The Editorial Board

If I were such a Democrat, I would also be mindful of the opportunities presented by this moment in history. For three presidential elections in a row, Trump drove out people who do not normally participate in democracy. He amassed coalitions by changing the GOP’s base to include these “low-propensity voters.” They were pulled in by maga, but now, in the wake of war, inflation and corruption, they are falling away. The likelihood, and fear among party elites, is they will return to their natural pre-Trump state.

A Trump staffer told The New Yorker: “We took over and we just kind of f—ing botched it. The Democrats didn’t create some bulls–t. We had a generational opportunity and we basically squandered it. Look at the coalition we had in 2024. Those people might not ever vote again in their lives.”

So Trump has done two things that create opportunities for an ambitious Democrat. He has put people who don’t normally vote back to sleep while awakening a sleeping giant in the South. (The Black and brown voters there are disproportionately young.) Trump could do to America what former Governor Pete Wilson did to California, where anti-Hispanic policies backfired in the 1990s. The high court has triggered a second backlash with Black voters.

“A lot of people are going to wake up Wednesday and realize we’re in a new era of American politics,” political scientist Joshua Zingher told me in the interview below.

“Joe Biden didn’t or couldn’t attempt major institutional reforms and we ended up in a worse place because of it,” Zingher told me. “The cycle will continue unless the Democrats actively break it, which starts with dealing with the Supreme Court but includes adding states and other institutional reforms. There is no path forward where things get better without renewing and revitalizing our democracy, and they owe it to their voters to try.”

Is Trump doing what Pete Wilson did? In California, that process took years. Is Trump turbocharging it?

I think over the short term the answer is “yes.” Over the long term, the answer is no. The backlash from Latino and Asian voters against ICE brutality, racism and self-inflicted economic wounds shaped 2026 and will continue to matter in 2028, but over the long term these are large and growing groups that will exhibit more political diversity over time, as the 2016-2024 period suggests. I think the bigger impact with Trump will be where the parties find their votes from. The South and the Sunbelt is where the action is going to replace the Rustbelt as the path to the presidency.

That brings me to my second question about Black voters. They have been like a sleeping giant in places like Texas, South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee. The assault on the Voting Rights Act may have woken the giant up?

Here’s the thing with the Supreme Court making the VRA unenforceable: nobody really knows what the long run consequences will be. Southern politics had been in a period of stasis, with guaranteed Black representation in exchange for Republican statewide control. The Supreme Court broke the truce, and it isn’t clear what comes next.

This all comes at a time when the South’s population is undergoing massive change through in-migration, particularly northern African Americans moving to places like Atlanta and Houston. Georgia is a great example of the political consequences of these changes. The VRA created uncompetitive districts with long-time incumbents, many of whom were very old. Those districts will be a thing of the past in most places. To me, the million-dollar question is how the state party systems change in response to both changing populations and electoral rules. It isn’t obvious to me how it’s going to go.

These changes are obvious to anyone paying attention to marginalized groups and their incentives, but this movement among Hispanics and Black voters is not a national story. Given its magnitude, why isn’t it?

I think a lot of it stems from these voices being underrepresented in elite media spaces. The Haley Stevens thing yesterday is a great example of that. Political reporters love palace intrigue stories and will go head over heels when they get some intra-elite conflict. The big structural changes that affect politics are harder to understand and affect demographics that aren’t them personally, which matters a lot.

In a more general sense, people learn America is a democracy in school, so we’re almost blind to these major violations of democratic principles and practice that happen right in front of our faces. American history and politics are structured by our ongoing fight over minority rights generally and African American rights in particular, and our current period is no exception. The Supreme Court killing the VRA via 1,000 cuts was the most consequential thing it has done in the 21st century, by far, in my estimation, yet it gets less attention, and I think this is why.

How weird is Texas going to get? And will that weirdness last until at least 2028?

A lot of people are going to wake up Wednesday morning and realize we’re in a new era of American politics. I think James Talarico is going to win, and the other state wide races are coin flips. Who knows if the wave gets big enough to move a significant number of state House seats. Ken Paxton losing is easy enough to write off because he has a track record of cartoon villain corruption, but Governor Greg Abbott losing to an underfunded Latina candidate would be a psychological shock across the spectrum.

Beyond Texas, I think you’re going to get races that nobody bothered to poll have unexpected outcomes. A friend of mine likes to say “our imaginations are insufficient” and I think our imaginations about what to expect have been too limited here.

Seems to me if Hispanics are using their vote to punish Republicans and if Black voters are doing the same, the Democrats have a basis on which to pursue accountability (impeachments, etc) and reforms (adding states, etc).

Democracy, or the lack thereof, is backdrop to the entire second Trump presidency and Election Day will make the subtext explicit. Ethnic and racial minority groups are the canaries in the coal mine. They occupy the most socially vulnerable positions in society, so they are forced to bear the brunt of the consequences of democratic erosion first.

However, if we do nothing, the consequences will come for us all regardless of where we fall in the social hierarchy. If the Democrats win big tomorrow, which polling and the early vote totals suggest, they have an imperative to do all of the above and will regret it if they don’t.

Biden didn’t or couldn’t attempt major institutional reforms and we ended up in a worse place because of it. The cycle will continue unless the Democrats actively break it, which starts with dealing with the Supreme Court but includes adding states and other institutional reforms. There is no path forward where things get better without renewing and revitalizing our democracy, and they owe it to their voters to try.

That’s all for today. Please consider subscribing! I know you like it. I know you’ll love the price! For just $9 a month, you get so much, plus the satisfaction of supporting independent journalism. Thanks! –JS

Trump assaulted freedom. Americans are fighting back. That's the story of the midterms

John Stoehr — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 20:26:26 GMT

Via Business Insider.

Election Day for the 2026 congressional elections is tomorrow. The future of democracy is at stake. Here are some final thoughts on the most consequential midterm of our lifetimes.

• Voters are mad. The conventional wisdom is that it’s over inflation and the economy. They have good reason to be. As I have said a few times, we are all feeling the effects of a triple whammy: illegal war, illegal taxes (tariffs) and illegal deportations. Before January 2025, Bidenomics was working. Wages were going up. Inflation was falling. But then Trump returned and almost instantly reversed all those gains. He promised to bring down costs. He raised them instead. The midterms are being framed as judgment on a broken promise.

• The conventional wisdom is wrong. He promised whiteness and delivered. Using the power of the federal government, he set out to bleach multiracial democracy: to purge institutions and civil society of commitments to equality, inclusion and justice for all. His project might have succeeded fully if not for the fact that whiteness backfires economically, as always. Farmers, trucking companies, construction firms, union members, the white working class generally – they are getting what they voted for. What they are mad about is feeling the pain of their terrible choices. On the strength of that rage, Trump and the Republicans are poised to lose GOP strongholds like Texas. The Democrats’ challenge will be figuring out how to reintegrate these voters into the larger project of democratic pluralism.

• Whiteness triggered a political reaction as well as an economic one. In addition to No Kings protests, which have smashed records in terms of their size, Hispanic voters are early voting in numbers so massive they suggest the intention of punishing Trump for unleashing a secret police force on their communities and its wholesale violation of their constitutional liberties. Black voters are acting similarly, only in reaction to this year’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act. “Southern politics had settled into a truce where African Americans got guaranteed representation in exchange for Republican statewide dominance,” said Josh Zingher, a political scientist at Old Dominion. “The Supreme Court ended the truce.” Zingher suggested that the largely white press corps is missing that this is a fight for freedom.

• Trump assaulted freedom. Economics is only one aspect of a larger agenda, but it’s the aspect that gets the most media attention. Freedom and economics are not separable, however, as old neoliberals like Milton Friedman used to say. The consequences of betraying the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the rule of law are not theoretical. They are deeply and powerfully felt by individuals and communities, though it will take time before they are fully understood. For now, the press corps is focused on telling the story about voters punishing Trump for “policy failures.” However, the story should be about voters punishing Trump for his crimes, and the broadbased demand for the restoration of law and order.

• Trump’s are high crimes and misdemeanors. Here’s a partial list from a Times editorial urging the electorate to hold the president and his party accountable on Tuesday. “He has broken his oath to defend the Constitution by trying to rewrite it on his own. He has refused to honor Congress’s power of the purse and misused national security laws for political ends. He has defied federal court orders on Medicaid funding, deportation orders and more. He has dismantled the Justice Department’s legacy as an impartial enforcer of federal law, turning it into an instrument of retribution against his adversaries while canceling investigations into his allies. He has appointed inept sycophants to oversee crucial government functions, including law enforcement, national defense and public health. He has sought to disenfranchise large numbers of voters, claiming fraud that cannot be found, and championed an extreme new approach to partisan gerrymandering.”

• The Republicans in the Congress are complicit. They have done nothing to stop a crime spree that has robbed the people of their rights, freedom and wealth. They stood by while he dismantled federal agencies without congressional approval, squandered US credibility abroad, sabotaged global alliances, and undermined public trust. They looked the other way while he enriched himself with tens of thousands of illegal stock trades. They are blind to the billionaires who are bribing him in plain sight. They didn’t mind his sham prosecutions of perceived political enemies. And they allowed for his most destructive choices: his decision to impose illegal taxes (tariffs) and to attack Iran. The Republicans are fond of saying that America is a republic, not a democracy, but by their actions, they don’t believe even that. They would clearly prefer a dictator. Their problem is voters no longer falling for the scam.

• The GOP also masked Trump’s dementia. They said his victory was a mandate to rule in the name of “real Americans,” so mentioning his dementia was an implied affront to that mandate. But as his power fades, so does the taboo. The Times (finally) ran a story Sunday, in uncharacteristically blunt language, analyzing how much Trump has deteriorated. “The president in his second term has used 19 percent more all-or-nothing words like ‘always,’ ‘never,’ ‘everything’ and ‘totally’ at rallies than he did a decade ago and 5 percent more than in 2024, a sign of black-and-white thinking that experts say often accompanies advancing age or cognitive decline,” the Times said. With AI-assisted analysis, the Times found Trump “makes rambling or confusing digressions in his rallies and speeches two and a half times as often in his second term as in the 2016 campaign, although roughly the same as in 2024.”

• When I say blunt, I mean blunt. The Times:

“The weave seems to be getting weavier.”
“He is profoundly and proudly undisciplined. He says things that are manifestly unhelpful to him.”
“He wanders from thought to thought, often without finishing a sentence, embedding one off-the-cuff story within another.”
“His focus on the male anatomy, for instance, has become remarkably pronounced lately.”
“He snaps at reporters so often now that he barely waits for their questions before calling them ‘sick’ and ordering, ‘Quiet!’”
“His exhortations to supporters to vote have grown more vulgar and violent as well.”
“He depicts himself as all-powerful.”
“The commander in chief who recently threatened to ‘annihilate’ Iran complained bitterly that he did not win the Nobel Peace Prize.”

• Trump’s dementia is a wild card. Some fear he will escalate the Iran war in a rage after the midterms, widening it to include Gulf allies already under siege. The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend on the true extent of the destruction of US bases in the Middle East. During the first six months of the war, Iran hit over 270 buildings in 24 installations in seven countries, causing billions in damage. That dynamic would surely get worse if he escalates the war. Politico reported this morning that allies fear he’ll go all-in for Russia, even more than he already has, by pulling US troops out of Europe, cutting off NATO funding, leaving nations exposed to Vladimir Putin’s imperialism. He’s capable of activating NATO’s Article 5, which says an attack on one is an attack on all. There are rumors that Benjamin Netanyahu, whose power is also waning, could talk Trump into triggering Armageddon.

• The midterms are about freedom and taking it back. That’s a narrative worth cementing right now in the public consciousness, because his reaction to losing the midterms will underscore it, therefore deepening his unpopularity and perhaps emboldening grassroots resistance more, hopefully creating conditions to restrain him in case he goes totally bonkers with military power. At home, he will almost certainly try some kind of second coup attempt. A judicial version is already taking shape. Today, he asked the Supreme Court to intervene in an entirely phony California case involving 20,000 mail-in ballots. Harder displays of oppression may come if those softer forms fail (and they will fail). The president plans to dispatch 1,000 “poll monitors” in search of “fraud” in a bid to create a pretext of defying voters’ will. If the story is about economics this month, it will be about freedom next month.

That’s all for today. Please consider subscribing! I know you like it. I know you’ll love the price! For just $9 a month, you get so much, plus the satisfaction of supporting independent journalism. Thanks! –JS

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By people, for the people

John Stoehr — Sat, 31 Oct 2026 11:54:23 GMT

Yesterday, I sent you the latest edition of the Editorial Board. It was about the “very perilous” period after the midterms during which a highly unstable president is probably going to do his worst. And if that’s not scary enough, there’s Donald Trump’s escalation of war to consider, and the general collapse of the world order. “The bones of the republic are probably going to hold up, however precariously,” I said. “It’s the other stuff – war and chaos and a bubble that’s about the burst – that is driving me to distraction.”

I’m writing today to ask for your help in continuing this work. The Editorial Board is made by people, for the people. I don’t use artificial intelligence. There are no sponsors. There are no ads. It’s just me and you and the democracy we love. (And the friends who contribute occasional pieces.) I hope you will support the mission in whatever way you can.

For just $9 month, you get so much: analysis and commentary; about 15 editions a month; a feeling of understanding and hope; and lots of kitchen-table ammo! You get the satisfaction of supporting an independent voice speaking the truth as plainly as he can.

That’s a lot for just 30¢ a day!

If you don’t want to subscribe, or are already subscribing (THANK YOU!), please consider a tip. Every dollar goes to groceries or the heat or things my daughter needs for school. (Check your status below to see if you’re subscribing or on the free list.)

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I won’t stop working hard for you and for democracy. I can’t help myself. But I hope you will you find a way to support the Editorial Board!

–John Stoehr

A sampling from the Editorial Board archives

Elon Musk is too big to trust

The Wall Street Journal and CBS News confirmed that Elon Musk was involved in the decision to stall out Starshield, the military version of Starlink, when Ukraine needed it most. As Russia launched its biggest attack since the invasion, Musk “capped the speeds at which Ukrainian hardware could stay connected to the satellite-based n…

10 days ago · 84 likes · 9 comments

Rage against new Gilded Age is reaching point of consensus

Some days feel like we’re all living in the pages of a novel set in the Gilded Age, a time when the merely rich transformed into the very obscenely rich while everyone else struggled…

16 days ago · 76 likes · 4 comments

Why do the Republicans fear James Talarico? He quotes scripture with authority

I’m late to this, but there’s still time for a word on James Talarico’s appearance on Jimmy Kimmel’s show. It’s important, because I don’t think most people on the left appreciate how threatening he is. He has a shot at becoming the first Democrat elected to the US Senate from Texas in decades. He presents a chance to reclaim policies favorable to Donal…

18 days ago · 80 likes · 5 comments

In American politics, the simplest explanation is probably the best. Why are some Republicans suddenly and conspicuously breaking from Donald Trump? Not just any Republicans, but ruby-red Republicans, in ruby-red states, in the span of days…

Diesel is the new covid

a month ago · 146 likes · 23 comments

Why is Trump blind to Dolly Parton's liberal politics?

Yesterday, during an interview with Glenn Beck, the president made Dolly Parton’s death about him. (”She really liked me, I will tell you.”) That was no surprise. What was surprising, however, was what Donald Trump said right before that. “She wasn’t a very political person…

2 months ago · 5 likes · 4 comments

Chaos, war and an AI bubble: A blue wave is coming, but there are ‘very perilous’ times ahead

John Stoehr — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 22:18:48 GMT

My friend Alex Wise, the host of Sea Change Radio, sent me a text recently saying that he’s feeling hopeful about democracy. The Democrats are poised to win the House, perhaps the Senate as well. He’s still worried, though. The president is highly unstable. The Republicans cannot be trusted. “What are Democrats planning on doing to protect the country from the very perilous interregnum period from November 3 and January 1, 2027?” he asked me.

The biggest thing they are doing is raising awareness of that very fact – that the period between Election Day and the day the new Congress is seated will be very perilous. According to NPR, the Democrats have organized to warn the public that Donald Trump will claim election fraud, no matter what, and they are preparing “their state and local counterparts to act when necessary to ensure election results are honored.” Reams of lawsuits have been pre-written and are ready to be filed. Congressional Democrats are standing by. Ditto for Democratic attorneys general. There are plans underway for “a massive presence at the polls” by Democrats and outside watchdogs, according to the AP.

The administration is already pushing boundaries. The Department of Justice is subpoenaing records from California over phony claims of noncitizens voting there. The department is launching a probe into Alaska’s Senate race, after recent reporting revealed efforts to recruit an independent candidate with the same name as the Republican incumbent, the allegation being intentional voter confusion. (I’m no expert in Alaska election law, but that’s probably not illegal, however distasteful it might seem.) There are scattered reports of DHS and ICE agents being around polling places. FBI agents are leaking their concern about being dispatched to them. The administration said it would deploy 1,000 “poll monitors.”

So far, these are half-hearted moves on Trump’s part, but even so, everyone seems to expect them and is prepared. Most of the effort will probably die in court, as most of it did after the 2020 election. His remaining moves would have to be truly dramatic to stop what’s coming – seizing ballots, arresting election officials, declaring martial law, or coordinating with Speaker Mike Johnson to refuse to certify the results. All of these would get the same saturation coverage that the J6 insurrection got, which would be bad for Trump but worse for his party, as it would justify an offensive posture previously unseen from the Democrats.

Beyond this is Trump’s biggest obstacle: a constitutional order that, in one way or another, virtually all Americans believe in. The Constitution is clear about who runs elections: states and localities. It is not the federal government. It’s sure as hell not the president. He can cry “fraud!” but that’s none of his concern, as it’s in the jurisdiction of states. From the outset, it would be hard to convince Americans to overturn the constitutional order to stop a state-level crime, but that goes double for him. He’s the least popular president of our lifetimes.

I don’t want to sound too optimistic, as it is hard to predict the actions of a demented narcissist. Trump will still be president. There’s a lot of damage he can do. (For instance, knock down the Kennedy Center in revenge.) That said, our focus on the domestic side of his descent may be blinding us to the international side. He’s chosen to side with Russia. He’s decided to look away from China’s espionage. The Iran war is still going badly. (The economy is still burning up.) Trump ordered a plan to ramp up the war post-midterms. US Senator Chris Murphy was brief on it. Yesterday, he said “their plan is insane,” adding “it will lead to devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law.”

Murphy could not comment further on a classified briefing, but published reports suggest the plan has more of the same bombing Trump has been doing, only more of it on Iran’s energy infrastructure (ie, oil). Not only would that constitute war crimes – hence the Connecticut senator’s remark about the “destruction of our commitment to the rule of law” - but it would justify Iran widening the war even more to include the energy infrastructure of the surrounding Gulf states. Bottom line: if you think diesel is expensive now, just wait.

There is a sense of the general collapse of the world order, which in turn could threaten the social order at home. Trump lifted sanctions of Russian oil and withheld arms shipments to Ukraine. The Times reported that Trump is “exploring” the idea of restoring Russia’s slush funds, which it would use to pay for its imperialist expansion. Trump, Vladimir Putin and Elon Musk appear to have conspired to sabotage Ukraine. Evidently, Musk and Trump unplugged Starshield, Ukraine’s defense uplink, while Putin launched a devastating ballistic missile strike. In response, Ukraine restarted drone attacks on Russia’s refineries, driving up the price of everything, and Russia aided drone attacks on Saudi Arabia’s refineries, driving up the cost of everything. Meanwhile, China is not only helping Iran kill American soldiers. It appears to have bribed the president to cover up a spy operating in his inner circle. In the global race for advanced technology, like artificial intelligence, China looks like the winner.

Disorder is brewing in Trump’s inner circle, too. Tech stocks fell today on news that monopolies like Amazon are spending more on AI than they are taking in. Word is spreading that AI is doing what many expected: decimating the labor market. A Goldman Sachs report said “higher AI adoption is now associated with weaker employment growth and higher unemployment.” AI is already wiping out entry-level jobs, leaving people under 30 in a lurch. (There are 71 million people in Gen Z.) Spending on AI is basically floating the economy right now, as food and housing take up half of household incomes, according to Bloomberg. There will be hell to pay when that bubble bursts. Billionaires are running for cover under Trump.

Again, there’s a lot that could go sideways after the election in terms of a demented narcissist president reacting to what promises to be the greatest rejection of his life. But from where I am standing, right now, the bones of the republic are probably going to hold up, however precariously. It’s the other stuff – war and chaos and a bubble that’s about the burst – that is driving me to distraction. My friend Alex is totally right. These are “very perilous” times.

In more ways than we can count.

Speaking of Alex

He had me on his show a couple of weeks ago. He wanted to talk about two pieces I wrote about Trump’s dementia, one written this month and the other right before the 2024 presidential election. The result was a segment he called “John Stoehr on Trump’s Dementia.”

Alex’s intro:

As we approach the midterm elections, the increasingly desperate, despotic, and diminished President of the United States is more unhinged than ever – saying he can do whatever he wants and repeatedly suggesting that Iran bomb San Diego and Los Angeles. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with opinion journalist John Stoehr of The Editorial Board to get his insights into the decomposing brain of Donald Trump and to contemplate what it means for this country. We discuss the role of the press in enabling the current state of affairs at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, examine options for Democrats if they’re able to regain power in November, and speculate on what lies ahead for the Republican Party after the Donald has gone.

Listen to our conversation here.

That’s all for today. Please consider subscribing! I know you like it. I know you’ll love the price! For just $9 a month, you get so much, plus the satisfaction of supporting independent journalism. –JS

Someday, the Republicans will again want to be seen as conservative. Don’t let them

John Stoehr — Thu, 29 Oct 2026 20:32:05 GMT

I was reading a Times report this morning about state and local election officials preparing for the election. Floods, fires, computer glitches – these are normal concerns, the Times said. But now there’s a new risk: the federal government.

That’s not what jumped out at me, though. I am well aware of Donald Trump’s phony fraud claims. I am familiar with his desire to steal the election if he can pull it off the crime. What jumped out at me was what Maine’s secretary of state said.

“This is the first time ever that we have had to engage in scenario planning to safeguard against potential federal interference in elections,” Shenna Bellows told the Times. Then she added a vital nuance to that statement. “It seems like the federal government is now adversarial to the states.”

The federal government is now adversarial to the states.

We have been living with Trump for 10 years. During that time, we have forgotten – I have forgotten, I guess – one of the load-bearing columns of so-called conservatism, which is that the federal government is the problem, not the solution.

For decades, the Republicans built up a body of rhetoric to convince many Americans, most of them white, that it’s oppressive to be taxed, tyrannical to be regulated, downright communist for the federal government to tell states what to do. With that rhetoric, they made liberal virtues, like equality and justice for all, seem radical, while policies designed to manifest those virtues were made to seem treasonous.

A classic example is Strom Thurmond’s “Dixiecrat” speech in 1948, given after Harry Truman desegregated the military. Thurmond was a defender of southern apartheid to the day he died. Tapping into the fear that the government would ask the same of the states, he compared civil rights to totalitarianism.

“[The Civil Rights Act] simply means that it’s another means, that it’s another effort on the part of this president to dominate the country by force and to put into effect these uncalled for and the damnable proposals he has recommended under the guise of so-called ‘civil rights.’ And I tell you, the American people, from one side to the other, had better wake up and oppose such a program, and if they don’t, the next thing will be a totalitarian state in these United States.”

Over the years, the lyrics changed, but the tune stayed the same. If there was a Democratic president who wanted to do something good for the electorate that elected him with the power of the federal government, Republicans acted like it was an effort to dominate the country by force. They would declare it either impossible (because it cost too much) or a violation of the sovereignty of the states. On that “constitutional” basis, the Supreme Court could usually be trusted to back them up.

I mean, the whole point of the “gun rights movement” was that an armed citizenry was the best defense against “government tyranny.” It should now be clear they never meant a word. You don’t hear “states rights” people complaining about Trump’s violation of state sovereignty. You don’t see the “Second Amendment” people complaining about his paramilitary police. You don’t see “free speech” people complaining about his attempts to censor the backlash. They spent decades accusing Democratic presidents of being “adversarial to the states,” but they were looking in the mirror the entire time.

Which brings me back to Maine’s secretary of state. I am grateful for her reminder, because there will be a future. There will be a time when Trump is gone and a new normalcy sets in, whatever that is. Voters will put a Democrat in the White House again. The moment they do, there will begin a huge effort on the part of the Republicans to trade their offensive posture, maga-ism, for a defensive posture, so-called conservatism. They will ask us to forget their complicity in creating “a totalitarian state in these United States.”

The new Democratic president will want to enact laws and policies that empower and liberate individuals and communities in states controlled by the GOP, and any chance Republicans have in resisting those efforts will depend on you, me and everyone we know believing they actually believe what they say about morality, the Constitution and the rule of law.

They do not.

Let’s remember that.

Ask Me Anything: October 29, 2026

I asked you to ask me anything. Here are some questions I got. If you want to ask me something for the next Ask Me Anything, leave a comment below or send a reply.

Craig Johnson asks:

Will Trump accept a GOP rout in the midterms? Will he acknowledge that is what Congress is, or will he refuse?

My answer:

The president will never ever concede defeat. He didn’t admit to losing the 2018 election. He didn’t admit to losing the 2020 election. He’s an 80-year-old narcissistic suffering from age-related dementia. He ain’t changing for the better.

The question isn’t whether he will accept defeat. It’s about what he will do in the face of it. He’s already done frightening things – sending ICE agents to patrol mail-in ballot boxes, sending subpoenas to election officials, sending FBI agents to raid the home of Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.

That said, it’s still kinda meh.

Here’s how Will Bunch put it Monday in the Inquirer:

“When the president orders a raid on the home of a political opponent like Omar, or when he files lawsuits that are likely to again be laughed out of the courtroom, America’s wannabe strongman is not displaying strength. These are acts of weakness and desperation, and they are bound to fail. …

“The fundamentals of what the political scientists call competitive authoritarianism — right-wing populists staging pretend elections — are failing because their misrule has imploded so badly that they can no longer win even those rigged contests.”

So what Trump is doing is scary but weak, Will said.

“Trump’s coup may be underway, but it’s already fizzling.”

Carl asks:

What are your thoughts on whether Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer should remain majority leaders following January 3. Should power struggles be a distraction?

My answer:

I am on the fence when it comes to Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. We need to give leaders grace. We also need to raise hell when they stray. I think an intra-party fight is possible but unlikely. If the Democrats prevail next week, Schumer will lead the Senate, Jeffries will be the speaker.

The problem is neither seems ready to fight to the degree they should. Jeffries is good at talking about it. Schumer isn’t good at even that. But we can’t write them off. First, because they’re leaders. Second, because they have put up good fights in the past. For me, it’s the back and forth – fighting, then peacemaking; peacemaking, then fighting – that’s dispiriting.

I’m reminded of remarks by Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate candidate in Michigan. In a recent interview, he talked about Donald Trump and administration officials using language that’s both refreshing and startling in that we rarely hear that kind of talk from Democratic leaders in Washington. He speaks as if grounded in a community of normal people, not a community of poll-brained campaign strategists.

AES said:

“We are being actively bullied by the dumbest people in the room. Donald Trump is an idiot. Whatever you think about him, he has one genius, which is the genius of getting attention, which is because his dad never gave him enough. Because he was a nepo baby, because he had resources, he realized quickly that he just craved attention, then used the bullying tactics that he uses right now to get it. But the man is an idiot. I mean, when it comes down to it, just a fool.”

And:

“So part of the responsibility I think we have is not to allow them to use their power to bend the rest of us to their will, and that means standing up. And the thing about is if you ever stood up to a bully, you realize that they’re very fragile. Once you get past the immediate bullying and the fear that they strike people, there’s no there there, and when you hit them back, they back off. I’m not looking to bully anybody, but if you’re walking around bullying people, and you are causing them harm as a function of it, I’m gonna show up and I’m gonna do exactly what you do to everybody else.”

I accept that I can’t always get what I want. But if I had my druthers, Schumer and Jeffries would learn from this.

That’s all for today. Please consider subscribing! I know you like it. I know you’ll love the price! For just $9 a month, you get so much, plus the satisfaction of supporting independent journalism. Thanks! –JS

Bolsonaro’s treason backfired: a warning for Trump and Big Tech

John Stoehr — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 21:05:48 GMT

Via Reuters.

What can we learn from news of Flavio Bolsonaro fleeing Brazil Monday after losing the presidential election there? Americans are famous for our indifference to international events, but I think this one tells us something about us.

The first thing to know is Bolsonaro fled Brazil and went to Florida after being ordered to surrender his passports. A justice of that nation’s Supreme Court ordered an investigation into money-laundering and other financial crimes the day after his defeat. It’s unclear how he left Brazil while under the order or whether he arrived with a passport. In any case, he requested political asylum and, according to the AP, his request was immediately granted.

That’s the first thing to know, because here in America, we have been told for at least a decade that the integrity of our country depends on upholding our laws, securing our borders, getting rid of dangerous immigrants, and denying access to criminals who are exploiting the system. The result of this conviction has been asylum-seekers being denied entry by 94 percent, according to data compiled by Syracuse University.

But if you’re Donald Trump’s pal, no problem.

As the saying goes, “for my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law.”

Traitor knows traitor
That’s the second thing to know. Trump is invested in Bolsonaro. The administration was involved in a secret scheme to help him by sabotaging the campaign of his opponent, President Luiz Inacio ⁠Lula da Silva. According to an investigation by Reuters, two officials from the US Department of State “advocated for punitive US government measures on Brazil designed to weaken Lula and boost the Bolsonaros.”

Reuters: “The policies included designating Brazilian gangs as terrorist groups and imposing US sanctions against the Brazilian Supreme Court Justice who was spearheading the investigation into [Flavio Bolsonaro’s dad] Jair Bolsonaro.”

I don’t really get the bromance between Trump and the Bolsonaros, but there’s clearly an affinity among them, one of character and personality more than discernible ideology. Jair Bolsonaro tried to mount an insurrection in 2022. So did Trump in 2021. Last year, the White House slapped 50 percent tariffs on Brazil in a bid to pressure authorities to drop charges against Bolsonaro. The move failed. Bolsonaro will die of old age in prison. Why did Trump bother? Traitor knows traitor? Enough said.

In any case, this year Lula warned Trump against violating Brazil’s sovereignty. He warned his opponent, Flavio Bolsonaro, there would be consequences for complicity. Neither heeded, so after the election, the Supreme Court justice who brought down the dad ordered the son to surrender his passports, pending an investigation.

The beginning of the end
That’s the third thing to know. The investigation is not trumped up. A donor network co-founded by Vice President JD Vance, called Rockbridge, is alleged to have interfered with Brazil’s election by Lula’s Workers’ Party and by another candidate who was knocked out in early rounds. In a case brought to Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Court, Renan Santos said “Brazilians who claimed to represent Rockbridge had discussed providing US support with Bolsonaro campaign officials,” according to the Post.

The Post: “The representatives also approached Santos with offers of campaign help, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose private discussions.”

The investigation is wide-ranging. The justice, Flavio Dino, said it must “verify if there was the effective furnishment of resources — including human resources — services, or other measurable economic advantages, identifying its origin, its destination and its eventual use in the campaign.”

That makes room for a lot, including Lula’s allegation, made during his victory speech, that foreign attempts to violate Brazil’s sovereignty included those of big tech monopolies.

“This was an election in which we had to overcome outside interference coming in through digital platforms, which we are going to have to regulate,” Lula promised. “We cannot have monstrous companies earning billions, paying no taxes, and trying to steer this country’s electoral outcome.”

He was talking about Meta. It owns Instagram and Whatsapp. According to one report, they are “Brazilians’ most popular communication channels” and there were “1,200 reports of censored profiles, removed content, and restricted pages, most of them from the left. Lula’s own profile was the target of a series of restrictions and failures that hurt his reach, according to Meta employees. The company denied political interference and claimed that ‘technical failures’ resulted in the account restrictions that harmed Lula.”

Meta also blocked the accounts of Angie Nixon, the Democratic Senate candidate in Florida, and the No Kings protests. It cited “technical failures” for those temporary shutdowns, too. Meta is owned by Mark Zuckerberg. He famously paid $25 million to settle a phony lawsuit Trump brought against Meta to avoid future losses caused by a possible anti-monopoly government crackdown on his monopoly.

Helping Trump’s friends and hurting his enemies is part of Zuckerberg’s ploy. Everything rides on Trump’s “protection,” which is to say, Zuckerberg’s freedom as much as his fortune depends on the Trump administration continuing to look the other way. If the US government’s orientation pivots, and starts paying attention to his crimes, and starts enforcing laws already on the books, that’s the beginning of the end for Zuckerberg.

Lula models an alternative
Which brings me to the fourth and final thing to know. The story of Flavio Bolsonaro running from the consequences of betraying his country reminds us that another world is possible. The Brazilians do not have to accept the corruption of their elites. Neither do we.

We do not have to live in a world in which the Russians, for instance, poison the American public against the Democrats in order to help the Republicans win elections. We do not have to live in a world in which the billionaire owners of the planet’s largest social-media platforms stand by and let it happen, citing “free speech” as the reason they should.

What started in 2016 has happened every election cycle since, all the way up to yesterday, when the AP reported that the Russians are now using AI to create fake videos of Democrats to spread lies about them, and Twitter is their primary means of dissemination.

We do not have to live like this, but we do, because we have been taught to believe that punishing the bad guys will make us as bad as they are or worse: give the bad guys more reason to be bad. That belief was so ingrained that Merrick Garland slow-walked the investigation into Trump’s attempted paramilitary takeover. He lived in fear of being accused of “weaponizing the law.” The result was a president getting away with breaking it.

But Lula models an alternative. Though his opponent explicitly campaigned on vengeance – “to free his father, pardon supporters convicted in a Jan. 6-style assault on Brasília and impeach the Supreme Court justices involved in their prosecution,” according to the Post – Lula said tough cookies. Accuse me of weaponizing the law all you want, but facts are facts. We don’t have to put up with this and we won’t.

That model is powerful. It says that to stop the authoritarians it is first necessary to stop believing their lies. We are not as bad as they are. We should not fear them doing more bad things when we stand up for the rule of law. We should punish foreign governments for sabotaging our elections. We punish candidates for accepting their support. We should punish big tech monopolies for facilitating it all.

The bottom line is that the freedom of the authoritarians, as much as the wealth and power, depends on the lies. Stop believing them and suddenly, the way forward becomes very clear and with that, their freedom suddenly becomes very much in doubt. —John Stoehr

That’s all for today. Please consider subscribing! I know you like it. I know you’ll love the price! For just $9 a month, you get so much, plus the satisfaction of supporting independent journalism. Thanks! –JS

How many times does Trump have to be accused of rape for it to matter in this country?

John Stoehr — Tue, 27 Oct 2026 21:56:57 GMT

I am going to tell you why I think the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee released on Monday a 53-page report presenting new evidence of Donald Trump’s involvement in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-crime syndicate, efforts by the Department of Justice to cover it up, and the Democrats’ call for a special counsel. But before I do, let me quote the report directly.

Why? Because it’s important when evidence suggests the president of the United States lied about his involvement with the world’s most notorious child-sex trafficker, and because the Washington press corps had decided to meet the moment with a collective shrug.

As Ana Marie Cox said, with appropriate outrage, “the New York Times and Washington Post, and all the major cable networks, have covered CheesecakeGate more thoroughly ... (A search of the media monitoring service Snapstream showed the three major cable news networks combined mentioned the rape allegation against Trump just twice, whereas the word ‘cheesecake’ has received 368 mentions in the same span.)”

So, as a public service, here are some quotes:

A growing body of evidence demonstrates that Donald Trump was an active participant in Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of young women during the mid-to-late 1990s. The Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are doing everything they can to keep the American people in the dark about it. ...
The evidence, much of it still hiding behind redactions in DOJ vaults, shows that Trump lied about kicking Epstein out of his Mar-a-Lago club and strongly suggests that Epstein introduced Trump to his wife Melania. The evidence demonstrates that Trump has lied about the nature and extent of his relationship with Epstein dozens of times—incriminating behavior for someone who supposedly has nothing to hide. ...
Above all, the actual evidence we have seen — as shared in the accounts and stories of 11 women, each described below — indicates that Trump abused, assaulted, and even raped numerous women alongside, and in coordination with, the most infamous sex trafficker in history.
These stories are united by time, place, and the distinct factual similarities in how Trump and Epstein pursued, manipulated, and abused these women. With one exception, these accounts of sexual assault and conspiracy involve episodes that took place between 1992 and 1997 in New York City and Palm Beach, at a time when Trump and Epstein were ‘close friends’ and participated in a shadowy subculture organized around young female modeling.
Witnesses speak consistently of modeling pageants and parties where young women and girls were forced into predatory situations and routinely taken advantage of, abused, and raped. They give similar accounts of the competitive and sinister relationship between Epstein and Trump and how it was channeled into their shared pursuit of young women.
Taken together, the evidence provided by the stories of these 11 women, and the documentary evidence that supports and corroborates their stories, indisputably meets and surpasses FBI’s standard for opening a full investigation: that “activity constituting a federal crime … may have occurred.”

Julie K Brown, the Miami Herald reporter who knows more than anyone about all things Epstein, said yesterday that much of the material in the report comes from public records and documents released after passage late last year of the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Brown said what’s new is an allegation from a former beauty contestant from Switzerland by the name of Beatrice Keul. She told the committee that Jeffrey Epstein arranged a meeting with Trump at the time one of his pageants. She said he raped her in 1993 in New York.

Here’s the key part of the report:

Later that day, Donald Trump’s representative invited Keul to go upstairs at the Plaza Hotel to meet with Trump. Believing this meeting to be a lucky break for the purpose of furthering her career and education, Keul accompanied Trump’s representative upstairs. He ushered her into the suite, where upon entering, Trump reportedly grabbed Keul from behind and forcibly raped her; in the process, tearing her dress and causing bleeding and bruising on multiple parts of her body. Keul described the rape as ‘brutal.’ Following the assault, according to Keul’s report, Trump sat her on the edge of the bed, repeated his promises to arrange for a visa and NYU admission, and made her promise she would keep quiet, saying, “[T]he show must go on.”

Courtesy of the House Judiciary Democrats.

The report said Keul is one of five women to directly accuse the president of “raping or sexually assaulting them in Epstein’s company or direct physical presence”:

• Beatrice Keul, whose account is comprehensively set forth for the first time in this report, credibly alleges that Trump violently raped her at a November 1993 pageant at the Plaza Hotel in New York City and that Epstein, Trump, and others used this pageant as a “hunting ground” to prey on vulnerable young women and girls;
• Stacey Williams, who offered a detailed and corroborated account of Trump sexually assaulting her in the early 1990s while she was alone with him and Epstein in an office at Trump Tower;
• Jill Harth, who has also publicly detailed Trump aggressively pursuing and violently sexually assaulting her and another woman in 1994 at a Mar-a-Lago party where Epstein and Trump were the only men present;
• Katie Johnson, who gave FBI a detailed account of her repeated rape at the hands of Trump and Epstein in 1994 in New York City when she was a minor; and
• A Jane Doe, who offered FBI a graphic account of Trump assaulting her when she was a minor in the mid-1980s in New York by forcibly pushing her head down to his exposed penis.

That’s the what. As to why the Judiciary Democrats released the report, the reason isn’t what you think. It isn’t because there’s a midterm next week. It’s no October Surprise. It is not going to change the election’s outcome. That’s why the press corps is ignoring it. The ghastly substance of it – evidence of violent sex crimes against women and girls by the president – doesn’t matter enough. It would be news if it affected an election. It won’t. So it’s not news.

But the report is a kind of preview. This is what we can expect from a House controlled by the Democrats in the two years leading up to the next presidential election. Impeachment is still a question, but there is no downside to subjecting Trump to endless grinding exposure. The weaker he gets politically, the more cracks there will be in his coalition. If you think he’s unpopular now, wait until Robert Garcia, the Judiciary’s ranking Democrat, gets going.

But I don’t want to get lost in the politics. These are real people. These are real crimes against them. They should see justice. More broadly, we cannot hope for our republic to survive if elites like Trump, who act with impunity for the law and morality, are allowed to carry on without fear of accountability. Trump will probably never see a jail cell (he’s 80, after all) but he is not alone. Many elites enabled him along the way, because they thought something was in it for them. There must be a price for impunity, and someone must pay it.

This report isn’t going to affect the election. It’s not going to bring justice. And it’s certainly not going to restore law and order. But I hope it’s the first of many steps toward that end.

Pastor Dan’s 14 points on El-Sayed’s remarks on religious freedom

Abdul El-Sayed was confronted recently by a man known as Tommy. Tommy wanted Michigan’s Democratic Senate candidate to disavow Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. The implicit allegation is AES is in cahoots with the terrorist organization, because he’s Muslim and his lineage is Egyptian, and if he does not disavow them, then he’s one of them.

In the video below, you can see AES turn Tommy’s religious bigotry into an opportunity to remind everyone of the meaning of the First Amendment. He deftly turns things around so that he, the Muslim, is the defender of religious freedom while Tommy, the self-identified Christian, would rather codify his faith into law. Takeaway: Who’s the real radical here?

The video went viral and provoked a flurry of online commentary. One of the best commentaries was Reverend Dan Schultz’s. He’s a Wisconsin pastor, contributor to the Editorial Board, and my pal. His 14 points are reproduced here with his kind permission.

El-Sayed was definitely prepared for that kind of question from that kind of questioner, but he also was able to take advantage of a couple of big holes in GOP strategy, such as it is.
The premise of Tommy’s attempt at a gotcha question was based in Christian nationalism, sure, but even more so in Christian normalism, ie, the assumption that “normal” voters are Christians.
The “nationalism” part comes in the further assumption that normal Christians reject Islam as antithetical to their faith, and want conservative Christian values written into governance.
There’s more, too: the question seems designed to tap into fears about Michigan’s rapidly-growing Arab population, and tap into out-state resentment of the Detroit metro area.
I don’t think Tommy thought he was going to turn the room against El-Sayed. More likely, he was trying to get El-Sayed to commit some gaffe that could be shared on social media — but there’s a reason people like Tommy pull these stunts in towns like Caro, not Dearborn.
What Tommy may not have known is that many of Michigan’s Arabs are in fact Christians, maybe up to half of them. So it’s hard to other them on that score.
And while this crowd seemed to be mostly El-Sayed supporters, it doesn’t seem like anyone was too inclined to othering, on the basis of religion, or race, or geography. I heard some pretty loud cheering for El-Sayed’s repeated “or no faith.”
The conservative base seems to have convinced themselves that most voters share their biases and preferences. That might have worked in 1980s Michigan, and in 2024 Michigan, voters might have ignored the nationalism in hopes of getting a better economy.
But in 2026, Republicans have failed so dismally on the economy and, well, any other kind of governance that it’s easy for voters to see that all they’ve got is the white Christian nationalism.
That gives someone like El-Sayed the opening to speak and react confidently. He knows Tommy’s coming at him with a bluff and a weak hand. The only people who care about him rejecting the Muslim Brotherhood aren’t going to vote for him anyway, so he doesn’t have to dodge or weave. He can just attack.
And attack he does, brilliantly. I thought the bit about the Constitution was great, not because it’s a secular counterweight to Christian chauvinism, but because El-Sayed framed it perfectly as a neutral operating system that Americans buy into as the rules of the game.
That’s the real weight of his counterpunch: not that Tommy is a bigot (though he kind of is), but that Tommy won’t agree to play by the same set of rules he demands El-Sayed play by. Who’s the outlier here?
Anyway, none of this is brilliant or original insight. It’s just helpful in understanding the corner Republicans have painted themselves into, in Michigan and nationally. They have fundamentally misunderstood the electorate, and it may cost them for a really long time to come.
To be pithy about it, if you’re going to run the “divide and conquer” flim-flam, you have to convince the marks there’s something in it for them. The GOP can’t do that, which leaves the opening for somebody like El-Sayed to expose the con for what it is.

That’s all for today. Please consider subscribing! I know you like it. I know you’ll love the price! For just $9 a month, you get so much, plus the satisfaction of supporting independent journalism. Thanks!–JS

Is Trump doing to America what Pete Wilson did to California?

John Stoehr — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 21:47:15 GMT

Courtney of the Times.

The midterms are eight days from now, and the story of the election is probably going to be about Hispanic voters. They moved toward Donald Trump in record numbers in 2024. They are now swinging back to the Democrats. Gerrymander efforts by the GOP to hold the House could backfire because of Hispanic voters. They could end up deciding control of the Senate.

The conventional wisdom is that they flipped back because of inflation, but it’s clear Trump’s broken promise is about more than that. Many Hispanic voters believed the president would not deport peaceful, law-abiding immigrants. He was lying, but many didn’t believe the truth. They believe it now. A new Times poll found that more than a quarter of Hispanic voters personally know someone who has been arrested, detained and deported by ICE.

“The very inhumane way our current administration goes about immigration enforcement is terrible,” a Hispanic voter, a Democrat, told the Times. “People are being treated like hardened criminals, when they hadn’t done anything actually wrong while they’re here.”

This is an important distinction. If the reason for their flipping is inflation, the Republicans can conceivably hope to win them back in time by following through on a future promise of lowering costs. But if the reason is not about anything tangible but instead about trust in the GOP’s intentions, Donald Trump may have crossed a line beyond which there is no return.

Time will tell whether I’m right, obviously, but we’ve been here before. In California, prior to 1994, Hispanic voters supported Republican candidates in robust numbers. The party was conservative. It produced Ronald Reagan. It sent Republicans to the Senate. Yet Hispanics found a home there. Many believed it was a means of achieving the American dream.

That changed dramatically after Pete Wilson was elected in 1991. The Republican governor set in motion a series of actions making it clear what his party really thought of the state and the place of Hispanics in it – California was a white man’s republic and they did not belong.

The most notorious of these was Proposition 187. It was a ballot initiative Wilson pushed for while running for reelection. It denied state services to undocumented immigrants, including health care and public education. To their shock, voters approved the measure in 1994.

Beforehand, Hispanics could believe the GOP’s party line – if immigrants work hard and play by the rules, the doors of opportunity and freedom would open to them. Afterward, it was no longer possible to believe that. The welcome mat had been pulled. The truth has been revealed. Prop 187 triggered a political backlash that has defined the Golden State since.

California hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential nominee since 1988. The last Republican senator, John Seymour, was defeated in 1992. And Pete Wilson was the last Republican governor. (Arnold Schwarzenegger’s tenure doesn’t really count.) It’s widely believed that Wilson permanently enfeebled the state’s GOP. He did so with a profound act of betrayal.

Courtesy of the Times.

Comparing Trump to Wilson is tricky. California isn’t America. But the betrayal is similar, if you’re being charitable, or acutely worse, if you’re just following the facts. Nearly a million immigrants have been deported since Trump returned to power. Most of them are from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia and Venezuela. As many as 80 percent of them do not have a criminal record. More than 500 US citizens, most of them Hispanic, have been detained by ICE. Some immigrants have been deported to places they have never known. (Cubans in South Florida, for instance, are being sent to Africa.) Legal immigration has dropped by half, according to Cato. The government is denying virtually all asylum seekers.

That’s not to mention what this president has done to the children of immigrants. Over the summer, The Marshall Project compiled the numbers from January 2025 to August: “8,592 children arrested by ICE; 8,755 children detained by ICE; 562 babies and toddlers detained by ICE; 198 children in ICE custody per day on average; 54 percent of child releases from ICE detention ended with the child being deported; 22,565 deportations of children by the federal government; 1,460 deportations of children taken from the interior of the US.”

It’s not that Donald Trump wants to get rid of a few bad apples. It’s that he wants to get rid of all apples. The apples have clearly heard the message. And they are now making choices.

Last week, the AP reported that states deciding Senate control are seeing a surge in early voting. “In Texas, early voting is up 74 percent compared with 2022,” the AP said. “In Kansas it’s more than doubled. Maine, North Carolina and Ohio also have seen increases of more than 30 percent in early in-person and mail voting compared with the same point in 2022.”

Pollster Tom Bonier said Saturday early voting in Texas is nearly 3 million. “More Hispanics have voted than did at this point in the 2024 presidential election,” he said. Young voters are driving the surge. “Hispanics under the age of 30 have not only exceeded their total turnout at this point in 2024, they have almost doubled it.” Of the vote totals in Texas so far, Bonier estimated 217,000 were cast by people who did not vote in 2024, half of them being Hispanic.

A common explanation is Hispanic voters are mad about the economy. Prices are too high. Wages are too low. It’s harder to get by. But that’s almost insulting, as it cheapens the scale of the injustice. Pete Wilson undermined people’s material conditions, too, but that’s not all he did. He profaned hope. He sabotaged the American dream. His party was punished for it.

To be sure, it’s too early to know if Donald Trump’s party will face the same or similar fate. However, what we do know is this: no Republican can win the presidency without Texas. If the Republicans are not worried about losing the Hispanic vote there, they should be. —John Stoehr

That’s all for today. Please consider subscribing! I know you like it. I know you’ll love the price! For just $9 a month, you get so much, plus the satisfaction of supporting independent journalism. Thanks! –JS

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Let's do democracy together

John Stoehr — Sat, 24 Oct 2026 12:34:51 GMT

Yesterday, I sent you the latest edition of the Editorial Board. It was about how Donald Trump keeps asking us to be stupid and how exhausting that is. Fortunately, the era of stupidity might be wearing itself out. What comes next is anyone’s guess, but let’s hope it’s less stupid.

I’m writing today to ask for your help in continuing this work. The Editorial Board is made by people for the people. I don’t use artificial intelligence. There are no sponsors. There are no ads. It’s just me and you and the democracy we love. I hope you will support the mission in whatever way you can.

That’s a lot for just 30¢ a day!

[Click here to leave a tip in the tip jar! Say $10? THANKS!]

I won’t stop working hard for you and for democracy. I can’t help myself. But I hope you will you find a way to support the Editorial Board!

–John Stoehr

A sampling from the Editorial Board archives

How to de-shittify America

During my occasional bouts of hopelessness, I find myself thinking about Cory Doctorow’s theory of technological regression. When big platforms like Google and Facebook make themselves worse in pursuit of greater profits, Doctorow said, they enshittify themselves…

a month ago · 19 likes · 4 comments

Today's affordability crisis is rooted in Trump's insurrection

I ended yesterday’s edition by saying there’s a straight line between the J6 insurrection and the affordability crisis we are all facing. The corruption that went into Donald Trump’s failed paramilitary takeover of the US government rolled into his second term, with the most recent results being persistent inflation, stagnant job growth and a war with n…

a month ago · 28 likes · 2 comments

The blasphemy of billionaires and the decadence of pundits who defend their obscenity

Lately, I have been thinking about Pat Robertson. Yes, the very same. The late televangelist used to accuse America of falling away from the straight and narrow when there was a natural disaster. Hurricanes, tornadoes, floods – these were God’s punishment, he said. For what? Well, whatever Robertson didn’t like, but gay men preoccupi…

3 months ago · 8 likes · 2 comments

Make the bad guys pay: A Democratic message for the white working class

Editor’s note: I’m sending today the latest edition of the Editorial Board via Substack. I haven’t used Substack in years, but people who use and like Substack continue to sign up for the free version of my newsletter. Therefore, I feel an obligation to give people what they are asking for. I don’t know whether I will continue doing this, so I encourage…

4 months ago · 7 likes · 2 comments

Exhausted by stupidity: Melania negotiated a 'ceasefire' while Trump bleated like a sheep

John Stoehr — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 21:02:48 GMT

“JAIIIIIIT.”

I am very tired of being asked to be stupid. I know that is not the most important thing right now. There are many more serious consequences to electing a criminal president who is burning up the economy. But despite the fact that I do this for a living, and have developed a high tolerance as a result, I am nonetheless exhausted. Endless stupidity wears a man out.

It’s hard to pick just one example. Luckily, the AP sent one. This morning, the White House wants me to believe First Lady Melania Trump “brokered an upcoming ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine in the war-ravaged city of Oleshky.” I am told she “initiated the discussions.” I am told “helping children in conflict [has been] one of her signature issues.”

I am also told that neither Russia nor Ukraine knows what the White House is talking about. The AP: “There was no immediate comment from the Ukrainian or the Russian governments.”

Am I to believe Melania Trump has the capacity to broker a ceasefire when her husband does not? Am I to believe Vladimir Putin cares about what she thinks? (He’s got the president wrapped around his pinky.) Even if true, am I to believe she cares about kids in need? This is the same woman who visited a migrant detention center in 2018, where there were 55 children, wearing a jacket on the back of which was written “I really don’t care. Do U?”

It’s clear what Melania Trump really cares about – her public image. She wants Americans to see her as a woman who cares about children without having to take the responsibility of actually caring for them. She embodies the idea of privatized gain and socialized losses. The truth is transparently obvious, yet the White House keeps asking me to be stupid.

The White House isn’t alone. The Washington press corps is also guilty. We are often treated as if we have no authority to arbitrate reality. If the news media does not tell us something happened, it apparently did not happen. To illustrate my point, I ask you to consider this:

[@atrupar: "Trump makes a bizarre face."]

And this:

[@atrupar: "Trump: If you don't want communists controlling the US Senate, which is between JAIIIIIIT."]

And finally this:

[@HQNewsNow: Trump: "I'd say 90 percent of the reason I took the governor EUHHH."]

No one knows exactly what is going on with the president. However, everyone can plainly see that something is definitely going on. No one makes noises like that. No one makes faces like that. No one does either unless there are things we do not know about that are very bad. We deserve to know what they are with sustained coverage in granular detail, but there is nary a peep from the press corps. The AP is willing to repeat word-for-word that Melania Trump negotiated “a localized ceasefire,” but not report why Donald Trump is bleating like a sheep.

The stupidity is endless. We are told the president is a patriotic American, then he sucks up to America’s enemies. Worse, last week, he switched sides, joining a Russian imperialist who is helping Iran kill Americans. That was after toadying up to a Chinese imperialist who is also helping Iran kill Americans. Last time I checked, “patriotic” did not mean “treasonous.”

We are told the president is a Christian man, then he says things that are shockingly blasphemous. This week, he said he will “lead us to a period of Christianity that nobody else can do.” Many of his followers are idolaters. “I want to see two people: Trump and Jesus,” one said. Worse is the suggestion that he’s the second coming of Christ. At a rally, before Trump’s entrance, a soundtrack played: “God gave us Trump … shepherd to all mankind.” If I remember right, the New Testament has a lot to say about something called the Antichrist.

We are told the president has ushered in a new era of manly virtue, despite that he applies spray tanning, dyes his hair, wears heel lifts to make himself look taller, falls asleep during Cabinet meetings, and is perhaps the vainest man who has ever lived. He accuses LaBron James of being “a total disgrace” for warming up during the national anthem but cannot win a war that he has said he won more than 100 times (as of August). He thinks good behavior is weakness, bad behavior is strength. He treats women like real estate. No one has seen more corruption than his. Everyone hates him, especially his kids. But go on. Tell me he’s manly.

Donald Trump is exhausting us with stupidity, but fortunately, there are signs that his moment is exhausting itself. Two years in and no president has been more unpopular than he is. Another two years and it might be virtually taboo to admit voting for him. Jingoism, barbarism, conspiracism, hate – it’s not only that maga-style populism should not be part of the prevailing discourse. It’s that it can’t be for long. As powerful and enduring as it may seem initially, it is more like mushrooms in American history. It springs up all of a sudden and seems to be everywhere at once. Then it dies back, nearly as suddenly. The first Red Scare was like that. So was the second. Americans just got tired of being tired of the stupidity.

It does not go away. Parts of it go underground, back to where it belongs. But some of it takes on new forms. Enterprising Democrats like Jon Ossoff and Abdul El-Sayed are now attempting to shear off the “maga” in maga-style populism. Instead of focusing on bigotry, conspiracy theory and longing for a mythical past, there is focus on egalitarian coalition-building against the real enemy of freedom and democracy: the very obscenely rich.

We may be exhausted but it won’t last. —John Stoehr

Trump is this close to yelling at clouds

I know these videos are hard to watch if you can’t stand his voice. But I want to draw your attention to this one. In it, Trump is in one of those states that people with dementia experience when they are agitated. He shows aggression when challenged. He denies facts. Mostly, he repeats himself, saying the same thing with changes of emphasis, with a hint of confusion, as if puzzled as to why his words do not land with the authority they once did.

If watching does not persuade you of this point, read the transcript below.

At issue is Trump’s defense of an attack ad featuring Amy Acton’s estranged mother, Donna Arthur. Acton is the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Ohio. Her opponent is Republican Vivek Ramaswamy. In the late 1970s, Donna Arthur accused her daughter of lying about the fact that her husband serially raped Acton from age 12. Arthur lost custody of her and her brother. Neither has been in contact since. The stepfather was charged and faced prosecution but fled the state. Donna Arthur went with him, becoming a fugitive. Below, Trump says “this has nothing to do with the stepfather.” It has everything to do with him.

Trump: A mother is saying “don’t put my daughter there, because she’s a terrible person and she’s a liar.” Why shouldn’t somebody use that?

Reporter: But do the sexual abuse allegations mean nothing, sir?

Trump: Wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait, slow down. Who are you with?

Reporter: I’m with NBC, sir.

Trump: One of the worst networks you have.

Reporter: But there have been very serious sexual abuse allegations, sir.

Trump: Quiet!

Reporter: They make no difference to you?

Trump: Isn’t she a fresh person? You’re a horrible little reporter, aren’t you? If my mother said bad things about me, you think the Democrats would put it up? I think so. But my mother thought I was wonderful. Thank you, Mom. My mother would never even say, if she thought them. This is a person, a mother, a smart woman, I watched, smart woman. She said her daughter is a disaster. Her daughter is a liar and she felt that she had an obligation and she also said her daughter lied about her opponent, which is Vivek Ramaswamy. If I had that ad, I should be so lucky to have an ad like that. Why wouldn’t you listen to a mother that says that? Why? Why would you, Miss NBC? Why wouldn’t you listen?

Reporter: She stayed with the stepfather after raping his stepdaughter in 1978, sir.

Trump: Wait a minute, quiet! I don’t know anything about a stepfather. You just keep talking.

Reporter: I’m answering you, sir.

Trump: I don’t know about any stepfather. That was many, many years ago. I know that recently a mother got on television and said that her daughter should not be governor of Ohio and she said “I love my daughter, but my daughter lies all the time and lied about her opponent and I can’t watch it.” This has nothing to do with the stepfather or anything else. This has to do with the fact that a woman got out, the mother of a person running for governor of one of the greatest states, where I set records, and said that she’s a liar. Her daughter is a liar. She said her daughter lied about the Vivek and the mother couldn’t take it anymore. She basically said her daughter should not – that’s what she said – her daughter should not be the governor of Ohio. To me, that’s something that’s very much fair game.

That’s all for today. Please consider subscribing! I know you like it. I know you’ll love the price! For just $9 a month, you get so much, plus the satisfaction of supporting independent journalism. Thanks! –JS

In Ohio, the public's tolerance for disgusting politics may be reaching a tipping point

John Stoehr — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 21:17:14 GMT

Courtesy of the office of Marhsa Blackburn.

I am sometimes asked if it would be better to leave Donald Trump alone, given that the immediate consequence of impeaching and removing him would be President JD Vance.

I agree with the subtext of the question. Vance is cunning and zealous, a true believer in the cause of Christian nationalism. If anyone can realize the fashy dreams of Big Tech, it’s him.

But in addition to my belief in leaving future problems to our future selves, I am not concerned about succession. First, because removing Trump would be good, in and of itself. Second, because, as scary as it is to think of him as president, no one likes JD Vance.

Other than being the vice president, the best thing he is known for is being a junior senator from Ohio who changed his identity as often as he changed his socks. Trump’s supporters are not his. Vance’s biggest audience is manosphere podcasters and conservatives who believe the Pope isn’t Catholic enough. As loud as they are, they are not a constituency.

But Vance’s main problem is his reputation for being a mercenary, which is to say, for being a political whore who is willing to sell his mind, body and soul for power, even to the point of self-humiliation. The thing about self-humiliation, however, is that eventually, no one trusts you or takes you seriously, not even the people for whom you are humiliating yourself.

Vance does not see it as humiliation, because there are no limits to his ambition. Honor and decency and self-respect – these are mere tools for achieving goals. But Trump has been on the scene for a long time. It’s been a decade of disgusting displays. With his disapproval rating shattering records, the public’s tolerance for disgust may be reaching a tipping point.

I don’t want to make too much of this, as the hole we have dug for ourselves is deep, but I think we should consider what’s happening in Ohio. The Republican candidate for governor, Vivek Ramaswamy, put $4 million into an effort to attack his opponent, Dr. Amy Acton, with an ad featuring her own mother accusing her of lying about her traumatic childhood.

Acton responded by producing court documents showing that her stepfather raped her when she was 12, and that her mom said she lied about it. Donna Arthur lost custody of Acton and her brother. They have not been in contact since then. (A grand jury indicted the stepfather, Cledith Arthur, in 1978. He fled the state and later died in Pennsylvania in 2004.)

The ad generated an enormous backlash in Ohio. The Columbus Dispatch, the state’s flagship paper, endorsed Acton in response to it, calling it “revolting and unsettling.” Ohio’s GOP elites lined up to denounce it: the secretary of state, the former House speaker, and US Senator Jon Husted. Ramaswamy’s primary challenger, Casey Putsch, beloved of Buckeye State neo-Nazis, said he would vote for the Democratic candidate as a consequence of seeing the ad. This morning, the current Republican governor, Mike DeWine, called it “deeply, deeply troubling.” He did not retract his endorsement of Ramaswamy, but urged him to take it down.

Ramaswamy had a chance earlier this week to distance himself from the ad. It was not clear at the time it went viral that his campaign had anything to do with it. Then on Wednesday, he removed all doubt by pouring millions into distributing it. At this point, what’s done is done. Even if he took it down, he’s already known for embracing the ad after it sparked outrage.

The ad was already drawing fire by the time JD Vance arrived. Despite that, during a stump speech, he said Ramaswamy “calls it out like it is, and calls Amy Acton a liar.” To reporters, he said he’s “disgusted when I see Republicans across the country who are whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America. I would say to Ohio Republicans, do you actually think that Amy Acton is unfit to serve as governor of the state of Ohio? I do.”

Students of authoritarian history say successors are rarely successful. The leader cannot tolerate the idea of someone coming after him, because if that were true, his power would slowly diminish as his coalition prepared for the future. It seems Donald Trump is on the same track. JD Vance will not inherit maga. His boss will sabotage any attempt to.

But Vance is doomed anyway, which is why I don’t fret much about the consequences of removing the president. Vance is the product of politics that treats people as a means, rather than an end unto themselves. There is nothing Trump’s people will not say to “own the libs.” There is no principle they will not profane in pursuit of power. Accuse the victim of child rape of lying? Yes. Weaponize her estranged and clearly troubled mother against her? Yes.

Right on cue, Trump wrote: “The press is lying to convince everyone that this Ad is bad, because it’s so good! Who wouldn’t use such an Ad. I would. It’s called ‘hitting pay dirt.’”

We have seen these disgusting displays for 10 long years. By now, the routine is familiar. Patience is wearing thin. All pretense is gone: there really is no sense of decency. It’s fitting that Vance is from Ohio, because in Ohio, we are seeing intimations of a lasting reaction. —John Stoehr

That’s all for today. Please consider subscribing! I know you like it. I know you’ll love the price! For just $9 a month, you get so much, plus the satisfaction of supporting independent journalism. Thanks! –JS

Elon Musk is too big to trust

John Stoehr — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 21:00:12 GMT

Via Business Insider.

The Wall Street Journal and CBS News confirmed that Elon Musk was involved in the decision to stall out Starshield, the military version of Starlink, when Ukraine needed it most. As Russia launched its biggest attack since the invasion, Musk “capped the speeds at which Ukrainian hardware could stay connected to the satellite-based network, the people said, rendering some offensive drones and interceptor drones virtually useless,” the Journal said.

It’s unlikely Musk acted alone. Reuters reported last week the decision to sabotage Ukraine came from the White House, the implication being it was Donald Trump’s. Musk said publicly that the administration did it. Administration sources said publicly Musk did it. Common sense says both did. The Journal said Musk’s team contacted the White House to “coordinate messaging.” A source told the Telegraph: “The reality is that they were both in it.”

Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, is acting like what’s been done can’t be undone. He has put up with Trump’s humiliation tactics for years to maintain access to weapons and intelligence he needs to liberate his country. But now, he is no longer biting his tongue.

“People have to hear reality,” Zelensky said. Whether it’s lifting old sanctions on Russia, waiving new ones or sandbagging Starshield, it illustrates Trump’s affinity for dictators, he said, and that Trump has taken the wrong side of history in deciding to help Vladimir Putin.

US Senator Chris Murphy, of Connecticut, told Anderson Cooper that Ukraine was winning the war over the course of the last year, despite Trump’s refusal to maintain previous levels of support, until Putin “called in a favor, using whatever lever he has over the president.”

Murphy called recent choices by the White House, including last night’s decision to withhold Patriot missile shipments to Ukraine, “a pattern of behavior” in which the president “has decided he’s gonna put Ukraine in a position where they may be pressured to capitulate … a strategy to put Russia in the most powerful position possible to gain a settlement.”

While Trump deserves to be treated as if he has crossed a line, so does Musk. The fact of his involvement in a conspiracy to destroy Ukraine’s sovereignty should trigger a credibility crisis. Indeed, Heather Cox Richardson compared him to none other than Benedict Arnold.

“Musk’s decision to change the course of a war with ‘a seeming flick of a switch,’ taking it upon himself, with or without the complicity of White House officials, to reverse the foreign policy of the United States of America for the benefit of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, is a stunning assumption of power reminiscent of Revolutionary War general Benedict Arnold’s weakening of the Americans’ defenses and draining of supplies at the strategic fort at West Point to enable the British to capture it before he was discovered and defected,” she wrote.

Musk seems aware of the possible consequences of showing his whole ass. “After what was described as a ‘night of carnage’ in Kyiv because of the blackout,” the Telegraph reported, Musk “had been alarmed about the possibility of adverse consumer reaction in Europe.”

I would guess his fear is rooted in more than concern for his companies, government contracts and profit margins. He has made an enemy out of a sovereign nation whose fate is bound to those of others allied in the most powerful security apparatus on the planet. Governments protect men like Elon Musk. They are how he became an alleged trillionaire. But government protection becomes optional in times of war. Zelensky needs Starshield. He doesn’t need Musk. If I were an oligarch like him, I would be careful around open windows.

In America, among the Democrats, there’s growing apprehension about Musk’s “stunning assumption of power.” “If it’s one man, Elon Musk, who is dictating our foreign policy, then he puts the United States at enormous risk,” US Senator Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, said today. “He’s the one who decides whether Ukraine, out there fighting on the frontlines to protect its democracy, lives or dies? No. We should not have one man in that position.”

The Times reported last week that if the Democrats regain control, they might investigate Musk’s AI interests, his foreign entrenchments and what he did as head of the Department of Government Efficiency. His role in a conspiracy against Ukraine adds another item to the list.

Politico reported this week that the House Democrats are already coming up with a game plan for when they have the subpoena power. Texas Congressman Greg Casar said “our committees need to be doing oversight both into the Trump administration, but I think even more importantly or equally importantly, into the corporations and ultrarich people who have tried to corrupt our government. And, of course, Elon Musk is on that list.”

In the spring, the Democrats introduced a bill that would unwind mergers made in the second Trump administration. More generally, the Democrats are focused on anti-monopoly enforcement and price-fixing amid a cost-of-living crisis, as well as political graft. Musk’s former position at DOGE yielded hundreds of billions in contracts. He got out of federal investigations and avoided billions in fines. His companies constitute a virtual trust.

And the Democrats are in the mood for trust-busting.

Filmmaker Alex Gibney made a documentary about Musk that shatters his reputation as a genius inventor. He told Piers Morgan last night that contrary to popular belief, Musk has never invented anything. His real genius is stock pumping, Gibney said. “That is where he really shines. He’s managed to take companies, which have a rather mediocre profit-and-loss record, and make himself through stock pumping the richest man in the world.”

Stock pumping is market manipulation. It’s illegal under federal law and New York state law. I’m reminded of that time when Tucker Carlson asked Musk what would happen to him if Kamala Harris won the 2024 election. “How long will my prison sentence be?” he said.

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Musk understands the stakes – that he has crossed the line, that there’s no going back, and that all that’s left is to pour hundreds of millions into the midterms in the hopes of staying out of jail. He is the single biggest backer of Ken Paxton, the corrupt and impeached attorney general of Texas. He is literally trying to buy a senator.

No one elected Elon Musk. A majority of the governed did not grant him authority over them. He has no constituency beyond Twitter followers. He has demonstrated unconscionable disloyalty. If he can pull the plug on Ukraine’s defense, he can pull the plug on America’s. —John Stoehr

That’s all for today. Please consider subscribing! I know you like it. I know you’ll love the price! For just $9 a month, you get so much, plus the satisfaction of supporting independent journalism. Thanks! –JS

Trump might be too demented to remember there is a future, but enablers shouldn't forget

John Stoehr — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 22:04:25 GMT

Courtesy of the White House via Aaron Rupar.

The president is demented. It’s why he lashed out at a reporter today in the Oval Office. Donald Trump said: “Quiet. Quiet! What’s wrong with you? Are you a sick person?”

It’s also why he acts like there is no future.

With the prospect looming over him of a US Congress controlled by the Democrats, Donald Trump is behaving like time is running out. In the last week, he has lifted sanctions on Russian oil, sabotaged Ukraine, and “waived” news laws designed to punish Vladimir Putin.

The devil gets his due.

And the due date has come.

That might sound like a good thing, but a demented, futureless president is dangerous. Consider that right now, before the midterms, Trump has the incentive to end the war against Iran. Prices are extortionate. The solution is restoring the flow of oil. But there may be no such incentive after November. As Cole Bucy and Nate Swanson wrote in Foreign Policy last month, Trump “may no longer feel burdened to pretend to be interested.”

Once election season is over, odds are Trump will turn his focus entirely inward to avoid accountability or settle scores or strawboss the public’s attention to stop it from moving away from him in anticipation of the next election. One result is an Iran that’s free to do more of the same burning up of the US economy. Short-term, there is little to be gained with a president who believes if he’s going down, he’s going to take everyone down with him.

That’s why it’s important to remind authoritarians that there will be a future, said Zeb Larson, a historian who writes for Dame and Liberal Currents. In the interview below, Zeb told me one of the ways the Democrats can be a truly oppositional party is by constantly reminding the president – but especially his enablers – that “the future awaits them.”

They won’t change their behavior on their own, Zeb told me, “because none of them can imagine a post-Trump future. It terrifies them. If they can just not deal with it at all, that leaves them freedom of action. Constant reminders about the fact that the future awaits them will break up his coalition, and also tee the country up for a post-Trump future.”

Initially, I got in touch with Zeb, because I wanted to talk about a piece he wrote a year ago, published in Dame, about the president’s clear cognitive deterioration, and what happens when authoritarian coalitions like his wait around for their leaders to unravel completely.

But after our conversation, news broke of former and current national security officials advising state elections officials on what to do if Trump uses “federal powers to sway the upcoming vote, covering categories that include legal and illegal activity,” according to the Post. “Among their concerns are that the administration could deploy troops or immigration agents to polling stations or seek to nullify results based on claims of voter fraud.”

Suddenly, Zeb’s point took on bigger significance.

There will be a future. Accountability awaits there.

Trump may be too demented to remember, but others shouldn’t.

A year ago, you said Trump’s cognitive deterioration is obvious and asked: Who’s really running the administration? Your piece in Dame came out before the war. The question is more pressing now. What can history teach us about moments like this?

Yeah, I wrote that before I knew anything about Natalie Harp, but she fits the historical mold perfectly. Her actual position is unclear but she wields access to Trump and his dwindling attention span, so she is now a power broker. And that’s where history is useful, I think, because whatever the normal processes for decision making in government are all gone now.

More philosophically, the opposition (Democrats) need to understand that they have to offer a vision of the future. Trump and those around him won’t do it because none of them can imagine a post-Trump future. It terrifies them. If they can just not deal with it at all, that leaves them freedom of action. Constant reminders about the fact that the future awaits them will break up his coalition, and also tee the country up for a post-Trump future.

In your piece, you describe two roads: one is rigging elections from maga figures who won’t give up power. The other is in-fighting between maga factions that plunge us all into chaos. Seems kinda hopeless?

I don’t personally feel hopeless, unless what you’re hoping for is a return to an earlier political status quo. Everybody should now know that Republicans won’t do the right thing on their own. Even the Iran War has just barely dented his control over the party. But he is hugely unpopular, and that seems poised to get worse.

I think what we can’t afford is complacency and the idea that Trump is at the root of all of everything that’s wrong. Democrats should be teeing up every aspect of civil society they can to fight against election tampering — in other words, act like an opposition party. Authoritarians do lose their own rigged elections, but it happens because the vote totals are too hard to ignore and because people are out in the streets. Maga infighting could be an incredible opportunity if and when it comes, as long as Democrats are organized themselves.

A lot has changed since your piece ran. The Dems are now more oppositional than they were, but are they oppositional enough?

Ha, it would take a lot to be enough in my book, but they’re getting there. I still want to see more concrete plans for what they want to do once they regain power. Focusing on economic issues feels safe in a bad way: as Trump has demonstrated, politicians tend to be better at breaking the economy than making it hum.

I want specific, concrete plans for accountability, fixing parts of the government like the Supreme Court, undoing the damage done by DOGE, and so on. My peers at Liberal Currents have done a whole series on this, The Reconstruction Papers. Be ambitious! Try to shape public opinion with demands and stop acting as though they can only ever respond to what they think voters want. This latest attack on Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is perfect because it shows how dangerous a large immigration police apparatus is: it can become fundamentally undemocratic. We can’t live with this thing going forward, so talk constantly about what comes next.

Trump will be a lame duck soon. The center of gravity is going to move away from him, virtually overnight. Being a sadistic narcissist who is clearly struggling with dementia, he’s not going to take kindly to that. Do historians recognize these situations and what can be done?

He will absolutely rage over this and it will be dangerous. He knows at some level that he’s old and dying, and one of the things about dictators is that they rarely talk about lineage or what comes after them. If something can succeed them, it could do so right now, which makes succession a threat. He will be very content to burn everything down.

Luckily for us, it’s terrible for the maga coalition. People hoping to escape accountability, or be Trump’s successor, don’t want to live in the burned down ruins that he’ll leave behind. It will promote infighting, but a savvy opposition can use that to its advantage. The coalition collapsing makes it so much more likely that individual members can’t escape accountability, so it’s better for them to cut deals.

Anthony Scaramucci said months ago that Trump is going to sabotage the GOP. “His personality is ‘you guys were nothing before I got on the stage and I’ve carried you for the last 12 years, and the 2020 election was rigged and everyone knows it, and I should’ve won that election, and I’ve returned to the presidency carrying all the Republicans on my back, and when I leave ... you’re going back to nothing’ ... that’s Donald Trump’s personality.” Hopeful? Scary? What should a reasonable person think?

Hopeful in the medium-term, because I don’t really see how the GOP reinvents itself post-Trump. He is a political anomaly and we’ll never be able to separate his appeal from “The Apprentice.” What that does is create an opening for the rest of us, because the GOP will come out of this so bruised and without any real core ideologically.

But in the short-term, it is frightening. Whether he’ll embark on another foreign policy disaster, I don’t know; Trump hates being a loser and [the Iran war] has already painted him as one. But at home, he’s going to feel even less inhibited about going after his critics or tanking the economy even further. The best thing for us to do is not to lose heart and just not stop shouting or resisting; reminders of his mortality and that this will end will make it harder for those around him to keep going.

That’s all for today. Please consider subscribing! I know you like it. I know you’ll love the price! For just $9 a month, you get so much, plus the satisfaction of supporting independent journalism. Thanks! –JS

Why GOP voters might finally see Trump as Putin's puppet

John Stoehr — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 02:16:09 GMT

During the president’s first term, it was impossible to get his supporters to accept that the Russians really did help him defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016, and that the late Robert Mueller’s investigation proved it. As far as they were concerned, the Russia thing was a hoax invented by their enemies, real and imagined. There was no way Donald Trump could be a traitor.

I wonder if that might be changing. Trump has cracked his base of power, first by reneging on his promise to release the complete Epstein files, and bring those involved in the alleged conspiracy to justice. Second, he burned up the economy with a combination of illegal war, illegal taxes and illegal deportations. Then last week, he made a series of decisions so brazen it shocked the cynical opportunists of the Washington press corps. The New Yorker‘s Susan Glasser said there is an October Surprise this election season. It’s Trump’s “pivot to Putin.”

For reasons no one can explain, beyond that he’s the weakest strongman ever, Trump lifted sanctions on Russian diesel. Easing restrictions will not only reverse the punishment for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but boost funding for his continued aggression against it. Last week, Trump (or someone, maybe Elon Musk) pulled the plug on Starshield, the military version of the Starlink satellite system used by Ukraine, just as Russia was pounding it with the biggest ballistic missile attack yet. Then Friday, Trump said he would not enforce new Russian sanctions approved by Congress two days before they were to take effect.

That last decision was the most significant, according to The Atlantic‘s Tom Nichols. “The American commander in chief has abandoned the Western order, the most successful — and powerful — security arrangement in human history,” he wrote Sunday. “Trump’s suspension of the law [sanctions] is a signal to Ukraine, to Russia, to Europe, and to America’s NATO allies that the Trump White House and Putin’s Kremlin are now on the same side.”

National Review‘s Andrew McCarthy, who is not a Democrat or a liberal, took it a step farther. He suggested Trump is acting in accordance with the very definition of treason in the US Constitution. “Putin’s war of aggression and hoped-for conquest against Ukraine … is part of his quest to reconstitute America’s Soviet enemy,” he wrote. “And President Donald Trump is giving him aid and comfort.” McCarthy called on the Congress to convene “immediate hearings about this week’s shocking escalation of the Trump-Putin alliance.”

CNN’s Jake Tapper did not weigh in on the substance of last week’s news, but did remind his Twitter followers today that on this day 10 years ago, at the final debate with Trump, Hillary Clinton said Putin “would rather have a puppet as president.” Trump: “You’re the puppet.”

Hillary Clinton replied: “It’s pretty clear you won’t admit that the Russians have engaged in cyber-attacks against the United States of America, that you encouraged espionage against our people, that you are willing to spout the Putin line, sign up for his wishlist, break up NATO, do whatever he wants to do, and that you continue to get help from him.”

Tapper is perhaps the most cynical of all the cynical opportunists who constitute the press corps. His reputation and reporting were central to the “but her emails“ dynamic that dragged Clinton. But with Trump’s approval now falling as low as 30 percent, Tapper can see which way the wind is blowing. Reposting Clinton’s remarks, in light of the bipartisan reaction to the “pivot to Putin,” seems almost conventional. It’s a sign that a subject that used to be controversial – Russia! Russia! Russia! – could soon become merely common sense.

A change to elite consensus is one thing. A change to mainstream consensus is another. The cost of living has been magnified by the cost of war such that most Americans are now focused on corruption – not just his, but that of the entire “Epstein class.” Corruption is no longer an abstraction that offends the precious sensibilities of liberals. It’s real and it hurts.

A new Fox poll showed nine in 10 Americans say corruption is their top worry. Neither affordability nor health care are more important. A new poll by the Post found two in three believe Trump is enriching himself as president. The Post said “most of the increase over the past year has come from people who lean Republican.” (An AP poll echoed the same.) CNN reported that Republican operatives conducting focus groups to gauge the opinions of GOP voters in the midwest found that they blame rising gas prices on “corrupt politicians” and “billionaires.” That shocked “some longtime strategists who’ve never seen government corruption emerge as a top issue for so many Republican voters in congressional races.”

Miles Taylor, who served in the first Trump administration, said a new consensus on corruption is a consequence of the president making it impossible to ignore. “He turned it from a background story that’s always playing out in Washington into basically the lead story of every news cycle for the past 18 month,” he said. “The high prices people are experiencing at the grocery and at the pump are in no small part because of Trump’s corruption.”

It wasn’t supposed to happen, because it has never happened in the history of polling, Taylor later discovered. But if corruption can achieve its current level of visibility, I don’t see why the same thing can’t happen to Trump’s corrupt relationship with Putin. His own people think he’s a crook. They are making plans to punish him. They recognize the midterms mark the end of an era. There’s no longer a reason to keep denying what’s been obvious to others.

Trump is Putin’s puppet.

The Wall Street Journal reported this morning that Putin wants a meeting next month between him, Trump and Xi Jinping to negotiate a “Ukraine deal.” This evening, the Post reported that Trump is holding up shipments of Patriot missiles to Ukraine. The first reflects hope in divvying up the world, the second an awareness that time is running out. Ukraine’s fate is in Europe’s hands for now, but the “pivot to Putin” may not be permanent. Disgust with corruption is reaching its zenith, which means Trump’s usefulness is reaching its end. —John Stoehr

That’s all for today. Please consider subscribing! I know you like it. I know you’ll love the price! For just $9 a month, you get so much, plus the satisfaction of supporting independent journalism. Thanks! –JS

Did Trump unplug Starshield because Putin asked him to?

John Stoehr — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 22:02:32 GMT

Via The Financial Review.

I think we are seeing the makings of another impeachment scenario involving Ukraine. The last one (which, as you know, was Donald Trump’s first of two) was about him asking Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to help him cheat to beat Joe Biden in 2020. If there is another impeachment scenario, it may center on Trump’s interference with that country’s right to exist, namely, that it looks like he sabotaged Ukraine’s war of survival.

On Wednesday, Russia attacked Ukraine’s energy infrastructure during what was supposed to be a ceasefire arrangement. In a barrage that included 39 ballistic missiles, the highest number in one attack since the invasion in 2022, the Times reported “some 600,000 people in Kyiv lost power, renewing concerns about access to heat during the upcoming winter.”

On the same night, Ukraine’s defense ministry reported it lost access to Starshield, which is a military variant of Starlink, a vital asset in combat communications. As of Wednesday, the Times said, the disruption had not been explained, but “the network ... is paid for by the Pentagon, leading Ukrainians to believe that the restrictions came from the White House.”

By Thursday, it was explained. And the Ukranians appear to have been right. Two US officials and a “Western official” told Reuters “the order to limit a satellite system used by Ukraine for battlefield communications and drone operations came from inside the White House.”

All this is happening in the context of diesel.

Russia finances the war by selling diesel, so Ukraine has been destroying its capacity to refine it. That has reduced the global supply, which has increased the price – and the price of everything else along with it. In turn, that has put pressure on Trump and the GOP.

They are facing voters enraged by the extortionate cost of living. As a “harcore Republican” in Georgia told MS Now: “Out of any president I’ve ever lived under, I’ve hurt more under Trump than any other president. Fuel prices, beef prices. I mean, he’s cutting our throats.”

Most of Trump’s trouble stems from his illegal war against Iran, and Iran’s decision to react by throttling the Strait of Hormuz. But as Rory Johnston explained, Ukraine’s strikes are definitely affecting diesel prices. “Russia is normally the world’s second largest diesel exporter, shipping around 1 million barrels per day,” the commodities researcher said.

“Today, they’re barely above 100,000 barrels per day. That loss of Russian diesel has absolutely helped drive diesel prices to their current near-all-time-highs.”

Trump seemed to act decisively last week. The AP said he announced that Russia will supply “more than 300,000 tons of diesel, followed by an additional 500,000 tons in November and 1 million tons ‘immediately thereafter.’ Russia will deliver an additional 3 million tons.”

As impressive as it sounds, 4.8 million tons of diesel is about nine days of supply in America. It will not make a dent. So why did Trump lift restrictions in place for six years? We didn’t get anything. Neither did Ukraine. According to the Times, Russia didn’t concede anything.

Which brings me back to sabotage.

Did someone in the White House pull the plug on Starshield/Starlink on the same night Russia launched more ballistic missiles at Ukraine than it had before? Did that person, or persons, work in coordination with anyone? What was their goal? And for whom did they do it? Sabotaging Ukraine serves neither Ukraine’s interests nor the interests of the United States, as vast majorities of Americans still prefer to live in a world in which nations have sovereignty and can’t be consumed by neighboring nations ruled by fools and degenerates.

Was it done merely because Vladimir Putin asked for it?

We deserve to know.

So yes, I think we are seeing the makings of another impeachment scenario involving Ukraine. I mean, there are a billion reasons to impeach Trump, but this one is a big one, as it’s part of America’s global role. In the context of an affordability crisis, it might be a story about how the president was so incompetent, so corrupt, so broken that he made enemies of everyone, including “hardcore Republicans.” In the end, all he had left was his friend, Putin.

And he didn’t have even that. —John Stoehr

Ask Me Anything: October 16, 2026

I asked you to ask me anything. Here are some questions I got. If you want to ask me something for next week’s Ask Me Anything, leave a comment below or send a reply.

@7719deftones.bsky.social asks:

What are your thoughts on what happens if Democrats win the House and Senate from November to January 4?

My answer:

You’re talking about the gap between Election Day and when the new Congress is seated. No one knows. No one can. Trump is too volatile. He’s demented and drunk on power, and desperate to stop the center of political gravity moving away from him. He says he can do anything he wants in ways that are real and aspirational. He says he can pardon himself, which is technically true if no one challenges the assertion. He often “jokes” about running for a third term but also seems to know he has less time on this earth than ever before.

I think we all know the president is in a downward spiral, politically and mentally. Therefore, we should all be afraid of the likelihood of short-term damage, but also hopeful. From the ashes will arise possibilities. The worse he gets, the better it will be for the Democrats. They might – might – capitalize on newfound gains by enacting serious institutional reforms so we never see another Donald Trump in our lifetimes, reforms like adding states, expanding the Supreme Court, expanding the House of Representatives, revitalizing the Voting Rights Act.

The main thing is Trump will not accept the outcome of the elections. Don’t be shocked. We’re all beyond shock. The question will be how sympathetic the public will be to his lies. My guess is there will be practically zero sympathy. Because of that, his lies could backfire, depending on how grotesque they are, depending on whether they inspire violence, forcing the Republicans who did not get ousted to run for cover. I am not optimistic, but I am being real. The politics of democracy doesn’t stop, no matter how much Trump would like it to.

Keith Connolly asks:

Should the rest of us around the world have faith in the American electorate and the American judiciary considering what happened in 2024 and the litany of crimes committed since then by the Trump regime?

My answer:

The rest of the world is right to doubt the American electorate, given that we traded the rule of law and the Constitution for an IOU. In a real sense, my country has descended into barbarism. Trump authorized (but since rescinded) an execution by firing squad to be livestreamed. Measles is breaking out again. Taxpayers are paying for ads that present the president as if he were a god who gilds everything he can, dreams of gilding things he can’t.

My country has also shown itself to be weaker than anyone expected. We went to war with a minor power and lost. Iran is strangling us economically and he ... just lets it happen without taking any responsibility. Meanwhile, he acts like a child. This weekend will be a massive No Kings protest. He will probably post another AI-generated video of himself in a crown flying a fighting jet, dropping poop on Americans. (Yes, that really happened.)

Outsiders ask themselves how we could have elected Trump, but outsiders often believe American propaganda, especially the propaganda about Americans. Truth is, we are just another people, no better, no worse. Our main distinction is probably our predilection for whiteness. While our two major political parties are not the same, they are still oriented around it, as whiteness is still seen as the true, legitimate source of power in America. That Trump was elected twice, despite all his vice and villainy, is shocking but not surprising.

The electorate is probably going to react badly to Trump’s failure in the coming elections. We are telling ourselves it’s because he broke his promise. But truth is, he kept it. He restored whiteness. Problem is whiteness always backfires economically. Every time. It cannot be what Trump voters want it to be. They won’t change their minds, though. They’re just going to get mad. The Republicans will suffer for it. That’s the best we can hope for right now.

In all likelihood, a Democrat will be elected president in two years. If he or she merely fixes what Trump has broken, I would recommend outsiders abandon faith in America. However, if that new Democratic administration rams through institutional reforms – like adding states to the union – I think that would be a reasonable beginning for a restoration of faith.

That’s all for today. Please consider subscribing! I know you like it. I know you’ll love the price! For just $9 a month, you get so much, plus the satisfaction of supporting independent journalism. Thanks! –JS

Rage against new Gilded Age is reaching point of consensus

John Stoehr — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 19:24:37 GMT

Some days feel like we’re all living in the pages of a novel set in the Gilded Age, a time when the merely rich transformed into the very obscenely rich while everyone else struggled.

Yesterday, the Washington Sun reported that the president had four golden chandeliers installed in the West Wing in celebration of his June birthday. The White House scrapped normal procedure. A small firm was given a $50,000 no-bid contract to get the job done fast.

On the same day, the Times reported that nearly half the country is having trouble making ends meet, with that number approaching 75 percent among low-income Americans.

“Nearly three-quarters said they struggled to pay for food, housing, medical care or daily transportation in the past year compared with 13 percent of upper-income adults,” the Times said of a new survey by the Pew Research Center. “About half of those on the lower end of the income spectrum said they could not pay some of their bills each month, and 77 percent said they did not have enough money to cover expenses for three months in an emergency.”

That so many people are scrambling is a consequence of Donald Trump’s choices. The triple whammy of illegal war, illegal taxes (tariffs) and illegal deportations are burning up the economy in the form of stagflation (stagnant incomes plus inflation). Hourly wages are back to where they were before Trump returned to power, the Times said. In September, prices rose to their highest in five months. They were 3.7 percent higher than this time last year.

But the above contrast doesn’t capture how systemic the problem is – that the corruption and villainy are not Trump’s alone. For that, we have reporting today by the Post. It revealed the individuals and companies that made $330 million in “donations” to his fund to build a ballroom where the East Wing of the White House used to be. All of them appear to have gotten something in return: favorable regulation, government contracts, even pardons.

Courtesy of Steve Rattner.

The Gilded Age was not only an era of explosive wealth. (No one had seen so much money made so quickly from industrialization.) It was also an explosion of what we would these days call white-collar crime. There’s a reason reformers used the phrase “robber barons.” It captured how the merely rich became very obscenely rich through a combination of corporate concentration, corruption and workforce exploitation. Naturally, the more people were aware of the crimes against them, the angrier they were with “the money power.”

There’s plenty of reason to be mad at the money power now.

Absent from the list of donors to Trump’s ballroom is Trump. Last year, amid outcry about the (illegal) demolition of the East Wing, he said don’t worry. “It’s being paid for a hundred percent by me and some friends of mine.” He might not use his own money, however, and he might not use his friends’. The budget for the ballroom ranges from $800 million to close to a billion dollars. In August, the Post reported most of that would come from taxpayers.

The president knocked down the East Wing in a fit of rage after No Kings, the biggest protest in American history. Then he solicited “donations” for a renovation no one wanted, no one approved, no one consented to. The “donations” were really “pay for play,” a cute name for bribery. Rich individuals and global conglomerates paid for favors from the president, including pardons, the cash being laundered through a shady nonprofit that tried to whitewash their identities. Compounding the injury is Trump’s apparent plan to inflate the budget, keep the “donations” for himself, and stick the American people with the bill.

I don’t know if history is going to repeat itself. However, I will note that the Gilded Age begat the Progressive Era, a period of unprecedented social and political reform in the early 20th century that rose from the backlash against the decadence and impunity of the previous era. I will also note a new poll by the Associated Press that suggests the emergence of a new consensus in which Trump is becoming symbolic of our own 21st-century Gilded Age.

Courtesy of Valentine Fourreau via Statista.

The AP found that “as Trump’s family business pulls in record money from new ventures helped by his policies,” about 60 percent believe he is “either illegally profiting or doing something unethical but not illegal.” Over half believe he has privileged his financial interests “a lot” since returning to the White House. Just 10 percent think he is focused “a lot” on them.

It appears that Americans are increasingly connecting the dots. It’s not just that they are struggling to make ends meet. It’s that Trump’s choices are the reason for that struggle. A new Fox poll has the president’s approval at just 36 percent. That’s four points lower than George W Bush’s was this time during his second term, the month before his party was wiped out. The GOP lost both chambers of the Congress in the 2006 midterms.

A final word.

About today’s “robber barons.”

They include leaders of household brands: Microsoft, Apple, Google. Donald Trump has been bestowed with immunity, but the Supreme Court did not bestow it on them. In the future, if they cannot be prosecuted for bribery, their firms are exposed, potentially, to either furious government oversight or the hammer of antitrust law. They’re all monopolies. They’re all illegal in one way or another. The coming backlash is going to be against them, too. —John Stoehr

That’s all for today. Please consider subscribing! I know you like it. I know you’ll love the price! For just $9 a month, you get so much, plus the satisfaction of supporting independent journalism. Thanks! –JS

Bidenomics was working. Crisis began when Trump ended it

John Stoehr — Wed, 14 Oct 2026 21:55:37 GMT

Via Axios.

The new Consumer Price Index was released. You will never guess what it showed – the biggest increase in five months. Prices were 3.7 percent higher than this time last year.

Why?

You know.

“In September, the primary driver of price pressures was energy prices, which on the whole rose 5.2 percent for the month, or 20.4 percent over the past year,” according to the Times.

The average price of gas has increased by 45 to 46 percent since February 28, the day Donald Trump attacked Iran, according to the Iran War Energy Cost Tracker, an accountability project by the Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University.

Diesel has shot up by 70 percent.

GasBuddy’s Patrick De Haan put today’s news this way: “September’s national average price of gasoline was $4.332 per gallon, up 6.8 percent from August’s $4.056 per gallon level, the second highest monthly average in 2026. It was the most expensive September ever.”

His italics, not mine.

Courtesy of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

But there’s more going on.

Trump’s tariffs account for the entire increase in the cost of consumer goods, according to a study by the New York Fed. It said “about a quarter of a tariff increase is passed through to consumer goods prices.” The study added that tariffs raised the price of imports as well as goods made in America. (Another factor is September’s price spike was “soaring costs associated with the boom in artificial intelligence investment,” the Times said.)

The president’s deportation agenda plays a role, too.

According to a new report by the ACLU and AFL-CIO, the cost of labor-intensive goods and services that rely on immigrant workers has risen faster than the rate of inflation.

“Lettuce rose nearly 32 percent, landscaping services rose 10.8 percent, home healthcare rose 10.7 percent, whole milk rose 9 percent, and canned fruit rose 7.9 percent,” it said, adding ICE raids on construction sites caused an “18 percent increase in new home prices.”

Via Michael Linden.

Put these factors together – illegal war, illegal taxes and illegal deportations – and the “gamechanger ... on Americans’ finances,” according to Heather Long, has been the near-total wipeout of wage gains since the day of Donald Trump’s return to the White House.

“Since January 2025,” the economist wrote on Twitter, “inflation has grown plus-5.4 percent. Wages (average hourly earnings) [have grown] plus-5.5 percent. This is a very different picture from President Trump’s first term when wages were up over 15 percent, well above about 8 percent inflation. It helps explain the frustration many households feel right now.”

The Times: “Average hourly earnings are now back to almost exactly where they were when President Trump was sworn into office for the second time, meaning that, on average, Americans have experienced zero wage growth, in real terms, since he returned.”

Democrats are reacting to all this the way they should.

“Trump’s failed economic agenda has raised prices for Americans by 5.9 percent,” Elizabeth Warren said. “That means families are paying $3,772 more thanks to inflation under Trump.”

“Inflation is up again,” Pete Buttigieg said. “Not because of a pandemic. Not because of a natural disaster. Because of Trump’s war, tariffs, and corporate tax breaks. It really is this simple: Republicans took over, and then drove up the cost of living in America.”

That’s fine, but I would rather hear something like this:

Bidenomics was working.

Courtesy of The Economist.

The central tenet of the economic agenda named after Joe Biden is growing the economy “from the middle out and the bottom up.” It was an explicit rebuke of “trickle-down economics,” which had prevailed since the 1980s. Bidenomics made public investments, strengthened unions, and encouraged competition. It poured trillions into the economy to counteract the effects of the pandemic. The result was record wages and growth, record unemployment and falling rates of inflation. The Economist called it “the envy of the world.”

The former president’s accomplishment cannot be overstated. As David Lurie wrote, in December 2023, Biden has “been one of the most successful Democratic presidents since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, both at home and abroad, having shepherded the nation through the end of the pandemic, initiated historic changes in industrial and climate policy, and led a coalition of Western nations against the most dangerous threat to democracy in decades.”

The problem, as Lurie says, was popularity. Bidenomics never had it. Inflation persisted throughout his presidency, eroding Biden’s approval. By the end, he was among the most unpopular presidents ever. Any chance of turning that around would have required another four years during which the seeds he had planted in the first term might have bloomed in his second. That never happened, of course, so Bidenomics was put away with its namesake.

But Bidenomics was working. That can be seen in the dotted blue line in the above graph published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It shows what consumer prices would have been had things been left alone. I’m no economist, but that suggests other trends would have continued, too: high wages and high growth, low unemployment, falling inflation, not to mention the transformation of the economy to running on renewable energy instead of oil.

The affordability crisis didn’t begin with illegal war, illegal taxes and illegal deportations.

Those came later.

It began when Trump came back – when Bidenomics ended.

Democrats are quick to blame Trump, slow to praise Biden. I wish they would get over themselves. Not only do Americans have short memories, but the current crisis is going to scramble people’s brains such that whatever obstacles there are in bringing Biden back into the conversation won’t be there long. A poll taken in February, before the war, found Americans already decided Biden was a better president than Trump. Imagine how receptive they might be to a revival of Bidenomics after experiencing the pain of the next two years. —John Stoehr

That’s all for today. Please consider subscribing! I know you like it. I know you’ll love the price! For just $9 a month, you get so much, plus the satisfaction of supporting independent journalism. Thanks! –JS

Why do the Republicans fear James Talarico? He quotes scripture with authority

John Stoehr — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 22:16:51 GMT

I’m late to this, but there’s still time for a word on James Talarico’s appearance on Jimmy Kimmel’s show. It’s important, because I don’t think most people on the left appreciate how threatening he is. He has a shot at becoming the first Democrat elected to the US Senate from Texas in decades. He presents a chance to reclaim policies favorable to Donald Trump.

But that’s not what scares the Republicans. What scares them is a Democrat who has the character and credibility to quote scripture with authority, not only to popularize good policies, like pro-immigrant reforms, but to discredit the GOP’s authoritarian project.

While others doubt the outcomes of policies enacted by the Republicans, Talarico doubts their intent – by holding them to the tenets of their faith. “The kind of religion that says you can treat people however you want as long as you have a personal relationship with Jesus is an abomination,” he told Jimmy Kimmel last month. “It is a cancer on the body of Christ.”

Talarico continued: “Scripture tells us that you can’t love God and hate other people. You can’t love God and abuse the immigrant. You can’t love God and oppress the poor. You can’t love God and bully the outcast. We spend so much time looking for God out there that we miss God in the person sitting right next to us, in that neighbor, who bears the divine image. I was brought up to believe that in the face of a neighbor, we glimpse the face of God.”

The implication is that no one can legitimately call themselves a Christian while ignoring, dismissing or profaning the teachings of the Jesus of the Gospels, and any attempt to rationalize such behavior by professing “belief in Christ” is an obscenity in God’s eyes.

Talarico never calls anyone out specifically. He merely invokes the name of a nameless religion. But he’s clearly talking about the Republicans, in particular the white evangelical Protestants who constitute their most powerful faction. I can’t think of another Democrat who has suggested their religion is “an abomination.” I certainly can’t think of one who is also leading his evangelical opponent, Ken Paxton, by four points, according to a new GOP poll.

White evangelicals began taking over the Republican Party about half a century ago. Over the years, the GOP has increasingly justified virtually every position, especially on abortion, in religious terms that maximize belief but minimize works. Christians since Christ have debated which is more important. Long ago, evangelicals decided the answer is faith, with works being proof of redemption achieved through faith, not a requirement for redemption.

“Faith alone” is a conservative interpretation of the Gospels that favors the interests of the ruling class. It doesn’t ask anyone to challenge the status quo to bring the Kingdom of God down to earth. It only asks us to wait patiently for our reward in the afterlife. In that view, loving your neighbor can seem like an option, rather than a commandment. After all, why fight now for liberty and justice for all when paradise has been secured later through faith? Talarico, who is a seminarian as well as a Senate candidate, knows all this. “Don’t tell me what you believe,” he says frequently. “Show me what you do, and I’ll tell you what you believe.”

So James Talarico’s campaign is a theological argument as well as a political one. More specifically, it is a liberal theological argument that’s gaining traction. Many of the religious conservatives who control Texas are seen as corrupt, not only as politicians but as Christians. Again, Talarico is not explicit. He’s blowing a dogwhistle only Christians can hear. He does not suggest Republicans are a “cancer on the body of Christ.” He suggests their religion is. He’s suggesting they are wrong politically, because they are wrong religiously.

In addition to being sincere and invoking scripture with deep knowledge, that’s why Talarico is dangerous. The Republicans need the public to believe their interpretation of God’s word is not an interpretation at all, but instead, God’s word. That gives their policies, like mass deportation, the appearance of being divinely ordained rather than choices made for partisan reasons. But Talarico challenges that claim by invoking the authority of the Bible with equal credibility. (Jesus didn’t say “believe in me so you can do what you want guilt-free.) In doing so, Talarico destabilizes the religious underpinnings of the rightwing project.

At the same time, the evangelical claim to biblical authority is facing a crisis of credibility. Trump’s sadism has pulled the mask off “the religious right” to reveal an authoritarian project that cares about Christianity only to the extent that it can be used to achieve political goals. The wider public is now deeply aware of what can result when “a personal relationship with Jesus” is used to rationalize violence and destruction. Talarico’s campaign is a call to action for Christians. Get back to basics. Get right with God by getting right with your neighbor.

To see what might happen to the Republicans’ credibility if Talarico’s theological argument catches on, consider Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor of Texas and an “outspoken evangelical Christian.” On Twitter last month, commenting on a video in which Talarico is speaking, Patrick said: “James Talarico said, ‘You can’t call yourself a Christian and reject the stranger seeking asylum at our southern border.’ James Talarico is too radical for Texas.”

That raises the inevitable question: “Has Dan Patrick – a man who tells anyone who’s willing to listen that he’s ‘Christian first, conservative second and Republican third‘ – actually read the Bible?” Not only was Jesus an immigrant himself, he was clear about what would happen to those who reject immigrants. “Truly I tell you,” Jesus said, “whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me” (Matthew 25:45), and as a consequence you will be “cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41).

If Talarico, who is literally quoting Jesus, is too radical for Texas, that suggests Jesus is too.

If so, game over – the beginning of the end of “the religious right.”

The New Republic‘s Greg Sargent wrote recently that Trump’s barbarism has “opened space for new moral arguments, a new consensus.” From there, Greg said, Talarico has made the case for immigration as “a positive good” and for immigration policy that’s humane and just.

While I think Greg is right, I also think his aperture is too narrow. Trump’s barbarism has done more than open space for this or that policy innovation. It has opened space for the emergence of a new social movement based on a revival of the Christian faith – a new social gospel, you could say – and Talarico seems to be positioning himself as a leading voice.

He told Jimmy Kimmel:

“Matthew 25 tells us Christians exactly how we’re gonna be judged and how we’re gonna be saved – by feeding the hungry, by healing the sick, by welcoming the stranger. I often wonder what would Jesus do if he visited the US Senate. I think he would tell the senators on the floor: ‘depart from me. I was hungry and you cut my food assistance. I was sick and you kicked me off Medicaid. I was a stranger and you deported me and my family.’

“And then I think he would flip over those fancy desks on the floor of the US Senate and demand that we take care of all of our neighbors, especially the least of these.”

That’s all for today. Please consider subscribing! I know you like it. I know you’ll love the price! For just $9 a month, you get so much, plus the satisfaction of supporting independent journalism. –JS

The taboo against naming Trump's dementia is fading

John Stoehr — Sat, 10 Oct 2026 12:17:38 GMT

Courtesy of the White House via Aaron Rupar.

I think the president of the United States really believes “there’s never been anybody“ who deserves the Nobel Peace Prize more than he does. He really believes he “settled eight wars.” He really believes he stopped “the total obliteration of the world“ by going to war with Iran.

And I think he will try to punish anyone who does not share his beliefs. As president, Donald Trump has vast powers at his disposal. “I can do whatever I want,” he told reporters on Wednesday. Evidently, that includes forcing people to believe his delusions of grandeur.

Yesterday, it was announced that Judge Navi Pillay had been awarded the prestigious award. She’s a former jurist for the International Criminal Court in the Hague, the Netherlands. She presided over monumental cases involving genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. When asked for comment, Pillay joked: “I may share this prize with Trump.”

Within hours, the administration said it placed economic sanctions on the court, preventing US businesses from providing services. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the ICC was “a rogue court.” The sanctions will continue, he said, until “allies, many of whom are part of the ICC and that rely on American service members for their defense, rein in the court.”

But after seeing a superpower brought low by Iran, US allies don’t rely on “American service members” like they used to. More importantly, Trump’s sanctions are an obvious attempt to compel belief in his fantasies. The Washington press corps has “normalized having an insane president,” as Aaron Rupar said, but allies must see it clearly. They don’t have the luxury.

That said, widespread crisis has a way of changing what’s considered normal. Last month, I noted twin patterns. On the one hand, Trump’s advisors have been getting “increasingly blunt“ with him, according to the Post, about the jeopardy his party is in due to the Iran war. On the other hand, as the economic fallout from the war continues to build up, reporters seem to be getting “increasingly blunt” with voters as well as administration officials.

I didn’t mean reporters are becoming adversarial. I meant they are becoming less inclined, as the backlash gains momentum, to play along with the White House line. CNN’s Jake Tapper, for instance, has never met a rightwing allegation he was not willing to give credence to. Yet when confronted with wild distortions by Kevin Hassett, head of the Economic Council, Tapper said voter unhappiness is showing up in the data, “just not the data you’re looking at.”

Worse, for Hassett’s credibility, was Tapper’s side-eye!

Donald Trump is weakening politically. (A new poll from Pew, the gold standard of polling, showed his approval is 30 percent. Virginia’s governor told MeidasTouch last night: “At this point in time in 2022, a little over 200,000 Virginians had voted. At this point in time in 2026, approximately 450,000 Virginians have voted early.) As he does so, there may be more incentive to focus on other weaknesses, including his mental deficits. Up to now, talk of cognitive decline has been on the margins, a subject debated among critics. The furthest forward it has come is in the form of regular rhetoric, as when Mike Barnicle memorably called Trump a “damaged, delusional old man,” suggesting dementia without naming it.

But the weaker Trump gets politically, I think the less hesitance there will be in breaking the taboo that’s currently preventing people from naming what they see. Last week, for instance, Time released the transcript of a long interview. For some, it revealed a broken brain. It raised the question as to whether Trump can tell the difference between fact and fiction.

“It’s almost unbelievable that this man is the president,” Amy McGrath wrote on Twitter. “He rarely finishes a coherent thought. At one point, he actually says that all of his decisions ‘are correct ones.’ His explanations of the national debt and basic economics are astonishingly muddled. He makes false claim after false claim with absolute confidence. I can’t tell if he just doesn’t care that he’s lying or actually believes the lies himself. Reading the transcript — not watching him, not hearing the delivery, just reading his actual words — is jarring.”

I think the strongest evidence to suggest the dementia taboo is fading came from the Times‘ Katie Rogers. She has covered Trump rallies for a decade. Last week, she said they “feel like the first stops of a farewell tour.” There’s less attendance, so there’s less coverage. “There were swaths of empty seats at the 10,000-capacity athletic center where Mr Trump spoke on Friday,” she wrote. “In Ohio a day later, several areas of an upper deck were empty by the time Mr Trump finished speaking at a 4,500-capacity high school student activity center.”

But at the top of her report was this: “The events are a ritual. He will attack Democrats. His words will probably stop making actual, logical sense for a moment, or for many moments. (It’s “the weave,” you see.) He will accuse Democrats of rigging the 2020 election (they didn’t). He will attack the news media. Then he will dance to a Village People song” (my italics).

With the dam heaving under pressure, critics are pushing harder. Lawrence O’Donnell might have gone farther than anyone so far. He said Thursday: “If the president of the United States is insane, that is the biggest news of the day or any day. That is what will live in history. That is what historians will devote their attention to if the president of the United States is insane. If the president of the United States’ mind is crumbling before our very eyes, that is the most important story of the day because everything else follows from that, everything!”

In good times, it’s tempting to put his derangements in the context of familiar partisanship. A desire to be a dictator on day one of his second term? That’s just Trump being Trump!

But bad times make things hit different. This week, he said, “I can do whatever I want,” in the same breath as “I stopped the total obliteration of the world,” as if he were a superhero. He punished the International Criminal Court for Navi Pillay’s decision to poke fun at him. His fantasies hit different when he demands the world validate them or suffer the consequences.

The times, they are a-changing.

Normalized insanity won’t last much longer. —John Stoehr

That’s all for today. Please consider subscribing! I know you like it. I know you’ll love the price! For just $9 a month, you get so much, plus the satisfaction of supporting independent journalism. Thanks! –JS

Trump and the GOP prefer to 'buy victory' over earning it

John Stoehr — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 19:44:39 GMT

The AP ran a headline that said it all. “Can $1 billion buy victory in the midterm elections? Some Republicans fear the answer is no,” read the topline item from yesterday’s “Morning Wire.” However, that was apparently too on the nose for some GOP readers. Later, the AP changed the headline to read: “Can $1 billion power Republicans to victory in the midterms?”

It doesn’t matter, though. The fact that Republicans are spending $1 billion on congressional elections is a grotesque revelation. It tells us who the Republicans are, what they value and what they expect from democratic politics. That’s more money than you, me and everyone we know will see in our lifetimes. Whether the AP asks if it can “power Republicans to victory” or “buy victory” for the GOP seems like a distinction without a difference.

The Republicans are spending obscene sums for two reasons. One is they took for granted congressional seats in red states and red districts. Some are suddenly in deep trouble. No one foresaw the president campaigning in Nebraska this week, but farmers there have been hit by a costly double-whammy – Donald Trump’s tariffs and Donald Trump’s war. They’re so mad an independent candidate is dead even with incumbent GOP Senator Peter Ricketts.

The second reason is related to the first. Because they took those seats for granted, they got a late start buying media time. They are paying more now to run ads than they would have months ago. The AP said MAGA Inc, the president’s PAC, “has been charged roughly $894 per airing, according to AdImpact, while Texas PAC has been charged roughly $809 for a mix of broadcast and streaming.” For the same mix, Democrat James Talarico paid about $290.

But there’s more here than Republicans making up for lost ground. One billion dollars is a reflection of who they are. They believe authority is their birthright. As a consequence, they believe there’s nothing morally wrong with “buying victory.” The Republicans are anti-political. They resent competing democratically. They would rather pick their voters, for instance through gerrymandering, than humiliate themselves with the chore of earning votes. As Mark Jacob said, with a precision rare in our discourse: “The clear message of Republicans is that this country is owned by white people and everyone else is renting.”

Some white people are renting too. They just aren’t aware of it or, if they are, they are choosing to side with the Republicans in the hopes of getting more than people they believe are their inferiors. That cynicism might pay off in good times, with a Democrat overseeing the economy. But with a Republican in charge, it backfires. Nebraska farmers like Trump, but don’t like the consequences. They believe they own America, too. Now their rent is going up.

The pain has been exquisite. Well-meaning advisors tell the Democrats to capitalize on it. The Bulwark‘s Sarah Longwell said they have “a generational opportunity to reestablish a relationship with rural voters betrayed by Trump.” Longwell said the formula is simple.

“Focus on solutions to cost of living issues, including healthcare,” she said. “Commit to a secure border without inhumane deportations. Deprioritize divisive social issues. No new wars. A more careful approach on AI policy and data centers. Care about working people.”

Other than AI and data centers, these have been part of the Democratic platform since at least the Obama administration. The problem isn’t Democrats failing to send the message. It’s rural voters failing to hear it. The reality is they want what the Democrats are offering, but not from the Democrats. They want it from the Republicans. They never get it, of course.

That’s why they get so mad.

There may be “a generational opportunity,” but I don’t know if it can be realized through enticements. A better way might be through “tough love.” Let GOP voters feel the consequences of empowering men who take them for granted, who try to “buy victory” rather than earn it, and who act like democratic politics is a chore that’s beneath them.

Perhaps the best way to help Trump voters is by allowing the painful experience of the GOP brand to play out. Self-interest drove them to Trump. Let it drive them to the Democrats. We’re all in this together. United, we stand. Divided, we fall. But values are not enough for some people. They won’t choose democracy unless it’s a means of survival. Millions of Republicans didn’t choose Franklin Roosevelt because he was charming. They chose him, in the depths of the Great Depression, because they understood they were hurting themselves. —John Stoehr

Ask Me Anything: October 8, 2026

I asked you to ask me anything. Here are some questions I got. If you want to ask me something for next week’s Ask Me Anything, leave a comment below or send a reply.

E Wade asks:

Where are we now on getting the remainder of the Epstein files released?

My answer:

Where we are is paralysis. As long as Donald Trump, or a Republican successor, is in the White House, the entirety of the Epstein files will never be seen. That said, there might not actually be much to them, at least not in ways most seem to believe. Lindsay Beyerstein explained in March the real Epstein story is probably about financial crimes. Epstein probably did the sex crimes, Lindsay reported. Maybe a few others did, too. But, she said, the pedophile ring is almost certainly not as broad and global as alleged. What is probably broad and global, however, is financial crimes, perhaps including espionage. As they say, follow the money. Ron Wyden’s office has been. “My investigators have confirmed the Trump administration is hiding interview documents it conducted with some of Epstein’s banks, and there could be more,” the Oregon senator told MeidasTouch last week. “There’s no limit to how far Scott Bessent, Kash Patel and Todd Blanche will go to continue this cover up.”

Carl Gibson asks:

It almost seems like Trump has been deliberately sabotaging the midterms. If there was a how-to guide for how to screw up your party’s chances of staying in office, he’d be following every step. Do you think he’s deliberately trying to throw the midterms? Kicking 760,000 people off of their health coverage weeks before an election really serves no purpose other than to make life harder for people, including a lot of his own voters.

My answer:

I asked myself the same question in May. Here’s what I said: “After all this time, we still interpret the president through a partisan lens that attempts to explain his behavior. Everyone assumes he wants his party to keep the House, at the very least to avoid impeachment. It’s because of this assumption that Republicans are growing frustrated. ‘The president was elected to juice the economy, to bring down inflation, to stop illegal immigration and to get away from woke culture,’ a GOP pollster told the Times. ‘If his highest goal were to maintain control of Congress, he would not be doing what he is doing.’ We should consider the alternative: that control of Congress is not his highest goal.”

What is his highest goal? Donald Trump, obviously.

How that will manifest after the midterms is hard to say. What’s certain is he won’t accept the outcome, even when he blames the Republicans. He already laid the groundwork for alleging fraud. On Sunday, he wrote on his social media site: “In Detroit, Philadelphia, California, and numerous other US Cities and States, the results, with much smaller numbers, will often take weeks to Rig, I mean, calculate. Voting in America is CORRUPT!!!” For allegations of fraud to work, however, Americans have to trust him. In an interview with the Connecticut Mirror, Jim Himes, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said there’s the rub. Trump “no longer has any meaningful public sentiment on his side.” Himes added: “That was not true on January 6, 2021. A president who is despised by two-thirds of the American population is a much less scary force than one who has the support of 60 percent of the population. So public sentiment really matters, and it is not on his side.”

lindsrn.bsky.social asks:

How do you balance caring for your mental/physical/emotional health while swinging between anger at all the chaos around you and how so many applaude it, feeling sadness over all of the death and destruction, and trying to manufacture some type of genuine hope to keep trying to lead positive change?

My answer:

Hope is found in two things: a) evil people die and b) good people always do good things, leaving their works behind. Progress is usually two steps forward, one step back, but there is no stopping democratic politics. It is the force of change in the world. That said, I stopped believing in the inherent goodness of the American people. Voters will trade democracy for money and status. But there is no good if there is no struggle, and sometimes, the struggle is just to wait. As Charlie Chaplin once said: “So long as men die, liberty will never perish.”

That’s all for today. Please consider subscribing! I know you like it. I know you’ll love the price! For just $9 a month, you get so much, plus the satisfaction of supporting independent journalism. –JS