DOJ-In-Exile

 Josh Marshall has been arguing that we need a Department of Justice-In-Exile. The idea is that there is obviously a massive amount of law breaking going on, and the Trump DOJ is simply not going to look into it - unless it's a Democrat. In fact, Democrats likely don't even have to break the law to warrant investigation and prosecution. If we are going to fumigate the Executive Branch and DOJ, we will need a repository of evidence so that we may hold people accountable. The signal failure of the Biden Presidency was not throwing Trump in jail on January 21st, 2021.

Now, the obvious problem is that Trump can and will pardon people. Some of the DOJ-In-Exile will perhaps be about sending that evidence to state prosecutors. If Trump pardons, say, Tom Homan, then perhaps Illinois could bring him up on charges under Illinois law. 

There's a separate issue that Marshall sometimes refers to, but needs to be repeated. Democrats need to be ready to go on various prosecutions on corruption and fraud outside of the Executive Branch or at least adjacent to it.

Want an example? Elon Musk sure looks like he's committing fraud so that he can become the world's first trillionaire. Given the howling void at the center of this creature in the place where his soul would normally be, his headlong pursuit of "winning" the race to become a trillionaire is naturally the sort of fraud that someone who feels that they are bigger than the law would commit. There's very little chance that Musk will get a pardon from Trump, but he might. He would have to feel that he needed one, and he may be too narcissistic to understand that. 

Anti-trust enforcement is a requirement for the next Democratic Administration. Yes, Republicans will caterwaul about "lawfare" after committing actual prosecutorial overreach. You just have to ignore that and bull right through. Biden and especially Merrick Garland were not capable of understanding that. It will require a new mindset from new leaders.

The Capo Regime

 Last night, a bunch of principled Republicans in Indiana who stood against Trump's mid-cycle gerrymandering plan went down to defeat in their primaries. As Morris points out, this is at the heart of Republican cowardice in the face of Trump. In fact, a lot of his most vocal critics in the GOP, like Don Bacon or Marjorie Taylor Greene are either planning on retiring or already have. You simply can't get crosswise from Trump and expect to retain your seat. We will see if Massie can hold on to his seat in Kentucky.

This is the fundamental problem with gerrymandering. If you think that the main obstacle to you holding on to your seat is from a primary challenger, because your district is R+10, then you cannot allow any daylight between yourself and party leadership. When your party is lead by a degenerate criminal like Donald Trump, that...well let's just say that causes problems.

The hope at this point is for an Orban-style rebuke of Trump and Republicans this fall. In this case, they will have dummymandered their way into losing seats that were previously safe. If the Blue Wave is large enough, it will not only deliver the House, but it will do so at huge margins, because Republicans took a bunch if R+15 districts and diluted them to create another R+9 district. 

Back to Trump, his fundamental managerial style is borrowed from the mafia. If you cross him, you die. Whatever your feelings about loyalty, this isn't that; it's fear. As Trump becomes more and more unpopular, lashing yourself to him will not, I hope, work out for the GOP.

Getting Worse

 Trump's war against Iran is getting worse. Trump, true to his nature, is trying to tweet his way through it. My favorite was him posting a picture of himself holding a bunch of Uno cards, saying he "held all the cards," but of course, if you have all the cards in Uno, you're losing.

Trump's leverage points on Iran do exist, but one fundamental problem is that eventually, Trump needs Iran to negotiate a peace. How do you negotiate with someone as unreliable as Trump? How can Iran trust anything this guy says? So, even if there were a deal that both sides could agree on, why would Iran trust him to follow through?

Eventually, I think, it's going to require more strikes on Iran. Quite a few more. Iran will then do as they did yesterday and strike Gulf oil facilities. Perhaps the only possible solution involves China acting as mediator - in fact, if China really is striving for global leader, what an opportunity this provides. They can fill the role that the US has filled for decades as good faith interlocutor between warring parties. 

So those $4.75 gas prices aren't coming down any time soon. If there's any potential upside to this is that Trump is now creating the economic conditions to promote renewables. Even as he tries to destroy renewables within the US, he is going to speed march the rest of the world away from petroleum. 

The worrisome thing for me is going to be food prices. Between fertilizers and diesel fuel, farming is about to go through some really tough times. That's going to hit everyone hard. 

Richardson began her post with:

According to a new Washington Post–ABC News–Ipsos poll, fifty-nine percent of Americans believe President Donald J. Trump does not have the mental sharpness necessary to lead the country. Fifty-five percent think he does not have the physical health to serve as president. Fifty-four percent say they don’t think Trump is a strong leader. Sixty-seven percent think Trump doesn’t carefully consider important decisions.

Events are moving too fast for this addled old man surrounded by sycophants who have to coddle his fragile ego rather than providing him with honest information and assessments. He's a fundamentally stupid man who is suffering from age related cognitive decline (he keeps bragging about passing dementia tests) and whose information environment makes it worse.

So, yeah, things are going to get worse before they get...worse.

A Looming Reckoning

 Martin Longman notes the brewing civil war within the Idaho GOP. Idaho is in the running for the most conservative state in the Union (which is a shame, because it's a gorgeous place). The issue that's tearing at the party is the issue of immigration and farm labor. Most agricultural businesses require low wage and often undocumented labor. They simply can't meet their margins without it. 

The "common sense" solution is some form of temporary guest worker program and a path to citizenship for others. The "work hard and pay their taxes but don't have documentation" group. However, the MAGA portion of the GOP is so damned xenophobia and racist that they want Stephen Miller's mass deportation program, whereas others - whether they know it or not - want the Biden plan negotiated in the Senate but blown up by Trump. Increased border security, expedited asylum hearings, and maybe some guest worker visas.

All of this points to a looming catastrophe. The farm economy is about to implode, as fertilizers are simply unavailable or too expensive, diesel is through the roof and they have no one to work the fields.

Every single one of these hardships is a direct result of decisions that Donald Trump made.

Personally, I would love to see a Farm-Labor Party come into existence in the Great Plains to run instead of the Democratic Party who are - often unfairly - seen as too beholden to strange culture war issues, Trump's weird exclamation of "transgender for all" whatever that means.

Even so, the way things are going, I'd keep an eye on places like Iowa, Montana, Kansas and Nebraska. The Democrats - and in some places independents - have recruited some good candidates, Alaska especially.

If it's a wave and farmers are hurting...anything is possible.

Racist In Chief

 Richardson's Recap began with cataloguing Trump's insane Tweet-stream over the course of an hour on Saturday. Included were these chestnuts:

Then, at 11:13, Trump posted an image of House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who is Black, holding a baseball bat. The caption calls Jeffries “low IQ,” “a THUG,” and “a danger to our Country.”

...

Then, at 11:40, he posted an image of what appeared to be the reflecting pool full of algae next to one that appeared to be the reflecting pool clean and with a bright blue color. Above the dirty image was the label “Hussein Obama,” and below it, the caption “Photo taken Sept[ember] 29, 2012”; the clean one was labeled with “Trump” and “Coming Soon.” Over the two together, the caption read: “This is what our Country was before, and after, “TRUMP!”

We can talk all we want about Trump's devastating impact on policy. Richardson notes his apparent plans to draw down American troops in Germany, because the German Chancellor pointed out - correctly - that America has no strategic vision for the war in Iran. That's really bad!

However, any discussion of Trump's impact on America - and an impact that will sadly, I believe, outlast him - is how he has dragged all sorts of slurs and nastiness out into the open again. Social media has been flooded with the war "retard" as a slur, which is really pretty appalling. It's not just MAGA that uses the word, either. 

The racism that Trump mainlines into public discourse would have ended a career 20 years ago. As he spiral into narcissistic wounds from his collapsing support as he awful policies become real, he leans more and more into the transgressive nature of his poisonous discourse. This thrashing about is going to get worse and he will get worse until we get the inevitable moment when Mike Johnson will explain that he hasn't seen the quote where Trump used the N-word five times in a single sentence.

I remain convinced that Trump remains an avatar for about a quarter of the American people and the rest of his support is just partisanship. That quarter of the American people can go fuck themselves.

Keeping Your Eye On The Ball

 The Platner thing is a perfect intramural clusterfuck - at least among the terminally online. It involves preening Bernie Bros on the one side and the women and minorities on the other, lots of hurt feelings and no clear offramps.

However...

We need to keep our eye on what's important here. Josh Marshall has been writing (here and here and here) on the corruptness of the Supreme Court and why reforming the Court and clipping its wings has to be an imperative of whenever we return to democratic rule and Democratic governance. It's the one thing that has me truly despondent about the near and long term future. In fact, we have the Court we have, at least in part because of the schisms of 2016, which might very well have pushed Trump over the finish line in the Blue Wall. Maybe a unified party win those three states, and we have no Gorsuch, no Comey Barrett and likely no Kavanaugh. 

The evisceration of the Voting Rights Act is an obvious example of the Judiciary rewriting the laws and overturning precedent to suit their ideological whims. However, we can't forget Dobbs. The decision to overturn Roe v Wade has led to restrictions across the country on women's access not just to abortion but all sorts of reproductive care.

Now, we have a Republican Circuit Court (the Fifth, naturally) banning the shipment of mifepristone across state lines. This is a classic case of the Dog That Caught The Car for Republicans. Bans on abortion drugs are pretty damned unpopular outside Trump's evangelical base. People might blanche at surgical abortions, due to decades of anti-abortion propaganda. Taking a people that expels the zygote is less offensive to some fence sitters on the issue. Why is a morning after pill worse than a morning before pill?

Republicans don't want to upset anyone any more than they have to in an electoral environment that is likely to be harsh already. If the FDA rules that mifepristone is unsafe (it isn't), then we have more people pissed at the degradation and politicization of medicine and science. If they rule that it's safe (it is), then the evangelicals walk out. They want to punt this until after the midterms, but the drug companies are pushing for an immediate ruling, not just for political reasons, but because this will legitimately sow chaos across telemedicine and the overall medical landscape. At a time when Trump's Big Ugly Bill gutted healthcare and rural health care in particular, destroying telehealth would be a disaster.

How many times to Susan Collins vote to confirm a Supreme Court nominee that helped author Dobbs? Five times - she didn't vote for Clarence Thomas, though, but only because she wasn't in the Senate. While she didn't vote for the OBBB that cut rural health care, she voted to advance it to the floor, in a classic example of strategic voting that has served her well over her career. 

Platner, for all his baggage, does not carry THAT baggage. 

Platner

 When I first saw video of Graham Platner, the now presumptive nominee to take on Susan Collins in Maine,  I thought he had something. Vibes, I guess. I do believe - very strongly - the Democrats have a vibes problem, and nominating a certain type of guy wins voters that nominating even an extraordinarily qualified woman like Hillary Clinton does not. Sucks to say out loud, but that's what my gut tells me.

Platner, however, proved to be something of an oppo researcher's dream. Incredibly bad statements in his past, a Nazi tattoo, casual misogyny (though again, in the past). Schumer saw this, too, and convinced term limited governor, Janet Mills, to jump into the race. 

She dropped out yesterday citing a lack of funds.

Platner has been gracious, his very online supporters have not. And this is the problem. As Platner's problematic past was exposed, people began to take sides. The Bernie Left loved his faux working class aesthetic (Platner grew up quite comfortable, including an unsuccessful stint at the Hotchkiss school). Those who preferred not to support someone with his past inflammatory statements or, you know, a Totenkopf tattoo saw in Platner the second coming of John Fetterman. Here was someone posing as a working class dude who was big and burly, but really was kind of playing at it. 

Both sides began to dig in. Once that happens, you lose focus on the real goal of all this, which is to finally oust Susan Collins - the only Republican elected Federal official in New England. Mills was a flinty old school Mainer who called out Trump in the Oval Office, famously saying, "I'll see you in court." Platner is several decades younger, at a time when Democrats are exhausted with older politicians. 

Where I land is here: I have some serious doubts about Graham Platner especially within the context of Fetterman's betrayal, but I have zero doubts about Susan Collins. She's objectively horrible, while pretending to be eminently reasonable. The facade of moderation covering a reliable MAGA vote.

The absolute imperative in 2026 is "Vote Blue, No Matter Who." That now includes Graham Platner and all his baggage. As for his embrace by the Bernie Bros and their inevitable crowing over his victory, I think this says less about Center Left vs Far Left, but rather about Young vs Old and the declining salience of rhetorical baggage in the Era of Trump. We can hope that there are no Swallwell sized revelations out there, because winning Maine is an absolute must if Dems are going to get a working majority in the Senate (especially with Fetterman being a supposed Democrat).

Platner has said the right things, even if his online mob has not. Hopefully, he continues to do so and tells that mob to win gracefully, or else we might lose catastrophically in November. 

A Most Unamerican Speech; A Most American Speech

 Donald Trump, yesterday, droned the words that Stephen Miller wrote for him about America being a racial project. He basically asserted that America was a nation-state for white, Anglo-Saxons. There's a version of this speech - delivered with the King Charles standing next to him - that might have made sense. 

In fact, Charles later gave that speech to Congress.

Where Trump spoke of some sort of racial and genetic connection - "Their veins ran with Anglo-Saxon courage." - Charles spoke of American ideals, including the value of bringing diverse voices together in a national project. If there was a connection between Britain and America, it was in the preservation of liberty through checks on Executive power, as was written into the Magna Carta and the Constitution. (In fact, the Magna Carta is somewhat more prominent a document in America than Britain.) Where Trump intoned the idea that America was a project of white Anglo-Saxons, Charles said "the essence of our two Nations is a generosity of spirit and a duty to foster compassion, to promote peace, to deepen mutual understanding and to value all people, of all faiths, or none."

The King of England continued: “Our common ideals were not only crucial for liberty and equality, they are also the foundation of our shared prosperity. The Rule of Law: the certainty of stable and accessible rules, an independent judiciary resolving disputes and delivering impartial justice. These features created the conditions for centuries of unmatched economic growth in our two countries.”

It was telling that when he affirmed support for Ukraine, he received a standing ovation. This, while Trump and Netanyahu move closer to Putin.

Trump's virulent social media team released a picture of Charles and Trump that read "TWO KINGS." While this is a direct troll of the No Kings protest movement, it is also the agenda to destroy checks and balances and create a form of personal rule that would be indistinguishable from a monarchy.

TL;DR: The King of England - the descendant of King George - gave a more American speech than the "president" of the United States.

The Hungarian Model

 For years, conservatives have looked at Viktor Orban's competitive authoritarianism as a model for what they wish to accomplish in the US. They want a white, ethno-state with an enriched elite that buttresses a patrimonial strongman who will prevent them from having to press 1 for English.

The rout of Orban's Fidesz party a few weeks back, however, is now the model for the pro-democracy forces in America. Yesterday, the "Supreme" Court - in yet another lawless, ahistorical nullification of American law - decided to effectively end the Voting Rights Act. Florida moved quickly to change its maps in seeming violation of its state constitution. I would expect Tennessee to follow suit. (All of this is downstream from Rucho, which ruled that partisan gerrymanders were legal, which might be up there with Dred Scott as the worst SCOTUS decisions of all time.)

In order to squeeze more Republican seats out of already gerrymandered states, Texas and Florida have risked "dummymanders." These are gerrymanders that dilute the strength of "red" districts to create more "purple" ones, and in return are susceptible to being overwhelmed in a wave election. If you take an R+15, a D+7 and a D+15 set of districts and create a D+25, an R+8 and R+7 set, you risk losing that original R+15 district in a wave year.

That's what happened to Fidesz and Orban. They has so squeezed the gerrymander and rigged the map that when a true mass mobilization occurred, it carried away those +10 districts.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Democrats winning the House this fall is likely the moment where we will know if America remains a democracy. Trump is almost certain to be less popular in November than he is now. Gas prices are not going to come down. He, himself, is insulated within his fantasy ballroom and his coterie of sycophants. 

I'm not especially concerned with the generic ballot right now, because I think people don't like the Democrats but absolutely HATE Trump, and that shows up in soft support for the Democratic Party that will not dissuade people from either swinging back to Democrats or simply staying home if they are Republicans.

Still, it could require a D+10 wave to overwhelm the efforts of the Supreme Court to end American democracy.

Decline Without A Fall

 The farcical charges against James Comey are the latest attempt by the Trump GOP to create a climate of fear and intimidation amongst their "enemies." As Josh Marshall and Heather Cox Richardson point out, these actions - and so many others - need to be understood not as expressions of Trump's strength, but as weakness. Trump is losing bigly. His approval ratings are cratering, and as they sink further, more of his base start to question whether they made the right choice. His policies are, of course, terrible. The Iran War and the tariffs are stoking inflation, and when you add in deportations and the general chaos of his rule, you get slowing growth. 

I never really thought that Trump's wholesale assault on American freedoms was going to resonate with the sort of swing voters who voted for him in 2024 because of nominal prices. They are pretty linear in how they think of politics, and abstractions like "freedom" were never going to move them, or they would have been moved in 2024. That's not to say that they can't see the absurdity of him focusing on his ballroom when people are losing their health insurance and the cost of gas is high and going to get higher.

We are six months from the midterms. Farm bankruptcies are skyrocketing. Interest rates are more likely to go up than down. The chaos will only intensify. Democrats' lead on the generic ballot is not as big as Trump's negative approval ratings. That typically changes as we approach a midterm election. What's more, this is where candidate quality matters. Mary Peltola and Sherrod Brown have already won their states before. People should trust them more than "Generic Democrat." 

Expect the crashing out by Trump to continue.

No, Seriously. F*** Your Ballroom

 Krugman notes that the REAL oil crunch hasn't arrived yet. Prices are bouncing all over the place based on Trump's erratic statements and the yo yo-ing of plans and statements by the US and Iran. Countries and companies are drawing down reserves to compensate for the reduced flow of oil. Presumably production is ramping up, too. Even if there was a real peace deal agreed to today, it would take many months to get oil production to return to pre-war levels.

Krugman concludes with this observation:

Translation: So far, despite much higher oil prices, demand for oil has fallen by only a fraction of the loss of supply. Instead, the world economy is running by taking oil out of storage. Since there’s only so much oil in the tanks, this can’t go on. So if the Strait doesn’t reopen, prices will have to soar high enough — and inflict sufficient economic damage — to destroy another 11 or more million barrels a day of demand. That’s a lot.

But Trump is talking about his ballroom.

This may seem weird, but it makes sense if you view it psychologically. Trump is clearly dissociating. His fragile sense of self-worth depends on constantly believing that he’s a winner while others are losers. Now he’s faced with the reality that he, more or less single-handedly, led America to humiliating strategic defeat.

So, viewed through the lens of his narcissistic wound, the immediate pivot from the assassination attempt to talking about how he HAS TO HAVE A BALLROOM is really about narcissistic supply. 

F*** Your Ballroom

 The single most idiotic thing to come out of the  half-baked assassination attempt on Trump's life were the immediate - and I mean immediate - calls to drop all opposition to Trump's ballroom.

First of all, security worked exactly as it should. The security perimeter held and no one was killed, including the would be shooter. There is at least some rumors swirling  that the Secret Service agent who was shot in the vest was shot by another agent. 

Second, the WHCD is not a presidential event. This is the first time that Trump has gone, in fact, because he's a WATB whose skin is so thin a gnat could pierce it.

Finally, what they are proposing (it's not really a serious proposal) is that presidents no longer interact with the public. Like the Japanese emperor, he should hide away in the imperial compound like a distant god. 

Basically, Trump will turn any random event into a way to sate his impoverished ego.

Broken Politics

 The...whatever it was that happened at the White House Correspondent's Dinner last night...is yet another simply bizarre moment that have become common place since Trump came down the escalator. Yes, I'm "victim blaming." Trump has been targeted previously by people who fit more in the school shooter or John Hinckley/Charles Guiteau category of assassin. Disturbed men who found meaning in killing someone famous or simply wanting to "die famous" themselves. We don't know anything about the motives of the man in custody, but he went to Cal Tech, wasn't a registered Democrat, but gave money to Harris' campaign. He was apparently staying at the hotel, which suggests a degree of planning. Yet the actual attack was hardly a well-thought out plan.

Lots of online voices have suggested that this - like the Butler attempt - were "false flag" actions designed to bolster Trump's sagging popularity. As Paul Campos argues, that's highly improbable. Some of this is post hoc ergo propter hoc, in that the Butler attempt really did give him a boost, and might have tilted the election in his favor. As I said at the time, his defiant fist as he was being rushed off stage was the only time I could see him behaving in a way that would suggest an actual virtue. From the effect, the cause is assumed that the shooting was staged.

Trump never goes to the WHCD because he hates the press. He decides to go, and there's a shooting attempt. This naturally lends itself to conspiracy theories. I would argue that his plan was to pick a nasty fight and give a vitriolic speech as a way to divert attentions from his cratering approval. Picking fights with the press is red meat and it always plays well with MAGA. That makes more sense than some sort of staged attempt on his life.

I think we have to consider two things. The first is that this is an administration that invited a reporter into a war planning chat. It's a president who launched a war against Iran without considering what Iran might do in response. It's an economics team who seems to think foreign countries pay tariffs, especially those damned penguins on the Heard and McDonald Islands. The idea that these clowns could pull off three false flag attacks and the meticulous attention to secrecy and planning that this would require strains belief.

The second is that Trump is a chaos agent. That's a large part of his selling point to the disgruntled people who adore him. They don't care if he can build a better society, they just want the old one torn down. That sort of personality will inspire violence. He will inspire to people to kill him. He will also inspire his followers to assassinate Minnesota legislators, to beat Paul Pelosi nearly to death with a hammer and to stage an insurrection to overthrow the government of the United States. 

Violence - political violence - is a sign that our politics are completely broken. It doesn't mean irrevocably broken, but currently very much broken. Again, we don't know if the shooter was thinking clearly, but he could very well be in the Luigi Mangione camp of a radicalized person who simply snaps and resorts to violence. We know death threats against public officials are on the rise, and we know that Trump uses dehumanizing language to speak about anyone who stands against him. Stochastic violence leads to actual violence, including violence directed against himself.

One more reason this is unlikely to be a false flag, besides the difficulty and danger in pulling it off. This story will largely disappear by Wednesday.  Quick, who was the guy who laid in ambush for Trump at his golf course? What was his name? Hell, I'm only vaguely sure of the name of the Butler shooter. Crooks, I think?

The dysfunction of our political life -  a dysfunction that Trump took and dialed up to a hundred - has led us to this point, where violence is more and more common, and will remain that way until we finally put the era of this malevolent orange creature behind us.

Hey, Are We At War With Iran Again?

 Or is Trump just manipulating markets again? 

Maybe the problem is sending these real estate failsons to negotiate an end to the war?

Going Down With The Ship

 Morris has the tale of Trump's truly abysmal approval ratings. He's underwater among almost every demographic except "people who voted for him 2024" and "men over 65." Even "white, non-college" is basically 50-50. Even his voters - and I think over time, people will not admit to voting for him - are at only 84% approval. Even the motivated reasoning of justifying your choice isn't enough.

My general feeling as an historian is that - as Adam Smith said - there's a lot of ruin in a nation. We will come out of this period weakened, fractured, degraded, but over time, we can recover - as long as we put it behind us.

However, our school has been hit roughly every year with an instance of hate speech. It's anonymous, it's racist and/or homophobic and/or sexist. In other words, it's like so much of the vile corners of our internet culture. But more significantly, it has happened every year since 2017. 

Since 2017.

Look, the racism, sexism and homophobia were always there. I'm not naive. What this villain has done is brought that language, that hatred, that bigotry out of the shadows and made it acceptable. I would point to his video that depicted the Obamas as monkeys, as just one of a million examples that - in a moral nation - would be the end of this guy.