If they do it will largely be because of this:
Sure, eventually people will realize that it’s all gone wrong. But then Trump will blame someone else and they will believe him.
It’s the story of his life.
"what digby sez..."
Month: June 2025
No, the rich won’t leave
The Bluesky post below provoked TSE at Political Betting dot com to remark, “I find this poll utterly depressing, like Brexit, the voters are prepared to make the country worse off financially because of values. I have recently thoiught [sic] about taking a job overseas, more polling like this and I definitely will be going, the country should be about aspiration.”
The United States was once. But then nearly half of us last November chose a shift toward fascism that will leave the country and the world worse off.
Of course, the Randian threat that people rich enough to flee the country to avoid paying marginally more in taxes is bluff and bluster, finds Inequality.org:
Increasing taxes on high income earners helped raise revenue without hampering the wealth of the millionaire class in Massachusetts and Washington, according to a new policy brief from the Institute for Policy Studies and State Revenue Alliance.
A common counter to raising taxes on the rich is that they will simply flee their home states to jurisdictions with friendlier tax codes. While some tax migration is inevitable, the wealthy that move to avoid taxes represent a tiny percentage of their own social class. The top one percent are incentivized not to move because of family, social networks and local business knowledge.
Our findings support the case against tax flight: The number of individuals with a net worth of at least seven-figures continued to expand in both Massachusetts and Washington after tax hikes. The millionaire class has grown by 38.6 percent in Massachusetts and 46.9 percent in Washington over the past two years. The seven-figure clubs in those states saw their wealth grow by $580 million and $748 million, respectively.
Not only did millionaires not flee the states imposing new taxes, but the states became richer. The four percent surtax on million-dollar incomes in Massachusetts and the seven percent tax on capital gains of $250,000 or more in Washington State succeeded in raising revenue — $2.2 billion for FY 2024 and $1.2 billion in its first two years of implementation, respectively.
OTOH, New York was glad to rid itself of Donald Trump. But it wasn’t taxes he was fleeing.
* * * * *
Have you fought dictatorship today?
Good Trouble Lives On (July 17, in memory of John Lewis)
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense
The impression is spot on
This story has been out for a few days, but more details emerged on Friday (The Guardian):
A 64-year-old Iranian woman, who has lived in the US for 47 years, was detained by immigration agents on Sunday morning while gardening outside her home in New Orleans.
According to a witness, plainclothes officers in unmarked vehicles handcuffed Madonna “Donna” Kashanian and transported her to a Mississippi jail before transferring her to the South Louisiana Ice processing center in Basile, reports Nola.
Kashanian arrived in the US in 1978 on a student visa and later applied for asylum, citing fears of persecution due to her father’s ties to the US-backed Shah of Iran. Her asylum request was ultimately denied, but she was granted a stay of removal on the condition she comply with immigration requirements, a condition her family says she always met.
She has no criminal record but remains in Ice custody.
The timing of Kashanian’s detention came just hours after US airstrikes in Iran. Federal officials did not comment on her specific case, though the DHS released a statement highlighting the arrests of 11 Iranians nationwide over the weekend, according to Nola.
Kashanian had moved to New Orleans as a teenager and built a life over four decades. She often shared Persian recipes on YouTube and was active in her daughter’s schools.
Nicole Wallace interviewed Kashanian’s husband, Russ Milne, and daughter, Kaitlynn Milne, on Friday.
Raw Story reports:
Kashanian’s husband, Russ Milne, told host Nicolle Wallace that she has fought through the system for citizenship for many decades. He said that she escaped a previous marriage “at a very young age.” It was finally deemed unlawful, and she was able to apply for asylum while attending university on a student visa.
Donna could never get the system to resolve her status despite her marriage to Russ Milne, her daughter said.
“She’s always caring. She’s our support system, so it’s obviously been really rough this week,” the daughter said with tears in her eyes. “She’s the person that was always at my school. Always taking care of things around my school. She was, you know, always a huge volunteer, always helping everybody around.”
Her voice cracked as she recalled, “Everybody knew Kaitlynn’s mom.”
Kashanian’s husband noted her volunteer work, particularly after Hurricane Katrina, when she helped build homes with Habitat for Humanity.
It was tough to watch. Despite the roadblocks to obtaining citizenship and asylum status, Donna had been allowed to build a life in the United States for nearly a half century. That is until her status was revoked without notice under the second Donald Trump administration.
The cruelty of Kashanian’s arrest and detention is pointless. Except the cruelty is the point, as Adam Serwer observed.
No statute of limitations
Punishment for civil infractions in this country falls under statutes of limitations typically measured in years, not decades. But not under the mass deportation policy driven by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. Kashanian’s crime (“poisoning the blood of our country”) in the view of Trump, Miller, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and border czar Tom Homan is as indefinitely unforgivable as murder. Their loathing for people viewed as inferior is beyond cruel. It is pathological.
Trump in his first term wanted to fortify his southern border wall, The New York Times reported, “with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators” to keep immigrants out. Already Florida is constructing a camp in the Everglades surrounded by snakes and alligators to keep them in. It will hold women like Donna Kashanian until the Trump administration can dump them like refuse in a third-world country. The actions of the U.S. government rhyme with the worst of history’s atrocities.
I first watched Judgment at Nuremberg as a teen. There is a bit of dialogue I long misremembered. When I finally watched the DVD, I found that I’d added my visceral reaction to the remembered dialogue. Marlene Dietrich is in a nightclub with Spencer Tracy, the chief judge:
Mrs. Bertholt: You see, I have a mission with the Americans, as Mr. Perkins can tell you.
Judge Dan Haywood: Oh, what is that?
Mrs. Bertholt: To convince you that we’re not all monsters.
Judge Dan Haywood: No, but some of you are.
That last line is not in the film. My memory added it to the exchange, and there it remained for decades. Present circumstances give me reason not to erase it.
Rod Serling’s classic Twilight Zone episode, “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street,” reminds us just how easily terror leads to horror, and how easy it is to surface the monsters within ordinary people.
Lauren O’Connor of the Writers Guild Foundation writes:
According to Devendra Varma, who was an expert in gothic literature, the difference between terror and horror is “the difference between awful apprehension and sickening revulsion.” This is to say that terror is the emotion we feel when we know something unimaginably awful is going to occur; horror is the emotion we feel when we sit in the realization that something unimaginably awful has just happened. The reason “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” is an exemplary script lies in how Serling takes us from terror (anticipation) to horror (realization).
Since Trump’s pogrom against immigrants began, Donna and her family lived in terror. On Sunday their terror turned to horror.
Something unimaginably awful, monstrous, is happening right now, right here in the United States of America. Government-sponsored terrorists are committing daily horrors on our own streets. The monsters have arrived on Pennsylvania Avenue, and on Maple Streets across this once-decent country.
That is not to equate Trump & Co. with Nazis. But the impression is spot on.
* * * * *
Have you fought dictatorship today?
Good Trouble Lives On (July 17, in memory of John Lewis)
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense
Baby cheetahs!
A litter of five cheetah cubs was born at the Saint Louis Zoo River’s Edge Cheetah Breeding Center on May 5, 2025. The cubs are the first successful cheetah births at the Zoo in more than seven years and are a significant contribution to the population of cheetahs in North American zoos.
This is the first litter for first-time parents Cora and Vader. “Cora’s Quints” are all doing well and bonding with her in a private maternity den. It will be several months before the cheetah family makes a public debut at the age when cubs would naturally leave the den with their mother.
“We’re thrilled to see Cora, a first-time mother, taking great care of her newborns. The average litter size for cheetahs is three to four cubs, though it’s not unusual for quintuplets to be born,” said Julie Hartell-DeNardo, Kevin Beckmann Curator of Carnivores, Saint Louis Zoo. “Each recommended cheetah birth is significant for the survival of this vulnerable species. Our dedicated Animal Care teams have been instrumental in these successful births from the pairing and introductions of Cora and Vader to the family’s dietary needs, hormonal analysis for pregnancy monitoring, veterinary care, preparing a maternal den and so much more,” said Hartell-DeNardo.
The first few months of life are critical for newborn cheetahs. The Animal Care team is monitoring the cheetah family via camera allowing them to watch Cora develop into an attentive mom —cleaning, nursing the cubs and keeping them warm. In the coming weeks, the cubs will receive their first well-baby check by the Zoo’s Veterinary Care team. Since the mother is keeping the litter close for the time being, that will be the first chance for the care team to determine the sex of each cub. The Zoo will wait until after the exam to name the cubs.
Photos by Maddison Syberg/Saint Louis Zoo
They are using the civil rights laws to strengthen white supremacy
They have forced out a university president over a bogus charge that it was discriminating against white people. In Virginia:
The University of Virginia’s president, James E. Ryan, has told the board overseeing the school that he will resign in the face of demands by the Trump administration that he step aside to help resolve a Justice Department inquiry into the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, according to three people briefed on the matter.
For the leader of one of the nation’s most prominent public universities to take such an extraordinary step demonstrates President Trump’s success in harnessing the investigative powers of the federal government to accomplish his administration’s policy goals.
The New York Times reported on Thursday evening that the Justice Department had demanded Mr. Ryan’s resignation as a condition to settle a civil rights investigation into the school’s diversity practices.
In a letter sent on Thursday to the head of the board overseeing the university, Mr. Ryan said that he had planned to step down at the end of the next academic year but “given the circumstances and today’s conversations” he had decided, “with deep sadness,” to tender his resignation now, according to one of the people familiar with the matter who was briefed on the contents of the letter.
The school’s board has accepted Mr. Ryan’s resignation, according to two of the people briefed on the matter.
It was unclear when Mr. Ryan would leave his post. He said in his letter to the head of the board that his resignation could be effective immediately but “no later than Aug. 15, 2025,” according to the person briefed on the letter. […]
Ten days ago, the Justice Department issued a stern warning to the board overseeing the University of Virginia that the school needed to act quickly. The department informed the college of multiple complaints of race-based treatment on campus, and of the government’s conclusion that the use of race in admissions and other student benefits were “widespread practices throughout every component and facet of the institution.”
He should not have resigned. This is exactly the sort of thing that should be fought all the way. But once again, we have capitulation from elites who apparently think they can appease the voracious appetites of the MAGA revolutionaries who literally want to go back to a pre-civil war status quo. They will not stop.
UVA, by the way, is in Charlottesville. We all know what happened there in Trump’s first term. It looks like the “very fine people” he’s put into his Justice Department are finally giving those marchers their day.
This is from the official White House account:
Just don’t call it a cult. That would be disrespectful.
G.Elliot Morris has crunched the numbers:
I wrote on Saturday night, a few hours after Trump announced the U.S. bombing of Iran, that people should generally expect an increase in support for military action over the next week. I made that prediction for two reasons.
First, because there was a positive shock in support for past wars in the Middle East just after the U.S. government engaged in its initial attacks. The surge was anywhere from 10 to 20%, depending on the war. With history as our guide, that’s a pretty strong trend.
This prediction turned out to be right; According to YouGov, support for bombing Iran rose from 21% to 35% over the last week, and opposition dropped from 57% to 46%.
It’s the Republicans of course:
[I]n surveys conducted after the strike on June 21, Republican support for Trump’s actions has surged. In YouGov’s polling, 68% of Republicans now support Trump bombing Iran. Meanwhile, support among Democrats didn’t budge at all, and Independents moved just 9 points toward support.
Still, as Morris points out, “the bombing is still the least popular act of war in the Middle East since at least 2001.” So that’s something.
The Washington Post poll found this:
They beieve in Dear Leader, not isolationism. America First=whatever Daddy wants.
The stupidity too ..
The fascism as well:
Trump believes that the Supremes did reverse birthright citizenship and that’s not true. But it did hand him a victory:
The justices decided in a 6-3 ruling that nationwide preliminary injunctions “likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts.” The highly consequential decision takes away power from lower courts to reign in the federal government. For the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the injunctions should be narrowed “only to the extent that the [they] are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue.”
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson called the majority’s decision “profoundly dangerous” because it “gives the Executive the go-ahead to sometimes wield the kind of unchecked, arbitrary power the Founders crafted our Constitution to eradicate.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor, also dissenting, blasted the Court for “shamefully” playing along with the government’s “gamesmanship.” She noted the administration did not try to argue that the birthright executive order is constitutional—an “impossible task”—but instead asked the justices to “hold that, no matter how illegal a law or policy, courts can never simply tell the Executive to stop enforcing it against anyone.”
The Trump administration—through the birthright citizenship case—argued that lower courts should not have as many tools to stand in the way of its agenda; the Supreme Court agreed. It enraged Sotomayor. “The rule of law is not a given in this Nation, nor any other. It is a precept of our democracy that will endure only if those brave enough in every branch fight for its survival,” she wrote. “Today, the Court abdicates its vital role in that effort. With the stroke of a pen, the President has made a ‘solemn mockery’ of our Constitution.”
The birthright case was not decided today and the complications the Court just created are massive. People would be citizens, depending on which state they were born or if the one they are in recognizes their citizenship — and nobody know who will determine that in the first place. So this is not over. And the atrocities this will create will be obvious by the time the Court takes the case:
“An infant would be a United States citizen and full member of society if born in New Jersey, but a deportable noncitizen if born in Tennessee.”
That can’t possibly work. They will either have to completely overrule the 14th Amendment, in which case we have another constitutional crisis or they will affirm its plain language. I wouldn’t make a bet on the latter.
If you think legislative sausage-making is tedious now, imagine this: a bunch of blowhards on the Senate floor, droning on and on, endlessly debating the chamber’s rules. The position of Senate parliamentarian was created back in 1935 to end that tiresome practice. For decades, the public wasn’t really even aware the parliamentarian existed, but the job suddenly became much more visible in 2001.
Whenever Republicans attain power, they have a sacred religious ceremony: To pass massive tax cuts for the wealthy. Nearly 25 years ago, when Senate Republicans were trying to muster support for such a plan, the chamber was evenly split, with GOP Vice President Dick Cheney holding the tie-breaking vote. Since there was no chance of avoiding a successful Democratic filibuster, GOP leadership opted to pass the cuts using reconciliation, a process that requires only a simple majority to approve certain budget and tax bills, but with an important caveat. The parliamentarian must agree that the legislation’s intent and language doesn’t violate the decades-old Byrd Rule. Named after former West Virginia Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd, the rule bans provisions deemed “extraneous” to the federal budget from being included in reconciliation bills.
The GOP Majority Leader at the time, Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott, decided to exercise his office’s previously unused authority to fire Parliamentarian Robert Dove when he ruled that some of the provisions in the proposed bill violated the Byrd Rule. Although Dove’s firing caused quite a stir at the time, Republicans managed to get their beloved tax cuts.
Since then, both parties have increasingly relied on the reconciliation process to circumvent narrow Senate majorities. While calls to fire the parliamentarian have been raised by both parties after negative rulings, Lott remains the only majority leader to actually do it.
When Democrats called to replace her after she ruled against them during the Biden years, Republicans clutched their pearls at the apparent disrespect their colleagues were showing the sacred Byrd Rule.
The current parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, was appointed in 2012 by then-Democratic Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada. MacDonough has served during the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations, and along the way she has ruled in favor of and against both parties in their reconciliation battles. When Democrats called to replace her after she ruled against them during the Biden years, Republicans clutched their pearls at the apparent disrespect their colleagues were showing the sacred Byrd Rule.
Now, their leader’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” — as President Trump fatuously insisted it be named by Republicans — has been submitted to the parliamentarian, and quite a bit of it has not passed muster. Their ritual tax cuts seem to be fine; reconciliation is designed to accommodate tax policy. But many of their spending reductions, which are supposed to offset the tax cuts, simply don’t fit the definition, MacDonough has ruled. And many Republicans are furious.
The list of provisions that have been deemed out of bounds by the parliamentarian is long. MacDonough has said no to the GOP’s prized initiatives slashing Medicaid and Medicare coverage for unauthorized immigrants, limiting state provider taxes, banning transgender care from all federal healthcare programs and cutting food stamp benefits. She has given a thumbs down to defunding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and plans that would have forced the sale of massive tracts of pristine public land to private developers and interfered with the judiciary’s ability to function. In all, she has rejected more than two dozen provisions.
This leaves the GOP having to pass all these proposals via individual bills, or a big omnibus bill, both of which would require 60 votes to avoid a filibuster. Unless they are prepared to nuke the filibuster, these proposals are dead.
The smarter Republican senators know that most of these cuts are electorally toxic. For all the rending of garments over the “unelected bureaucrat” parliamentarian usurping their God-given mandate, a good many of them will be relieved.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said repeatedly this week that he’s not going to overrule MacDonough, nor is he going to follow Lott’s example and fire her. But for all of Thune’s assurances of respect for Senate rules and traditions, it’s certainly possible he will do so anyway. For no apparent reason, Trump is breathing down the majority leader’s neck to get the bill passed by July 4. The right flank of Thune’s caucus is upset at losing some of their prized provisions. For his part, Thune had pushed hard to split these priorities into two or more bills, but Trump wasn’t having it. He demanded his “One Big Beautiful Bill,” and Republicans on Capitol Hill had no choice but to acquiesce.
“These are speed bumps along the way, we anticipated those and so we have contingency plans,” Thune said. “Obviously, you have to adjust the timing and schedule a little bit, but we’re moving forward.”
The biggest issue now confronting Republicans is the gigantic pot of money — hundreds of billions of dollars — they were expecting to generate from their plan to cap the ability of states to collect more federal Medicaid funding via health care provider taxes. Thune said Republican leaders knew “it was going to be an interesting conversation” with the parliamentarian over that provision, which suggests they knew it likely wouldn’t qualify. But they had to appease the hardliners by trying.
All this will leave the deficit in even worse shape. The tax cuts will explode the deficit, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. But let’s face it: That ship has long since sailed. Republicans really don’t care. Sure, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and some of the House Freedom Caucus members will put up a fuss. But there’s almost no chance they won’t cave in the end to pass their precious tax cuts.
As usual, billionaires will get their treats and average people will lose. But if Thune and his deputies in Senate leadership can hold fast and let the parliamentarian’s rulings stand, at least the bill will be marginally less horrific. These days, that’s about the best we can hope for.
Salon
Are Democrats listening?
Democrats’ stubborn circling the wagons around Andrew Cuomo in the New York City mayor’s race was tone-deaf. As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez says in this interview, there were other choices that the people of New York clearly favored more.
Democrats have a choice to listen or not, AOC tells reporters. The question lingers, Can yellow dogs learn new tricks?
View on Threads
This guy has 21st century skills that Democrats in their 70s and 80s cannot wrap their brains around. And probably shouldn’t try.
* * * * *
Have you fought dictatorship today?
Good Trouble Lives On (July 17, in memory of John Lewis)
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense