This is a compendium of the reporting and commentary that best explains the America's political, economic, and social conditions – and, most important, how we can find a way back from the dark days ahead. You will rarely find anything here from the New York Times or Washington Post or any of the other Big Journalism companies that failed us so completely during the 2024 elections and are now sucking up – even more than usual – to Donald Trump, his cult, and corporate oligarchs. My focus will be on smaller, more honorable outlets (and individuals). I hope you'll support them with your attention and your money.
Trump’s cabinet appointments are agents of his contempt, rage and vengeance. The motive for naming his quack nominees is located in his resentments from his sordid first term for which he pledged retribution. He sees the US government in its totality as a bastion of his “enemies within”. He intends to shatter every department and agency, root out expertise that might contradict his whims, demolish the balancing power of the Congress that could inhibit him, and trample the law that might stand in his way. Wrecking the government is not only Trump’s technique for gaining submission and compliance, but is his ultimate purpose. He will achieve vindication by tearing down anything he feels was used to restrain his destructive impulses or tried to hold him accountable for his past crimes, whether it is the military, the justice system or science itself.
You've been hearing for days about Trump's cabinet nominees, each worst than the last. This Guardian commentary is as good a roundup of the freak show as you'll see. The author gets a couple of things wrong – he says the Murdoch family is on the outs, which is patently absurd given the number of Fox "News" people slated for high posts – but overall this serves as an appropriate indictment. Even though several of these nominees is likely to be shot down, the main point of the exercise, as noted, is destruction. Even if America comes out of the next few years with a democracy that works, the repairs will take a generation.
Republicans in North Carolina rushed a bill through the legislature this week to boost their power before they lose their supermajority, approving a measureto give their party more control over elections, eliminate the jobs of judges who have ruled against them and limit the authority of the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general. Republicans hold three-fifths majorities in the legislature and have used that power to override vetoes by Gov. Roy Cooper (D). In January, they’ll lose the ability to easily roll back vetoes by incoming Gov. Josh Stein (D) because they’ll no longer hold such a large majority in the North Carolina House.
Picking out just one piece of this sleazy operation: The Republican Party has been a relentless foe of voting rights for decades. Recent Supreme Court decisions have all but wiped out the law that worked to ensure that every eligible citizen can vote and have it counted, and Red State legislatures and governors feverishly work to deny those rights to people who tend to support Democrats. That's the context of the maneuvering in North Carolina, where Republicans are on the verge of locking in voter-suppression by giving key powers to a state official whose job has nothing to do with civic administration but who also happens to be a Republican. Stripping a governor's powers like this is how Republicans do things – and it's just a preview of moves they'll be making at the state and federal level in the next several years.
WITH EACH DAY’S HEADLINES EMERGING from the Trump transition team—some merely disturbing, others terrifying—the half of the country that voted against Donald Trump is left standing alone. Who in the Biden administration is shoring up whatever guardrails remain? Who in the White House is bothering, while the bully pulpit remains theirs, to educate the public about how the Constitution is supposed to operate? Who among the Senate Democrats, during their waning weeks in the majority, is standing up for good government and the rule of law?
Democrats so consistently bring handshakes to knife fights that the questions quoted in the Bulwark piece above might seem almost rhetorical, with "Nobody" being the answer to all of them. It's certainly true that national Democrats are preoccupied with blaming someone (else) for their losses, but there are some signs that they are at least aware of their opportunity to a) prepare for the Trump machine attack on, well, everything next year, and b) getting a few things done in the meantime. The Senate, still nominally controlled by Democrats, is confirming a batch of Biden-nominate federal judges, thanks in part to Republican senators who can't be bothered to show up for the votes but mainly thanks to the Democrats' persistence. They could, however, be doing a lot more, which is the main point of the commentary. Let's hope they give it a try. Nothing much is at stake, after all.
I missed this video a couple of weeks ago, and you probably did, too. It's worth a listen because Elizabeth Warren is one of the best our political system has to offer. She offers hope and solidity, realism and determination. We can't give up. We have to work together, no matter what else.
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Sidney Blumenthal
Kim Wehle
