Month: February 2026

Even Axios notices:

• ⚖️ Retribution: A federal grand jury unanimously rejected the Justice Department’s attempt to indict six Democratic lawmakers over a video they made urging service members to refuse unlawful orders. It’s at least the fifth time that charges against Trump’s adversaries or protesters have been turned away by a grand jury — virtually unheard of in modern federal prosecutions. A federal judge also shut down Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s attempt to punish Navy veteran Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) over his role in the video, accusing the Pentagon of unconstitutional retaliation.
• 🚨 ICE raids: Trump’s border czar Tom Homan announced an end to the 10-week ICE surge in Minneapolis following the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens, which drew mass protests and rare rebukes from corporate America. The president acknowledged his mass deportation campaign could use a “softer touch,” as private and public polls point to a sharp decline in support for his immigration policies.
• 🪖 National Guard: Trump also withdrew all federalized National Guard troops from L.A., Chicago and Portland after repeated legal defeats and opposition from state and local leaders, dealing a blow to his efforts to crack down on crime in Democratic-run cities.
• 📦 Tariffs: Six House Republicans joined Democrats to pass a resolution rescinding Trump’s tariffs on Canada. The vote became possible only after a smaller group of Republicans staged a floor rebellion against GOP leadership, opening the door for Democrats to force more politically painful votes on Trump’s trade agenda.
• 🗂️ Epstein files: Trump’s push to shut down MAGA’s Jeffrey Epstein obsession backfired in spectacular fashion. The Justice Department is still grappling with daily backlash after releasing more than 3 million documents, with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) voicing rare criticism over revelations that DOJ tracked what lawmakers searched while reviewing the unredacted files.
• 📽️ Racism: A chorus of Republicans, led by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), condemned Trump’s reposting of a video that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. The White House initially defended the post before deleting it and claiming an aide shared the clip.
• 🇩🇰 Greenland: Trump dominated Davos last month with his threats to seize Greenland by any means necessary — only to retreat amid market turmoil, European fury, warnings from congressional Republicans, and a vague “deal” promising the U.S. greater access to the Arctic territory.
• 🏦 Fed: The DOJ’s criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell has drawn deep skepticism from Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who has vowed to block confirmation of Powell’s successor, Kevin Warsh, unless the probe is dropped. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent privately proposed shifting the investigation to the Senate to placate Tillis, who swiftly threw cold water on the idea.

Trump doesn’t like this but he knows that he can always just self-soothe by saying that the news is fake, the polls are rigged and the elections have been stolen — and tens of millions of Americans will go along with him. I’m beginning to wonder if he doesn’t actually prefer to lie about his failures so that he can see people bowing and scraping, pretending that they believe him. Knowing that people are licking your boots, pretending that they agree with you when it’s patently obvious that you are lying is a very real form of power.

On another level, he’s convinced himself that he is the world’s greatest victim and it’s only because of his very, stable genius that he’s ascended to the presidency twice. And frankly, you can’t blame him. He has never been held accountable for any of his failures, crimes and grotesque behaviors and he’s done it all out in public right in everyone’s faces. You can see why so many people think he is a magic man. Who else could get away with all that?

But that’s a subject that historians, psychologists and political scientists will wrestle with for centuries (if we last that long.) How on God’s green earth did this very sick, inept, stupid man manage to do what he has done?

Calling Hannah Arendt’s ghost…

Update: Krugman weighs in with Pam Bondi’s bizarre performance before the Judiciary Committee, particularly when she objected to any questioning about the Justice Department when the stock market is up:

This plumbed new depths of moral bankruptcy, effectively saying: “How dare you complain about child rape when the stock market is up?”

There was an unmistakable stench of desperation in Bondi’s tantrum. And it fooled no one. The cracks are showing, as some congressional Republicans have now voted against Trump’s tariffs, Justice Department lawyers are quitting en masse or just plain cracking up, and attempts to weaponize prosecutions keep failing.

Now Tom Homan says that the ICE surge in Minnesota will be wound down — an ignominious retreat if true — while Democrats are standing firm on refusing further DHS funding without significant reforms. And Bondi’s yelling isn’t making Epstein go away.

But let’s examine Bondi’s demand that Americans ignore the omnishambles because stocks are up. It’s morally depraved, but what about the economics? Yes, stock prices are up. As any economist can tell you, however, the stock market is a poor indicator of the economy’s overall health. Paul Samuelson famously quipped that the market had predicted nine of the last five recessions.

Furthermore, stock prices are up almost everywhere — and up more in other countries than they are in the United States. The chart at the top compares stock prices in the U.S. and in the euro area; since the latter is measured in euros, and the euro has risen against the dollar, Europe has substantially outperformed America.

And if we go beyond the stock market and look at what really matters to most Americans — affordability and jobs — the Trump economy isn’t delivering. Inflation remains stubbornly elevated. Despite one good month, employment growth has shriveled. And it keeps getting more difficult to find a job.

Here’s one measure I find useful, the Conference Board’s “labor market differential” — the difference between the percentage of Americans saying that jobs are plentiful and the percentage saying that jobs are hard to find:

This is certainly not a great economy. It’s not even a healthy economy. And Americans are not buying the administration’s lies.

Remember how all the big conservative Christians and the MAGA right have been screaming about antisemitism, even going so far as to strong arm all of America’s major universities into crushing free speech on campus in order to stop it? Yeah, I thought you would.

Apparently, a little antisemitic banter is just fine on Fox News, though. All in good fun. When sprinkled in with a dash of misogyny and pedophilia it’s comedy gold:

JESSE WATTERS (CO-HOST): But if you read the Epstein files — the Journal has done a great job at this — Epstein got his money from two Jewish billionaires, [Les Wexner] and Leon Black, and a little bit of money from the Jewish banking dynasty, the Rothschilds in Europe. And it looks like he’s mostly just a fixer, a guy who advises. He helps people with their problems, sometimes those problems are you need a girl, and —

LISA KENNEDY MONTGOMERY (CO-HOST): Or some penicillin.

WATTERS: Or some — If you need it, he’s got it.

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): He’s a sex rabbi.

WATTERS: He should perform at the halftime show next year.

Doing the old Jewish banker, Protocols of the Elders of Zion thing is fine. That’s just reality, amirite? It’s only when you say that Palestinians have rights that you are being antisemitic.

It’s all about gas prices

Price changes over last year (January CPI report)
Gas Utilities: +9.8%
Electricity: +6.3%
Food away from home: +4.0%
Medical Care: +3.9%
Shelter: +3.0%
Overall CPI: +2.4%
Food at home: +2.1%
Transportation: +1.3%
New Cars: +0.4%
Used Cars: -2.0%
Fuel Oil: -4.2%
Gasoline: -7.5%

— Charlie Bilello (@charliebilello) February 13, 2026

Meanwhile:

12.7% of credit card balances in the US are now 90+ days delinquent, the highest since 2011.

5.2% of auto loan balances are now 90+ days delinquent, the highest since 2010.https://t.co/l5IYmkf6Ih pic.twitter.com/n5PRktSDXy

— Charlie Bilello (@charliebilello) February 12, 2026

Americans are shouldering almost all of President Donald Trump’s import tax surge, a report,from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said on Thursday.

The bank said 90% of the tariffs imposed by the president on imported goods are borne by American consumers and companies. The report pushes back against the Trump administration’s argument that the levies are paid by foreigners.

Oops.

There’s lots more like that. Which is one big reason why Trump’s latest approval rating in the AP-NORC poll is down to 36%

Just an astoundingly bad AP poll for Trump

• 36% overall job approval
• 72% disapprove of Greenland threats
• 66% describe economy as doing poorly
• 60% unfavorable view of ICE

Cannot stress enough: the vast majority of Americans think this presidency is a failure.

— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) February 13, 2026

It is a failure. But then we knew it would be, however you measure it, simply by virtue of the fact that it’s headed by a very psychologically damaged malignant narcissist. How could it be anything else?

But agents sure as hell got acculturated

Top Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials testified on Thursday before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. They no doubt enjoyed the roasting (New York Times):

Testifying before the Senate panel, Todd Lyons, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE], repeatedly said he could not offer comments on the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti because of continuing investigations. But asked by Senator Maggie Hassan, Democrat of New Hampshire, if they were “domestic terrorists,” a label that Trump administration officials used to describe them shortly after their deaths without providing evidence, Mr. Lyons said he did not have knowledge that they were.

Ongoing investigations and all that.

Mr. Lyons and Rodney S. Scott, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection [CBP], were also pressed about Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s description of Mr. Pretti as a domestic terrorist. In response, they said their agencies did not provide her an assessment that Mr. Pretti was engaged in domestic terrorism.

Democrats condemned random violence by CBP/ICE agents. Republicans focused on reinforcing the White House’s “Democrat-run cities” run amok narrative.

Then came Kentucky Republican Rand Paul’s turn, along with Democrat Gary Peters of Michigan:

Mr. Paul and Senator Gary Peters of Michigan, the top Democrat on the committee, played a video analysis of the moments leading up to Mr. Pretti’s killing, stopping at various frames to question Mr. Scott and Mr. Lyons about their agents’ conduct.

“It’s clearly evident that the public trust has been lost,” Mr. Paul said. “To restore trust in ICE and Border Patrol, they must admit their mistakes.”

“No one in America believes shoving that woman’s head and her face in the snow was de-escalation,” said Paul, reacting to witness videos.

Asked if it was appropriate for federal officers to beat someone with a pepper spray canister, Mr. Scott placed blame on Mr. Pretti. He said the video showed that Mr. Pretti was “not compliant, he’s not following any guidance, he’s fighting back nonstop.” But Mr. Scott would not answer whether it was appropriate, given that federal investigations into the shooting were ongoing.

But this the money exchange:

under questioning by Rand Paul, ICE officials confirm that yelling at officers is not assault and recording officers is not a crime pic.twitter.com/7Q9Td0Mjtz

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 12, 2026

Epstein liked to cosplay as smart

Why is this not surprising? Discovered among the millions of Epstein documents (The Atlantic):

Promoting contemptible perspectives on race is probably nowhere near the most depraved things Epstein did; he was, after all, a registered sex offender charged with child trafficking. But Epstein’s views are notable given his long-standing influence on some of the most powerful and influential Americans. His conversations from a decade ago provide clues as to how race science was picked out of the boneyard of history and reanimated into a force that’s influencing U.S. politics right now.

I’d say rather that race science was never consigned to “the boneyard of history” any more than fascism. The graveyard of the undead, perhaps. Paul Krugman might call it “a zombie lie — something that keeps coming back no matter how many times it’s killed by evidence.”

As other emails suggest, Epstein enjoyed in a dilettantish way to rub elbows with people known more for their brains. Him being filthy rich, intellectuals tolerated his inquiries about ideas more than they would give the time of day to the average schlub. It seems Epstein came across Noam Chomsky that way and recommended to him “Race and IQ: Genes That Predict Racial Intelligence Differences” from a white supremacist website. Epstein repeatedly attempted communication with Charles Murray of “The Bell Curve” infamy. Murray tells Ari Breland that it’s possible they met at a conference somewhere, but he has no recollection.

Other such characters from the fringe pop up in Epstein’s emails. But let’s get to how these ideas reach into the highest echelons of government and public policy.

In the past several years, race science has gained traction on the right and in parts of Silicon Valley’s elite circles. Elon Musk, for example, has repeatedly replied to the @cremieuxrecueil account, run by Jordan Lasker, an independent researcher who has been credited by a right-wing publication for tracing “the genetic pathways of crime, explaining why poverty is not a good causal explanation.” Musk has also engaged with an account that posted statistics supposedly illustrating the inferiority of Black people. In November, The Guardian reported that perspectives defending race science were embedded in Musk’s Wikipedia competitor, Grokipedia. Musk and his representatives did not respond to a request for comment.

In 2023 and 2024, respectively, Charlie Kirk and Tucker Carlson interviewed Steve Sailer, a prominent race-science proponent. President Trump—who once considered Epstein a close friend and is referenced in many emails—has toyed around with the concept for years. In a November 2024 interview with the right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump said that some of the migrants coming across the southern border were genetically inferior. “How about allowing people to come to an open border, 13,000 of whom were murderers? Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States,” Trump told Hewitt, citing an incorrect number. “You know, now a murderer—I believe this—it’s in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.” When I reached out to the White House, the spokesperson Abigail Jackson told me in an emailed statement that “President Trump is right—dangerous criminal illegal aliens exploited Joe Biden’s open border and flooded our country.”

And what then do we say about the career criminal Trump’s genes, or the pedophile Epstein’s?

Arguing that intelligence and adjacent traits are biologically determined served a clear function for a man like Epstein, who treated women as disposable and subordinate. And it’s equally unsurprising that the powerful people with whom he cultivated relationships might attempt to come up with a natural, objective explanation and rationale for their perch at the top of society.

That perch has more to do with how in our culture wealth inordinately confers more status than one’s intelligence and humanity. Empty vessels possessing only the former enjoy cosplaying as though they accrued their wealth-status through native intelligence. Drug kingpins and warlords make no such pretensions. Perhaps the Epstein class should study instead the genetic origins of cunning and amorality.

The Trump administration: Q.E.D.

Them: If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?Me: If you're so rich, why aren't you smart?Looking at you, Bessent.

— Tom Sullivan (@tmsullivan.bsky.social) 2026-01-19T01:29:48.211Z

Everyone wondered what the government had uncovered that would have justified the warrant to seize the ballots in Fulton County. Well, they released the affidavit the FBI submitted to the judge and it’s as outrageous as we might have imagined. Philip Bump reports:

By the bureau’s own admission, the recent FBI search of the Fulton County, Georgia, elections office did not center on uncovering evidence that the 2020 presidential election results there were tainted by fraud. The release of the affidavit submitted in support of the warrant makes that clear. The document argues that the potential illegality requiring federal intervention involved “many allegations of electoral impropriety relating to the voting process and ballot counting” in the county. It also claims that if failures on the part of election officials were “the result of intentional action,” a crime might have occurred.

The affidavit offers no evidence of intentionality, though. Instead, it centers primarily on rehashing existing, broadly debunked claims about purportedly dubious activity in the county at the time of the election. There is no evidence in the affidavit that the election was dishonest; there’s not even any evidence of significant, suspicious activity.So why does the affidavit exist? The direct answer to that question is offered by the affidavit itself. 

“The FBI criminal investigation originated from a referral sent by Kurt Olsen, Presidentially appointed Director of Election Security and Integrity,” FBI Special Agent Hugh Raymond Evans writes.

Olsen is not an objective party here. At the time of the 2020 election, he worked for President Donald Trump’s campaign, leading efforts to overturn the results of a contest that Trump lost. He’s identified in the final report of the House select committee that probed Trump’s efforts as having “authored a memo urging Vice President [Mike] Pence to adjourn the joint session of Congress without counting electoral votes.” Trump tapped Olsen last year essentially to resume his work.

Of course it was at the hands of the coup plotters. How could it not be?

Bump points out that this about “proving” Donald Trump was right about everything but it’s also about rigging elections going forward. I’m very worried about this as I’m sure you are too. I know the blue states will hold the line. But states like Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, North Carolina, which are at least partially run by Republicans, are going to be under tremendous pressure to go along.

There is a lot of talk about the nightmare scenario in which Mike Johnson refuses to give up control and won’t seat enough “contested” Democratic victors to give them the majority, but that isn’t the problem. Mike Johnson is not the speaker on January 3rd, when the new Congress convenes. The Congress is not a continuing body. Nothing happens until the new Congress elects a new speaker.

However, that doe not mean that there isn’t a potential problem. Ned Foley at electionlawblog explains here:

On January 3, 2027, the House will have to organize itself by first having the Members-elect vote in a new Speaker. If there is contestation over enough seats to determine which party has a majority of Members-elect for the purpose of holding the vote on who is the new Speaker, that contestation can stymie and delay the Speakership vote and prevent the organization of the House.

It’s a situation very much to worry about, but not in the way Graham describes. It wouldn’t be the Republicans giving themselves the majority by seating two more Republican members instead of the two Democrats who were certified by the state to have won the election. It would be much messier and more complicated than that. (As a general rule, the Clerk of the House is supposed to identify as a Member-elect a candidate who presents a prima facie valid certificate of election from the state, history shows that it is not always that simple.)

They’re going to do something. We just have to hope that the Democrats are prepared for anything.

Think again:

The Trump administration is dramatically expanding an effort to revoke U.S. citizenship for foreign-born Americans as it works to curb immigration, according to two people familiar with the plans.

Over the past several months, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency within the Department of Homeland Security that’s responsible for legal immigration, has been sending experts to its offices around the country or reassigning staff members to focus on whether some citizens processed through those offices could now be denaturalized, these people said.

The goal of emphasizing naturalized citizens is to supply the office of immigration litigation with 100 to 200 possible cases per month, one of the people familiar with the plans said. Such cases have typically been very rare, involving people who concealed criminal histories or previous human rights violations during their application processes. The New York Times first reported the quota.

By comparison, throughout the four years of President Donald Trump’s first term, the administration formally filed a total of 102 such cases, according to the Justice Department.

The effort is part of the overall push by Homeland Security to drastically curtail immigration and deliver on Trump’s policy agenda. The push has included DHS’ sending scores of immigration enforcement officers into U.S. cities on deportation missions and purchasing mega warehouses to hold detainees.

DHS has also increasingly sought to remove legal immigrants from the U.S. by revoking thousands of visas, including for some people who participated in pro-Palestinian protests, and trying to deport green card holders.

Let’s be clear. They are engaged in a program of ethnic cleansing. Anyone who is foreign born is on the chopping block. And most of them are non-white. (If they could deport all African Americans they would certainly do so but they may be stuck there — they’ll just ratchet up incarceration instead.)

Stephen Miller had made it very, very clear that he wants all foreigners out and wants to shut the door on letting any new ones in. Trump will make noises once in a while about letting him “the good ones” because he still has a vague subliminal knowledge of the (dying) conventional wisdom that America is the land of freedom and opportunity. (He doesn’t actually care about any of that, of course, but he knows that some people do.)

They have three years left to ratchet up this program. No one should be sanguine that they won’t do it, even if the Democrats miraculously manage to win the midterms. This, graft, and the monuments to Dear Leader, are the main objectives of the Trump 2.0 administration.

They seem to have awakened:

President Trump’s job approval is 34 points underwater among young men, with 32% approving and 66% disapproving of his performance in office.

A paltry 26% of young men would back a J.D. Vance presidential run in the 2028 general election, with 55% opposing and 17% unsure.

A 61% supermajority of young men say Trump is not fulfilling his campaign promise to put America first, including 25% of young Republican men and 64% of Independents.

Thirty-three percent of young men combined—including 15% of young Republican men—hold Trump (24%) and Republican leaders (9%) as the figures with the greatest responsibility for lowering the country’s temperature around political violence, while just 6% say Democratic leaders hold this responsibility.

Young men are most alarmed by Trump’s $1 trillion cut to health care (66% very concerned), followed by his opposition to fully releasing the Epstein files (63%), and his expansion of immigration raids to target anyone who looks or sounds foreign (60%).

Sixty-five percent of young men say that they are either struggling to pay bills (27%) or are just making enough to pay bills (38%).

Fifty-eight percent of young men believe that Trump has negatively impacted their finances, while just 23% say that he has had a positive impact.

Half of young men blame Trump’s tariffs for higher grocery costs (49%), while a larger share blame private corporations that purchase real estate for high housing costs (65%).

An astonishing 73% of young men believe that American culture has changed for the worse since their parents were their age—20 points higher than the electorate overall. 

That’s from Third Way which is hardly a left leaning institution.

I won’t belabor the point that Trump was a known quantity in 2024 and there’s no excuse for why so many people voted for him anyway. You know how I feel about that. But if anyone can be excused it’s the younger folks who have less experience with politics and only knew that things were better when they were younger and they associated that with Trump.

They won’t make that mistake again.

Maybe. But it’s not the one Trump thinks it is.

Even for a president accustomed to making grandiose statements, this one was a whopper. On Wednesday, Donald Trump said in an interview with Fox Business that we are living in “the greatest period of anything we’ve ever seen.” That’s more than a bit vague, but I think we know what he meant. 

Trump has always bragged incessantly about himself and his alleged accomplishments. But ever since he returned to the White House in 2025, he’s been touting his presidency as a “Golden Age,” even going so far as to make the expression tangible by slapping gilt on everything in sight. He genuinely believes he can change reality simply by relentlessly stating something as fact in the face of all evidence to the contrary. His repeated insistence, though, that the country has never been as successful as it is today has so far landed with a thud.

We are, in fact, living in an historic time. Americans have rarely been more pessimistic about the future. According to the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index, Americans who believe they will have high-quality lives in five years declined to the lowest level since the organization began asking the question 20 years ago. Those who believe that both their current and future lives are good enough to be classified as “thriving” dropped to 48%. If this is America’s Golden Age, it doesn’t appear that people are seeing it.

In fact, the right-wing polling organization Rasmussen asked the question outright and found bad news for the president: Only 27% of those surveyed see this as the country’s “Golden Age,” as compared to 58% who do not. Even more galling to Trump has to be the finding that 48% of voters now say that Joe Biden was the better president. Only 40% said the same of Trump. (A Harvard CAPS/Harris poll similarly reported that 51% favored Biden over Trump, a dramatic — and recent — switch from December, when Trump was on top at 53%.)

Some of these findings are no doubt driven by partisan swings according to who is in the White House. But these polls are finding that even Republicans are feeling pessimistic, despite all of Trump’s happy talk. In fact, I would think that his portrayal of the country as having never been better sounds downright delusional to even some of his ardent supporters. 

All this despondency appears to be having an effect on the GOP leadership. Trump and his acolytes have been sent into paroxysms of anger by the mild criticisms offered by American athletes at the Winter Olympics. When skier Hunter Hess had the temerity to say “Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.,” the president called him a loser and said he shouldn’t have tried out for the team. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on X, “Raise your hand if you think Olympic Skier Hunter Hess should be disqualified off the U.S. Team.” That idea got a ringing endorsement from Utah Sen. Mike Lee, who posted, “If you can’t stand up for your country while abroad—at the Olympics or otherwise Stay home.” Podcaster Megyn Kelly said that “Hess should be stripped of his ability to rep the USA & sent home.”

Many of Hess’ fellow athletes have made similar comments, reflecting the overwhelming attitude among the majority of young people in America who are deeply pessimistic about the country. Their messages weren’t about the price of eggs or worries about getting ahead. If there was one overarching concern, it was about being perceived as endorsing the hateful behavior and attitudes the world is seeing acted out under the leadership of the Trump administration every day.

“I’m racing for an American people who stand for love, for acceptance, for compassion, honesty and respect for others,” cross country skier Jessie Diggins wrote. “I do not stand for hate or violence or discrimination.” Chris Lillis, a freestyle skier, said, “I feel heartbroken about what’s happened in the United States. As a country we need to focus on respecting everybody’s rights and making sure that we’re treating our citizens, as well as anybody, with love and respect. I hope that when people look at athletes competing in the Olympics they realize that that’s the America we’re trying to represent.” 

Those are values that these young Americans hold. But it isn’t just young people. Rich Ruohonen, who at 54 is the oldest man to ever represent the U.S. in the Winter Olympics — and happens to hail from Minnesota — gave a spirited speech during a press conference explicitly calling out the authoritarian tactics deployed by the Trump administration in his home state, while simultaneously declaring his love for his country and its freedoms. As of Tuesday, not one American participant in the games had stood up for Donald Trump or his policies.

There have been protests before at the Olympics, and they were always met with angry denunciations from the right. Their reflexive reaction to anyone suggesting that America isn’t perfect has always been “Love it or leave it.” But Trump, with his own constant carping about the United States both at home and abroad, has turned that notion sideways. While the president often proclaims that things have never been better, his endless insults and criticisms of his fellow Americans actually convey the clear impression that the country is a chaotic mess of mutual loathing and factional hatred. No wonder everyone is so pessimistic. 

This is a change. America has certainly had its dark periods, and there were no doubt times that the people felt the future was grim. But for the most part, America has always been an optimistic nation, with the future beckoning a better day for everyone. The proverbial image of the U.S. as a “shining city on a hill” once resonated with immigrants who came to this country believing that here was a place to build a better life for themselves and their families. 

The sight of those Olympians feeling the need — and the freedom — to champion liberal values of diversity, kindness and compassion, as well as opposition to injustice, is a sign that all is not lost. And perhaps the best example of all came on Sunday when global superstar Bad Bunny performed at the Super Bowl halftime show and served up a roaring example of those values before over 128 million people all over the world. The joy expressed in his message of inclusion and universality said more about the America that most of its people actually believe in than any golden monuments to Trump will ever do.

The right’s cramped vision of American greatness, with its sour, white nationalist ideology and cruel authoritarian methods, is a good reason to be pessimistic. But the resilience of the American people from Minneapolis to Milan is telling a different story. For all of our gloom about the future, it appears we aren’t giving up. Perhaps the Golden Age really is upon us after all. It’s just not the one Donald Trump thinks it is. 

Salon

And they don’t like what they see

G. Elliott Morris:

In 2024, the voters who knew the least about politics were some of Donald Trump’s strongest supporters. One pre-election poll found Americans who didn’t consume any news at all said they’d vote for him over Kamala Harris by a 20-point margin, 60%¹ to 40%.

Today, the president’s support among low-knowledge voters has cratered to just 43%, according to a new analysis of data from our January Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll. The share of 2024 voters who now disapprove of the president is well over 55%.

According to our poll, low-knowledge voters backed Trump by a net margin of 11 points in 2024. Now, however, the same low-knowledge voters say they disapprove of the president by 13 points — a 25-point shift away from the president.

High-knowledge voters were roughly evenly split in 2024 (voting for Harris by 2 points, per self-reports in our data), and have moved against Trump at a softer rate, to -14. The two groups are compared in the following chart:

He’s so ubiquitous that even the people who studiously avoid the news can’t help but notice that he’s destroying everything he touches.

Apparently, these low info voters skew younger and poorer and are less ideological making them more likely to be moved by actual conditions on the ground than others. That’s bad news for Trump.

More at the link.