Month: April 2025

There has to be a better way to deal with immigration than this. ICE is not it:

The woman, who News 4 will refer to as “Marisa”, and her three daughters came to Oklahoma looking for a slower, more affordable pace of life. They rented a house in a seemingly safe northwest Oklahoma City neighborhood.

[…]

But any comfort they had disappeared Thursday morning when about 20 men, armed with guns, busted through the door. “I don’t know who they were,” she said. “It was dark. All the lights were off.” Marisa said the men identified themselves as federal agents with the U.S. Marshals, ICE, and the FBI.

On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the U.S. Marshals Service denied having agents present during the raid, telling News 4 they were “aware of the operation before it happened,” but did not assist in any capacity.

“I keep asking them, ‘who are you? What are you doing here? What’s happening,’” she said. “And they said, ‘we have a warrant for the house, a search warrant.’” She said they ordered her and her daughters outside into the rain before they could even put on clothes.

She said that the names on the warrant were of the former residents.

“We just moved here from Maryland,” she said. “We’re citizens. That’s what I kept saying. We’re citizens.” She said the agents didn’t care. “They were very dismissive, very rough, very careless,” she said. “I kept pleading. I kept telling them we weren’t criminals. They were treating us like criminals. We were here by ourselves. We didn’t do anything.”

Marisa said the agents tore apart every square inch of the house and what few belongings they had, seizing their phones, laptops and their life savings in cash as “evidence.”“I told them before they left, I said you took my phone. We have no money. I just moved here,” she said. “I have to feed my children. I’m going to need gas money. I need to be able to get around. Like, how do you just leave me like this? Like an abandoned dog.”

Before they left, Marisa said one of the agents made a comment. “One of them said, ‘I know it was a little rough this morning,’” she said. “It was so denigrating. That you do all of this to a family, to women, your fellow citizens. And it was a little rough? You literally traumatized me and my daughters for life. We’re going to have to go get help or get over this somehow.” Now, Marisa said they have, quite literally, nothing.

If ICE was involved then this was an immigration raid.

This was horrific for these people. But this sort of trauma is being inflicted on people all over the country every day. Legal residents, tourists, migrants and yes, American citizens are being raided and rousted by what amounts to secret police operating in every corner of America without any restraint.

By the way. This latest polling from PRRI is pretty stunning:

A majority of Americans agree that “President Trump is a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy” (52%), compared with 44% who agree that “President Trump is a strong leader who should be given the power he needs to restore America’s greatness.”

I wish more polls would ask questions along this line. When you read things like that story above it’s very hard to dispute it.

CNN did a nice fact check. 100 lies in 100 days. Here are just the first few on inflation and the economy:

Inflation

1. Falsely claimed in April that grocery prices “are down” and “WAY DOWN.” Grocery prices had continued to increase since he took office – and the jump from February to March, about 0.49%, was the biggest one-month increase since October 2022.

2. Falsely claimed in April that “the cost of eggs has come down like 93, 94% since we took office.” The consumer price of eggs hit a record high in March, and while they might well have fallen in April, the decline certainly wasn’t 93% or 94%; wholesale egg prices had fallen roughly 52% since the week Trump took office.

3. Falsely claimed April 17 that gas prices had fallen to $1.98 per gallon in two states the day prior. In fact, no state’s average gas price was below $2.70 per gallon the day prior, according to data from AAA – and of the tens of thousands of individual stations tracked by the firm GasBuddy, not a single one was selling for under $2.19 per gallon that day.

4. Falsely claimed there was “no inflation” during his first presidency. Inflation was relatively low, but it existed; prices rose about 8% from the beginning of Trump’s term to the end. And year-over-year inflation was 1.4% in the month he left office, January 2021.

5. Falsely claimed President Joe Biden’s administration had the highest inflation “in the history of our country.” Trump could have fairly said the year-over-year US inflation rate hit a 40-year high under Biden in June 2022, when it was 9.1%, but that was not close to the all-time record of 23.7%, set in 1920. Trump’s claim was also wrong if he was claiming there was record cumulative inflation over the course of Biden’s presidency. It was about 21%, compared to about 49% during President Jimmy Carter’s term.

6. Falsely claimed the price of bacon “quadrupled” during Biden’s presidency. Federal statistics show the average price of a pound of sliced bacon in December 2024, Biden’s last full month in office, was up about 19% since January 2021, the month Biden was inaugurated; the average price in January 2025, Biden’s last partial month in office, was up about 21% since January 2021. Neither was close to the 300% increase Trump claimed.

7. Falsely claimed the price of apples doubled during Biden’s presidency. Federal statistics show the price of apples increased by about 7% between the month Biden was sworn in as president and December 2024; it was about an 8% increase between January 2021 and January 2025. Neither was close to the 100% increase Trump claimed.

Trade, the economy, taxes

8. Falsely claimed that, before he came back to office, “We were losing $2 trillion a year on trade.” The total US deficit in goods and services trade in 2024 was about $918 billion; if you count only goods trade and ignore the services trade at which the US excels, it was about $1.2 trillion, still far shy of Trump’s figure. (And economists widely reject Trump’s notion that a trade deficit, the difference between the value of US imports and exports in a given year, is a loss.)

9. Falsely claimed in early April that the US was already taking in $2 billion, $3 billion, or even $3.5 billion per day in tariff revenue. The actual figure was in the hundreds of millions at most, not $2 billion, and it’s important to note that US importers, not foreign exporters, pay the tariff revenue.

10. Falsely claimed the US has a “$350 billion” trade deficit with Mexico. Federal statistics show the 2024 deficit with Mexico in goods and services trade was about $179 billion; it was about $182 billion in goods trade alone.

11. Falsely claimed, after an interviewer reminded him that not a single tariff deal with another country had been announced yet, “I’ve made 200 deals.” He simply had not done so, and his supposed explanation for this assertion – “The deal is a deal that I choose…We are a department store, and we set the price” – did not substantiate it.

12. Falsely claimed, while touting the supposed benefits of tariffs, that Honda “just announced” it is building “a really big plant in Indiana.” Honda subsequently told CNN: “Honda did not announce plans for a new plant in the U.S. at this time.” Reuters, citing anonymous sources, had reported that Honda was planning to build its next-generation Civic hybrid in Indiana rather than Mexico as originally planned, but the report did not say Honda was building a new factory.

13. Falsely claimed “the United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been” from 1789 to 1913, when tariffs made up a higher percentage of federal revenue, and that 1870 to 1913, before the reintroduction of the federal income tax, was “the richest period in the history of the United States, relatively speaking.” Trump didn’t explain what he meant by “proportionately the wealthiest” or “the richest…relatively speaking,” but economists say that by any standard measure, the US is far wealthier today than it was in the early 20th century and prior; per capita gross domestic product is now many times higher than it was then.

14. Falsely claimed he signed “the largest tax cut in history” during his first presidency. Expert analyses have found his 2017 tax cut law was not the largest in US history, either in percentage of gross domestic product or in inflation-adjusted dollars.

He is a pathological liar. But he’s now fully delusional. Just wait until he spews the “you can believe me or you can believe your eyes on the tariffs as the chickens really start to come home to roost over the next few months. The good news is that the people seem to be able to see it.

Read the rest. The sheer volume of lies is always astonishing but now it’s completely off the charts.

STEPHEN MILLER: “FOX NEWS NEEDS TO FIRE THEIR POLLSTER” pic.twitter.com/LCtnt5eC1p

— Ales Iz Neias (@alesizneias) April 29, 2025

Here’s a scary bit of analysis. Greg Sargent at TNR spoke with journalist Michael Cohen about Trump and the polling. The gist of the conversation is that Trump is really in a bubble and is simply believing what his very extreme inner circle tells him. He’s just another elderly Fox viewer and it’s why he lost his shit over all these 100 day polls. He apparently didn’t know that his policies are unpopular. His reflexive caterwauling about “fake news” was even more hysterical than usual.

Cohen and Greg note that Trump actually doesn’t seem to understand that the Supreme Court ruled against him in the Abrego Garcia case, saying his lawyers (and Stephen Miller) told him it was the opposite. I agree with them that Trump seemed genuinely confused (although he’s also wiley enough about all this to throw his lawyers under the bus.)

They think, as do I, that Stephen Miller is the shadow president and is the one driving the bus on immigration. I would argue that he’s driving it on foreign policy and some of the tariff stuff too. Anything that touches foreigners is in Miller’s wheelhouse.

This is concerning:

Sargent: It looks to me like Stephen Miller is starting to sense that the Supreme Court is going to rule against them in the end—in a final way—on Abrego Garcia. If that happens—as you say, they have been following some court orders—they’ve really dug in hard behind this idea that Abrego Garcia is never coming back. Period. If we bring Abrego Garcia back, it will mean capitulating to the liberal media and to all the hated liberals who think the law should be enforced. So that can’t happen. So I think Stephen Miller is trying to steel Trump for the eventual need to defy the Supreme Court in one way or another, and the way he will try to get there is by essentially telling him, Everyone else is lying to you. The court has told you that it’s really OK for you not to bring him back.

Cohen: I think there’s a lot to that argument, and I think it’s quite possible that you’re right about that. But I think…. Let me go back a second. When they refuse to abide by the Supreme Court ruling to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, I assume they were doing this because they think this is a winning issue for them, on immigration. And if there’s any place they’re going to defy the courts, it’s going to be on immigration and deportation because they think this plays in their favor. Look, the polling suggests it’s not actually; it suggests that this is actually really hurting Trump. But I think the view inside the White House is, This is our issue.

In fact, Miller says it. In that Oval Office meeting with the El Salvadoran president, he says, This is a 90–10 issue for us. He literally says those words, so I think he thinks this is a winner for them. That was what I was assuming was happening. They were just going to [say], OK, we’re going to abide by court orders, but not here because this is a good issue for us. I don’t think that’s what’s happening now.

Now, I think that Miller wants the president to take the position that on this issue—on deportation issues—the Supreme Court cannot tell him what to do.And he’s made this argument. He said that the power to conduct foreign relations is unimpeachable, and the Supreme Court cannot interfere, which is how Miller interprets the case, the decision—which is also clearly incorrect. So I think you might be right, that he’s steeling him for a moment in which he’s going to continue to violate a court order, continue to ignore the court, and do so, for Trump’s case, out of ignorance.

Now, the thing is that what worries me about this is that the court, looking at this could conclude, Right now the White House is refusing to abide by this order to facilitate his return. Do we really want to go there again and say to the White House again, You need to do this? Because if they don’t, if the White House continues to say, No, we are not going to abide by this order, does it then fundamentally weaken the credibility of the Supreme Court, and does it lead to the court basically looking like a paper tiger? I think that’s a real concern. If I’m on the court, forgetting the ideological makeup of the court, that’s a legitimate concern. The court has no enforcement mechanism whatsoever on their orders. It basically relies on political norms.

So if they think that Trump’s not going to abide by his political norm, they might just rule in such a way that gives Trump some political out on this issue. I think it’s a real concern, and maybe that’s what Miller’s trying to accomplish here. To my mind, there is no question that Stephen Miller, not Donald Trump, is driving the stubbornness of the White House in abiding by the Supreme Court order. It’s not Trump doing this. This is Stephen Miller who’s doing this.

Sargent: Right. If I understand you correctly, and I think this makes a lot of sense, it’s basically Stephen Miller bluffing the Supreme Court—

Cohen: Yes. Exactly right.

Sargent: —by saying, over and over, No, we won before the Supreme Court. He’s essentially saying to the Supreme Court, We’re going to roll over you if you don’t give us a way to claim victory at the end of the day here. This is why, by the way, I think two things are really important: (1) the fact that his aides are lying to him about public opinion, and (2) that the public opinion is about the abuses of power on immigration in particular. Because what we’re learning from this polling is that Stephen Miller is wrong.

When they abuse their power on immigration and act lawlessly and send people to black sites and snatch people off the streets, the public reacts badly. They’re not seeing it through just the prism of, Oh, Trump is just dealing with illegals. Stephen Miller calculated that they would see it that way, but Americans aren’t seeing it that way. They’re seeing it in terms of the lawlessness. So when the polls show that the lawlessness is unpopular, and when Trump’s own people deceive him about what those polls are showing, they’re essentially trying to get to the place where the lawlessness continues.

If you are a praying person, pray that the Supremes see through this and don’t take the bait. With every win these Trumpers go further and if someone doesn’t stop them now it will be impossible to do it.

I suppose it’s also possible that the high court majority is actually in agreement with Trump on this and believes that the rule of law is no longer operative. Maybe they’re happy to throw out the bill of rights and the 14th amendment in order to allow this dementia riddled monster a free hand to get rid of every brown person in the country. Most of them are nothing more than political operatives at this point anyway. We just have to hope that a majority still has a shred of fealty to the ideals of this country and the clear intention of the Constitution.

Trump says these polls are all fake. He believes that everybody loves him. He says running the world. That’s literally what he said.

Well, here’s some more “fake news” from the Marist Poll:

• 39% of Americans approve of how President Trump is handling the economy. 55% of U.S. residents — including 88% of Democrats, 59% of independents, and 17% of Republicans — disapprove of how the president is dealing with the economy.
• 34% of Americans approve of how the president is handling tariffs, and 58% disapprove. While 90% of Democrats disapprove of how Trump is handling tariffs, 73% of Republicans approve. Still, 20% of Republicans disapprove of Trump’s approach. Among independents, 28% approve, and 64% disapprove of how President Trump is dealing with tariffs.
• On the issue of foreign policy, 39% of residents nationally approve of how the president is dealing with the issue. 53% disapprove.
• 44% of Americans approve of how President Trump is dealing with immigration, and 52% disapprove. Among independents, 37% approve, and 57% disapprove.

Plurality Disapproves of Administration’s Handling of Abrego Garcia’s Deportation

49% of Americans say, from what they have read or heard, they disapprove of the Trump Administration’s handling of the deportation to El Salvador of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. 35% approve, and 15% are unsure. Democrats (81%) and independents (51%) are more likely to disapprove of how the Administration is dealing with the situation than Republicans (13%). 73% of the GOP approve of how the Administration has handled Abrego Garcia’s deportation.

Slim Majority Perceives Trump as Putting Country on Wrong Path

51% of U.S. residents describe the direction in which President Trump is moving the country as change for the worse, up slightly from 48% in March. 42% say they consider the direction in which the president is steering the country as change for the better. This is notched down from 45% last month. Seven percent say the direction the president is moving the country is no real change at all.

More Than Six in Ten Say Trump is Moving Too Quickly

Many Americans (61%) think President Trump has been rushing to make changes without considering the impact of those actions. This is up from 56% in March. 39%, however, believe President Trump is doing what he needs to do to get the country back on track. Most Democrats (91%) and more than two in three independents (67%) consider the president to be moving too quickly to implement change. More than one in five Republicans (21%), up from 16% previously, agree.

Nearly Half of Americans Say Trump’s Policies Have Negatively Impacted Them

49% of residents nationally report that the policies President Trump has implemented during his second term have had a mostly negative impact on them. 32% say they have had a mostly positive impact, and one in five (20%) say they have not had any personal impact on them at all.

Most Democrats (81%) say the president’s policies have mostly negatively affected them. Among Republicans, 67% think the president’s policies have benefitted them, 11% say Trump’s policies have had a negative effect on them, and 22% report they have had no personal impact on them. A majority of independents (52%) say President Trump’s policies have mostly negatively affected them.

Six in Ten Say Nation’s Economic Conditions are a Result of Trump’s Policies

60% of Americans say they nation’s current economic conditions are mostly a result of President Trump’s own policies. 39% think they are mostly something President Trump inherited. 86% of Democrats, 61% of independents, and 32% of Republicans think President Trump is responsible for the nation’s economic conditions. Nearly seven in ten Republicans (68%), though, say the nation’s economic situation is something the president mostly inherited.

Majority of Americans Think Imposing Tariffs Hurts the U.S. Economy

57% of residents nationally, including 88% of Democrats, 22% of Republicans, and 58% of independents, think placing tariffs on imports from other countries hurts the U.S. economy. 33%, including 65% of Republicans, say tariffs help the national economy. One in ten (10%) say tariffs don’t make much of a difference either way.

Tariff Talk Has Not Changed Purchasing Behavior for Slim Majority, But…

While 51% of Americans have not made any changes to their purchasing decisions based on the Trump Administration’s actions to place tariffs on imported products, 21% of residents say they have sped up making purchases. An additional 28% have delayed buying certain products.

Nearly Two in Three Americans Say Grocery Prices will Increase

64% of Americans think grocery prices will increase during the next six months. This opinion has increased from 57% in March. 16% of Americans believe prices of groceries will decrease. One in five (20%), down from 26%, say they will stay about the same.

89% of Democrats and 64% of independents believe grocery prices will rise in the coming months. 35% of Republicans, up from 23%, say the same.

Most Americans Think the President Should Obey Federal Court Rulings

85% of Americans strongly agree or agree that the president should obey federal court rulings even if he does not like the rulings. 15% disagree or strongly disagree that the president should abide by these rulings. Regardless of party, most Americans either strongly agree or agree that the president should obey federal court rulings, despite how he feels about the rulings. However, most Democrats (73%) strongly agree with this position while 27% of Republicans say the same.

Majority with Unfavorable View of Musk

54% of residents nationally, up from 50% in March, have an unfavorable opinion of Elon Musk. 34% have a favorable view of him, and 12% have either never heard of Musk or are unsure how to rate him.

Americans’ Opinions of DOGE Upside Down

A plurality of U.S. residents (47%) have an unfavorable opinion of the Department of Government Efficiency. 36% have a favorable opinion of the department, and 16% have either never heard of the department or are unsure how to rate it,

I know you’re sick of seeing these polls but I want to document them here. It’s important that he’s so unpopular in his first three months because it shakes the weird, inexplicable belief in some people that he has a mandate for these changes. He never did and I’m quite sure that Russell Vought knew it and didn’t care. He’s too addled to even think it matters. But it does. If the country was going along with all this we’d already be lost.

Trump invited The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, Ashley Parker and Michael Sherer to the White House for an interview. They’ve published long excerpts of it. Here’s a bit:

Trump: I did it for you. [He makes a sweeping gesture.] If you take a look back, Jeffrey, this is the new Oval Office—and people love it. Those paintings were all in the vaults. We have vaults downstairs. They have about 4,000 pictures, and I took some of the great presidents.

Goldberg: It really does look different.

Trump: Well, now it looks like it’s supposed to look. Before, they didn’t take care of it. There was no tender loving care.

Parker: Are you using your own money for the Oval Office?

Trump: Yeah, I do it on my own. You see up top? That came all out of Mar-a-Lago.

Parker: Really?

Trump: Yeah.

Goldberg: Wait, the gilded—?

Trump: Yeah, the gold. And that’s all 24-karat gold, which is interesting because they’ve never come up with a paint that looks like gold. They’ve never come up with a paint where you can just paint it and it looks like gold.

Michael Scherer: Is there truth to the rumor you’re going to do the ceiling?

Trump: Yeah, I’m doing that. The question is: Do I do a chandelier? Beautiful crystal chandelier, top of the line, beautiful. Would be nice in here. It almost calls for it, but I don’t know. We’re more focused on China, Russia.

The oval office looks like a conference room at the Trump Taj Mahal. It’s hideous.

"I'm going to speak a sentence you will never hear in the United States," @JohnKingCNN says: In Canada "there's a big national election, and Donald Trump is by far the most unifying force." pic.twitter.com/To5RZDyKfA

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) April 28, 2025

Here’s how that worked out. Thanks Trump!

Trump’s everyday high prices “win” a spotlight

Chickens are roosting at the White House (Punchbowl News):

Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

Amazon doesn’t want to shoulder the blame for the cost of President Donald Trump’s trade war.

So the e-commerce giant will soon show how much Trump’s tariffs are adding to the price of each product, according to a person familiar with the plan.

The shopping site will display how much of an item’s cost is derived from tariffs – right next to the product’s total listed price.

The king is not amused (CNBC elaborates):

The White House on Tuesday slammed Amazon for reportedly planning to display the cost of President Donald Trump’s tariffs next to the total price of products on its site.

“This is hostile and political act by Amazon,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

“Why didn’t Amazon do this when the Biden administration hiked inflation to the highest level in 40 years?” Leavitt asked.

Biden did not hike inflation, Tokyo Rose. Inflation during his term was global. But you knew that.

Find more statistics at Statista

“Bringing down the terrible Biden inflation has been a priority for the first hundred days of the Trump administration,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters, not acknowledging that inflation had fallen dramatically (here and globally) before Trump even took office.

Then Trump announced global tariffs. Now inflation is back. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is letting his customers know why (if reports are true).

Guess he’ll go eat worms!

It’s all so unfair, of course. Everyone is mean to the Republican president whose team exiles American children, including a four-year-old girl with Stage 4 cancer sent to Honduras without her medication.

Three months in and they’ve already lost the country faster than any White House in decades. From here on out it’s just them whining about about how everyone is being mean to them.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) 2025-04-29T13:22:33.294Z

May voters, the economy, and history heap upon them all the opprobrium they are due.

* * * * *

Have you fought dictatorship today?

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What’s a stymied autocrat to do?

Donald Trump just helped elect a Canadian prime minister who ran on an anti-Trump platform. Mark Carney in March told the American autocrat who thinks he runs the world where he could stick his tariffs and his 51st state threats. (Trump backed the other guy.) Trump’s week is not going well. He’s making wild claims about 200 trade deals for which there is no evidence. The rest of his first 100 days have been chaos, controversy and destruction with large doses of cruelty for cruelty’s sake.

Daily Beast:

“Protests, polling, and pushback”: These are the three things The New Abnormal pcodast host Jesse Cannon believes show the “Trump dam is breaking.”

Cannon believes small wins like the lowest 100-day approval rating in 70 years are “super important” because they chip away at the “Achilles’ heel” of the president.

“The pushback and protests against all of this do have some wins,” he said.

Death by a 1,000 cuts can work both ways, Cannon suggests.

The podcast co-host Danielle Moodie pointed out polling for President Joe Biden “was in the mid-50s” for the same timeframe and George W. Bush “was in the low-50s.” Trump is at 41%.

She claimed Trump is “circling the drain” with his poll numbers.

NPR (also under attack by Trump) reports on more bad polling:

Twice as many people said President Trump deserves a grade of F rather than an A for how he’s handled his first 100 days in office, according to a new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll.

Forty-five percent said Trump deserves the failing mark, compared to 23% who would pass him with flying colors. It’s understandable that partisans would have strongly polarized views of the president, but it’s also notable that half of independents said he deserves an F, and only a slim majority of Republicans would give him an A.

Thomas Edsall considers the psychic impact the flood of negative numbers might have on the size-conscious Trump.

“Public opinion has turned against him, the economy is faltering, the Supreme Court has ordered him to stand down, his tariffs have backfired and such conservative mainstays as National Review and The Wall Street Journal are questioning his judgment,” Edsall begins.

The “stymied autocrat” will of course claim down is up and losses are victories. He will double down on distractions. But what else? Edsall’s sources suggest that the more Trump fails, the more he flails.

“A less constrained Trump may be a more violent Trump,” write Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum, political scientists at Dartmouth and Harvard who wrote on the politics of chaos.

“Mr. Trump’s second term is proving far rockier,” the Economist explained in a recent article.

“As Trump’s armor begins to crack, you have to wonder: Who is more dangerous — a triumphant Trump or a wounded Trump?” asks Edsall.

Tali Mendelberg, a political scientist at Princeton, tells Edsall that predicting how Trump will react is a fraught prospect, but his behavior follows a pattern:

He is now aggressively pushing the limits of the law in nearly every conceivable way. It is difficult to see why he would slink into humility or go quietly into defeat. He has never done so before. He fights with every means at his disposal. If he should feel that he is losing power and respect, there is no reason to expect he will self-restrain.

Restraint is not exactly Trump’s strong suit.

Michael Bang Petersen, another political scientist, this time from Denmark, says Trump bears “every single hallmark of a dominance-oriented leader. He seems aggressive, self-centered, norm-violating and strategically uses fear to force people to defer.”

You don’t need a political scientist to know which way Trump’s moods blow.

But will he try to provoke violence as pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act? It’s clear Stephen Miller is itching for it.

Edsall’s other sources tell us what after a decade we non-academics already know about the man-child in the Oval Office.

The danger, says Herbert Kitschelt, a Duke professor of international relations, is that an economic crisis will convince Trump et al. to “realize that they cannot win a free and fair election, and actually might face a defeat in the midterms severe enough to precipitate the impeachment of both president and vice president.”

The question then becomes, in Kitschelt’s view,

Will evangelical-nationalist clero-fascism — with other MAGA and Tea Party currents in tow — be capable of converting America into an electoral autocracy faster than U.S. civil society and large parts of the business sector will be able to mobilize a defense of American democracy and to stiffen the spine of the U.S. judiciary to preserve American institutions?

That’s what keeps me up at night.

Michigan Congressman Shri Thanedar (MI-13) on Monday introduced articles of impeachment against Trump. These are, of course, more political performance art at this stage, but validation for Trump that if Democrats win back the House majority in 2026, they could impeach him yet again, impeach “your favorite president” like nobody’s ever been impeached before.

* * * * *

Have you fought dictatorship today?

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Many Dems are still wringing their hands about “what’s wrong with us???” and walking around in their hairshirts like a bunch of sad sacks and it’s driving me crazy. They lost by 1.4% last November and the GOP has one of the smallest congressional margins in history. Yes, they lost and that’s hard but at a time when Trump’s approval is sinking into the 30s and the economy is about to go belly-up under his watch, internecine slap fights are truly beside the point. Yes, move forward, empower the new generation, put together a compelling agenda — of course. That’s basic party politics. But this endless self-flagellation when you have the other side on the run is just inexplicable to me.

We are facing a fascist takeover! Snap out of it and build the resistance!

Anyway, that’s just me. Over at the Bulwark, there has been some interesting discussion by the Never Trumpers about what the Dems should do and they have differing views on this as well. Some think it’s healthy and good to have the liberals and moderates out there sparring to show the people that within the Democratic Big Tent there are people like themselves. I can see that.

And they also think that the Democrats have to sort of rise above the atrocities of today to offer a compelling vision of the future which sounds to me like some kind of fever dream considering where we are today.

I come down on the side of JV Last on this one. He thinks unified resistance is the way:

Look, a party brand built around a coherent and compelling vision for the future is absolutely one way to win power. But it’s not the only way.

So let me lay out an alternative theory: Democrats don’t need to rebrand the party; they need to totally disqualify the Republican party while being ambiguous about what they stand for so that a broad array of voters can project their preferences on to them.

And any national Democrat trying to do intraparty wrangling right now is committing political malpractice. Because the only story that matters is how Trump Republicans are destroying the economy and the rule of law.

Indeed. He further writes:

Late last week Sen. Slotkin did a big public rollout of her campaign to purge the Democratic party of being “weak and woke.” This involved her cursing (to show how strong she is) and criticizing Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for their “oligarchy” organizing tour.

Also late last week: The director of the Port of Los Angeles warned that in two weeks the number of inbound containers being processed at the busiest facility in America will drop by 35 percent. “Essentially all shipments out of China for major retailers and manufacturers have ceased,” he reported. “And cargo coming out of Southeast Asia locations is much softer than normal.”

You can see this wave of declines coming by watching container ship departures from Asia, which are moving toward pandemic levels.

Last suggests that instead of railing against fellow Democrats, Slotkin should have gone to the port of Long Beach and stood in front of the empty containers to give her speech which illustrates for everyone, “Trump did this.” That is more powerful than any words she could say in this particular moment. (I’ve written about the consequences we can expect from these tariffs and it’s very bad. As Josh Marshall said, “it’s going to be a long hot tariff summer.” The Democrats need to be foreshadowing this right now.)

Last details the various approaches of the last 24 years of presidential campaigns and concludes:

Those are the last seven insurgent presidential campaigns and you can sort them, broadly, into two buckets: Coherent visions and oppositionism. The coherent vision campaigns went 2–1. The the oppositionist campaigns went 3–1.

Point is: You can do it both ways.

I would just add that one of the reasons for oppositionism in the current moment (as if the horrific Trump polls after only 100 days don’t make it clear) is that it’s vitally important that the American people fully and forcefully reject Trumpism and the authoritarian project of the Republican Party as soon as possible. This has been 10 years of hellish chaos fed by disinformation and propaganda and this may very well be the last chance we have to beat this back.

I’m heartened that so many independent voters are saying no to Trump and his agenda. There are even cracks in the GOP coalition starting to show in these polls. But it’s depressing that it takes an unabashed, open, flagrant move toward crude fascism to make it happen. It’s only because Trump is himself a demented old man suffering from grandiose delusions that we might have a chance to come back to something that resembles democracy.

If the Democrats are at all competent, they will have an agenda to do that ready to go and they will have prepared the American people for what it will take to do it. But we do not have the luxury of a circular firing squad right now. Slotkin can make all of her points without aiming at members of the party who are necessary to motivate to win and neither do we need prominent progressive Democrats to be giving interviews saying that the party “lacks vision for the future.” All that may be true but this moment is about survival. It’s like talking about what color you want to paint the wall when you rebuild while you’re still rescuing your dogs and putting out the fire. Yes, they need to have their agenda at the ready (maybe it’s “Abundance”) but everyone needs to pull together in this moment to douse the fire of fascism.

After seeing the polls this week, I think this may be what will inspire and motivate the entire coalition, woke, non-woke,economic determinist and Trump antagonist alike:

Pritzker: It’s time for us to be done with optimism about their motives. Time to stop wondering if you can trust the nuclear codes to people who don’t know how to organize a group chat. It’s time to stop ignoring the hypocrisy in wearing a big gold cross while announcing the… pic.twitter.com/Szt6GcaqZ1

— Acyn (@Acyn) April 28, 2025

It’s time for us to be done with optimism about their motives. Time to stop wondering if you can trust the nuclear codes to people who don’t know how to organize a group chat. It’s time to stop ignoring the hypocrisy in wearing a big gold cross while announcing the defunding of children’s cancer research… Autistic kids and adults who are loving contributors to our society don’t deserve to be stigmatized by a weird nepo baby who once stashed a dead bear in his car. Our military service members don’t deserve to be told by a washed-up Fox TV commentator, who drank too much before being appointed Secretary of Defense, that they can’t serve their country simply because they are Black, gay, or a woman.

"Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption.

But I am now."

— Governor JB Pritzkerpic.twitter.com/pgt9X8DfdW

— Micah Erfan (@micah_erfan) April 28, 2025

Your mileage may vary on this but wherever we end up I hope the Democrats don’t do what the German center and left did in 1932 and focus so much on fighting among themselves that they didn’t fight the real fight. Trump is weak and stupid and MAGA is a cult of personality that is morphing into a fascist movement — but it can be stopped.

There was a time, not long ago, when a presidential candidate’s spouse was required to shut down his charity because of the appearance of conflict of interest. Even that was not enough. Their daughter was advised to give up any political career that might intersect with politics and pursue a job as a kindergarten teacher. (I’m talking about Hillary Clinton and her family, of course.)

More recently, we were told that a son having a job with a foreign company during his father’s tenure as vice president was so corrupt that he deserved to be prosecuted and his father impeached.

My how times have changed:

Donald Trump Jr., megadonor Omeed Malik and several other investors are launching an invite-only club that costs more than half a million to join with an exclusive post-White House Correspondents’ Dinner gathering, according to an invite obtained by POLITICO and two people with knowledge of the venture, granted anonymity to discuss the private organization.

The “Executive Branch” is the brainchild of Malik and the president’s eldest son, and their partners at conservative fund 1789 Capital. It will be located in Georgetown.

Their goal, the people familiar with the plans say, is to create the highest-end private club that Washington has ever had, and cater to the business and tech moguls who are looking to nurture their relationships with the Trump administration.

The referral requirements and prohibitive pricing is meant to ensure the C-suite crowd can mingle with Trump advisers and cabinet members without the prying eyes of the press and wanna-be insiders. The price tag won’t be a problem for Trump’s cabinet — given it’s by far the wealthiest in history.

I don’t even know what to say. If you are a person who reflexively recoils against lefty language about oligarchy all you have to do is read that to recognize that they are right. There’s just no other way to see this. They aren’t trying to hide their intent.

I have long said that shamelessness is their superpower and if we’ve learned one thing, once these “norms” are broken it’s a free-for-all. I don’t know how to restore a normal respect for the rule of law and democracy but we’d better move quickly before people completely forget what those things are.

Speaking of oligarchy, how about this grotesque little cabal:

Chatham House, [is] a giant and raucous Signal group that forms part of the sprawling network of influential private chats that began during the fervid early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, and which have fueled a new alliance of tech and the US right. That same week in Chatham House, Lonsdale and the Democratic billionaire Mark Cuban sparred over affirmative action, and Cuban and Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro discussed questions of culture and work ethic.

This constellation of rolling elite political conversations revolve primarily around the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and a circle of Silicon Valley figures. None of their participants was surprised to see Trump administration officials firing off secrets and emojis on the platform last month. I did not have the good fortune to be accidentally added to one of the chats, which can be set to make messages disappear after just 30 seconds.

But their influence flows through X, Substack, and podcasts, and constitutes a kind of dark matter of American politics and media. The group chats aren’t always primarily a political space, but they are the single most important place in which a stunning realignment toward Donald Trump was shaped and negotiated, and an alliance between Silicon Valley and the new right formed. The group chats are “the memetic upstream of mainstream opinion,” wrote one of their key organizers, Sriram Krishnan, a former partner in the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (typically styled a16z) who is now the White House senior policy adviser for AI.

That’s from the blockbuster Semafor expose by Ben Smith that delves into this “conversation” that’s apparently been going for years and is responsible for the red-pilling of silicon valley which wasn’t very hard. Privileged, white, very low EQ egomaniac tech bros were an easy mark.