition, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), according to Axios, launched “a digital ad campaign against Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Susan Collins (R-ME.)” seeking to tie the Senators to efforts to dismantle Social Security.
And this is not to get into ouir brothers and sisters among us Democrats who are afraid to challenge tariffs. At least Chuck Schumer's desk has quit writing me.
Right. I'd hope that there are behind the scenes discussions...I have the same problem with Dem leaders, but politics is always about herding cats....
IMHO the best we can do is "shared" government. I advocated that Jeffries offer the chair of the House intelligence/military committees to Mike Turner, R Oh.
The thing that's missing is frank discussions with otherwise sane Republicans about the nature of their fear. I've read that some of them acrtually fear for their lives. And then Trump is pretty good at insulting appelations andones which stick.
We gave a lot both to snate candidates, our local congressional candidate, and the party in 2024. I thought that would improve the quality of the solicitations we'd get via eamil, but alas. "Brarack has asked me to check in with you to see if there's anything we can do to encourage your financial participation at this vital time." etc. We used to get solicitations from Schumer's desk, but apparently someone told him how idiotic they read.
I love the idea of shared government and thre are worthy Republicans. I would think it would fall to us to gather them in and engineer a wresting of power fro m Trump by t=returning it to the house and senate.
I've lived in the Grove off and on...was in DC but kept proprety...
I don't know whether you remember the old now defunct Centro Vasco, but numerous Latin American revolutions began there.....many if not most local businesses in little Havana were CIA subsidized. ..once lived a block from the Gubiernos en Exilio de Cuba...
Is the destruction of the economy the single most powerful incentive for resistance? So much has already been destroyed. Perhaps by destroying the economy they will more quickly seal their own destruction. Keep pumping air into that balloon. At some point it pops.
It is true that many elected Republicans are going to lose their jobs. Right now they’re afraid of being primaried by someone even more ideologically bound to Donald J Trump. We must work to make them fear being voted out resoundingly by angry constituents instead. Keep the pressure on!
There are plenty of them under pressufre now. E.G. where I live 3 MAGATS represent a Dem majority. All are Cuban Americans. 2 of 3 were once Dems -- switched due to Cuba policy.
Here's an example....Editor’s note: Miami healthcare CEO Michael “Mike” B. Fernandez wrote the following open letter to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and members of the Republican Cuban-American Miami-Dade congressional delegation: U.S. Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart, Carlos Giménez and Maria Elvira Salazar. For decades, I have stood with you in defense of the freedoms we cherish, those we were denied in the country of our birth and found in the grace of this one. I know what it means to flee tyranny.
Pickets at my Congeresswomans office. Pickets at CANF -- the Cuban American National Federation.
Besides that Cubans and all minorities bear the DEI brunt from Musk and his Muskovites. Every government, business, here are bi if not tri lingual. People were hired on that basis.
Plus, we have more Canadian Americans than live in c=some provinces. Were (past tense) mostly pro business Republicans. 54,000 Floridians work for Canadian businesses. We've lost about 3 mil tourists this year.....
I'm 75, and for as long as I've paid any attention to politics, this current "Republican" (Nazi) budget plan has been their wet dream. The difference now is that there's a Nazi in the WH with a cult following that has terrorized those in the party that once had a working conscience. It's Full-Frontal Evil without a micro-gram of moderation.
I wake up every morning, and go to sleep each night so confused by the behavior of so many of the millionaires, billionaires, individual or corporate. What is the point of their wealth? Why is paying their fair of taxes such an issue? Why do they need more?
My apologies to all those generous individuals and corporations. The ones paying living wages, sharing profits, providing healthcare and safe working conditions…and paying their taxes. Thank you for showing us how it can/should be done.
You're far from alone. Warren Buffet paid nearly $1 billion in taxes last year and said he was glad to do it. I didn't see an ounce of suffering on his face when he said that and clearly neither did he. It's insane that policy is being fashioned to benefit not just the richest, but stupidest and ugliest of the rich. Trump's ads about 'preserving middle-class tax cuts' are all over MSNBC and CNN. They must be paying a fortune to outbid everyone to put them there. Every bit of it is deceptive hogwash -- it's the middle-class who are financing tax cuts for those who make a hundred times more than they ever will in a single year.
As is written on the IRS building in Washington (who are now "considering" an illegal administrative maneuver to revoke Harvard's tax status to please the Mango Miscreant), "taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society." That is a message that everyone should be taking back to their rabid Republican House members and Senators.
So, if "taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society" then does this then play out to mean that if our society becomes uncivilized, we can stop paying taxes? Personally, I think we should all find a legal way to not pay taxes but to put those dollars into a high interest savings account so it's available on the day we agree to pay our taxes again. Just a thought...
I would strongly recommend that journalists like yourself stop referring to programs like Social Security and Medicare as “entitlements”. They are not. These are “Benefits” (paid for by workers their entire working lives.) We earned them.
Fraud...the word is applied only to Americans whose lives depend on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, government pensions, etc. The programs that OUR tax money has paid for over the course of OUR WORKING LIVES suddenly become entitlements riddled with fraud. But...when OUR tax monies are diverted to the bank accounts of billionaires who are actively working to destroy the country, fraud no longer figures in their side of the equation. The indifference of the administration and the MAGA RINOS in Congress to the plight of those who will be suffer deprivation is despicable and sick. Why worry about their "plum" positions being primaried? If they don't change their votes to work for their constituents, the voters will throw them out on the street for their spineless collaboration with the real frauds.
Hardcore MAGA types are so into the cult that they are oblivious to what is coming - their family members are directly affected, but they do not care, and they will blame Biden. Should I have empathy? Nope. They are willfully ignorant.
Alan Greenstein: I think that's the key--a cult is rooted in existential identity--but so is one's financial situation (and one's family's). So when they crossed that line into SS and Medicare, they stepped into a conflicting existential identity for a huge number of MAGA.
But you are also right that a potential weak spot is for the Administration to lie their way out of being responsible for it. But can they do that with the "let it all hang out' Musk waving around a buzz saw and breaking into institutions' computers? We don't know yet, but I really doubt it.
It may be easier to plan our future when we realize that a traitor has taken over the country and is softening it up for a Putin take-over. Nothing else makes sense. Time for Plan B.
There is something terribly wrong when the Trump administration makes so many cuts to programs that help the needy- and then we see him sitting in the Oval Office in front of all that GOLD as though he is a king.
The Democrats need to come up with a sobering and realistic alternative plan and sell it to the American public. Hit the airwaves. Flood social media. Demonstrate that the Democratic Party has the competence to deal with this crisis and is the true party of financial acumen, not the Republicans. Destroy this myth once and for all that the Republicans are the financial wizards.
They are a huge part of the problem, no doubt. I have no simplistic answer to their demise but possibly the destruction of the economy will cut deeply enough into the advertising revenue that they will change course, but I doubt it. Blame Biden and the ignorant will lap it up.
I think your focus on rural areas is important, but needs to show more discernment. Poor does not mean red. Rural does not mean white. Disentangling these associations would be helpful.
New Mexico is different. It is not a red state, as you imply. It is a very poor state (almost 20% of the population lives in poverty), which is true of some of the red states.
New Mexico has been reliably blue since 2008. All state government office holders are Democrats and the legislature is majority Democratic. The states representatives at the federal level are also Democrats.
New Mexico has a large Native American population, of which 60% receives Medicaid. About 50% of the population are Mexican or of Hispanic or Latino descent. Only one-third of the population is white.
I went to a high school in New Mexico where about 30% of the population was Native American. In my mind and experience, they are a significant group. But when I look at govt statistics, they are identified only as “other.”
Anybody, Republican or Democrat or independent, who is complicit in the dismantling of our government, should have a target on their back and be replaced in 2026 and 2028 and beyond. No exceptions and particularly with respect to Trump and his enablers.
Ms. Rubin, I was a registered representative of the New York STOCK Exchange on 10/19/1987. This policy induced disaster smells a lot like what occurred the Friday proceeding and the Monday.
Devaluation of the dollar, rise in interest rates and huge p/e ratios. Be afraid be very afraid.
Shame on you Jennifer Rubin. When you call Social Security an "entitlement" you negate anything positive you had to say. SOCIAL SECURITY has never been an entitlement. Every single American that has worked for a living has PAID into this fund. It is demeaning to everyone that has worked for a living. SHAME ON YOU.
Respectfully, I agree that the word "entitlement" has come to mean something that a self-centered person "feels" that they deserve. However, the first dictionary definition of "entitlement" is "that to which a person has a right." The word really has two separate meanings, according to the dictionary. I believe that Jennifer Rubin is using the word correctly. We have a right to Social Security.
Once again the cowardice & greed of Republicans comes shining through! But on an even more serious note. These cuts across many departments & projects that help the most vulnerable I believe are designed specifically to make these populations poorer & sicker. Isn't it much easier to manipulate a population when they are too weak & poor to fight back. The peasants in North Korea come to mind. Or the "workers" in Chinese factories that are just about held as slaves. This is what trump & his sycophants want & this is what cowardly Republicans are giving him. Hmm, keep it up & these cowards won't have to worry about getting primaried, they'll have to worry about getting thoroughly beaten by an opposition candidate come election time. Maybe by 2026 if we still have the ability to vote in a fair & secure election enough Magats will have put 2+2=4 together, rather than the current Magamath of 2+2=5 that is forced down their throats by their cowardly "representatives"!
We need Congressional Republicans to come to their senses. Some have. See Feathers of Hope. Jerry Weiss. https://jerryweiss.substack.com/
Tariffs. We need to thank the 7 Republican cosponsors to the senate bill that would strip Trump of tariff authority. S.1272 — 119th Congress (2025-2026) Cantwell, D, WA is main sponsor.
Cosponsor Date Cosponsored
Sen. Grassley, Chuck [R-IA]* 04/03/2025
Sen. Moran, Jerry [R-KS]* 04/03/2025
Sen. Klobuchar, Amy [D-MN]* 04/03/2025
Sen. Murkowski, Lisa [R-AK]* 04/03/2025
Sen. Warner, Mark R. [D-VA]* 04/03/2025
Sen. McConnell, Mitch [R-KY]* 04/03/2025
Sen. Bennet, Michael F. [D-CO]* 04/03/2025
Sen. Tillis, Thomas [R-NC] 04/04/2025
Sen. Welch, Peter [D-VT] 04/04/2025
Sen. Young, Todd [R-IN] 04/04/2025
Sen. Coons, Christopher A. [D-DE] 04/04/2025
Sen. Collins, Susan M. [R-ME] 04/04/2025
Sen. Blumenthal, Richard [D-CT] 04/04/2025
It is a nice sentiment, but to make this into law requires 2/3 of the House and 2/3 of the Senate to come up with a veto-proof majority. I don't see that many spines appearing in either house... The rethuglicans somehow thought getting their idiot-king into the Whitehouse would assure them the winning hand in their culture wars. Maybe it did, but they are going to find destruction of the US economy to be their Waterloo.
This could be the start of something BIG.
IMHO national security is another issue. 26 senate Republlicans and many Republican House members voted to fund Ukraine and many oppenly oppose Trump on that issue. E.G. https://bacon.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=2616
We only need a few Republican House members to kick it off. Need to pressure them.
And flattery will get us anywhere....
Perhaps more time actually spent in their States and Districts will help them come up with some courage. We won't know until after the current recess. But tRump is already defying multiple court rulings. He is also refusing to spend money Congress appropriated. The Constitutional Crisis is well under way.
Read Feathers of Hope.
How about -- " at the direction of DOGE, [SSA] has begun knowingly adding living people to SSA’s death records — the Death Master File (DMF) — by assigning them false “dates of death” to “terminat[e]” their “financial lives.” " https://www.cbpp.org/blog/trump-and-doge-claim-power-to-falsely-list-living-persons-as-dead-in-social-security-records
What member of Congress supports that??????
"Being wrongfully identified as dead in Social Security records “can lead to benefit termination … and severe financial hardship and distress to affected individuals.” Because the DMF is leveraged by many federal and state agencies to determine eligibility — and by the Treasury Department’s government-wide “Do Not Pay” system to prevent improper payments — false inclusion of a death date can lead to an individual losing their health coverage through Medicare, having their tax return delayed, or having their Social Security or other eligible benefit payments cancelled, among other harms.
"The DMF is also used by some private-sector companies with a legitimate business or anti-fraud need for the data — including financial institutions, credit agencies, insurance companies, and pension administrators. As a result, being inappropriately listed as dead can result in severe financial consequences like disruption in bank account access, credit cards being cancelled, pension benefits being paused, insurance coverage being cancelled or claims being denied, rejected employment applications, or denial of credit.
"The first group of people to be wrongfully and knowingly declared dead by the Trump Administration are reportedly being targeted in an immigration enforcement effort focused, at least in part, on people who were lawfully present and eligible to work until the Trump Administration abruptly terminated their lawful status. These individuals would have been correctly issued Social Security numbers (SSNs) upon obtaining their lawful immigration statuses, and any change in those statuses should not limit their access to their own financial resources in U.S. banks."
I recommend that Contrarian interview Ed Weir, PhD, Former Social Security Manager. https://www.youtube.com/@MyGovExpert
Thank you for reminding us about that one.
https://open.substack.com/pub/solarireport/p/the-fast-approaching-digital-control?r=epq7q&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
This is a rogue regime which is making the wheels turn backwards to further their goal of making abject cruelty the SOP of the US Government. When enough of the citizenry finds out that the Government no longer has any intention of keeping its promises, we will have a humanitarian disaster in this wealthy country.
While they MIGHT vote for this bill in the first place, I will bet they won't vote to override his veto. They're just too chicken.
But, at least their votes will be on the record.
I agree, but the Battle of Waterloo was the final battle in a war that lasted for 23 years. Trump has been president for 87 days. My primary concern right now is about the two ultraconservatives who have had the most impact (aside from Musk) on Trump, but are rarely, if ever, seen with him. They are Kevin Roberts, CEO of the Heritage Foundation, and Leonard Leo, Chair of the Federalist Society.
It was Kevin Robert's idea to dismantle the "deep state" (our government) by firing all the civil servants and replacing them with Trump loyalists. He also is responsible for eliminating the Department of Education, and wants to reduce the scope of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, roll back renewable-energy programs to create a regulatory environment that favors the fossil fuel industry, limit mail-order abortion pills, and remove DEI hiring policies from federal programs, among other things. https://www.newsweek.com/project-2025-promises-second-revolution-1920506
This is all too long for a comment, but Leonard Leo was responsible for stacking SCOTUS with conservative Justices, including John Roberts so they could overturn Roe v Wade. In 2022, he received $1.6 billion dollars from an ultraconservative donor, and is using it to weaponize conservatives. https://www.axios.com/2024/09/12/leonard-leo-conservative-groups-funding
I think it is safe to say that people with money and cultist agendas have been instrumental in tRumps ascension. Some - a few - cultists have the knack and ravening greed to become major tRump supporters. We are very far into the rabbit hole and whether we can be extracted becomes more problematical every day.
Those numbers have to be the Goal for the next election. Not taking house and senate - Veto Proof Majority !
Let's not make too much of what may lead to nothing in terms of a sweeping realignment of more Republicans. Thr Party has been a criminal insurgency since its hostile take-over by Trump in 2015. It refused, with a few honorable exceptions, to even consider the evidence in two impeachments when Trump was clearly guilty as charged. The Republicans played fast and loose with SC nominations to block Democrats and rush in Trump's picks. They are responsible along with the SC Republican majority for giving America its current dictatorship in consolidation. Most Republicans stayed loyal to Trump even after his failed January 2021 coup. They are like Nazis, they will only go down with their leader. Hope is delusory - a way to feel better, a drug to avoid facing the dark reality. America is being swept by a Neo-Fascist criminal wave flooding over it and destroying all its institutions. Look at anything - weather forecasting, cancer research, the National Science Foundation, the NIH, the CDC, the IRS, the Departments of Agriculture and Education, the DoD, the DoJ, the CIA, the FBI, the Smithsonian, the Kenedy Ceter, illegal abductions and deportations against court orders, coercion of media, of universities, the delibersate cult of fear-induced obedience and sadism-porn (e.g. in Kristi Noem's poses and photo- ops), the tariff wars and attacks on allies, the de facto alliance with Putin's Russia.
Where are the Republicans? Not even WW2 did so much harm to America's basic institutions - science, technology, and the economy grew stronger then. Even though there were abuses such as the internment of Japanese-Americans, FDR and his Cabinet didn't glory in sadism. If America ever recovers, it will be broken and seriously wounded. That's what happens when a long-time associate of gangsters, a criminal foreign operative, is allowed to become president, that too for a second time after a coup attempt. Everyone should know that a failed coup is only a dress rehearsal for the next one. This time, the enemies of Anerican democracy - Musk, Thiel, Andreessen, etc. - were ready. As Putin's domestic partners, they only want to rule for their own benefit and tear down the Federal government. Trump’s foreign investors - Netanyahu, bin Salman, and Putin - use him for their regional aims.
Gotta blame McConnell for the impeachments not passing.
You're so right. But can you toss us a lifeline? We need a clear path forward. We cannot abandon hope.
The only certainty about the future is, someone said, that it's uncertain. There lies the possibility that we can change and shape the future, make it better than it would otherwise be. Perhaps at this point it makes a lot of sense to support the Democrats who are vocal and organizations like Indivisible who represent the resistance. Even more, to push the Democrats who are equivocal or want to compromise. Also, to do what we can, each in our way, to organize and spread the message to stand up to the deranged tyrant, his billionaire backers, and his henchmen(and women): Never to give in. Never to compromise and obey immoral orders and pressures. To work in every way to bring down the Republicans now in power, including by persuading those we can not to vote for them. There will be lots of battles. Some will be lost, including in court decisions, there are already those in universities and law firms and media have given in. But the message of Thoreau and Gandhi and Martin Luther King is still valid: Do not obey immoral laws and orders, don't cooperate, even if there are costs. Help those we can to organize and rise up against tyrants and oppressors. For what it's worth, Gandhi's repeated agitations against payment of land revenues to the oppressive imperial government brought the British in India to the point where they could only collect taxes using military force. That could not last.
Another ray of hope - tyrants are also mortal men, they will not be there for ever, and their seconds-in-command don't often have the same following. When the power of the cult is broken, it will be a different game. Perhaps economic chaos and military mistakes (a US armada has gathered in the Indian Ocean within striking distance of Iran, so war with Iran?) will bring the regime into disrepute and humiliation soon. We don't know and can't predict events when there is a mad king in power who only searches how to satisfy his greed and spite and need for vengeance, or to please his foreign and domestic deep-pocketed sponsors.
Thank you, Hari, for an informed, well thought out and clear-eyed response. I share similar hopes yet need validation. This helps.
You're welcome, Josephine. Thank you for your kind response. Perhaps we should consider one more possibility: If and when the economic situation worsens to the point Republican Senators and Representatives fear they will lose their seats and are under immense continuing pressure from their constituents, enough may turn and join the Democrats to bring down the despot.
These rethugs risk nothing, knowing that the bill will go nowhere. I'm not about to thank them for having brought this Nazi plague upon the U.S.
And our Democratic Leadeship is going to what?"
In addition, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), according to Axios, launched “a digital ad campaign against Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Susan Collins (R-ME.)” seeking to tie the Senators to efforts to dismantle Social Security.
And this is not to get into ouir brothers and sisters among us Democrats who are afraid to challenge tariffs. At least Chuck Schumer's desk has quit writing me.
Right. I'd hope that there are behind the scenes discussions...I have the same problem with Dem leaders, but politics is always about herding cats....
IMHO the best we can do is "shared" government. I advocated that Jeffries offer the chair of the House intelligence/military committees to Mike Turner, R Oh.
The thing that's missing is frank discussions with otherwise sane Republicans about the nature of their fear. I've read that some of them acrtually fear for their lives. And then Trump is pretty good at insulting appelations andones which stick.
We gave a lot both to snate candidates, our local congressional candidate, and the party in 2024. I thought that would improve the quality of the solicitations we'd get via eamil, but alas. "Brarack has asked me to check in with you to see if there's anything we can do to encourage your financial participation at this vital time." etc. We used to get solicitations from Schumer's desk, but apparently someone told him how idiotic they read.
I love the idea of shared government and thre are worthy Republicans. I would think it would fall to us to gather them in and engineer a wresting of power fro m Trump by t=returning it to the house and senate.
And I'll bite. "Baghdad by the Sea"?
We are all afraid -- Murkowski. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69FGNdBemTI
Miami, I picked it up from a radio talk show when I was a kid. Have used it for years, i.e. https://www.amazon.com/Miami-90-2Paths2-Murder-Novel/dp/1977222374
Besides murder meet:
- Foreign intrigue, spies and espionage.
- Cultural assimilation and hostility.
- Generational and inter-generational conflict.
- Dognapping and animal rights.
- Fire bombings.
- Riots.
- Abstract and symbolic cultural art.
- Public corruption fraud and Medicare fraud
- Jury trials and administrative hearings involving DNA and other scientific subjects.
- Foreign and domestic intelligence.
- Smuggling, illegal guns and drugs and illegal immigration.
- Remittances to Cuba.
- Grifters.
- Terrorist gangs.
- Unscrupulous police and politicians.
- Interaction between the State Department, Justice Department and other agencies.
- Social Security hearings.
- Greyhound racing.
- Advanced placement.
- PETA.
- Comparative religion.
- Non-violent direct action.
- Religious proselytization and conversion.
- Parochial vs. public education.
- Religious persecution.
- Santeria and Voodoo.
- Spells and trances.
- Gangsters and ganiffs.
- Eugenics, genetics, forensic evidence and expert testimony.
- Lukumi. Melungeons. Moors and Christians. Babalus and Rebbes.
14 years first in Coconut Grove commencing in 1986, Then Belle Isle, now St Petersburg.
But Baghdad by the Sea says it all. Bravo
I've lived in the Grove off and on...was in DC but kept proprety...
I don't know whether you remember the old now defunct Centro Vasco, but numerous Latin American revolutions began there.....many if not most local businesses in little Havana were CIA subsidized. ..once lived a block from the Gubiernos en Exilio de Cuba...
I have relatives in St. Pete...
Schumer finally did something
Is the destruction of the economy the single most powerful incentive for resistance? So much has already been destroyed. Perhaps by destroying the economy they will more quickly seal their own destruction. Keep pumping air into that balloon. At some point it pops.
Feathers of Hope.
IMHO national security. Did they sign up to be members of an axis of evil?
It is true that many elected Republicans are going to lose their jobs. Right now they’re afraid of being primaried by someone even more ideologically bound to Donald J Trump. We must work to make them fear being voted out resoundingly by angry constituents instead. Keep the pressure on!
There are plenty of them under pressufre now. E.G. where I live 3 MAGATS represent a Dem majority. All are Cuban Americans. 2 of 3 were once Dems -- switched due to Cuba policy.
Here's an example....Editor’s note: Miami healthcare CEO Michael “Mike” B. Fernandez wrote the following open letter to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and members of the Republican Cuban-American Miami-Dade congressional delegation: U.S. Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart, Carlos Giménez and Maria Elvira Salazar. For decades, I have stood with you in defense of the freedoms we cherish, those we were denied in the country of our birth and found in the grace of this one. I know what it means to flee tyranny.
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article304271841.html#storylink=cpy
Pickets at my Congeresswomans office. Pickets at CANF -- the Cuban American National Federation.
Besides that Cubans and all minorities bear the DEI brunt from Musk and his Muskovites. Every government, business, here are bi if not tri lingual. People were hired on that basis.
Plus, we have more Canadian Americans than live in c=some provinces. Were (past tense) mostly pro business Republicans. 54,000 Floridians work for Canadian businesses. We've lost about 3 mil tourists this year.....
If this sort of pressure is applied nationwide it may turn the tide if Trumpism….
Start recall petitions. Make them see that they've already run out of time, and they'll lose their jobs in any case.
I'm 75, and for as long as I've paid any attention to politics, this current "Republican" (Nazi) budget plan has been their wet dream. The difference now is that there's a Nazi in the WH with a cult following that has terrorized those in the party that once had a working conscience. It's Full-Frontal Evil without a micro-gram of moderation.
I don’t understand why most don’t understand this!!
I don't either. My guess is that many can't imagine that he worst case scenario is unfolding in real time.
They aren't paying attention. The only news they here is from MAGA channels.
I wake up every morning, and go to sleep each night so confused by the behavior of so many of the millionaires, billionaires, individual or corporate. What is the point of their wealth? Why is paying their fair of taxes such an issue? Why do they need more?
My apologies to all those generous individuals and corporations. The ones paying living wages, sharing profits, providing healthcare and safe working conditions…and paying their taxes. Thank you for showing us how it can/should be done.
You're far from alone. Warren Buffet paid nearly $1 billion in taxes last year and said he was glad to do it. I didn't see an ounce of suffering on his face when he said that and clearly neither did he. It's insane that policy is being fashioned to benefit not just the richest, but stupidest and ugliest of the rich. Trump's ads about 'preserving middle-class tax cuts' are all over MSNBC and CNN. They must be paying a fortune to outbid everyone to put them there. Every bit of it is deceptive hogwash -- it's the middle-class who are financing tax cuts for those who make a hundred times more than they ever will in a single year.
As is written on the IRS building in Washington (who are now "considering" an illegal administrative maneuver to revoke Harvard's tax status to please the Mango Miscreant), "taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society." That is a message that everyone should be taking back to their rabid Republican House members and Senators.
So, if "taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society" then does this then play out to mean that if our society becomes uncivilized, we can stop paying taxes? Personally, I think we should all find a legal way to not pay taxes but to put those dollars into a high interest savings account so it's available on the day we agree to pay our taxes again. Just a thought...
I like the comment acknowledging the companies that still
operate with integrity.
Why are you confused? They’re supporting the king. That’s all.
I would strongly recommend that journalists like yourself stop referring to programs like Social Security and Medicare as “entitlements”. They are not. These are “Benefits” (paid for by workers their entire working lives.) We earned them.
Fraud...the word is applied only to Americans whose lives depend on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, government pensions, etc. The programs that OUR tax money has paid for over the course of OUR WORKING LIVES suddenly become entitlements riddled with fraud. But...when OUR tax monies are diverted to the bank accounts of billionaires who are actively working to destroy the country, fraud no longer figures in their side of the equation. The indifference of the administration and the MAGA RINOS in Congress to the plight of those who will be suffer deprivation is despicable and sick. Why worry about their "plum" positions being primaried? If they don't change their votes to work for their constituents, the voters will throw them out on the street for their spineless collaboration with the real frauds.
To a Republican, fraud is simply clever manipulation.
Hardcore MAGA types are so into the cult that they are oblivious to what is coming - their family members are directly affected, but they do not care, and they will blame Biden. Should I have empathy? Nope. They are willfully ignorant.
Alan Greenstein: I think that's the key--a cult is rooted in existential identity--but so is one's financial situation (and one's family's). So when they crossed that line into SS and Medicare, they stepped into a conflicting existential identity for a huge number of MAGA.
But you are also right that a potential weak spot is for the Administration to lie their way out of being responsible for it. But can they do that with the "let it all hang out' Musk waving around a buzz saw and breaking into institutions' computers? We don't know yet, but I really doubt it.
It may be easier to plan our future when we realize that a traitor has taken over the country and is softening it up for a Putin take-over. Nothing else makes sense. Time for Plan B.
There is something terribly wrong when the Trump administration makes so many cuts to programs that help the needy- and then we see him sitting in the Oval Office in front of all that GOLD as though he is a king.
As far as Trump is concerned he believes he IS a king.
The Democrats need to come up with a sobering and realistic alternative plan and sell it to the American public. Hit the airwaves. Flood social media. Demonstrate that the Democratic Party has the competence to deal with this crisis and is the true party of financial acumen, not the Republicans. Destroy this myth once and for all that the Republicans are the financial wizards.
And the people who only watch Faux? Will they see any of it?
They are a huge part of the problem, no doubt. I have no simplistic answer to their demise but possibly the destruction of the economy will cut deeply enough into the advertising revenue that they will change course, but I doubt it. Blame Biden and the ignorant will lap it up.
I think your focus on rural areas is important, but needs to show more discernment. Poor does not mean red. Rural does not mean white. Disentangling these associations would be helpful.
New Mexico is different. It is not a red state, as you imply. It is a very poor state (almost 20% of the population lives in poverty), which is true of some of the red states.
New Mexico has been reliably blue since 2008. All state government office holders are Democrats and the legislature is majority Democratic. The states representatives at the federal level are also Democrats.
New Mexico has a large Native American population, of which 60% receives Medicaid. About 50% of the population are Mexican or of Hispanic or Latino descent. Only one-third of the population is white.
Over 50% of births are covered by Medicaid! More on Medicaid in NM: https://files.kff.org/attachment/fact-sheet-medicaid-state-NM
I went to a high school in New Mexico where about 30% of the population was Native American. In my mind and experience, they are a significant group. But when I look at govt statistics, they are identified only as “other.”
Gratuitous cruelty, they name is Repugnican't!
Anybody, Republican or Democrat or independent, who is complicit in the dismantling of our government, should have a target on their back and be replaced in 2026 and 2028 and beyond. No exceptions and particularly with respect to Trump and his enablers.
Ms. Rubin, I was a registered representative of the New York STOCK Exchange on 10/19/1987. This policy induced disaster smells a lot like what occurred the Friday proceeding and the Monday.
Devaluation of the dollar, rise in interest rates and huge p/e ratios. Be afraid be very afraid.
Shame on you Jennifer Rubin. When you call Social Security an "entitlement" you negate anything positive you had to say. SOCIAL SECURITY has never been an entitlement. Every single American that has worked for a living has PAID into this fund. It is demeaning to everyone that has worked for a living. SHAME ON YOU.
Respectfully, I agree that the word "entitlement" has come to mean something that a self-centered person "feels" that they deserve. However, the first dictionary definition of "entitlement" is "that to which a person has a right." The word really has two separate meanings, according to the dictionary. I believe that Jennifer Rubin is using the word correctly. We have a right to Social Security.
Once again the cowardice & greed of Republicans comes shining through! But on an even more serious note. These cuts across many departments & projects that help the most vulnerable I believe are designed specifically to make these populations poorer & sicker. Isn't it much easier to manipulate a population when they are too weak & poor to fight back. The peasants in North Korea come to mind. Or the "workers" in Chinese factories that are just about held as slaves. This is what trump & his sycophants want & this is what cowardly Republicans are giving him. Hmm, keep it up & these cowards won't have to worry about getting primaried, they'll have to worry about getting thoroughly beaten by an opposition candidate come election time. Maybe by 2026 if we still have the ability to vote in a fair & secure election enough Magats will have put 2+2=4 together, rather than the current Magamath of 2+2=5 that is forced down their throats by their cowardly "representatives"!