The Trump administration saw yet another high-profile departure Wednesday, with Navy Secretary John Phelan heading to the exits. Senate Republicans are bracing for even more.
President Donald Trump’s recent administration shakeup — the sacking of Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi as well as this week’s departure of Lori Chavez-DeRemer — has created openings for a slew of potential confirmations, and GOP senators are contemplating who might be next and how quickly Trump should make any further changes.
No Republicans are publicly urging any particular oustings. But privately GOP senators believe Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and FBI Director Kash Patel could be at risk of leaving — voluntarily or not.
“He’s in a bad mood,” one GOP senator said about Trump. “He’s preparing to really let a lot of them go.”
So, situation normal.
Norm Eisen, former White House Special Counsel for Ethics and Government Reform, as well as former and board chair of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), is exactly the kind of American Donald Trump hates: someone with ethics. Especially since Eisen served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee for Trump’s first impeachment.
Trump went after Eisen on Truth Social Wednesday night.
He IS in a mood, isn’t he? I’d missed this (Newsweek):
President Donald Trump has called for Fox News host Jessica Tarlov to be taken off the air, calling her “one of the least attractive and talented people” on television.
Writing on Truth Social on Thursday, Trump said: “Her voice is so grating and terrible, I had to ‘turn her off!’”
Yes, but does Trump run out of the room when he hears her voice like my spouse does with his?
Tarlov, a former Democratic Party strategist and co-host of Fox News’ The Five, said on Thursday that Trump now had a “35 percent approval rating in most polls,” adding that “no Americans wanted the tariffs, they didn’t want the war in Iran, and they don’t want the ballroom.”
That explains his dumping on Tarlov. Eisen told Jennifer Rubin the Department of Justice should be renamed the Department of Trump.
Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, despite its branding, is not about returning to past American greatness or building anything like it in the future. MAGA is throwing a decade-long tantrum over demographic and social change it cannot stop.
“Superpower Suicide” is a concept to help understand the approach of the Trump regime to the rest of the world. We are fighting a war for no reason we can name, losing it, and covering our defeat with genocidal and apocalyptic propaganda. This is bad enough on its own; but I think this performance is symptomatic of something deeper — a systematic undoing of American power by Americans. In this video I stay close to very traditional accounts of the accumulation and maintenance of of state power, all of which indicate rapid and catastrophic decline as the result of specific choices in the last year. I don’t even mention one source of US power which is specifically modern: the international structures we built over decades to ensure our centrality, which the Trump people are undoing. Many of the American fundamentals are still very sound, but a better future, or any kind of future at all, will depend on a sober reckoning with the present moment.
Snyder sees a movement with Donald Trump as its figurehead as one separately described as “a regime of the bullies for the billionaires” by Anat Shenker-Osorio. “There is no idea of the future,” Snyder says. “There’s just day-to-day enrichment. We’re pursuing policies inconsistent with being a superpower.”
The “we” in Snyder’s formulation is the people with their hands actually on the levers of power. It is a class of grifters, to be sure, with no commitment either to the American republic or to its founding principles, only to their own enrichment. They are above the law. Above history. Above patriotism. They’ve applied the concept of an extractive economy to the operation of a nation state itself.
Stephen Hinton decsribed it seven years ago in a Medium post, writing, “It is rather surprising that the dominant business paradigm is capitalism and yet it runs on degrading capital. On a finite planet, this is surely not good business let alone good for the planet.” Or for a democratic republic run on extraction, which is the only one Trump and his hangers-on know.
The story is different for MAGA footsoldiers who now see that Trump has betrayed them. He’s pursing his own pecuniary interests and self-aggrandizement with no regard for their well-being. Trump manipulated them for his own interests by performing commitment to theirs. And now that he’s a lame duck, he can drop all pretense. And has.
Readers who have been with me since my early tenure here at Ye Olde Blog may recall that I see another dynamic at work among the kind of people who adopted Trump as their champion. It is the kind of self-destructiveness one see among people with low impulse control, sometimes reflected in less education, and sometimes in proud rejection of it. If they cannot get their way, they start acting out. Or breaking things or setting fires. Trump is both.
I have long said that the Republican Party is acting out one of those dreary murder ballads with America. If they cannot have America for their own, they just might burn it down. John Boehner can relate. That is why Digby quoted Rick Perlstein yesterday: “Take demagogues seriously. Voters love them. And they’re only a joke until they win.”
I took her by her lily white hand
And dragged her down that bank of sand
There I throwed her in to drown
I watched her as she floated down
“Was walking home tween twelve and one
Thinkin’ of what I had done
I killed a girl, my love you see
Because she would not marry me
– from “Banks Of The Ohio” (traditional)
They love their country — it’s THEIR country — and if they can’t have her, nobody can.
Republicans got their stopped clock cleaned in Virginia on Tuesday when voters approved a new congressional map that — say it ain’t so! — disenfranchises a large swath of voters: theirs. Donald Trump in clockwork fashion declared the election rigged. Republicans were winning earlier in the day (before any votes were counted?), he insisted, before the dreaded “Mail In Ballot Drop” (whatever that is). “Where have I heard that before?” Trump raged. He’s more obsessed with the manner of voting than the outcome. Disenfranchising Republicans is an afterthought.
Tazewell County Circuit Court Judge Jack Hurley barred state officials from implementing the new maps, calling the ballot language “flagrantly misleading” and the process in violation of the Virginia constitution. Virginia Attorney General Jay pledged to appeal the ruling.
“Republicans lost,” says Virginians for Fair Elections. “Now they’re trying to overturn the will of the voters in court and trying to relitigate an election they couldn’t win.”
Where have you heard that before?
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez offered a terse rejoinder to Republican howls of disenfranchisement. Essentially, don’t like it when it’s done to you? Then stop doing it to us. Join us and ban partisan gerrymandering.
Reporter: What do you make of Republicans saying that Virginia—
AOC: Wah wah wah.
We have asked Republicans for 10 years to ban partisan gerrymandering. And for 10 years, Republicans have said no. Republicans have fought for partisan gerrymanders across the United States of… pic.twitter.com/BVa9uOH0zq
The Atlantic‘s Adam Serwer responds to the accusation that the effort by Virginia Democrats disenfranchises Republicans: “That is exactly what the new Virginia map does,” Serwer states bluntly, offering a summary history of partisan gerrymandering.
Republicans justify their rigging of district maps on the grounds that “the votes of constituencies that lean Republican are more legitimate than those that lean liberal.” They state it explicitly. Serwer brings receipts:
“If you took Madison and Milwaukee out of the state election formula, we would have a clear majority—we would have all five constitutional officers and we would probably have many more seats in the Legislature,” Robin Vos, the Republican speaker of the state assembly in Wisconsin, said in 2018. The logic here is clear: Rural votes, more likely to be Republican, should count more than urban votes, which tend to come from Democrats. At the time, Republicans in Wisconsin had managed to draw maps so effectively that even when Democrats won 53 percent of the vote, they won only about a third of the seats in the legislature.
When Democratic states tried to lead by example in adopting nonpartisan redistricting commissions, Republicans saw an advantage. If Democrats would not pursue maximum advantage for themselves, Republicans would in states they controlled.
Republicans’ will to power vs. Democrats defense of democratic principles does not win them the approval one might assume.
Over at Strength In Numbers, Elliot Morris this morning reflects on a recent poll on party favorability. Democrats are -3 on favorability and Republicans -16. But part of that unfavorability for Democrats is, you guessed it:
Even voters who say they have an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party often plan to vote for Democrats anyway. And when Democrats’ own voters complain about their party in their own words, the complaint is not that Democrats are too liberal or “weak and woke”, it’s that they’re not fighting hard enough, particularly against Donald Trump.
Morris reflects on his polling’s findings:
As I wrote back in February, the Democratic brand is not predominantly woke, but weak. Respondents to our survey associated the Democrats with traits like honesty and caring about the working class, but they are seen as weak and not particularly effective. The Republican brand, by contrast, is a strong brand that a majority of the country finds extreme.
This takes us back to Virginia. Republicans’ howls do not presage a recommitment to small-d democratic principles any more than Tucker Carlson’s mea culpas about Donald Trump this week reflect a “road to Damascus” change of heart about his embrace of fascism. (Carlson is simply positioning himself to secure a base in a post-Trump MAGA.) Serwer sees it too, writing that Republicans “simply believe that disenfranchising Democrats is good but disenfranchising Republicans is bad.”
Serwer concludes with Justice Elena Kagan:
“The partisan gerrymanders here debased and dishonored our democracy, turning upside-down the core American idea that all governmental power derives from the people,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her 2019 dissent in Rucho. “If left unchecked, gerrymanders like the ones here may irreparably damage our system of government.”
Kagan was right then, and she’s right now. If Republicans had listened at the time, they would not be tasting their own bitter medicine today.
What I wonder now is whether in the next poll Democrats’ clapback in Virginia will improve their standing with Democrats and independents who perceive the party as weak in this one. When polled on which Democrats they see as sharing their values, “Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Zohran Mamdani lead the pack, with more traditional voices including Barack Obama, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, and Gavin Newsom coming in close behind.” AOC’s comments above show why she’s in the first group. It’s a flashing red light that party leaders won’t heed that no Democrat in House or Senate leadership even show up in the chart below.
Morris writes:
The strategic implications here are straightforward. Democrats do not need to reinvent themselves ideologically nearly as much as they need to convince voters they can act with purpose and deliver on their promises. Their own supporters are not begging for moderation so much as urgency; independents, too, have fewer specific ideological qualms with the party as they do personal germane criticism. They are not demanding a lurch left or right so much as evidence of leadership, coherence, and fight.
In a political environment where neither party is broadly beloved, voters must know you stand for something — and for standing up for it, too. The Democrats have made a lot of progress on these numbers over the last year. But a perception of weakness is still its biggest one.
Redistricting not only happens in legislatures and ballot measures
From her campaign website, “Justice Anita Earls is a civil rights attorney and experienced jurist who is running for reelection to the North Carolina Supreme Court in 2026.”
Democrats’ narrow victory in Tuesday’s redistricting referendum in Virginia was the latest battle in the two major parties’ gerrymandering war. Democrats, for once, did not roll over when Republicans launched the war in Texas at Donald Trump’s command. They fought back:
“We cannot bring a stick to a knife fight,” said Kelly Hall, the executive director of the Fairness Project, which spent more than $12 million backing the redistricting referendum.
With Republicans “assaulting the integrity of representation in the U.S. Congress, we need to be able to respond with every tool that we have,” she said.
The new map could turn the state’s 5D-5R congressional delegation (with one seat open) into a 10D-1R affair.
But the redistricting war of control of Congress is not only fought in legislatures, ballot measures, and congressional races. They also happen in lower-profile spots on your ballot.
Judicial elections are on the ballot this fall. And they matter. A lot. Bolts offers a state-by-state guide:
Nineteen states are holding regular elections for their supreme courts this year, meaning races where candidates can challenge incumbent judges or run for an open seat. How those work is straightforward; think of what you’re used to seeing for Congress or governor.
But 13 states are holding retention elections, which are simple up-or-down votes, with no challengers, where voters decide if a judge who is already on the court should stay in office. (Explore these rules in our state-by-state guide to each state’s high court.)
Plus, some states allow candidates to affiliate with a party. Others hold nonpartisan elections, though in many such states parties and advocacy organizations still get involved.
This year, liberals or Democrats are aiming to retain their large advantage in Michigan and gain a foothold in Georgia and Texas. A wave of retirements could affect the Washington court’s recent history as one of the more left-leaning in the country, though conservatives are unlikely to gain major ground.
Lest anyone forget, NC Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs and the state’s Democratic Party had to fight in court for six months and two days to secure her 734-vote win in 2024. Republicans play to win even when they lose. January 6 ring a bell? How about this?
Democrats losing control of the state Supreme Court majority in the 2022 midterms meant the new Republican court revisited a recently settled gerrymandering case that gave North Carolina a 7R-7D congressional delegation.
Democracy Docket noted at the time that “the court’s unprecedented decision to rehear this case was not due to any changes in the underlying facts of the lawsuit; instead, it ensued after North Carolina Republican legislators asked for the case to be reheard following the state Supreme Court’s shift from a Democratic to a Republican majority after the 2022 midterm elections.” The new 5R-2D court overturned the old court. The resulting congressional split is now 10R-4D in a state Trump won by 3.2 points in 2024.
Conservatives or Republicans, meanwhile, have an opportunity to erase the liberal lean of Montana’s supreme court, and extend their dominance in North Carolina and Ohio.
In the red states of Kansas, Missouri, and Wyoming, justices who have sided with more liberal outcomes in major recent cases are all up for retention. Conservatives managed to oust a Democratic-appointed justice in Oklahoma two years ago for the first time in the state’s history, though it appears unlikely that the state will see similar agitation this year.
Progressive efforts to oust justices who upheld abortion bans faltered in Arizona and Florida two years ago; this year, more justices who held that position are up for retention in those states. And in Minnesota, a trio of justices with experience as public defenders—a very unusual concentration by national standards—is up for reelection, though the field is not yet set.
These races are not sexy or high-profile. In the past, it’s been unseemly for judges to spend a lot of time raising campaign funds. All bets are off now that Trump sees his power ebbing away and is clutching at any lever for hanging on and staying out of jail. Democrats have to take seriously these state court races. We train our poll greeeters to advise voters to vote all the way down the ballot, of course. But we ask that they pay particularly close attention to the state judicial races. They matter. We’ve lived with the consequences.
Go and do likewise where you live.
North Carolina Democrats hope to secure reelection for Justice Anita Earls this fall and then flip enough Republican seats in 2028 and 2030 to regain the majority on our Supreme Court in time to defend fair redistricting after the 2030 census. (Three Republicans are up for reelection in 2028 and two in 2030.)
Donald Trump on Saturday signed an executive order allowing expedited research into psychedelics as potential treatments for mental disorders. (Like his?) “It is the policy of my Administration to accelerate innovative research models and appropriate drug approvals to increase access to psychedelic drugs that could save lives and reverse the crisis of serious mental illness in America,” the statement reads.
“Can I have some, please?” Trump joked to assembled guests in the Oval Office.
Would we notice any difference?
Seth Meyers reminds us how batshit crazy the last 3 weeks have been: Trump fired AG Pam Bondi. He posted a meme of himself as Jesus then said he thought it was a meme of himself as a doctor. He said the Pope is weak on crime. A MAGA podcaster said Trump is under demonic… pic.twitter.com/CRhoPotsVA
In no way should you believe that Trump signed this order out of concern for anyone’s mental health. It’s simply another business area that someone close to him feels is insufficiently commodified and exploited financially. And that someone whispered in Trump’s ear. Likely after making a large donation to Trump, an investment in his businesses, or a purchase of his crypto. Is Don Jr. invested yet?
Big pharma is all over it. A site called Biopharmdive reports:
At least half a dozen biotechnology companies working on psychedelics saw their stocks rise following an executive order from the White House meant to encourage the development of these drugs for mental health.
The order, issued Saturday, directs the head of the Food and Drug Administration to provide a new — and controversial — kind of voucher to “appropriate” psychedelic medicines that the FDA has classified as potential breakthroughs for serious conditions. That classification, as well as the “national priority vouchers,” are designed to significantly speed up the development and regulatory review of certain therapies.
This is more about profits than patients.
Not that there isn’t public and medical interest, Scientific Americanreports:
An estimated 15.4 million adults in the U.S. live with severe mental illness, according to the National Institutes of Health. Veterans are at particular risk: Research shows that suicide rates are nearly twice as high among veterans as they are in the general population. And existing drugs, such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), that are designed to treat depression and other mental health conditions aren’t always effective or accessible for everyone. An increasingly vocal cadre of researchers believe psychedelic substances could offer more effective treatments. And in some clinical trials, psilocybin, MDMA and LSD have been found to have promising results in treating mental health conditions.
“We need better treatments,” says Alan Davis, director of the Center for Psychedelic Drug Research and Education at the Ohio State University. “We need to be able to help people, and I think psychedelic therapies will offer a new way in which to do that.”
But research into these drugs is slow and hard to do, not least because the U.S. government categorizes many psychedelics as Schedule I drugs, which means they are considered to be dangerous and to have a high potential for abuse and “no currently accepted medical use,” according to the definition in the Code of Federal Regulations. In most cases, the possession of such drugs is federally criminalized, and that adds significant hurdles for researchers who are trying to study their effects.
That’s part of the reason why very few therapies that use psychedelic drugs have been approved for use in the U.S. One of the most well studied psychedelics, MDMA, was set back in 2024 when, citing insufficient and flawed research, the Food and Drug Administration rejected a proposal to approve it as a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.
Maybe it’s a good thing. Half of this country appears deranged. We’ll all have PTSD before Trump and Trumpism are gone.
The annual inflation rate in the US jumped to 3.3% in March 2026, marking the highest level since May 2024 and a sharp increase from 2.4% in both February and January. Figures came in line with forecasts, with the rise primarily driven by higher energy costs (12.5%), mostly gasoline (up 18.9%) and fuel oil (44.2%), due to the war with Iran. On the other hand, prices for used cars and trucks continued to decline (-3.2% vs -3.2%) while inflation steadied for shelter (3% vs 3%) and eased for food (2.7% vs 3.1%). On a monthly basis, consumer prices rose 0.9%, the largest increase since June 2022, following a 0.3% gain in February and also in line with forecasts, boosted by a 21.2% jump in gas prices. Meanwhile, core inflation which excludes food and energy, also picked up though much more moderately, to an annual rate of 2.6%, compared to forecasts of 2.7%. On a monthly basis, core consumer prices increased by 0.2%, below expectations of 0.2%. source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
BREAKING: Stunning new polling reveals that Donald Trump is 60 points underwater when it comes to the issue of inflation. This is the number 1 issue voters care about. Donald Trump is set for a rude awakening in November. pic.twitter.com/IZvac5idY2
— Democratic Wins Media (@DemocraticWins) April 20, 2026
And a 70 point drop among independents on inflation.
Just 29 percent of Americans approve of the president’s handling of the area, while almost two-thirds — 64 percent — disapprove, a Economist/YouGov poll found. Discontent with the highest inflation since 1981 propelled Trump back into office in 2024. But now it’s become a political albatross of his own.
Trump’s Iran war and tariffs are surely to blame, but:
The deeper explanation, though, is that voters remain furious at the rise in costs from the inflationary period of 2021 to 2025. Since Trump cannot reverse those high prices, their disillusionment has grown.
<glug, glug>
Sign Guy on Monday had a too-close encounter of the MAGA kind with a dude super-triggered over this sign:
Sign Guy is your canary in the coal mine. If MAGAs are getting this worked up over the price of gas and Oreos, how will they respond when, after Labor Day with Trump facing a crushing, humiliating defeat, Sign Guy very publicly starts urging 1000s of independents per week to vote in November?
Trump said Friday that the Strait of Hormuz situation was “over.” It very obviously wasn’t.
Trump said Friday that Iran agreed “to never close the Strait of Hormuz again.” The next day, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz again.
Trump said yesterday that Vance isn’t going to Pakistan for the talks. Officials quickly said Vance is going to Pakistan for the talks.
Trump said this morning that Vance had left and would be there tonight Islamabad time. Officials quickly said Vance is actually leaving tomorrow.
Trump said Iran has no military anymore and that “everything’s gone.” Iran continues to have a military with destructive capabilities.
Trump said the pope issued a statement saying Iran can have a nuclear weapon. That never happened.
Trump said nobody expected Iran to retaliate against Gulf countries. That was widely expected.
Trump said the only planes the US has really lost in the war have been to friendly fire. He said this at the same event at which he had spoken at length about what happened after Iran shot down a US plane.
Story on the president’s ever-growing number of false claims on big and small matters related to the war – and his triumphant claims about supposed Iranian concessions that we just can’t assume are based in reality:
Trump said Friday that the Strait of Hormuz situation was "over." It very obviously wasn't.
Trump said Friday that Iran agreed "to never close the Strait of Hormuz again.” The next day, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz again.
CNN's Melissa Bell reveals the world is completely bypassing the United States. Over 30 global leaders met in Paris to secure the Strait of Hormuz, deliberately excluding Washington. The international community is actively organizing to survive Trump's disastrous war. pic.twitter.com/Ewocwti4s6
Wikipedia: Valley Cottage is a hamlet and census-designated place within Clarkstown, located in Rockland County, New York, United States.
The Washington Post this morning begins its profile of Americans impacted by rising costs in Valley Cottage. There, Marvel Produce has seen an over 25 percent rise in fuel costs for its delivery trucks. The produce they deliver costs more because shipping costs more:
“I would say this is the worst year in my career, besides covid and 2008,” said Mike Scicchitano, a 30-year veteran of the industry who co-owns Marvel Produce. He doesn’t consider himself political, and stresses that his views are his own, but said the war and ensuing fuel costs have exacerbated his dismal view of Washington.
Dari Sonera-Scicchitano, Mike’s wife and another co-owner, said she is considering voting in the midterm elections for the first time because “we need change,” starting with ending the war and bringing fuel prices down.
The rest of the article is about Americans struggling to cope with the prices, and small business people having to calculate how much they can raise prices without losing customers. There is also some happy talk about gas prices falling within two months of a settlement with Iran. Maybe.
Sixty percent of Americans disapprove of the U.S. military strikes on Iran, according to an Ipsos poll conducted in late March, and 56 percent said they believe the war will have a negative impact on their own financial situation. Trump’s overall approval rating has remained around 38 percent, though his approval rating for the economy hit a low of 31 percent in late March, according to a poll by CNN and SSRS.
Danielle Cifuni, 42, was on the phone with her sister when she pulled up to the pump in New City. “Oh my God,” she said. “It’s $5.45 per gallon.”
Cifuni owns two Playa Bowl franchises, in Bronxville and the Bronx. Her margins for açai bowls are shrinking as the cost of shipping in fruit has skyrocketed and she can’t raise prices. She has voted for both Trump and Lawler but said she is not sure how she will vote this fall. She wants the federal government to focus more on domestic issues.
Over at The New York Times, Lydia DePillis helps explain why gas prices rise faster than they fall. Gas station owners face the same countervailing pressures of having to raise prices without driving off customers. So they eat some of the hit to their bottom lines in the short term:
The good news, for gas stations, is that drivers base their expectations for how much gas should cost on last week’s price.
“So if the costs fall 20 cents, and the station lowers the price by 5 cents or 10 cents, the consumers say, ‘That looks like a great deal, compared to what I think is supposed to be there,’” said Matthew Lewis, a professor of economics at Clemson University who has studied retail gas markets. “Everyone just stops searching when the prices start to fall.”
So prices fall slower than they rise as owners try to recoup upside losses on the downhill side.
There is no guarantee, however, that gas vendors will recoup margins they lost on the way up by holding prices up slightly as rack prices come back down. Also, there is a newer problem: Gas stations make most of their money on stuff other than gas.
About that other stuff. I walked through the cookie aisle on Sunday and was struck by the visual flood of sale stickers. Deals! Except one look at the retail prices dispelled that notion.
The Oreos (standard package) that sold for about $4 in 2024 now sell for $6.28. The bargain is getting the “World’s Best Selling Cookie” cookies for $5. That’s up 25 percent from 2024 prices at the sale price.
No wonder mentioning planning for a $5/gal staycation set off Reckless Endangerment Guy last week. He can’t afford even a sugar high. Republicans may not withstand the blowback.
A truly disturbing article in The Atlantic is one I need to reread to truly absorb. Noah Hawley created the FX series Fargo and Alien: Earth. What he learned from three nights at Jeff Bezos’s Campfire retreat in 2018 carries the ominous tenor of dystopian science fiction. Even worse for it being reality.
Bezos had recently beome the world’s second centibillionaire, his wealth then half what it is today. Wealth on such a scale, Hawley sensed, removes one almost completely from the moral universe. Where there is no moral universe, there is no arc, no bending toward justice, and no justice. Visiting this stop on a circuit of ideas festivals revealed just how alien is the world of the ultra rich. Not just their world is alien, but the metahumans themselves (gift link):
This sense of invulnerability has deep psychological ramifications. If everything is free and nothing matters, then the world and other people exist only to be acted upon, if they are acknowledged at all. This is different from classic narcissism, in which a grandiose but fragile self-image can mask deep insecurity. What I’m talking about is a self-definition in which the individual grows to the size of the universe, and the universe vanishes. Asked recently if there is any check on his power, President Trump—himself a billionaire, and by far the richest president in American history—said, “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” Not domestic or international law, not the will of the voters, not God or the centuries-old morality of civic and religious life.
Decades of research in developmental psychology have shown that moral reasoning develops through consequences—not punishment, necessarily, but experiencing the effects of your actions on others, receiving honest feedback, having to accommodate reality as it actually is rather than as you wish it to be. It’s not that the wealthy become evil; it’s that their environment stops teaching them the things that nonwealthy people are forced to learn simply by living in a world that pushes back. When you can buy your way out of any mistake, when you can fire anyone who disagrees with you, when your social circle consists entirely of people who need something from you, the basic mechanism by which humans learn that other people are real goes dark.
When Peter Thiel said, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” he wasn’t talking about your freedom. He was talking about his own. You don’t exist. When Musk took a chainsaw to the federal government as part of the inside joke he called DOGE, he did so with the air of a man who believed that nothing matters—poverty, chaos, human suffering. He was having fun. It didn’t even matter that the entire destructive exercise ultimately yielded no practical financial gains. For him, the outcome was a foregone conclusion: He could only win, because losing had lost its meaning.
When, now and again, a politician proposes a wealth tax, the rich react with horror at the prospect of their agency being constrained by mere mortals. How dare society make any claim on them? Just as Hawley observes.
I’ve long seen the modern corporation as a kind of Frankenstein monster, a legal alien of our own creation and loosed upon the world. Let them grow large enough and they become the world-dominating Weyland-Yutani, the “company” of the Aliens franchise. Nation states become mere corporate tools. Humans become mere inputs to exploit. You see it already in “human resources.”
Fifteen years ago, I wrote about the resentment the rich feel about educating the golden gooses that fill their plates and coffers:
In the Atlantic’s “The Rise of the New Global Elite,” Chrystia Freeland describes the super-rich as “a nation unto themselves,” more connected to each other than to their countries or their neighbors. Freeland writes that “the business elite view themselves increasingly as a global community, distinguished by their unique talents and above such parochial concerns as national identity, or devoting ‘their’ taxes to paying down ‘our’ budget deficit.” Thomas Wilson, CEO of Allstate, explains that globalization means, “I can get [workers] anywhere in the world. It is a problem for America, but it is not necessarily a problem for American business …” Why should it be?
In a global economy driven more and more by bottom-line thinking, public education is just another community expense the elite would rather not bear, isn’t it? The rich can afford private schools for their children and have little need for educated workers in the multiple cities where they own houses. How much education do gardeners and waiters really need anyway?
But allow those legal fictions to grow planet-sized in their reach, and they spawn trillionaires who exist in a post-human universe where meat sacks such as yourselves are no longer fellow crew members on a shared celestial lifeboat. It’s their super yacht. Serve or be thrown off.
Contrasts in Jamie Ager’s NC-11 campaign against Republican incumbent Rep. Chuck Edwards will reach beyond the two men’s occupations. Ager is a fourth-generation farmer from a storied political family. * Edwards owns six McDonald’s franchises. Also at issue will be the region’s ongoing recovery from the devastation from Hurricane Helene’s deadly visit on Sept. 27, 2024. And the pace of it. Over a year and a half later, WNC is still waiting for promised federal funds.
Helene caused $60 billion in damage across North Carolina. For all of Edwards’s cozying up to the Trump administration in his R+5 district, the region had seen only 9 percent of promised recovery monies, Gov. Josh Stein (D) noted last fall. Stein nevertheless requested another $13.5 billion for storm recovery from Congress this month.
Helene recovery also will be an issue in former Gov. Roy Cooper’s (D) bid for the open U.S. Senate seat vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Thom Tillis. Cook’s Political ranks the race Lean D.
To get a sense of Edwards, consider his trolling a town hall crowd in Asheville last March. Or his lending his campaign $250,000, then collecting interest when he repaid himself 2 years later (Asheville Watchdog). Or his response to Leslie Boyd, a former beat reporter who turned activist after the death of her son (The Assembly):
Boyd’s son Mike died from colon cancer in 2008; he was uninsured due to a pre-existing condition. She shared this with Edwards when he was a member of the state House, she said, while she was advocating for Medicaid expansion.
“His first question was whether my son had a job when he got sick,” Boyd recalled. “Nobody had asked me that before. And I was stunned. I said, ‘Are you implying that my son was too lazy to deserve to live?’ He said, ‘No, but you know, a lot of people just want a handout.’”
A spokesperson for Edwards’ office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
After a small (4-10 person), weekly sidewalk protest in front of an Edwards-owned McDonald’s in Hendersonville, NC grew to 40-some and briefly moved inside on March 15, Edwards sent Boyd a letter banning her from his six properties.
Freight is back on track
In better news, rail service to WNC from the east returned this weekend for the first time since Helene hit in Sept. 2024 and washed out large sections of track (Blue Ridge Public Radio):
The railway, known as the Old Fort Loops, has been a lifeline for many local businesses. The first train since Helene will roll through this weekend — and that has rail advocates excited.
The twisting, turning stretch of railway known as the Old Fort Loops runs about 13 miles between Old Fort and Swannanoa. Climbing more than 1,000 feet through the Blue Ridge Mountains, it’s one of the most treacherous sections of rail in the country.
The rail route crosses over the Eastern Continental Divide east of Asheville.
The railway sustained heavy damage from Helene, and for months, it wasn’t clear whether the owner, Norfolk Southern, would rebuild it. Finally, last May, the construction began. And now, less than a year later, the first freight train is about to roll through since the storm.
Norfolk Southern posted on Saturday, “The 59‑car westbound train traveled from Hickory and Old Fort before entering the iconic Old Fort Loops, climbing the mountains through tunnels and sweeping horseshoe turns on its way toward Asheville.”
Speaking of tunnels.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee placed Jamie Ager’s NC-11 race on its Red to Blue list as a potential flip in February. Cook’s Political Report moved the race from Solid to Likely Republican in September.
I worked for the state party on Heath Shuler’s successful 2006 NC-11 race. That was the last time the seat flipped from red to blue prior to REDMAP redistricting in 2011. Ager’s campaign is the first time since then that I see daylight at the end of the tunnel. Get onboard.
For a sense of the historic Old Fort Loops, watch this drone video shot before Helene.
* After Jamie’s father John won an NC state House seat in 2014, he often showed up to local meetings in muddy boots. John did eventually start wearing ties, albeit dated ones.
