Cliffhanger

 

The Long Fall:

At the root of all Trump’s efforts to undermine the Constitution and destroy the country is Vladimir Putin. Putin would like very much to wrap up the war in Ukraine and take back all the old Soviet Union’s satellite countries -- Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia et-al. During his first term, Trump let it be known that he’d let him do it. Trouble is, Putin can’t seem to get the job done. Russia’s not the country it once was and Putin’s running out of time. Sure would make things easier if the USA were out of the picture.

Art by Kevin Kreneck. For more Graphics and Greeting Cards, go to https://kkreneck.wixsite.com/mysite

Dispatches

MEDICAL EXPERTS HORRIFIED BY TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ‘FRIDAY NIGHT MASSACRE’ AT CDC, BUT SOME ARE CALLED BACK. The Trump administration carried out mass layoffs of federal public health officials Oct. 10 that experts warned would leave the US dangerously unprepared to handle disease outbreaks.

As reported by The New York Times Oct. 11, the layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were deep and wide-ranging, and included employees and leaders “in offices addressing respiratory diseases, chronic diseases, injury prevention, and global health.”

The administration laid off the entire CDC office in Washington, D.C., as well as the staff of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a publication founded in 1930 that has been credited with the first reporting in medical literature on the disease that would come to be known as AIDS in 1981.

In addition to this, several dozen Epidemic Intelligence Service officers, commonly known as “disease detectives” who track outbreaks across the world, received their termination notices, Bred Reed noted at Common Dreams (10/11).

Dr. Jeremy Foust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, reported in a post on his personal Substack newsletter that CDC insiders are estimating that “between 1,100 and 1,300 employees are being cut” by the Trump administration.

Other public health experts reacted with horror to news of the terminations.

Dr. Catharine Young, a senior fellow at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, described the layoffs as a “Friday night massacre” and warned of severe repercussions for both US citizens and the entire world.

“This isn’t streamlining the government—it’s dismantling our ability to detect and respond to outbreaks before they spread,” she wrote in a post on X. “You can’t cut your way to safety.”

However, the Trump administration on the next day reversed about half of the layoffs at the CDC after hundreds of scientists received “incorrect notifications” that they were laid off during the government shutdown, NBC News reported Oct. 12, citing an official familiar with the matter.

“The employees who received incorrect notifications were never separated from the agency and have all been notified that they are not subject to the reduction in force,” the official told NBC News. “This was due to a glitch in the system.”

The reversed layoffs came just after the administration moved to lay off thousands of federal workers during the government shutdown, prompting backlash from critics who argue the layoffs are illegal.

The reduction-in-force moves are being challenged in court and mark the latest fallout from the government shutdown fight, which has stretched into its second week as lawmakers show no signs of moving closer to a deal.

TRUMP HAS HIRED 100+ ‘FOSSIL FUEL INSIDERS’ TO FILL TOP ENERGY, ENVIRONMENTAL ROLES. A top energy adviser to President Donald Trump admitted in an August interview that the administration is offering “concierge, white-glove service” to fossil fuel companies while blocking and defunding clean energy projects, Stephen Prager noted at Common Dreams (10/8).

The comments, reported Oct. 7 by the Washington Post, came from Brittany Kelm, a senior policy adviser for Trump’s National Energy Dominance Council (NEDC), which was established within the Department of the Interior in February.

“We’re like this little tiger team, concierge, white-glove service, essentially,” Kelm said on the Lobby Shop podcast, “We were put together very particularly with the president’s priorities in mind on energy. So keeping coal plants open, establishing critical mineral mining domestically, and then that broader supply chain.”

She described her role in the council as being to help oil, gas, and coal companies navigate “the politicals” of agencies that grant permits for new projects. Companies, she said, “can walk out of our office, and they have all the contacts they need” for regulators in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the departments of the Interior and Commerce.

“We know how to unstick what is stuck,” Kelm said. “It’s a lot of undoing old policies and getting rid of regulatory burdens.”

Mahyar Sorour, the director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Fossil Fuels policy project, responded: “The reality of fossil fuel companies getting white-glove, concierge service from the Trump administration would be comical if it weren’t so sinister.”

“During the election,” she continued, “Trump told oil and gas executives that he would clear the way for more production without any safeguards if they gave his campaign a billion dollars—they did, and now Trump is blocking clean energy and giving the oil and gas industry immense handouts in return.”

Since retaking office in January, Trump has sought to expand the production of oil, gas, and coal with reckless abandon, without regard to the impacts of carbon emissions on the planet or other environmental impacts of pollution.

As the rest of the world has surged its use of wind and solar projects, surpassing coal for the first time this year, the Department of Energy made a $625 million investment to “expand and reinvigorate the coal industry,” which is the dirtiest form of energy.

And July’s massive GOP budget contained billions of dollars worth of handouts for the fossil fuel industry, boosted drilling on millions of acres of public lands, mandated oil and gas lease sales, and imposed new fees on renewable development.

At the same time, Trump has singlehandedly reduced the US’s growth outlook for renewables by 45%, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).

As the Post reports:

[Trump’s] administration has held up permits for solar and wind projects since July and blocked wind farms outright. The Energy Department last week canceled $7.6 billion in funding for projects aimed at curbing climate change including installation of renewables, grid upgrades and carbon capture projects. That’s on top of $27 billion in funding for clean energy that the Environmental Protection Agency is seeking to claw back.

COAL MINERS NEVER THOUGHT TRUMP WOULD MAKE BLACK LUNG GREAT AGAIN. Coal miners, who largely work in states that President Donald Trump won by large margins in the 2024 election, are criticizing his administration for failing to enforce federal rules that would limit the spread of potentially fatal black lung disease, Oliver Willis noted at Common Dreams  (10/13).

“The coal miners have supplied this country with electricity, and now they’re just cast aside to die,” West Virginia-based Judith Riffe, whose husband died of the ailment, told The New York Times.

A federal rule limiting miner exposure to silica dust—which causes black lung disease—was set to go into effect in April, but it has been opposed in court by the mining industry, which alleges that it’s too expensive to limit the use of the material, despite the health risk.

The Trump administration has decided not to enforce the rule until the court case is resolved, demonstrating its support for the mining industry. But then in September, the administration said that it would put at least $625 million into subsidizing the coal industry—ignoring all environmental impacts.

“The companies might be getting a handout, but the miners ain’t getting none,” Gary Hairston, a retired West Virginia coal miner who has suffered from black lung disease for more than 30 years and is president of the National Black Lung Association, told the Times. 

In 2024, Trump won West Virginia by more than 41 percentage points, with 69.97% of the vote. That made it Trump’s second-best performance behind Wyoming, where he received 71.6% of the vote.

The rule to protect miners was proposed in 2024 under President Joe Biden and was the first time in U.S. history that silica dust was regulated. 

“We’re making it clear that no job should be a death sentence, and every worker has the right to come home healthy and safe at the end of the day,” Julie Su, who was the acting director for the Department of Labor at the time, said. 

Congressional Republicans have voiced their support for holding back the rule. In a July letter to the head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration at the Labor Department, House Education and Workforce Committee Republicans complained that the rule is “unwarranted and costly.”

But despite the position of the industry and the Trump administration, mine workers are developing black lung disease at an earlier age. Data shows that the current rate of the disease is back to rates last seen more than 50 years ago, in the 1970s.

Black lung disease is an incurable condition and can lead to deadly outcomes like lung cancer, tuberculosis, and heart failure.

GOP GERRYMANDERING MAY BACKFIRE SPECTACULARLY. It appears Republicans are getting too big for their britches in the Donald Trump-led effort to rig the 2026 midterm elections by redrawing congressional districts to benefit the GOP—hubris that may backfire a bit, Emily Singer noted at Daily Kos (10/9).

On Oct. 6, Utah’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a new congressional map that actually opens the party up to losing two seats in the state’s four-member U.S. House delegation.

Utah passed the new map under orders from a state judge, who ruled in August that the current Republican congressional gerrymander violated a law that required the state to use a nonpartisan commission when drawing districts.

But rather than make one of the state’s four seats blue by centering it around Democratic-heavy Salt Lake City, as proposed by an independent redistricting commission, Republicans instead redrew the map to split Salt Lake City into two districts, a move that ensures that President Donald Trump carried all four of the state’s new House seats—albeit by smaller margins than the illegal map the judge struck down.

Yet, if a Democratic wave materializes in 2026 amid backlash to Trump and his party’s fealty to his lawlessness, Republicans might actually lose two seats, rather than just one.

“The map has two seats that Trump carried by about 2 and 7 points, respectively. Such a plan might end up being a ‘dummymander’—a situation when the dominant party draws a map to favor it that backfires and produces gains for the opposition party,” Geoffrey Skelley, the chief elections analyst at the outlet Decision Desk HQ, wrote about a draft of Utah’s new map.

The new map will still need to be approved by a judge before it takes effect.

Meanwhile, things are looking good for Democrats in California, where voters are being asked in a November ballot measure whether the legislature should redraw the state’s congressional maps in response to GOP redistricting efforts in Texas.

Punchbowl News reported on Oct. 8 that Republicans appear to be throwing in the towel on California’s redistricting fight, believing that Democrats’ efforts to paint the referendum as a check on Trump’s power will lead the ballot measure to pass. Polls suggest the measure would pass if the election were held today.

If the ballot measure passes, California’s redrawn map would likely neutralize the gains Republicans are seeking to make in Texas.

What’s more, Republicans’ efforts to redraw Indiana’s congressional map appear to be stalling. GOP lawmakers are getting cold feet about trying to axe a Democratic seat, Politico’s Adam Wren reported—so much so that the White House is sending Vice President JD Vance to the state to strong-arm GOP legislators into submission.

Democrats, meanwhile, say that despite Republicans’ best efforts to gerrymander their way to victory, the GOP’s unpopular actions will still sink its House majority next November.

“[Trump] is trying everything possible to keep the House in 2026. All the redistricting in the world isn’t going to help when the Trump health insurance premiums hits,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) wrote Oct. 7 in a post on X. “24 Million voters, many in swing districts, are gonna see their insurance costs increase. Good luck Don!”

RASKIN DEMANDS BACK RECORDS IN PROBE OF $1.5 BILLION IN ‘SUSPICIOUS’ TRANSACTIONS TIED TO EPSTEIN. US House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) on Oct. 8 sent letters to four major banks demanding records related to more than $1.5 billion in “suspicious” financial transactions tied to Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring, Jessica Corbett noted at Common Dreams (10/9).

“Can Bank of America help Congress understand how Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and their co-conspirators were able to use your bank and others to conduct more than $1.5 billion in suspicious financial transactions to operate their international sex trafficking ring for years without ever being caught?” Raskin (D-Md.) wrote to the bank’s CEO, Brian Moynihan.

The congressman began his letters to Bank of New York Mellon CEO Robin Vince, Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing, and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon the same way.

Epstein, a financier and convicted sex offender, was found dead in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while facing federal charges for sex trafficking. His death was ruled a suicide, but that has been met with deep skepticism. Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year federal sentence for her related crimes.

The US Department of Justice has refused to release all of its files on Epstein, heightening public, media, and congressional attention on his friendship with President Donald Trump in the 1990s until their alleged falling out in the early 2000s.

“In September, at a hearing with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Kash Patel, it became clear that the FBI has failed to ‘follow the money’ with regard to more than $1.5 billion in suspicious transactions related to Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking ring,” Raskin wrote Oct. 8.

“In light of this startling information, House Judiciary Committee Democrats moved to subpoena financial records related to Jeffrey Epstein from these four banks, but Republicans, with the exception of Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky,), blocked these efforts,” he explained, urging the institutions to willingly work with the panel.

Under the Bank Secrecy Act, institutions must implement anti-money laundering policies, which include requiring compliance officers, often in consultation with executives, to file a suspicious activity report (SAR) within 60 days of noticing an activity that raises a red flag, “so federal authorities can be alerted to the potential criminal activity and investigate,” the letters stress.

“Despite the public nature of Mr. Epstein’s crimes, and the hundreds of millions of his funds flowing through your bank, it appears Bank of America filed only two significantly delayed SARs relating to his conduct—covering $170 million in transactions between Mr. Epstein and billionaire investor Leon Black,” Raskin wrote to Moynihan.

‘CROOKED COPS’ REPORT DETAILS TRUMP-LED CORRUPTION OF JUSTICE DEPT. The Not Above the Law Coalition on Thursday released a report documenting how President Donald Trump’s administration has been corrupting every aspect of federal law enforcement, Brad Reed noted at Common Dreams (10/9).

The report, titled Trump’s “Crooked Cops”: The Corruption of Federal Law Enforcement, said that the president has “gone to extreme lengths to appoint top officials with no compunction about abusing their power to pervert justice to punish political enemies and favor political friends,” before showing how these appointees have swiftly eliminated their agencies’ independence from White House political pressure.

“Law enforcement that serves the political interests of the president rather than the public eliminates a core tenet of democracy, namely that we are a country of laws, not of men,” the report emphasizes.

The report begins by recounting how Attorney General Pam Bondi followed direct orders from the president to file criminal charges against former FBI Director James Comey, while at the same time noting that she has overseen “a department-wide purge of career officials who were assigned to Trump’s criminal cases or who were suspected to be insufficiently loyal to Trump personally.”

Other Trump officials who feature prominently in the report include FBI Director Kash Patel, who is facing a lawsuit from former agents who have alleged they were fired as part of a “campaign of retribution”; Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who conducted an interview with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, and then moved her “to more comfortable, low-security accommodations” after she told him that Trump had no involvement in her former partner Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal activities; and White House border czar Tom Homan, who was allegedly caught on video accepting a $50,000 cash bribe from undercover FBI agents.

The report also takes a swipe at Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, who publicly pressured ABC to take late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel off the air mere hours before the network decided to suspend him.

“This was by no means the first instance of Carr weaponizing his regulatory enforcement power for political ends,” the report says. “His threats have been all the more significant as many media companies have business interests pending before the administration.

During a conference call announcing the report, Rep. Joe Morelle (D-NY) described the Trump administration’s actions as ”so distressing and so disturbing,“ and vowed that he was ”not going to stand by while the Department of Justice is used to subvert the rule of law.“

Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-NY), a former federal prosecutor, said on the call that it was ”personally devastating“ to watch the corruption of the Justice Department, and he vowed that House Democrats would be ready to go with oversight investigations should they return to the majority after the 2026 midterm elections.

”Trump is trying to turn this government into his own personal fiefdom,“ said Goldman, who later described the weaponization of the Department of Homeland Security as ”downright scary.“

LIVING WAGE, AFFORDABILITY PLATFORMS HAVE MAJOR ELECTORAL ADVANTAGE, POLLS SHOW. As One Fair Wage launched a new political action committee focused on electing candidates who will push for a true living wage that makes it possible for working people across the US to thrive, the coalition said two new surveys provide a “roadmap for 2026” for candidates and Democratic leaders who are willing to follow it, Julia Conley noted at Common Dreams (10/9).

The polls were conducted by Democratic polling firm Lake Research Partners on behalf of One Fair Wage (OFW) and the Living Wage for All Coalition, and found “overwhelming support for living wage policies in competitive swing districts and in major cities.”

In 18 competitive congressional districts across the country, the first survey found that 55% of respondents supported raising the minimum wage for all workers to $25 per hour, even after being exposed to opposition messaging.

Latino voters showed the strongest support at 72%, along with people of color overall at 64%, women at 60%, and people under age 40 at 59%.

With grocery prices harder to afford than they were one year ago in many swing districts, as another poll showed last week, 56% of people said raising the minimum wage is a high or medium priority for them, including 71% of Democratic voters.

The firm also asked voters in major cities with high costs of living, including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco, whether they supported raising the minimum wage to $30 in those areas, and found similar results.

Two-thirds said they backed gradually raising the minimum wage for all workers to $30 per hour.

“Support is strongest among the very voters Democrats must mobilize to win in 2026 and 2028: Black voters (80%), Latino voters (73%), young voters under 40 (72%), and women (72%) all back the proposal,” Lake Research Partners said.

Support for the proposal was highest in New York City, where Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani (D-36) has included a $30 minimum wage proposal as part of his mayoral campaign platform—one that’s heavily focused on making the city more affordable for all New Yorkers.

Seventy-two percent of New Yorkers said they supported the proposal.

The polling comes as endorsements from lawmakers and advocacy groups that have long been aligned with the Democratic Party have piled up for Mamdani—and as powerful party leaders in New York including US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand have continued to refuse to publicly support the democratic socialist.

Saru Jayaraman, president of OFW, warned that a failure to deliver on affordability and living wages before the midterm elections next year will make ”saving democracy“ from President Donald Trump and the Republican Party impossible.

”We represent 13.6 million restaurant workers in America,“ Jayaraman told Common Dreams. ”And over the last nine months, they’ve repeatedly asked us: ‘You want us to come to a rally on a Saturday to save democracy? I work three jobs and I earn $3 [an hour]. What has democracy done for me lately? Nothing.’“

Along with electing candidates who center living wages and affordability, Jayaraman said in a statement that delivering on the issue ”means passing Living Wage for All legislation in every blue state next spring and ensuring no one is left behind.“

”If Democrats don’t deliver, the right will continue to exploit the affordability crisis to divide working people,“ she said. ”Delivering real affordability is how we restore trust—and how we save democracy.”

Joining OFW in launching the Make America Affordable Now PAC on Thursday are Democratic candidates who are centering affordability and living wages in their campaigns, including Minnesota state Sen. Omar Fateh (D-62), who is running for mayor of Minneapolis; Seattle mayoral candidate Katie Wilson; and US Senate candidate Graham Platner of Maine.

CAMPUS LEADERS MOBILIZE TO BATTLE TRUMP’S ANTI-EDUCATION ‘COMPACT.’ Campus activist groups are banding together to fight against President Donald Trump’s proposed “compact” with universities in which they would receive priority access to federal funding in exchange for pledging support for aspects of the president’s political agenda, Brad Reed noted at Common Dreams (8/8).

The Sunrise Movement on Wednesday said that students and workers at the universities who have been invited by the Trump administration to sign the compact have “already gathered thousands of petition signatures” urging school administrators to reject it, and they are “planning coordinated campus protests in the coming weeks” to keep the pressure on their schools to resist any effort to infringe upon academic freedom.

The proposed deal with the Trump administration requires that universities abolish institutions on campus that “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.” Additionally, it would completely overhaul admissions processes so that schools are not allowed to consider factors “such as sex, ethnicity, race, nationality, political views, sexual orientation, gender identity, [or] religious associations.”

Critics have said that agreeing to these terms would essentially end schools’ academic freedom, and the Sunrise Movement compiled quotes from both students and professors explaining their opposition to the Trump administration’s proposed deal.

Kelsey Levine, a student at the University of Virginia, said the school’s signature on the agreement would be tantamount to “selling out its most vulnerable populations of students: international students, transgender students, and students of color,” as well as “compromising its foundational principles of independence, truth-seeking, and democracy.”

Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors, described the Trump administration’s proposal as a “corrupt bribery attempt” that “would usher in a new draconian era of thought policing in American higher education, cripple our technological innovation capacity, and assault our very democracy.”

Evan Bowman, vice chair of Higher Ed Labor United, said that the battle against the Trump administration’s efforts to infringe upon academic freedom were being waged with an all-hands-on-deck effort.

“Workers, students, campus community members across this great country are coming together to fight for a higher education system that actually works for all,” he said. “One that is affordable, strengthens freedom and democracy, and stands up to its public mission.”

Jan-Werner Müller, a professor of politics at Princeton University, wrote in The Guardian on Tuesday that all universities must reject Trump’s proposal on the grounds that “it is a thinly veiled attack on academic freedom; it is a test case for whether Trumpists can get away with demanding loyalty oaths; it exceeds the president’s powers to begin with; and it is bound to achieve the opposite of its stated goal of ‘academic excellence in higher education.’”

Müller also linked the agreement to what he described as “Trump’s emerging mafia state,” in which “there is no guarantee that those bending the knee will not be bullied again.”

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on Monday that only one institution, the University of Texas at Austin, has so far signaled support for the compact, while others have started to signal their opposition.

Trump is Unfit to be President

Donald Trump at his core is a real estate developer with a mixed record in business deals, who went through four business bankruptcies while he became famous portraying a master of business as TV host of “Apprentice” and “Celebrity Apprentice.” 

 Trump University was a for profit school that failed in 2011 amid fraud claims. His family charity came under scrutiny in 2016 for ethical and legal violations. In 2024 he was found liable for fraudulently misrepresenting assets to obtain loans, in in a lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Leticia James in federal court in New York. Trump was found guilty in 2024 in New York state court of felony charges for his use of business assets to keep a porn actress silent about their past affair, while he was running for president in 2016. And he was indicted on federal charges relating to his attempts to tamper with election results in a failed attempt to overturn his 2020 defeat and his role in mounting an insurrection at the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in a failed attempt to stop the certification of the election results. 

 Despite all this, the Republican Party thought Trump was the best man to carry their banner again in 2024, as the GOP made the tran- sition to Greedy Oligarch Party. Trump returned to the White House with a mere plurality of the national vote and narrow control of Congress, but plenty of scores to settle by whatever means necessary. 

What’s the worst that could happen? We have found out during the first 10 months of Trump’s retribution tour. 

First, of course. Trump nominated radical Congressmen Matt Gaetz to be attorney general, but Gaetz had to withdraw from the nomination amid sexual misconduct allegations, so former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a longtime Trump loyalist, got the nod. 

Trump went on to assemble what may be the least competent Cabinet in modern history. While most nominees were confirmed on near-party-line votes, where Republicans rule with 53 senators, Fox News weekend host Pete Hegseth needed Vice President JD Vance’s tiebreaker vote to become Defense Secretary. 

Then, steered by the Heritage Institute’s Project 25 guidelines, Trump ignored the separation of powers and other limitations of presidential power. He (and his key advisers) started ruling by executive orders and social media. In late September, Trump ordered Attorney General Bondi to move faster in prosecuting three perceived enemies, former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Leticia James and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who led the first impeachment of Trump in 2020, when Schiff was in the House. In a Truth Social text on Sept. 10 that apparently was meant as a private message, Trump asked Bondi, “What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.” He added, “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! President DJT.” 

Within a few weeks, Erik Siebert, the experienced career prosecutor was replaced by Lindsey Halligan, a former Trump lawyer who had never prosecuted a criminal case. Comey was indicted on a charge of making a false statement to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding, over the objections of veteran prosecutors who said there was no probable cause for the charges. James was indicted on a charge of mortgage fraud. Comey and James have denied the charges. Schiff said he will not be intimidated, or deterred. “We will do our jobs. We will stand up to this president,” he told reporters. 

If there is any doubt about Trump’s increasing dementia, his Truth Social posting at 12:38 a.m. Oct. 12 offers proof. “THE BIDEN FBI PLACED 274 AGENTS INTO THE CROWD ON JANUARY 6,” he wrote. “If this is so, which it is, a lot of very good people will be owed big apologies. What a SCAM – DO SOMETHING!!! President DJT” 

Trump was president on Jan. 6, 2021, and he was in control of the FBI during the riot, which he watched on TV as he rebuffed pleas to send the D.C. National Guard to relieve embattled Capitol police. He either forgot that experience, or he is lying again. 

Trump also has called for the jailing of Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson for opposing his efforts to deploy military there to “restore order.” A federal judge in Illinois who blocked Trump from deploying Texas National Guard troops in Chicago Oct. 10 questioned Trump’s grasp on reality. Judge April Perry noted lawyers for the state and the city of Chicago argue that “National Guard troops from both Illinois and Texas have been deployed to Illi- nois because the president of the United States wants to punish state elected officials whose policies are different from his own.” 

Perry noted that the president may federalize the National Guard if “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority” of the US government, but that is not justified by current circumstances. The judge noted a “troubling trend” of the Trump administration “equating protests with riots” and “a lack of appreciation for the wide spectrum that exists between citizens who are observing, questioning, and criticizing their government, and those who are obstructing, assaulting, or doing violence. ... Ultimately, this court must conclude that Defendants’ ... perceptions are not reliable.” 

Whether Trump is really sinking into dementia or he is simply misleading the nation, Republicans who stand by in Congress and watch Trump’s abuse of office share his guilt or derangement. — JMC

Thoughts and Prayers

 

Thoughts and Prayers

Well entrenched far right wing political reluctance to address gun control is a problem. Data still shows that states with strict gun control laws have seen a significant drop in the rate of gun related deaths among children. Not surprising, states with lenient gun control laws have seen a rise.  

And so, kids continue to be slaughtered, and those on the far right continue to offer thoughts and prayers.

Art by Kevin Kreneck. For more Graphics and Greeting Cards, go to https://kkreneck.wixsite.com/mysite

Dispatches

 APPEALS COURT UPHOLDS E. JEAN CARROLL’S $83 MILLION DEFAMATION WIN AGAINST TRUMP. A federal appeals court upheld a civil jury’s finding that Donald Trump must pay $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll for his repeated social media attacks against the longtime advice columnist after she accused him of sexual assault, the Associated Press reported (9/8).

In a ruling issued Sept. 8, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Trump’s appeal of the defamation award, finding that the “jury’s damages awards are fair and reasonable.”

Trump had argued that he should not have to pay the sum as a result of a Supreme Court decision expanding presidential immunity. His lawyers had asked for a new trial.

A civil jury in Manhattan issued the $88.3 million award last year following a trial that centered on Trump’s repeated social media attacks against Carroll over her claims that he sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan department store in 1996.

That award followed a separate trial, in which Trump was found liable for sexually abusing Carroll and ordered to pay $5 million. An appeals court upheld that award last December.

In a memoir, and again at a 2023 trial, Carroll described how a chance encounter with Trump at Bergdorf Goodman’s Fifth Avenue in 1996 started with the two flirting as they shopped, then ended with a violent struggle inside a dressing room.

Carroll said Trump slammed her against a dressing room wall, pulled down her tights and forced himself on her.

A jury found Trump liable for sexual assault, but concluded he hadn’t committed rape, as defined under New York law.

Trump repeatedly denied that the encounter took place and accused Carroll of making it up to help sell her book.

He also said that Carroll was “not my type.”

The 2023 jury awarded Carroll $5 million to compensate her for both the alleged attack and statements Trump made denying that it had happened.

After that first verdict, the court held a second trial with a new jury for deciding damages from additional statements Trump made attacking Carroll’s character and truthfulness.

Trump had skipped the first civil trial but he attended the second, which took place as he was running for president in 2024. Speaking to reporters throughout the trial, Trump portrayed the lawsuit as part of a broader effort to smear him and prevent him from regaining the White House.

His lawyers complained that the judge, in setting rules for the second, damages trial, had barred Trump and his defense team from claiming in front of the jury that he was innocent of the attack. The judge ruled that that issue had been settled by the first jury and didn’t need to be revisited.

SUPREME COURT LIFTS LOWER COURT BAN ON ‘BLATANT RACIAL PROFILING’ BY ICE AGENTS. The US Supreme Court on Sept. 8 gave its approval for federal immigration agents to stop and detain anyone in the Los Angeles area based on factors including “the type of work one does,” a person’s use of Spanish or accented English, or their “apparent race or ethnicity”—allowing what critics called “blatant racial profiling” to be used to carry out President Donald Trump’s mass detention and deportation plan, Julia Conley noted at Common Dreams (9/8).

The court’s three liberal justices dissented, but the right-wing majority sided with the Department of Homeland Security, whose agents in recent months have carried out sweeping raids across the Los Angeles area, including in incidents that have been caught on video and appear to be armed roundups of large randomized groups of Latino people—not operations targeted at arresting violent criminals, as the Trump administration has previously suggested.

The court did not provide an explanation of its reasoning, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a separate opinion expressing agreement with the ruling, saying the court was simply allowing immigration agents to use “commonsense” criteria for stopping and detaining people, including their English proficiency and the type of work they do.

In their dissenting opinion, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote, “We should not have to live in a country where the government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low-wage job.”

“Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent,” wrote Sotomayor.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council (AIC) said the ruling by the right-wing majority has troubling implications. 

“Because a sizeable portion of Los Angeles’s low-income Latino community is undocumented,” he said, the court believes “it is inherently acceptable for [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to stop and question any Latino working a low-wage job that is seen seeking Spanish.”

Civil rights groups joined several individuals in filing a lawsuit against the administration earlier this year, arguing that thousands of people in Los Angeles have been wrongly arrested in unconstitutional, “indiscriminate immigration operations.”

“Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force,” the plaintiffs argued, “and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents have been violating the US Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, they said, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

In July, Judge Maame E. Frimpong in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, ordered agents not to stop or arrest people in the Los Angeles area based on factors including race and ethnicity, language spoken, or their involvement in particular kinds of work including at day-laborer or farming sites.

The Trump administration later appealed to the Supreme Court, saying the lower court’s order had unlawfully interfered with ICE operations and claiming agents use discretion to ensure they don’t wrongfully include people in immigration sweeps.

AS TRUMP CLAIMS TO CLEAN UP CRIME, HIS PARDONS HAUNT HIM. President Donald Trump claims to be cleaning up crime in Washington, after he sent the National Guard to police D,C.

However, Trump should be more concerned with the crime spree being carried out by some of the 1,500 Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionists he pardoned, a number of whom have been re-arrested since Trump gave them clemency in one of the first actions he took when retaking office in January, Emily Singer noted at Daily Kos (9/8).

Robert Keith Packer, the Jan. 6 insurrectionist who infamously wore a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt, is the latest Trump pardon recipient to be arrested again since receiving Trump’s pardon.

Packer was taken into custody in Virginia on Sept. 4 after his dogs allegedly attacked four people, sending them to the hospital. One of the victims of the dog attack remains hospitalized and faces the possibility of losing her arm, according to a local media outlet in Newport News, Va, where the attack occurred.

According to a report from ABC News, Packer was charged with “one felony count of animal attack resulting from owner’s disregard for human life.” He was also charged with two misdemeanors of “attacking while at large and no city license.”

Packer had served 75 days in federal prison for his role in the Capitol insurrection, in which hordes of Trump supporters violently broke their way into the Capitol to try to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential victory. Packer was to be arraigned on Sept. 12 for the alleged dog attack.

So far, at least six pardoned insurrectionists have been arrested for new crimes, including Packer. They include: Zachary J. Alam, who was arrested in May on burglary charges in Virginia; Andrew Taake, who in February was arrested on child sex crimes charges; Daniel Ball arrested on pending federal gun charges; and Matthew Huttle was shot and killed by police during a traffic stop. Another pardoned insurrectionist, Edward Kelley, was sentenced to life in prison after he was convicted on charges of plotting to assassinate law enforcement officers who were involved in the probe of his role in the insurrection.

What’s more, a former FBI agent who urged rioters to kill law enforcement officers defending the Capitol on Jan. 6, now works in Trump’s Department of Justice.

Ultimately, Trump isn’t cleaning up crime, as he claims. He instead unleashed it by pardoning unrepentant rioters, going as far as mulling whether to give them restitution even though they sought to overthrow the government. One of the rioters, Ashli Babbitt, a U.S. Air Force veteran, died after she was shot by a Capitol police officer as she tried to break into the House chamber. Her family filed a wrongful death lawsuit and Trump’s U.S. Department of Justice in May agreed to a payment of $4.975 million to the family and the Air Force in August offered a military funeral for Babbit.

TRUMP ACCUSES FOES WITH MULTIPLE MORTGAGES OF FRAUD, BUT RECORDS SHOW 3 CABINET MEMBERS ALSO HAVE THEM. The Trump administration vowed to go after anyone who got lower mortgage rates by claiming more than one primary residence on their loan papers.

President Trump has used the claiming of multiple primary residences as a justification to target political foes, including Lisa Cook, a governor on the Federal Reserve Board, U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who pursued a civil fraud case against Trump,, his adult children and his company for misrepresenting his wealth to obtain favorable loan and insurance rates..

Real estate experts say claiming primary residences on different mortgages at the same time is often legal and rarely prosecuted.

But if administration officials continue the campaign, ProPublica reported Sept. 4, mortgage records show there’s another place they could look: Trump’s own Cabinet.

Underscoring how common the practice is, ProPublica found that at least three of Trump’s Cabinet members call multiple homes their primary residences on mortgages. We discovered the loans while examining financial disclosure forms, county real estate records and publicly available mortgage data provided by Hunterbrook Media.

Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer entered into two primary-residence mortgages in quick succession, including for a second home near a country club in Arizona, where she’s known to vacation. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has primary-residence mortgages in New Jersey and Washington, D.C. Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, has one primary-residence mortgage in Long Island and another in Washington, D.C., according to loan records. 

In a flurry of interviews and rapid-fire posts on X, Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director, has led the charge in accusing Trump opponents of mortgage fraud. “If somebody is claiming two primary residences, that is not appropriate, and we will refer it for criminal investigation,” Pulte said in August. 

A political donor to the president and heir to a housing company fortune, Pulte’s posts online tease big developments and criminal referrals, drawing reposts from Trump himself and promises of swift consequences. “Fraud will not be tolerated in President Trump’s housing market,” Pulte has warned.

Real estate experts told ProPublica that, in its bid to wrest control of the historically independent Fed and go after political enemies, the Trump administration has mischaracterized mortgage rules. Its justification for launching criminal investigations, they said, could also apply to the Trump Cabinet members.

All three Cabinet members denied wrongdoing. In a statement, a White House spokesperson said: “This is just another hit piece from a left-wing dark money group that constantly attempts to smear President Trump’s incredible Cabinet members. Unlike [Fed Gov.] Lisa ‘Corrupt’ Cook who blatantly and intentionally committed mortgage fraud, Secretary DeRemer, Secretary Duffy, and Administrator Zeldin own multiple residences, and they have followed the law and they are fully compliant with all ethical obligations.”

See the rest of the story, with links, at ProPublica.org.

HOUSE DEMS POUNCE ON RELEASE OF TRUMP PORNOGRAPHIC BIRTHDAY LETTER TO JEFFREY EPSTEIN THAT TRUMP DENIED EXISTED. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Sept. 8, released a photo showing a pornographic birthday card that Donald Trump allegedly sent to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Brad Reed noted at Common Dreams (9/8).

The birthday card’s existence was originally reported by The Wall Street Journal in July, and it features an outline of a naked woman along with Trump’s squiggly signature in the area where the woman’s pubic hair would be.

Trump denied that he ever sent Epstein such a card for his 50th birthday in 2003 and Trump filed a libel lawsuit against the Journal that sought at least $20 billion in damages for what it described as “glaring failures in journalistic ethics and standards of accurate reporting.”

With the note’s existence seemingly confirmed, however, many Democrats rushed to charge the president with trying to cover up the full extent of his relationship with Epstein, who was accused by multiple women of sexually abusing them when they were teenagers.

“We got the Epstein note Trump says doesn’t exist,” said Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.). “Time to end this White House cover-up.”

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) called on the White House to release the full Epstein files.

“Trump said it didn’t exist, but here it is,” she said. “Thank you, Oversight Dems, for proving he is lying. And if he’s lying about this, what else is he lying about? Makes it clear why he is so opposed to releasing these files...”

Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) had a similar reaction to the card.

“No surprise the note does exist,” she said. “More proof this White House cover-up is to protect Trump, the powerful, and the wealthy. Release the full files now.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt took a defiant tone after the note’s publication and continued to insist that it was all a “hoax.”

“As I have said all along, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it,” she said. “President Trump’s legal team will continue to aggressively pursue litigation ... This is FAKE NEWS to perpetuate the Democrat Epstein Hoax!”

PROFESSORS WANT TO LEAVE TEXAS BECAUSE OF TENSE POLITICAL CLIMATE, SURVEY SAYS. Many Texas professors are looking for jobs in different states, citing a climate of fear and anxiety on their college campuses due to increased political interference, according to a recent survey conducted by the American Association of University Professors, Nicholas Gutteridge and Alex Ford reported at TexasTribune.org  (9/5).

The survey interviewed nearly 4,000 faculty across the southern U.S., including more than 1,100 from Texas. About a quarter of the Texas professors said they have applied for higher education jobs in other states in the last two years, and more than 25% said they soon intend to start searching for out-of-state positions. Of those who aren’t thinking of leaving, more than one-fifth said they don’t plan to stay in higher education in the long-term.

“Morale is down,” said one Texas faculty member at a public four-year university in a written response. “Friends have lost contracts for no discernable [sic] reason. We live in fear of using the wrong word. We self-censor. We do not have academic freedom.”

In Texas, faculty have criticized new state laws banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs in universities; requiring universities to establish policies limiting tenure; and limiting faculty’s role in crafting courses and hiring colleagues. Other reasons included salary and academic freedom concerns, the survey found.

“It is certainly a combination of factors of people wanting to leave Texas. But the ability to do your job without attacks from politicians and the ability to participate in your campus voices is always [at] the top of faculty minds,” said Matthew Boedy, president of Georgia’s AAUP chapter.

Texas had the highest percentage — more than 60% — of respondents who said they wouldn’t encourage graduate students or colleagues to seek employment in their state. The survey reached out to faculty from other southern states, including Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas.

“As the survey says, there’s a broad political climate in Texas that is seen as anti-higher education,” Boedy said. “And many faculty, if they can, they don’t want to put up with it.”

The AAUP’s state conferences conducted the study throughout August. Over half of the Texas respondents said they are tenured at their institution, and about 40% have been employed at their university for 16 or more years.

The results come as universities across the U.S. have faced increasing political pressure both at the state and national level.

About one in 10 Texas faculty said they had contracts cut by the Trump administration, according to the survey. Federal agencies have limited and cut funding to research at many universities, such as a policy change at the National Institutes of Health in February that threatened to cost Texas universities hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds. A federal judge blocked the change after a coalition of states sued the NIH.

Many public university systems have also disbanded their faculty senates, groups that advise leaders on curricula, hiring and other academic matters, after state lawmakers passed Senate Bill 37 earlier this year. The legislation gave more control over those decisions to Texas university systems’ regents, who are appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott.

In recent years, lawmakers passed laws banning DEI initiatives in higher education, and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick spearheaded an effort two years ago to limit tenure at public universities, which opponents argued would cause a brain drain in Texas.

An analysis by PEN America in July found that state legislators have introduced more than 70 bills across 26 states that “censor” higher education in one form or another, whether through restrictions on what can be taught or policies that undermine academic freedom.

Mad King Donald Plans War

Donald Trump is in a race with his circulatory system to realize his ambition of becoming a dictator at the level of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. He has brought Republicans to heel, so they overlook his spots of dementia now, as they overlooked his selling of the Big Lie that Democrats had stolen the election in 2020, when he tried to inspire his cult members to stop the transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021.

The House on Jan. 13, 2021, voted to impeach Trump for incitement of insurrection. The Senate trial started Feb. 9, after Trump was forced out of the White House, and that was enough to get 43 Republican senators to rationalize voting for acquittal, which was 10 more than Trump needed to retain the opportunity to run again.

  Trump spent the next three years picking up 34 felony convictions, a civil judgment of liability for misrepresenting his wealth to obtain favorable loan and insurance rates and civil liability for sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll and defamation while a federal prosecutors brought felony insurrection and obstruction charges against him. But the GOP still sponsored his revenge tour.

Once back in the White House on Jan. 20, Trump started implementing measures to stay there, which started with naming an attorney general who would drop the charges against him and clear the Justice Department and FBI of anybody whose loyalty to Trump was suspect, as well as a defense secretary who would clear the Pentagon of leadership who would second-guess Trump’s orders if things got dicey. Trump’s lackeys transformed the Department of Homeland Security into  into a police agency whose Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents became shock troops who would work with National Guards and other military to quell protests, first in Los Angeles and later in Washington, D.C., as they tested the plan.

Now Trump plans to follow up his occupation of Washington, D.C., with invasions of Democratic cities, including Chicago and Baltimore, which he called hellholes of crime, despite evidence that crime, including murder rates, have dropped in recent years.

Trump and his aides/controllers at the White House appear to be testing ways to intimidate voters in the runup to the 2026 midterm elections, when control of the House and Senate is up for grabs. 

The next step was to target Chicago, and the White House gave the game away Sept. 6 when an image was posted on social media, titled “Chipocalypse Now,” a reference to the 1979 war movie, “Apocalypse Now,” which depicted a crouching Trump in a cavalry hat, with helicopters, billowing flames and the Chicago skyline in the background, under the text, “I love the smell of deportations in the morning,” a twist on the famous quote from Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore (played by Robert Duvall), “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” But the post concludes, “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR … Chipocalypse Now”

The post escalated tensions between Trump and Illinois leaders. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, called the “Chipocalypse Now” post “not normal. ... The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city,” he said. “Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”

But with a California federal judge ruling Sept. 2 that Trump’s use of the California National Guard and U.S. marines to patrol downtown Los Angeles was illegal, the White House may be relying on secretive ICE thugs to intimidate civilians and hope violent reactions of protesters will give the feds the pretext to call in the military to back up ICE activities across the country. 

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer of San Francisco ruled the use of armed soldiers (whose identity was often obscured by protective armor) and military vehicles to set up perimeters and traffic blockades, engage in crowd control, and otherwise demonstrate a military presence in and around Los Angeles was a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the president from using the military as a domestic police force without approval from Congress.

California asked the court for an injunction to free the remaining 300 National Guard members stationed in Los Angeles from federal control, after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Aug. 5 ordered the troops to stay on duty through the state’s special election on redistricting in November.

“The timing of Trump’s extension of the National Guard soldiers isn’t coincidental — he’s holding onto soldiers through Election Day,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “The reality is this — they want to continue their intimidation tactics to scare Californians into submission.”

But hours after the California court ruled against Trump’s use of troops in Los Angeles, Trump touted his use of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., and said he would soon send  troops into Chicago. “We’re going in,” Trump said about sending the National Guard to Chicago. The comment came during a Sept. 2 press conference in the Oval Office to announce moving the headquarters of the U.S. Space Force from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Ala. “I’m so very proud of Washington. It serves as the template,” he said.

At a Sept. 2 press conference, Illinois Gov. Pritzker said the National Guard was not needed nor wanted in the city. But he said federal agents were already massing in a nearby military base and predicted they would soon start conducting immigration raids in Latino communities in order to spark demonstrations. “We know, before anything has happened here, that the Trump plan is to use any excuse to deploy armed military personnel to Chicago,” Pritzker said

Chicagoans came out in large numbers against Trump’s power play in the city’s downtown Sept. 6, as thousands of people protested the prospect of increased ICE arrests and the president’s plan to bring the National Guard into the city.

In Washington, D.C., groups of local residents have been operating “night patrols,” armed only with their cell phones, medical kits and the confidence to assert their dwindling rights to trail and record the activities of Trump’s occupation forces, Dave Zirin and Chuck Modiano reported at TheNation.com. 

Although Trump says ICE is going after “the worst of the worst” criminals and bad characters, in fact the raids target any Latinos who can’t show proof of citizenship, including asylum applicants who have been working peaceably in the U.S. for years while they wait for immigration courts to review their cases.

Pritzker has said he is “deeply concerned” that ICE will target Mexican Independence Day in Chicago. “We have reason to believe that Stephen Miller chose the month of September to come to Chicago because of celebrations around Mexican Independence Day that happen here every year,” Pritzker said Sept. 2. “It breaks my heart to report that we have been told ICE will try and disrupt community picnics and peaceful parades. Let’s be clear: the terror and cruelty is the point, not the safety of anyone living here.” 

If ICE or troops show up in your town, you have the right to observe and record their activities. Just don’t give them the excuse to call in armed troops, who don’t want to be there. — JMC

From the October issue of The Progressive Populist.

President Pedophile?

 

President Pedophile?

Whether Trump's political career will survive the complete opening of the Epstein 

files is problematic. Assuming the salacious stories are true, will his supporters 

tolerate a pedophile?

Art by Kevin Kreneck. For more Graphics and Greeting Cards, go to https://kkreneck.wixsite.com/mysite

DISPATCHES

TRUMP DEPLOYS NATIONAL GUARD TO POLICE D.C., SAYS OTHER CITIES MAY BE NEXT. Donald Trump on Aug. 11 moved to deploy the National Guard on the streets of Washington, D.C., while also officially taking over the city’s police department, Brad Reed noted at Common Dreams (8/11).

What’s more, Trump suggested that this could be a model for other American cities.

As reported by NBC News, Trump said during his announcement on plans to deploy the National Guard in the nation’s capital that “other cities are hopefully watching this” and that he hoped it would make them “self-clean up, and maybe they’ll self-do this and get rid of the cashless bail thing and all of the things that caused the problem.”

Trump then named Baltimore, Oakland, New York, and Chicago as potential future targets for National Guard deployments and other measures.

Shortly after Trump made his announcement, Washington, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb indicated that he was not taking the president’s attempt to take over his city’s police force lying down.

“The administration’s actions are unprecedented, unnecessary, and unlawful,” he declared in a post on X. “There is no crime emergency in the District of Columbia. Violent crime in D.C. reached historic 30-year lows last year, and is down another 26% so far this year. We are considering all of our options and will do what is necessary to protect the rights and safety of District residents.”

Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA) was also quick to condemn the president’s takeover of D.C. law enforcement as an unnecessary power grab.

“The president’s attempt to federalize the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and deploy the National Guard on the streets of our nation’s capital is an abuse of power,” she said. “It’s an egotistical, pathetic attempt to stoke fear and distract from his failures: America is less affordable, healthy, and safe under this administration.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who last year served as the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential nominee, chided critics who had accused him in the past of exaggerating the authoritarian threat of a second Trump term.

“The road to authoritarianism is littered with people telling you you’re overreacting,” he wrote on X.

The NAACP, meanwhile, compared Trump’s enthusiasm for deploying the National Guard in Washington, D.C. to purportedly battle crime with the lackadaisical attitude he took toward deploying the National Guard when his supporters violently stormed the United States Capitol building on January 6, 2021.

“As a reminder: The same president who proclaims he wants to take back our capital during a historic 30-year low crime rate also couldn’t find the National Guard on Jan. 6,” the organization wrote.

Politico reported Trump’s seizure of the D.C. police is on borrowed time from a legal perspective. While the Home Rule Act gives Trump the power to take control of the D.C. police force for emergencies, this power only lasts for 30 days, after which he must seek authorization from Congress to maintain control.

TRUMP NAMES CLUELESS CRANK TO RUN BUREAU OF LABOR STATS. President Trump announced E.J. Antoni as his nominee to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Aug. 11, after he fired the former commissioner Aug. 1, blaming her for a weaker-than-expected jobs report. 

Antoni, chief economist for the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank, was a contributor to Project 2025, Trump’s blueprint for taking over the U.S. government, .Oliver Willis noted at Daily Kos (8/11)

Dr. Erika McEntarfer, a labor economist who was nominated by Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate in January 2024, was fired by Trump in retaliation for a jobs report showing the job market beginning to stagnate since he began implementing his tariffs, with only 73,000 jobs added in July—far below the expected 110,000. The report also showed downward job number revisions for May and June.

Instead of admitting that he made a mistake or changing course, Trump has pushed a twisted and false conspiracy theory alleging that jobs numbers are being manipulated.

Antoni’s candidacy for the top BLS job has the open support of former Trump chief of staff and right-wing conspiracy theorist Steve Bannon.

“EJ Antoni as the new head of Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s what we’re pushing,” Bannon said on his podcast, on which Antoni previously appeared to call for McEntarfer’s ouster.

After BLS released a revised jobs report on the state of the economy in August 2024, Antoni declared that it was the sign of a recession. 

“Wall Street is increasingly waking up to the fact that the economy post-COVID has never been as good as the government bean counters claimed, and a recession may have already begun,” he told the right-wing Daily Caller.

Similarly, after the passage of the American Rescue Plan in 2021, Antoni wrote an analysis arguing that it would cause millions of jobs to be lost.

He was extremely wrong on both counts. 

At the end of his 4-year term, President Biden added 16.6 million jobs to the economy after signing several key pieces of legislation to stimulate the economy, including the Rescue Plan, the Infrastructure Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act. Most Republicans—and the Heritage Foundation—opposed those bills.

The economy that Trump inherited from Biden was stabilized after the height of the coronavirus pandemic under Trump and was growing. But now that costs are being artificially increased because of Trump’s tariffs, that growth is under significant threat.

Trump’s tariffs are already hurting the economy, and now someone who couldn’t see economic improvements coming when they were well on their way is likely to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

What could go wrong?

RAIL WORKERS WARN UNION PACIFIC-NORFOLK SOUTHERN MERGER WOULD ‘SIMPLY LINE THE POCKETS OF WALL STREET.’ An inter-union U.S. rail coalition on Aug. 11 announced its formal opposition to Union Pacific’s $85 billion bid to purchase Norfolk Southern and any other private consolidation of railroad giants, warning that such mergers serve only to enrich investors at the expense of workers, passengers, and communities across the nation, Jake Johnson noted at Common Dreams (8/11).

Railroad Workers United (RWU)’s steering committee adopted a resolution outlining its opposition to the pending Union Pacific (UP)-Norfolk Southern (NS) deal, noting that rail mergers “have more often than not been fraught with inefficiencies, confusion, service disruptions, clogged terminals, staffing shortages, exhausted workers, and general malaise.”

RWU “opposes this UP-NS merger as well as any and all takeovers, mergers, or other combinations of the remaining Class One railroads under the current system of private ownership,” the resolution states.

“The only further consolidation of the continent’s rail system that RWU would support is one that is publicly owned—how most nations’ rail infrastructure is owned and operated today—and where the railroad workers are included in all aspects of managing railroad operations,” the document concludes.

RWU joins other prominent rail labor leaders and policy experts who have expressed deep concerns about the proposed takeover, which is part of a wave of mergers in the U.S. industrial sector this year under the Trump administration. The UP-NS merger still must receive federal approval.

“If the Union-Pacific-Norfolk Southern merger is approved, BNSF, the other western railroad—owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway—will almost certainly pursue CSX, the other eastern railroad, to avoid being boxed out,” Arnav Rao, a transportation policy analyst at the Open Markets Institute, warned in a piece for Washington Monthly.

“If the United States is serious about reshoring manufacturing, it cannot afford to let its rail system become a duopoly,” Rao added. “Allowing Union Pacific to absorb Norfolk Southern would leave just two national carriers, each with incalculable leverage over customers, workers, and regulators.”

MOST OF TRUMP’S NET WORTH COMES FROM ‘CRYPTO,’ WHICH TRUMP’S TEAM IS WORKING TO DEREGULATE. Over his nearly seven months as president, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has been taking a sledgehammer to regulations on cryptocurrency. A new report sheds further light on the reasons why, Stephen Prager noted for Common Dreams (8/11).

The president may be profiting far more from his “rapidly-growing crypto empire” than was previously known and has used it to dramatically increase his net worth, according to an investigation released by the anti-corruption group Accountable.US.

While a report from Bloomberg on July 2 estimated the billionaire president’s crypto holdings to total about $620 million of his nearly $7 billion net worth, Accountable examined other investments that had not previously been reported, but indicated Trump’s net worth could roughly be $15.9 billion, with about $11.6 billion in uncounted crypto assets, or 73% of his net worth.

As part of what they called “Crypto Week,” House Republicans passed multiple industry-friendly pieces of crypto legislation in July, the GENIUS Act and the CLARITY Act, which Accountable says would allow Trump to directly profit.

The GENIUS Act purported to create a regulatory framework for so-called “stablecoins,” which are pegged to existing financial assets like the U.S. dollar and are poised to become part of the portfolios of increasing numbers of companies. However, as Nikki McCann Ramirez wrote for Rolling Stone in June:

“One of Trump’s priorities has been the normalization of these so-called stablecoins — a type of asset that his family is now hawking. 

“Despite the moniker, stablecoins can be extremely unstable. A 2023 study published by the Bank for International Settlements found that of 60 stablecoins analyzed in their review, all of them had become de-pegged from their underlying asset at least once. 

“The 2022 crypto crash was triggered by the failure of Terraform Lab’s Terra/Luna “algorithmic” stablecoin—the collapse of which saw $45 billion erased in the span of a week.”

The bill places only very light regulations on stablecoins, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has warned that since he controls such a large percentage of the stablecoin market, their uptake into the broader economy could “create a superhighway for Donald Trump’s corruption.”

“As soon as the players understand that Trump’s intervention is a real possibility, then the stablecoin market is no longer about a careful review of whether there are adequate dollars to back up a particular stablecoin, or whether the stablecoin issuer has an AAA rating,” Warren said.

“Instead, the whole game becomes one of trying to engage the president to weigh the end and make one set of coins more valuable, and therefore another set of coins less valuable,” she added. “It’s corruption, but it’s also a market manipulation that ultimately drains away any development … It undermines all the markets at that point.”

But the CLARITY Act, which has been passed by the House and now awaits consideration in the Senate, is “the real prize” for the industry. It would dramatically narrow the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) ability to regulate cryptocurrencies—most notably by recategorizing many assets as commodities instead of securities, which places them under the much smaller and less-resourced Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

Trump would be one of the foremost beneficiaries of this bill, which would exclude digital assets like his $TRUMP and $MELANIA “meme coins” from SEC regulation.

It would also likely affect the classification of Bitcoin, which Trump Media has explicitly acknowledged would benefit the president. “If Bitcoin is determined to constitute a security,” the company said in a June SEC filing, it could “adversely affect” the price of Bitcoin and the price of Trump Media’s holdings.

Not only does this benefit Trump, said Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk, but the legitimization and entrenchment of these unstable assets has the potential to make the whole economy less stable.

“Eerily reminiscent of the risky behavior that gave us the 2008 financial collapse, Donald Trump is ushering in a new era of casino-like speculation on Wall Street with highly volatile crypto trading in retirement accounts,” Carrk said.

“While the Trump family stands to win either way with crypto investment product fees,” Carrk added, “throwing such a wild card into the financial system with little to no guardrails could lead to history repeating itself—with everyday Americans footing the bill when things inevitably go south.”

VETS FACE DIRE NEW HEALTH CARE CRISIS. President Donald Trump’s policies are causing doctors to turn down job offers in Veterans Affairs hospitals, a new report has revealed. Simultaneously, the administration is engaging in anti-union actions in the veterans health care system and Democratic lawmakers say veterans will ultimately suffer, Oliver Willis noted at Daily Kos (8/8).

ProPublica reported that a new analysis of hiring at VA hospitals since Trump took office shows that doctors are rejecting job offers. Of the roughly 2,000 doctors who were offered jobs between January and March, nearly 40% turned down the offer. That turndown rate is a 400% increase from a year ago when former President Joe Biden was in office.

ProPublica also revealed that doctors and nurses already in the system are leaving. Every month that Trump has been in office has seen a decline in doctors employed by the VA. Between January and June, twice as many nurses left the VA system as have been hired.

The brain drain is occurring at the same time that the administration is focused on slashing the agency’s workforce.

Under Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, a longtime Trump cheerleader and apologist when he served in Congress, the administration has pursued significant cuts. The agency announced Aug. 7 that it is on pace to cut 30,000 jobs by the end of the 2025 fiscal year.

“This announcement makes clear VA is bleeding employees across the board at an unsustainable rate because of the toxic work environment created by this Administration and DOGE’s slash and trash policies,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, (D-CT) ranking member of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, said.

ProPublica noted in its report that wait times have increased for patients seeking primary and specialty care, along with wait times for outpatient surgery and appointments.

Collins also announced that the agency is terminating collective bargaining agreements for more than 350,000 unionized employees. Democrats slammed the action as another attack on veteran care.

FBI PURGE INCLUDES OFFICIAL WHO TRIED TO PROTECT JAN. 6 INVESTIGATORS. Amid accusations that President Trump is turning the Department of Justice into his “personal weapon,” multiple media outlets reported Aug. 7 that his administration is ousting at least three top officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Jessica Corbett noted at Common Dreams (8/7).

The FBI purge includes Brian Driscoll, who served as acting director earlier this year; Walter Giardina, a special agent involved in the investigation of Trump’s ex-trade adviser, Peter Navarro; and Steven Jensen, acting director in charge of the Washington Field Office, unnamed sources told outlets including The Associated Press, The New York Times, and Fox News.

Jensen was involved in investigating the Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and Driscoll—as head of the FBI before Trump’s appointee, Kash Patel, was confirmed—resisted the administration’s demand that he turn over a list of agents who worked on probes of the insurrectionists, who were promptly pardoned when Trump returned to power.

Highlighting that battle over the list of agents, the AP detailed:

Emil Bove, the then-senior Justice Department official who made the request and was [in July] confirmed for a seat on a federal appeals court, wrote a memo accusing the FBI’s top leaders of “insubordination.”

Responding to Bove’s request, the FBI ultimately provided personnel details about several thousand employees, identifying them by unique employee numbers rather than by names.

The three men were reportedly told to leave the FBI by Aug. 8. According to Fox, one source described the removals as “retribution,” and multiple people told the outlet that “more ousters are expected at the bureau by the end of the week, though the exact number of personnel included, or their roles at the bureau, are unclear.”

The Times noted that “the fresh ousters reflect, in part, a long-running effort by senior Trump administration officials to dismiss agents and prosecutors who worked on cases related to the president. Those have included the investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia during his first term, the investigation into his handling of classified documents after he left office, the investigation into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and the investigations of rioters at the Capitol.”

US MANUFACTURING SECTOR ‘SPUTTERING’ AS TRUMP TARIFFS HIT CONSUMERS. After multiple delays, the “reciprocal” tariffs first announced this past spring by  Donald Trump went into effect Aug. 7 even as the American economy is showing serious signs of weakness, Brad Reed noted at Common Dreams (8/7).

As reported by CNBC, the new tariffs hit nations all over the world and included particularly hefty tariffs on longtime trading partners such as Brazil, which got hit with a 50% tariff as Trump tries to pressure the country to drop criminal charges against former President Jair Bolsonaro, who allegedly plotted a coup attempt after losing the 2022 general election to current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

While many longtime U.S. allies such as the European Union and Japan struck deals with Trump ahead of the deadline, their products are still getting hit with 15% tariffs that are far higher than any duties placed on foreign goods in decades.

On his Truth Social page Aug. 7, Trump celebrated the implementation of the tariffs and declared that “tariffs are flowing into the USA at levels not thought even possible!”

However, the president’s triumphant tone does not match what consumer sentiment and economic data are currently showing. The Wall Street Journal reported Aug. 6 that the American manufacturing economy, which Trump has claimed will benefit the most from his tariffs, is currently “sputtering” as companies face higher costs of key inputs such as steel, aluminum and copper.

“From March to July, U.S. manufacturing activity contracted, according to the Institute for Supply Management’s monthly survey,” noted WSJ. “The Manufacturing PMI last registered at 48, below the 50 score that differentiates growth and decline.”

The Journal also cited top domestic manufacturers such as Whirlpool, Polaris and Harley-Davidson who say that consumer demand has been hit in recent months as consumers pull back spending in the face of the president’s tariffs. In fact, Polaris CEO Mike Speetzen told investors during a recent earnings call that “consumers are really just reluctant to go spend right now unless they really need to or they’re fortunate enough to have the financial flexibility to do that.”

Data released in late July also showed that the American labor market overall has nearly ground to a halt over the last three months, as the economy added an average of 35,000 jobs per month from May through July.

TRUMP WANTS TO USE RACIAL MATH TO RESHAPE ELECTIONS. President Donald Trump announced Aug. 7 that he is directing the Department of Commerce to start work on a new U.S. census—one that would exclude undocumented immigrants from the population count, Alex Samuels noted at Daily Kos (8/7).

“I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. “People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS.”

If implemented, this move would mark a significant break from the way the census has traditionally been conducted. For centuries, it has counted every person living in the U.S., regardless of citizenship status.

Trump’s announcement comes as the White House urges GOP-led states to redraw their congressional maps to boost Republicans’ chances of holding their House majority after next year’s midterm elections. Texas has started that process, though Democrats there stalled it by fleeing the state, thus denying the legislature a quorum.

Some of Trump’s critics correctly criticize the census plan as yet another blatant power grab. 

“The next part of the plan to steal the midterms and/or the 2028 election—an attempt to do a mid-decade census to take seats and electoral votes away from blue states,” former Republican and anti-Trumper Ron Filipkowski posted on X. “I knew this was coming.”

Naturally, MAGA supporters are fully on board. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia reposted Trump’s announcement while promoting her “Making American Elections Great Again Act,” which would order “a new census counting American citizens only” and demand reapportionment based on that revised count.

However, that plan runs afoul of the Constitution. The law requires a national census every 10 years to count all residents, not just citizens. The official census website clearly states that the decennial count is “designed to count every resident in the United States.” That’s how congressional seats and Electoral College votes are assigned.

But legality has never stopped Trump before.

During his first term, he attempted to force the U.S. Census Bureau to include a citizenship question—“Is this person a citizen of the United States?”—despite warnings it would discourage responses. A federal court called the move an “egregious” violation of the law, and the Supreme Court eventually blocked it.

Trump persisted. He directed federal agencies to collect citizenship data without directly involving the census. His main push failed then, ahead of the 2020 census, but now he appears to want to restart the process midstream.

If successful, states with large undocumented populations—like California—are expected to lose congressional seats, while whiter, more rural, redder states could gain influence. A 2020 Pew Research Center report indicated that excluding noncitizens from the census might cause some states, including California and Texas, to lose seats in the House.

There’s also the logistical aspect. The 2020 census cost nearly $14 billion and took years to prepare. The idea that Trump’s Commerce Department could produce a new census within a year or two is unrealistic. Preparations for the 2030 census are already underway, and federal law requires any proposed questions to be submitted to Congress at least two years before data collection.