— from Alternet

Republican midterm candidates are starting to flee from associating with President Donald Trump while others tune out his outlandish antics, and according to one conservative commentator, it comes down to how he "aggressively squandered" the strengths that got him reelected.

Rep. Mariá Elvira Salazar, a Florida Republican who has represented the state's 27th District since 2021, turned heads across the political world this past week when she released a new midterm ad firmly breaking with Trump on immigration, saying that some of his mass deportation efforts have "gone too far." Her district is nearly 74 percent Latin American, and Trump carried it by around 15 points in 2024, amid a major shift towards Republicans made by Latino voters that year.

Now, as anti-Trump conservative Charlie Sykes said on the "Fast Politics" podcast, that voting bloc has made a dramatic shift away from supporting the president, resulting in an ad like Salazar's, which would have once seemed unthinkable given Trump's huge sway over the GOP.

— from Salon

In my decades as a cultural anthropologist studying authoritarianism in Russia and the United States, I’ve learned that one of power’s most useful tricks is making responsibility vanish. Autocrats convince people that the harms they create are someone else’s fault — or no one’s fault at all.

I first thought about this sort of doublespeak in an ordinary situation. In the 2000s, as I completed my doctoral research in northern Russia, an older friend tried to teach me a lesson about dressing warmly. She stopped in the middle of the woods during a walk, looked with disapproval at my light jacket, and threw her hands up in mock confusion, surveying the snow-encrusted pines. She said, “I seem to have lost my way!” I stared, knowing she could find her way home easily. My friend continued, “I hope we don’t freeze to death!” (Having grown up during Joseph Stalin’s dictatorship in the 1940s and 1950s, when authorities sometimes took relatives away for criticizing the regime, she had learned to talk about human missteps as if they simply happened, with no one behind them.) Shivering in the woods, I found myself acting like we were really lost, even though she was the agent of chaos.

— from Tom Engelhardt's Substack

Yes, our world is often predictable enough, or at least it was once upon a time. But give Donald Trump credit. He’s only predictable in one way — in his remarkable unpredictability. In almost every imaginable sense, in fact, he was distinctly unimaginable (until, of course, he happened). And since entering the White House in January 2017, he’s been the most distinctly unpredictable, unpreventable, unprecedented, and, of course, unpresidential president in the history of these (ever more dis-)United States.

In fact, in a Trumpian fashion, perhaps he should be renamed Donald — not J. for John, as in, of course, a place to take a crap, but C for Crazy as a loon, although there’s no reason to insult loons by assuming they’re actually anywhere near as loony as him, especially since that J could also be for Jerk, though that’s way too mild, right? — Trump(ed), since he Trumps everything in his vicinity (including himself). There may, in truth, never have been a great imperial power on the downward slope of history ruled by quite such a maniac.

Democrats’ chances of taking back the Senate look better than ever, but even if November brings a blue wave, they will still not have control of the legislative and executive branches simultaneously until at least 2029.

The question facing Democratic lawmakers now is how they should conduct themselves during these wilderness years if they want to regain a trifecta in the next presidential election.

Voting down any idea the White House or GOP leadership propose without suggesting any alternative is a bad idea. More than three-quarters of Americans say they want more bipartisanship in Washington, and voters often punish opposition parties they view as do-nothing obstructionists.

But when we say Democrats should be more bipartisan, it’s important to specify what we mean. This moment has provided exemplars of two very different kinds of aisle crossing, which I’ll refer to as John Fetterman Bipartisanship and Elizabeth Warren Bipartisanship.

After a century of providing healthcare to this rural, southeast Michigan community, Sturgis Hospital closed in June with only 70 hours warning.

The hospital was not on the at-risk-of-closing list that had been published by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) a year earlier.

Over 300 Sturgis Hospital employees are scrambling to find work. Registered nurse Beth Kelley, who had worked at Sturgis for 32 years, described the meeting room as filled with “shock” and “devastation” when management announced that the hospital was closing.

The termination of care at Sturgis Hospital overloads the city’s emergency medical services. Director of public safety Ryan Banaszak said, “What was once approximately a 2-mile transport for patients has now become closer to 25 miles, which takes ambulance personnel and equipment out of service for a much longer period of time.”

“I was in the Oval Office when I got a call with the results of the September 15th House Impeachment vote. Unbelievable. Of course, my Repubs all voted against this persecution, but 47 of the Dems, including their leaders—Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi, and Richard Neal from Democratic Massachusetts—voted PRESENT! That is really a vote against Impeachment and makes them ON MY SIDE! My aide read their lame excuse, saying that ‘serious work’ had to be done, including ‘comprehensive investigations, reviews of thousands of documents … Congressional hearings, sustained public organizing … to build a broad national consensus.’ That’s why they voted PRESENT!”

“But they were really AWOL. The polls show well over a majority of people want me FIRED. The Dems are really cowards. All they had to do was to use my scores of Executive Orders, which they claim were illegal and unconstitutional. Plus, repeat my widely reported statements that I can do whatever I want as President and what they have condemned as my outlaw actions here and abroad. I’m the only evidence they need.”

— from Flagler Live

As human beings we have always been sitting ducks to extinction’s cosmic whims. We are a few astronomical units away from a life-ending meteor or comet strike, the kind that wiped out the dinosaurs after they were their own animal kingdom for a couple of hundred million years. Nothing we can do about that.

For the brief time human beings have roamed the earth–less than five seconds if earth’s history were a 24-hour clock–we’ve shown nearly equal aptitude and enthusiasm for reproducing, and for suicide. Aptitude for reproduction is nothing special. As Cole Porter put it, birds, bees and even fleas do it. But you have to be human to know suicide, by which I mean the act of engaging in knowing self-destruction, as most wars of recorded and (easy to guess) unrecorded history of the last 100,000 years have been.

Those mass suicides have ended tribes, empires and civilizations, but so far not humanity itself. It is only since 1945 that we’ve acquired that skill. A global nuclear war today would end life on the planet, which would become “a republic of insects and grass,” as Jonathan Schell, the Cole Porter of nukes, put it in The Fate of the Earth (1982).

— from Alternet

President Donald Trump had a plan to rig the 2026 midterms in favor of the Republicans, but every step of the way, he appears to have hit a wall.

iPaper's Max Melzer penned a report Friday that even Trump's U.S. Post Office is ignoring his demands to act as a kind of gatekeeper for mail-in ballots.

Trump attempted to redraw congressional districts, which are only done after new Census Bureau numbers. Instead, states like Texas, Missouri, and others tried to redraw districts based on the 2024 election results favoring Trump and the GOP. There are now concerns that as Trump's 2024 coalition is breaking apart, using that as a guide may not have been the best idea. In Texas, for example, there are three districts that were drawn specifically to be Republican that may flip to Democratic.

FBI Director Kash Patel refused to dissuade concerns that the federal government will send agents, homeland security officers and others to "monitor" the polls on Election Day.

— from Salon

Kash Patel wants to be the White House’s preeminent attack dog. But as usual, he can’t help but break through the fence and run into traffic. This time, his mistake was a very strange quasi-defense of people convicted of bestiality. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., led the FBI director straight into a trap during Tuesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing when he asked Patel why his agency had dropped the hiring ban on people who admitted to engaging in sex with animals.

“We did not want to punish victims of bestiality,” Patel replied. His words immediately ricocheted around the internet, as it’s generally understood that humans are the victimizers in such situations. Although he went on to argue that the change was to protect sex trafficking victims who may have been forced into such acts, his reasoning didn’t convince many on the committee, including Republican Sen. John Kennedy.

— from OtherWords

The cost of health care just keeps going up — and millions of Americans are set to lose coverage.

Under the GOP’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” around 17 million people in this country will lose health care thanks to the law’s Medicaid cuts, failure to renew Affordable Care Act subsidies, and other changes. Those cuts accelerate after this year’s midterms.

Instead, that money is going toward tax cuts for the rich plus record budgets for ICE and the Pentagon. Immigrants — including well over 1 million who are lawfully present — will be especially hard hit.

Rosa Maria Carranza fled El Salvador’s civil war for the United States decades ago, working here and sending money home to support her three children. She missed their milestones as she worked overnight shifts babysitting and substitute-teaching. Later, she co-founded a preschool.

— from Foreign Policy In Focus

This is the first article in a two-part series.

For many years, progressive movements and activists have longed for the moment when we could imagine a real foreign policy rooted in true internationalism and solidarity.

But in our efforts to influence actual policy decisions, we’ve settled for important but smaller asks — ending specific wars, blocking the transfer of certain weapons to Israel, reducing military aid, cutting the military budget. That made sense — our movements’ view of the world was rarely fully reflected in Congress, the State Department, or the White House.

Now some of those limitations are fading. There are new possibilities rising as we see new candidates with incredibly progressive politics win their campaigns — and even more importantly, we see in recent years the extraordinary shift in public discourse about the U.S. role in the world, especially (though not only) throughout the almost three years of U.S.-enabled genocide in Gaza.

— from The Hartmann Report

Trump has now repeatedly offered his voters $5,000 checks if Republicans hold onto the House and Senate this fall, calling it the “Trump dividend.” On Sunday he told a rally that it’ll “happen 100 percent” if enough people turn out to vote GOP.

Since his own party controls both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, he could now get an appropriation passed for the ~$1.2 trillion this will add to the national debt; the fact that he’s not doing this is pretty much proof that what’s really going on here is a good old fashioned vote-buying scheme dressed up with some fancy language to make it seem less like the crime it is.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that “if the Republicans win” is quite simply a way of telling millions of Americans that there’s five grand riding on how they vote.

— from Beat the Press

This fall, California residents will be voting on a measure that would impose a tax of 5% on people with wealth in excess of $1 billion. This is a serious tax on a small group of very wealthy people.

While some focus on the amount of tax that these super-rich people will pay, it’s worth keeping in mind how much they will still have after paying their tax bill. A billionaire with $5 billion in assets will pay $250 million in taxes, but they will still be left with $4,750,000,000. We probably still don’t have to worry about these folks collecting food stamps.

The proponents of the tax calculate that it will raise $100 billion. While it is a one-time tax, it can be paid over five years. This sum will roughly match the cuts in Medicaid funding over this period that the Trump administration has put in place.

Editor’s Note: The following is the fifth and final excerpt from Nancy J. Altman’s new book, The Road to Medicare for All: A Call to Action (Routledge, 2026), now available for purchase wherever quality books are sold. Read the previous excerpts published here, here, here, and here. As the United States continues to spend substantially more on health care than other wealthy nations but with poorer health outcomes, Altman’s book analyzes the dysfunction of the current system and sets forth the solution. “Medicare for All won’t happen without a fight,” she argues, “but it is a fight we can win.”

Reaching our destination won’t be easy. Americans have been fighting for universal, government-sponsored national health insurance for over 100 years. Progress was made in 1965 and 1972, when Medicare was enacted and expanded. Since, then, though, not only was Medicare not expanded; frustratingly, its opposition has succeeded in partially privatizing it.

The moment in which the nation finds itself does not appear particularly hopeful even for the country to remain the United States. Not since the Civil War has the nation been so divided.

— from Alternet

New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan spoke at The Atlantic Festival Thursday, where the former detailed her predictions about President Donald Trump's presidency if Democrats take over one or both houses of Congress.

In a discussion about pardons and members of the administration breaking laws, court rulings, or orders, Haberman said that one thing that Steven Miller learned is that if the president declares an emergency, he can do whatever he wants. That combined with "an utterly compliant House GOP and slightly less so but fairly compliant Republican Senate" is how Trump has accomplished what he has.

Aside from the "emergency powers" efforts, another option is for Congress to hand over its power."And so, not to get too hyper local here, but there are many ways in which this government reminds me of like 1970s New York," Haberman said. "And the reason I say that is that that is Donald Trump's, you know, sort of, model of executive power."

— from Salon

Donald Trump recently claimed that when he goes to international gatherings, all the leaders stand up. Supposedly, they do this as a sign of respect for him personally: “They didn’t stand up for our last president; they didn’t care about him … they laughed at him. But our country is respected again.”

He’s been using versions of that line ever since he was first inaugurated back in 2017. But he’s always portrayed America as a disgusting hellscape seen by the rest of the world as a laughingstock — except when he is president, when we magically enter magically a “golden age” in which the entire planet turns to him as its undisputed leader.

Needless to say, this is utterly delusional. Foreign leaders do not stand at attention when he enters the room. The footage of such meetings is public, and we know that they do not see themselves as vassals to this president. He’s just making that up. And neither they nor the people in their countries “respect” America again. In fact, the opposite was clearly true during Trump’s first term, and people around the world respect the U.S. even less the second time around.

— from Robert Reich's Substack

Friends,

I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so.

When I charged that egg producers were engaged in illegal price fixing, Fox News mocked me and many economists disagreed with my analysis.

But now we know the truth — egg producers were engaged in illegal price fixing.

Please watch and share.

Like slavery, massive corruption or reckless imperialism, draconian income inequality is a compound, internal cancer that corrodes democracy, vetoing both the idea and delivery of positive government actions

How curious, and telling, the shocking news a month ago that one earthing boasts control over a trillion dollars hardly drew weeks of headlines! Let alone shock, awe and outrage, even demands for reform. This breakthrough whopper carries both real-world and symbolic impacts. When, in short, is way, way too much too much – when do voters regain control over their world? If Musk the half-trillionaire in 2024 spends $300+ million rigging campaigns, why not a billion or more now, a rounding error. Even were Musk not a badly-educated, impulsive, alt-right, white supremacist – keen to spawn a legion of Muskettoes, any sovereign republic that tolerates one person controlling a trillion dollars jeopardizes its democratic integrity. A wayward trillionaire poses a pandemic threat with global obsessions.

“We have many monsters to destroy.”
—George Seferis

“But how can anyone tell the truth about Fascism, unless he is willing to speak out against capitalism, which brings it forth?”
—Bertolt Brecht

More than four decades ago, the Greek composer and public intellectual Manos Hadjidakis issued a warning that now reads less like a reflection on fascism than a prophecy of our own time. The greatest danger, he suggested, comes when we grow accustomed to the monster, when its presence no longer shocks the conscience and its violence begins to merge with the routines of everyday life. Tolerance does not diminish the monster; it multiplies the conditions that allow it to flourish, strengthening its presence in public life until monstrosity itself acquires the authority to govern. In this instance, the collapse of conscience is inseparable from the uncoupling of “belief from judgment, conviction from action.”

— from The Hartmann Report

A new Economist/YouGov poll of registered voters that just came out this week found that the top two words that Americans across the board endorse to describe Donald Trump are “corrupt” (53%) and “dangerous” (51%). Not even half of registered Republican voters were willing to call him “honest.”

This is consistent with Gallup’s finding earlier this month that fully 89 percent of Americans now believe that corruption in our government is widespread, the highest number in the two decades the polling company has been asking, and a higher number than in any other advanced, industrialized democracy.

The same day that poll came out, yesterday, CBS News published photos that American service members smuggled out of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia showing extensive — massive — damage to barracks, facilities, and even US aircraft, all done by Iranian drones and missiles. The Pentagon’s own Inspector General just reported that there has been $3.7 billion in equipment and building losses and around 60 aircraft destroyed or severely damaged.

— from OtherWords

Gen Z women like me are having fewer babies. That shouldn’t be a surprise — with prices for everything going up, our parents’ steady jobs, white picket fences, and retirement packages feel much less attainable for us.

But the government wants to make us change that. In the U.S. and elsewhere, anxiety over aging populations and shrinking labor forces has been woven into the claim that women in their 20s somehow owe the economy more babies.

Our fertility becomes an asset on a balance sheet to counteract falling birth and marriage rates. Women who choose to put our own lives and interests first get branded “childless cat ladies,” as Vice President J.D. Vance once called us. But if being in no rush to get pregnant means I’m a selfish cat lady, I’m proud to claim the title.

President Donald Trump is losing badly, and he knows it. At the MAGA rally billed as the Republican midterm convention on September 9-10, he mounted yet another brazen attack on the democratic process that threatens to hold him accountable. He tried to buy votes, imbue personal loyalty to him over allegiance to democracy, and encourage voter fraud.

Most of the media dismissed the episode as just another bizarre Trump moment.

A Dubious Promise

Eight minutes into his second keynote speech on Day Two of the rally, the president promised a $5,000 “Trump dividend” to every US adult citizen if Republicans retained control of Congress in November. That would add more than $1 trillion to the burgeoning federal deficit and fuel persistent inflation.

— from the Brennan Center for Justice

Voters had a big win at the Supreme Court this week. What does it all mean?

On Monday, the court refused to allow the Postal Service to implement a new rule that would have curbed mail voting. But the one-paragraph ruling seemed to say more than “not yet.” The Trump administration, the justices ruled, was “unlikely to succeed on the merits.”

This was great news for the millions of citizens who rely on mail voting, the method now used by 1 in 3 voters. It was utterly bonkers that the White House tried to exert control over the election system. That’s illegal, a fact now confirmed over and over. The Brennan Center was proud to be part of the legal team representing voters before the Supreme Court.

President Donald Trump’s drive to undermine the election is failing. Time and again, his moves have been parried or blocked.

— from Salon

Natalie Harp’s enormous bag and unflattering photos of Trump's rear end fuel attacks on a reporter

If there’s ever been anything Donald Trump loves more than gold, it’s a camera. The former reality TV host has willingly debased himself in a myriad of ways — doing an ad for Pizza Hut, shaving Vince McMahon’s head during a wrestling match, painful “acting” appearances in “Home Alone 2″ and “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” — all to get a sweet, sweet dose of video proof of his existence.

Right now Trump can’t stop begging for attention, even though it’s immensely damaging to his party’s midterm prospects. He forced the Republicans to throw him a two-day fake convention so he could give lengthy prime-time speeches. He holds frequent on-camera events in the Oval Office, forgoing the work of actual governance so he can be photographed sitting behind the Resolute Desk.

— from Rober Reich's Substack

Friends,

Earlier this week, after a federal judge barred the Kennedy Center from once again adding Trump’s name to it, Trump apparently ordered his handpicked Center trustees to close it down. (Fencing went up around the building yesterday.)

Trump said in a social media post that the closure was needed for safety repairs. But he also said the repairs would happen only if the board were permitted to move forward with plans to add his name to the building.

The Center’s trustees confirmed that without “appropriate recognition” on the building, Trump was unlikely to oversee the renovation or “lead the fiscal rescue of the Center.” A fiscal rescue is necessary because ticket sales and fundraising plunged after the trustees added Trump’s name to the building in December.