Is the No Kings movement a color revolution?

After the No Kings protest on Saturday, I was curious about how MAGA pundits would respond, so I watched a few clips from their shows/podcasts. For the most part, they went from claiming that those involved would be America-haters, terrorists, antifa, and Marxists beforehand, to claiming it was all just old people afterwards. 

On Youtube, it was a post by Glenn Beck that caught my eye because it was titled, "Glenn Beck Exposes No Kings Plot: This IS a Color Revolution!" In case you're not familiar with the term "color revolution," here's how Wikipedia defines it:

The color revolutions were a series of often non-violent protests and accompanying (attempted or successful) changes of government and society that took place in post-Soviet states (particularly Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan) and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the early 21st century.The aim of the color revolutions was to establish Western-style democracies.

I'll grant that Beck isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. Perhaps he thinks that comparing the No Kings protests to non-violent attempts to establish democracies in post-Soviet states is fear-inducing. But if that's his idea of a critique...I'll take it!  

So I watched the video. Beck begins by calling everyone who attended the protests an "idiot." But after about 9 minutes of that, things get pretty interesting. At that point, he starts talking about the intellectuals and organizers behind the protests and encourages his listeners to read two books. The first is "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, " by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan.

For more than a century, from 1900 to 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts in achieving their stated goals. By attracting impressive support from citizens, whose activism takes the form of protests, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other forms of nonviolent noncooperation, these efforts help separate regimes from their main sources of power and produce remarkable results.

Over the last few months I've heard about the "3.5% rule," but didn't know where it came from. Thanks to Glenn Beck, I now know that it came from Chenoweth and Stephan.

Looking at hundreds of campaigns over the last century, Chenoweth found that nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to achieve their goals as violent campaigns. And although the exact dynamics will depend on many factors, she has shown it takes around 3.5% of the population actively participating in the protests to ensure serious political change.

Whether or not you agree with the "3.5% rule," the fact that "nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to achieve their goals as violent campaigns," is the money quote.

The second book Beck mentions is "From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Guide to Nonviolent Resistance," by Gene Sharp.

From Dictatorship to Democracy was a pamphlet, printed and distributed by Dr Gene Sharp and based on his study, over a period of forty years, on non-violent methods of demonstration. Now in its fourth edition, it was originally handed out by the Albert Einstein Institution, and although never actively promoted, to date it has been translated into thirty-one languages. This astonishing book travelled as a photocopied pamphlet from Burma to Indonesia, Serbia and most recently Egypt, Tunisia and Syria, with dissent in China also reported. Surreptitiously handed out amongst youth uprisings the world over - how the 'how-to' guide came about and its role in the recent Arab uprisings is an extraordinary tale.

 If you're interested, check out Sharp's "198 Methods of Nonviolent Action."

Silly me. I had studied the nonviolence methods of Ghandi and MLK when I was in college in the 1970's. But I thought all of that wisdom had been lost in the succeeding decades. Here it is alive and well in a whole different form among the intellectuals and organizers behind the No Kings movement. That brings me so much hope and joy!

At this point, I haven't seen a lot of other MAGA pundits comparing No Kings to the color revolutions.  But someone who did make the connection is Kirill Dmitriev, Putin's Envoy on Foreign Investment and Economic Cooperation. In response to a tweet from Mike Flynn about the No Kings protests, he wrote: "Same playbook and same people who do 'color revolutions.' Sad that very few people understand the deep level of coordination and experience involved." It's not hard to understand why Putin would fear color revolutions. As a matter of fact, that fear could be what drove him to invade Ukraine.

The Kremlin’s fear of a fresh popular revolution threatening its position in power isn’t far-fetched; history favors nonviolent movements, which boast a 53% success rate compared with the 26% success rate for violent campaigns. In Russia’s neighborhood, civil resistance has proved itself to be a particularly potent strategy – between 1900 and 2019, 58% of the region’s major nonviolent movements succeeded in achieving their goals.

While Russia’s “special military operation” launched on Feb. 24 to “denazify” Ukraine came as a shock to many, Putin’s fear of popular revolutions means he has been plotting to regain control in Ukraine ever since a popular revolution in February 2014 deposed Kremlin-backed president Viktor Yanukovych.

If the worst thing that Beck or any other MAGA pundits can say about No Kings is that we are emulating nonviolent color revolutions to defend democracy - a prospect that terrifies Putin - it is just the kind of affirmation I've been looking for to indicate that we're on the right track.

The America I love

During his conversation with Marc Maron, Barack Obama took a step back from the specifics of what we're dealing with these days and gave an overview of the basic conflict that has been at the heart of our differences since the founding of this country. 

To illustrate the warring narratives, the former president pointed to the speech he gave at the 50th anniversary of the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, saying that - of all the speeches he gave during his presidency - that is the one that is "closest to my heart."

As a point of privilege, I'll simply say that six years ago, I wrote that the Selma speech was the most important of Obama's presidency.  The context in which he gave it is important to recognize.

Early that year, Rudy Giuliani had set off a firestorm by suggesting that Obama didn’t love America. The accusation was made because of the president’s refusal to use the words “radical Islamic terrorist.” It became one of those stories that not only swirled around right wing media, but migrated into mainstream outlets as well. The patriotism of this country’s first African-American president was under assault.

Here are a few key quotes from the speech:

What greater expression of faith in the American experiment than this, what greater form of patriotism is there than the belief that America is not yet finished, that we are strong enough to be self-critical, that each successive generation can look upon our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake this nation to more closely align with our highest ideals?...

The American instinct that led these young men and women to pick up the torch and cross this bridge, that’s the same instinct that moved patriots to choose revolution over tyranny. It’s the same instinct that drew immigrants from across oceans and the Rio Grande; the same instinct that led women to reach for the ballot, workers to organize against an unjust status quo; the same instinct that led us to plant a flag at Iwo Jima and on the surface of the Moon.

It’s the idea held by generations of citizens who believed that America is a constant work in progress; who believed that loving this country requires more than singing its praises or avoiding uncomfortable truths. It requires the occasional disruption, the willingness to speak out for what is right, to shake up the status quo. That’s America.

Many things have changed since that march over 50 years ago, but one remains constant.

[W]hat has not changed is the imperative of citizenship; that willingness of a 26-year-old deacon, or a Unitarian minister, or a young mother of five to decide they loved this country so much that they’d risk everything to realize its promise.

That’s what it means to love America. That’s what it means to believe in America. That’s what it means when we say America is exceptional.

For we were born of change. We broke the old aristocracies, declaring ourselves entitled not by bloodline, but endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. We secure our rights and responsibilities through a system of self-government, of and by and for the people. That’s why we argue and fight with so much passion and conviction — because we know our efforts matter. We know America is what we make of it.

As Obama told Maron, the clash on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 was between people like young John Lewis, who held that view of patriotism, vs. those with billy clubs on horseback who represented conquest, hierarchy, domination, and the idea that if you weren't a white property-owning male, you didn't matter.  

The reason Obama brought up that speech is because, once again, those two narratives are clashing. MAGA isn't even being subtle about it - they're saying the quite parts out loud.

For example, back in July, J.D. Vance gave a speech at the right wing Claremont Institute where he "offered one of the clearest articulations to date of American citizenship and identity based on ancestry and bloodline rather than the principles outlined in our Declaration of Independence." A couple of months later, Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) gave a similar speech  titled "What is an American" at the National Conservatism Conference. After referencing his (white) ancestors who conquered the west, Scmitt said:  

[A]ll of them would be astonished to hear that they were only fighting for a “proposition.”... 

America, in all its glory, is their gift to us, handed down across the generations. It belongs to us. It’s our birthright, our heritage, our destiny.

If America is everything and everyone, then it is nothing and no one at all.

When pundits and politicians wring their hands about what divides us in this country...they should look no further than these two narratives about what it means to be American. 

Ahead of the No Kings demonstrations on October 18th, MAGA talking points about it have been consistently repeated. They're suggesting that the people who protest on Saturday "hate America." 

I tend to reject using the word "hate." But if those folks want to paint me as rejecting the America of (white) bloodlines, conquest, hierarchy and domination, I'm happy to own that charge. 

The America I love is the one Obama described. And yes, it includes everyone.

Selma shows us that America is not the project of any one person. Because the single-most powerful word in our democracy is the word “We.” “We The People.” “We Shall Overcome.” “Yes We Can.” That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone...

We are Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea, pioneers who braved the unfamiliar, followed by a stampede of farmers and miners, and entrepreneurs and hucksters. That’s our spirit. That’s who we are.

We are Sojourner Truth and Fannie Lou Hamer, women who could do as much as any man and then some. And we’re Susan B. Anthony, who shook the system until the law reflected that truth. That is our character.

We’re the immigrants who stowed away on ships to reach these shores, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free –- Holocaust survivors, Soviet defectors, the Lost Boys of Sudan. 

We’re the hopeful strivers who cross the Rio Grande because we want our kids to know a better life. That’s how we came to be.

We’re the slaves who built the White House and the economy of the South.

We’re the ranch hands and cowboys who opened up the West, and countless laborers who laid rail, and raised skyscrapers, and organized for workers’ rights.

We’re the fresh-faced GIs who fought to liberate a continent. And we’re the Tuskeegee Airmen, and the Navajo code-talkers, and the Japanese Americans who fought for this country even as their own liberty had been denied.

We’re the firefighters who rushed into those buildings on 9/11, the volunteers who signed up to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

We’re the gay Americans whose blood ran in the streets of San Francisco and New York, just as blood ran down this bridge.

We are storytellers, writers, poets, artists who abhor unfairness, and despise hypocrisy, and give voice to the voiceless, and tell truths that need to be told.

We’re the inventors of gospel and jazz and blues, bluegrass and country, and hip-hop and rock and roll, and our very own sound with all the sweet sorrow and reckless joy of freedom.

Dangerous old men

Barack Obama said something recently that I found quite thought-provoking. 

OBAMA: It's fair to say that 80% of the world's problems involve old men hanging on who are afraid of death and insignificance, and they won't let go. They build pyramids, and they put their names on everything. They get very anxious about it.

[image or embed]

— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) September 25, 2025 at 1:02 PM

Having studied Obama intensely over the last decade, I can tell you that he doesn't throw stuff like this out lightly. I can actually imagine him calculating how many of the world's problems track back to old men who are afraid of death.

It's important to note that, based on past statements, Obama wasn't using the term "men" generically. This statement echoes something he said back in 2019.

The world would be a better place if more women were in charge, former President Barack Obama says. Speaking at an event on Monday, Obama also said that many of the world's problems stem from "old people, usually old men, not getting out of the way...They cling to power, they are insecure, they have outdated ideas and the energy and fresh vision and new approaches are squashed."

My mind immediately went to that fact that, ever since about 2016, I've said that the three most dangerous men in the world are Donald Trump (79), Vladimir Putin (73), and Benjamin Netanyahu (75). Globally, men's average lifespan in 71, while in the U.S., it's 75. I wouldn't be surprised if those were three of the men Obama had in mind.

As someone who is now in their 70's, I can attest to the fact that the imminence of death is much more present that it has been in the past. It is clear that, even in his dementia-addled brain, Donald Trump is thinking about it a lot as well. Over the past couple of months, he's talked about his desire to get into heaven several times. 

None of this is to suggest that I endorse the kind of ageism that I've seen on display lately. Someone shouldn't simply step down based on the year they were born. Those kinds of calls should be based on performance. There is a certain kind of wisdom that can come with age that is worth revering, just as there are young men who cling to power out of a sense of insecurity (J.D. Vance is only 41 years old).

But it is interesting to view Trump, Putin, and Netanyahu through this lens that Obama articulated. They're scared to death and are clinging to power in order to avoid the insignificance of death. 

Finding joy in a world drenched in fear/anger

This has been a dark week.

To be honest, I shed a tear when I heard that Charlie Kirk had been shot. It was partly because no human being deserves that. But I also felt the dread of what was going to come next. I wasn't wrong to feel that way. The division in our country has never felt more deep. The darkness from that seemed overwhelming. 

But then I ran across a video that had been posted the day before Kirk was shot. Perhaps you've seen it too.

While the performances are amazing, I suggest that you focus on the faces of the people in the crowd. One of the comments on YouTube captures my reaction perfectly: "I love flash mobs. I know it's weird, but the idea of huge amounts of people working together for zero payback except making people happy makes me emotional." Those performers not only brought joy to the people in the crowd. As I write, the video has garnered almost 7 million views in 5 days, demonstrating that people are starving for that kind of shared joy.

A few days later I ran across a couple of young men doing this on social media:

Want more? Here ya go.

These guys are "social media influencers" with hundreds of thousands of followers. But they're not just performing. I got hooked binging on T. Eian's videos and his skills aren't limited to dancing. He is a master at engaging all kinds of people - young, old, white, black, brown, etc. As with the flash mob, check out the joy they're spreading. 

When it comes to music, engagement, and spreading joy, no one is better at it than Jacob Collier.

 

You can tell that everyone in the audience that night had a spiritual experience.

Perhaps Nelson Mandela put it best: "It is music and dancing that makes me at peace with the world...and at peace with myself."

 

 I can't say that I have found peace with the world. But for right now, these performers have brought me some peace with myself. As Kamala Harris reminded us during the 2024 campaign, it's all about preserving our joy - especially as others try to ensnare us in fear/anger.  

Correcting Amy Walter with some recent history on immigration

One of my least favorite political commentators is Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report. Her appearance on the PBS News Hour on Tuesday reinforced that opinion. Host Geoff Bennett specifically asked her to comment on Trump's use of the military to paint a picture of toughness. Here's how Walter responded:

No, I think that's true, and I do think that's why it's been so interesting to watch the Democratic response, especially of Democratic leaders, not just in the state, but nationally...

The question going forward, I think, is how Democrats do talk about these issues, it's going to be really important for the — not just what's happening today in Los Angeles, but just writ large. I think there has been a lot of pullback and a lot of hand-wringing from Democrats about an issue which they used to have an advantage on during the — Trump's first term, they have a disadvantage on now.

Walter can't be bothered with talking about a president using the military against citizen protesters. Instead, she frames the issue as a challenge for Democrats. WTH?! Of course, right wing media was able to wallow in her comments about "handwringing Democrats" being at a disadvantage on the issue of immigration. 

But how can anyone take her historical reference seriously? Did Democrats have an advantage on immigration during Trump's first term? On what basis does she make a claim like that?

So here's a little recent history lesson for Ms. Walter. Republicans were shocked to lose the 2012 election after making huge gains in the 2010 midterms. The situation was so bleak for the GOP that they did an autopsy to try and figure out why they had failed so miserably. Here's one of the recommendations coming out of that autopsy:

[A]mong the steps Republicans take in the Hispanic community and beyond, we must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform. If we do not, our Party's appeal will continue to shrink to its core constituencies only. We also believe that comprehensive immigration reform is consistent with Republican economic policies that promote job growth and opportunity for all.

Some Republican politicians took that to heart. In the Senate, Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John McCain (R-AZ), and Marco Rubio (R-FL) worked with four Democrats to produce a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill that included both border security and a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. It passed the Senate 68-32.

But then House Speaker John Boehner refused to take up the bill due to pressure from his right wing Tea Party (prelude to MAGA) members. The bill stalled and was never passed - even though polls showed that a large majority of voters supported such a measure. 

Donald Trump kicked off his 2016 presidential campaign by calling Mexican immigrants criminals and rapists. His presidency was filled with racist lies about immigrants invading our country and a truly horrific attempt to deter immigration by separating children from their parents at the border. Even some Republicans were appalled.

The first bill President Biden sent to congress after beating Trump in the 2020 election was on comprehensive immigration reform, including both border security and a pathway to citizenship. It never passed. Towards the end of his term, Biden and Democrats once again negotiated a bipartisan border control compromise in the Senate. But Trump urged Congress to kill it because he wanted to use immigration as a campaign issue.

During the 2024 campaign Trump ratcheted up the lies about criminal immigrants and even went so far as to claim that they were eating our pets. Now he's trying to implement his mass deportation agenda, even though only 39% of Americans support what he's doing. Polls consistently show that Americans support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

If all anyone did was pay attention to right wing media and their enablers in mainstream media, you'd think Walter is right. But a brief look at both recent history and polling suggests that - at minimum - things are a bit more complex than her "analysis" suggests. 

If we are ever going to have a rational discussion about immigration, we're going to need to take a deep breath and step back from the racist fear-mongering and fascism emanating from Trump and his enablers. Democrats are firmly on the right side of history on this one. We recognize that we are a country of immigrants and that diversity is our strength. We must construct a humane immigration system because it's not just the right thing to do. It is the step we need to take right now in order to "perfect our union."

Got the blues?

Every link in this piece takes you to more great music.

Since we were in high school in the early 70s, I've known that my brother's favorite band has always been The Allman Brothers. I never paid them much attention because I was into other things. Then a couple of years ago, I finally decided to check into them to see what all the fuss was about. This was the first video I pulled up to check them out. 

At the time I didn't know that Soulshine was written by Warren Haynes and wasn't released by ABB until 1994 - long after both Duane Allman and Barry Oakley (original band members) had died in separate motorcycle accidents. 

But as I watched that video, I wondered who the young man with the long blond ponytail was. He blew me away with his slide guitar playing - standing so stoically in the place where Duane once stood. 

I soon found out that the young man was Derek Trucks - nephew of Butch Trucks, one of the ABB drummers. Derek was a guitar prodigy who had his own band by the time he was 13 and was opening for the Allman Brothers. He went on to become a member of the band when he was 20 years old and played with them until they disbanded in 2014. Derek also toured with Eric Clapton in 2006/7.

I went on to learn that in 1999, Derek met blues singer Susan Tedeschi and they were married a couple of years later. After fronting their own bands, the two joined forces in 2010 and formed the Tedeschi Trucks band. Here's their most famous song, Midnight in Harlem.

If you check into this band, you're going to hear a lot of people calling them the best touring band out there, and based on my limited experience, I'd agree with that. I went to see them last summer when they came to Minneapolis (my first live concert in decades) and it was a soul-stirring experience. 

I tell you all of that because it became an even bigger deal last November. Like most of you, I was pretty devastated about the election results and spent the next couple of weeks pretty immobilized by fear, rage, and depression. 

But then on the weekend of November 15 and 16 I got to live-stream the TTB concerts at the Fox Theater in Atlanta. Afterwards, I was no longer immobilized. Sure, I've continued to have times of fear, rage, and depression - but now I know that listening to good music keeps me functioning. 

You'll hear a lot of folks talk about the need for self-care during these times. Last November I learned that music is an integral part of self-care for me.

One more musical note before I close. Yesterday Sly Stone died. In honor of his tremendous contributions, here's how the Tedeschi Trucks band closed out that performance at the Fox Theater (I dare you to try and sit still through the whole thing): 

The Trump administration's attempt to restore white supremacy in the midst of demographic change

As we watch a militarized effort to terrorize black and brown immigrants (while importing white racists from South Africa), it is important to keep in mind the basis for this campaign. No one has articulated the fear better than white nationalist Richard Spencer back in 2015 as Trumpism was taking hold on the right (emphasis mine).

“Trump, on a gut level, kind of senses that this is about demographics, ultimately. We’re moving into a new America.” He said, “I don’t think Trump is a white nationalist,” but he did believe that Trump reflected “an unconscious vision that white people have – that their grandchildren might be a hated minority in their own country. I think that scares us. They probably aren’t able to articulate it. I think it’s there. I think that, to a great degree, explains the Trump phenomenon.”

Fox News and Republicans fully embraced the white supremacist great replacement theory sparked by this fear. 

The demographics these folks are referring to didn't simply spring up in the last few years as a result of recent increases in immigration. Demographers have been pointing them out for decades now. 

The real news is that, in addition to immigration, these changes are also based on birth rates. For example, "Children born in 2011 are members of this country's first majority-minority birth cohort." Another milestone was reached in the 2020 census: white non-Hispanic youth are now a minority (47%) among those under 18 years of age. Projections are that whites will be a minority in this country by 2044.

All of this led to an important analysis in the Washington Post back in 2018. At the time, the first Trump administration had released  a plan to severely restrict legal immigration - especially from countries in Africa and South America. The Post found that, if implemented, the plan would "delay the date that white Americans become a minority of the population by as few as one or as many as five additional years." Here's why (emphasis mine):

Experts say the main driver of diversification in the United States is the native-born Hispanic population, which grew by about 5 million from 2010 to 2016, just as the native-born white population shrank by about 400,000 over the same period, according to Census Bureau data...

“You can shut the door to everyone in the world and that won’t change,” said Roberto Suro, an immigration and demography expert at the University of Southern California. “The president can’t do anything about that. If your primary concern is that the American population is becoming less white, it’s already too late.”

The truth is that the Trump administration can't deport enough undocumented immigrants to change the trajectory that is underway. The bad news is that this is why they're going after legal immigrants and birthright citizenship. It is also why they probably won't hesitate to deport black and brown citizens.

Very much related to these efforts is the prevalence of natalism on the right - especially from folks like Elon Musk and J.D.Vance. The whitest age cohort in this country - baby boomers - is dying off and not being replaced by births. 

If these folks were really concerned about population decline, they'd be welcoming MORE immigrants. Instead, they want (white) women to have more babies. It's all an ugly mixture of misogyny and racism. 

Leonard Leo's terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month

These days, the news is almost too depressing to read. So I'll take good news any way I can get it. Along those lines is the fact that the month of May has been a pretty bad one for Leonard Leo - the man Justice Clarence Thomas once called “the Number Three most powerful person in the world.” Of course, Thomas was only joking...sort of.

In case you're not familiar with Leo, he's the Opus Dei Catholic who used dark money to stack the Supreme Court with extremists and then proceeded to pour millions into groups seeking to influence the Court. He has openly stated that his goal is to influence all aspects of American politics and culture by crushing liberal dominance. 

The bad new for Leo started early on in May when Cardinal Robert Prevost was chosen as the new pope, Leo XIV. While it remains unclear how he will interact with right wing Catholics in the United States, one of his first meetings was with the Opus Dei prelate, Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz. Apparently Pope Francis had begun the process of reforming the group, but it stalled after his death. It's clear that Pope Leo is prepared to pick up that ball, insisting on reforms. 

Given that Leonard Leo's focus has been to ensure a court that supports Catholic theocracy (integralism) and sides with big corporate interests, the fact that the new pope chose the name "Leo" is also relevant. The previous Pope Leo is remembered as one who was dedicated to social policies and social justice.

One of the barriers to Leo's goal of establishing a Catholic theocracy is the First Amendment's separation of church and state. In order to challenge the Supreme Court's interpretation of that amendment, Leo funded a court case promoting a publicly funded Christian school in Oklahoma.

At issue is the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma’s push to create the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would be the nation’s first religious school entirely funded by taxpayers. The school received preliminary approval from the state’s charter school board in June. If it survives legal challenges, it would open the door for state legislatures across the country to direct taxpayer funding to the creation of Christian or other sectarian schools.

In other words, this case was a BFD!

The second blow to Leonard Leo came on May 22nd when this happened:

The Supreme Court on Thursday effectively ended a publicly funded Catholic charter school in Oklahoma, dividing 4-4.

The outcome keeps in place an Oklahoma court decision that invalidated a vote by a state charter school board to approve the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would have been the nation’s first religious charter school.

Finally, you may have heard that this week President Trump directly attacked Leo. Here's what he wrote on Truth Social:

I was new to Washington, and it was suggested that I use The Federalist Society as a recommending source on Judges. I did so, openly and freely, but then realized that they were under the thumb of a real “sleazebag” named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions.

That attack came on the heels of the Trump administration losing 96% of rulings in federal district courts during the month of May. Seventy-two percent (72%) of those ruling came from Republican-appointed judges. So now Leo, according to Trump, is a "sleazebag" who hates America. 

Far be it from me to defend Leo against those attacks. It couldn't happen to a more deserving *sshole. 

But the whole situation is a cautionary tale to anyone who signs up to support Trump. The president has no policy or moral foundation. All he wants is 100% loyalty to his needs. If that isn't provided...you're simply a sleaze bag who hates America.

My message to Democrats: Don't you dare apologize for Biden!

Both mainstream and right wing media are once again obsessed with Joe Biden's age. Three events contributed to this renewed focus.

1. Publication of the book "Original Sin" by Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper,
2. The White House release of the audio tape of Joe Biden's interview with special counsel Robert Hur, and
3. The announcement that Biden has prostate cancer. 

The story being spun is that Biden was in mental decline during his presidency and that the truth about his condition was hidden from the public. Tom Bevan, publisher of the right wing site RealClearPolitics, said that "Gaslighting about Biden's mental conditions is one of the biggest scandals in American history." WOW, one of the biggest in American history?!

To believe that extreme hyperbole, you have to forget that President Biden took the historical step of stepping out of his race for reelection. You also have to completely ignore interviews like this one that Biden did with John Harwood nine days before the Hur interviews began - where he intelligently discusses some of the complex issues he was dealing with as president.

So where's this huge scandal? There isn't one. The truth is that Joe Biden's presidency was a tremendous success. There is a reason why that poses a big threat to Trump and Republicans. No one has consistently pointed that out better than historian Heather Cox Richardson. As an example, last August she wrote that "Under the direction of President Joe Biden, over the past three and a half years the Democrats have returned to the economic ideology of the New Deal coalition of the 1930s." What did that coalition accomplish?

Before 1935...the government served largely to manage the economic relationships between labor, capital, and resources. But [FDR's New Deal] recognized that the purpose of government was not to protect property; it was to protect the community...

This reworking of the American government to reflect community rather than economic relationships changed the entire fabric of the country, and opponents have worked to destroy it ever since FDR began to put it in place. 

The New Deal coalition survived those attacks until the 1980s. Here's what Biden faced when he took office: 

Biden set out to prove that democracy could work for ordinary people by ditching the neoliberalism that had been in place for forty years. That system, begun in the 1980s, called for the government to allow unfettered markets to organize the economy. Neoliberalism’s proponents promised it would create widespread prosperity, but instead, it transferred more than $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%...

When he took office, Biden vowed to prove that democracy worked. With laws like the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, the Democrats directed investment toward ordinary Americans. The dramatic success of their economic program proved that it worked. 

Republicans want Democrats on their heels apologizing for Joe Biden because, as the Trump administration focuses on undoing everything the former president accomplished, they want to ensure that no president in the future tries to replicate a return to the New Deal coalition of the 1930s.

I, for one, will not capitulate to that nonsense and I'll call out any Democrat who does. What President Biden accomplished during his four short years in office was a huge step forward for this country. I'm not only grateful to him personally, I proudly embrace his vision of making the government work for ordinary Americans.

Musk will be leaving the federal government deeper in debt than when he started

There has been some speculation about what Elon Musk really wants out of the DOGE efforts. For example, lots of questions arise about his access to reams of government data on private citizens. Of course, the same can be said about how DOGE will increase the wealth of the wealthiest man on earth. 

But when it came to selling the public on DOGE, the message was clear. Here is what Musk promised last October during Trump's rally at Madison Square Garden.

Musk promised that he would cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. He said that our tax dollars were being wasted and DOGE was going to fix that. 

Three months later, Musk dropped that number in half, going from promising $2 trillion in cuts to $1 trillion. Now that he's heading back to try and rescue his failing companies, Musk is bragging about saving $160 billion. 

But there are a couple of problems with that number as well. Journalists who have studied the numbers provided by DOGE have consistently found inaccuracies, some of which are eventually corrected. Additionally, only about $69 billion has been itemized, with $16 billion being verifiable. Finally, those cuts are spread out over an average of three years. Caleb Acarma and Judd Legum found that DOGE's verifiable cuts to contracts and grants would produce about $5 billion of savings in fiscal year 2026.

Because numbers that large are hard to visualize, here's a graph of promises vs. reality:

But it gets even worse. Not only has total federal spending INCREASED by $156 billion since Trump took office,  there's also this:

DOGE, meanwhile, could end up costing the federal government $135 billion this year when accounting for the lawsuits its cuts have triggered and loss of tax revenue from a depleted IRS, according to the Partnership for Public Service, a good government nonprofit.

So in about 5 months we've gone from Musk promising to cut $2 trillion per year from the federal budget to adding something like $286 billion to the deficit (156 + 135 - 5). Meanwhile, approximately 260,000 federal workers have been fired, U.S. Aid has been demolished, the Departments of Education and Veterans Affairs have been gutted, and Social Security is being threatened (to name just a few).

Musk will be leaving the federal government in chaos and deeper in debt than when he started. Let's rename his efforts the Department of Techbro Incompetence (DOTI). 

Trump and MAGA are using civil rights laws to reinforce white supremacy

The day after he was inaugurated, Trump signed an executive order titled "Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity." Six days later, right wing journalist Christopher Caldwell, wrote an article titled "The Biggest Policy Change of the Century." The tag line at The FreePress reads: "Trump is not simply eliminating the affirmative-action enforcement machinery. He is throwing it into reverse." What did he mean by that? Referring to Trump's executive order, here's what Caldwell told Andrew Sullivan (emphasis mine):

The first move is to say that you can longer do affirmative action, DEI, and that kind of thing. But the second move is to say, "we believe that DEI is actually racism"...Conservatives had always argued against the excesses of civil rights in a kind of principled way: "Actually, civil rights, well-meaning though it was, granted too much power to the federal government"...What the Trump administration has done...is lay claim to that power and is running the whole machine in reverse.

While I disagree with Caldwell about almost everything, he is absolutely right in his description of what the Trump administration is doing. They aren't just attempting to roll back civil rights protections. They're claiming that any move to enforce civil rights is discrimination...against white heterosexual able-bodied men. Here are the opening paragraphs of the executive order:

Longstanding Federal civil-rights laws protect individual Americans from discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. These civil-rights protections serve as a bedrock supporting equality of opportunity for all Americans. As President, I have a solemn duty to ensure that these laws are enforced for the benefit of all Americans.

Yet today, roughly 60 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, critical and influential institutions of American society...have adopted and actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) or “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” (DEIA) that can violate the civil-rights laws of this Nation...Hardworking Americans who deserve a shot at the American Dream should not be stigmatized, demeaned, or shut out of opportunities because of their race or sex.

This is something that has surfaced regularly in writings by MAGA influencers. For example, in writing about Princeton University, Christopher Rufo accused the school of waging a "war on civil rights"...against white men.

James Piereson has written that the Democratic Party's diversity initiatives violate civil rights law. In making the case, he actually utilizes the court case against Bob Jones University. You might remember that as the one that galvanized evangelical leaders to eventually band together and form the Moral Majority to protect their right to discriminate. 

In 1970, President Richard Nixon ordered the Internal Revenue Service to enact a new policy denying tax exemptions to all segregated schools in the United States based on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. That not only affected segregation academies in the South, it also affected Bob Jones University, due to their discriminatory admissions policy. The case went to the courts, with the Supreme Court eventually ruling in favor of the IRS.

Now, Piereson is using that ruling to suggest that diversity initiatives in the Democratic Party violate civil rights law by suggesting that tax-exempt institutions may not violate “fundamental national public policy.” In MAGA terms, that last phrase means "anything Trump says."

Caldwell - who is obviously thrilled with this reversal by the Trump administration - has said that White Americans “fell asleep thinking of themselves as the people who had built this country and woke up to find themselves occupying the bottom rung of an official hierarchy of races.”

First of all, the notion that there is "an official hierarchy of races" is absolute nonsense. But even if there were such a thing, the idea that white people occupy the bottom rung is absurd. For most of us, that is proven by the disparities that continue to exist in areas like health care, education, housing, employment, and the criminal justice system. 

But for MAGA, those disparities are proof that "different groups have different preferences, talents, and capacities," as Rufo has written. In other words, their arguments are ultimately based on eugenics.

If your head isn't spinning over all of that, then you're not paying attention. MAGA and the Trump administration are utilizing civil rights laws to reinforce white supremacy. And yes, all of our deceased civil rights leaders are rolling over in their graves on that one. It's time the rest of us took notice.

J.D. Vance forecasted the attacks on charitable organizations

In November 2021, J.D. Vance gave a speech at the National Conservatism Conference titled, "The Universities are the Enemy." We've all witnessed how that is playing out with this administration. 

But Vance's goals are bigger than just the universities. If you remember, he talked about ripping out the current American leadership class like a tumor. The vice president got specific about one of those "tumors" during an appearance on Tucker Carlson's show. Here's what he said (emphasis mine):

The basic way this works is that the Ford Foundation, the Gates Foundation, the Harvard University endowment, these are fundamentally cancers on American society, but they pretend to be charities, so they benefit from preferential tax treatment...

We are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in ill-gotten accumulated wealth. It serves as a tax haven for left-wing billionaires and what do they do with this? They fund critical race theory, they fund ridiculous racism, they fund teaching 6-year-olds that they should, you know, cast off their gender. We are actively subsidizing the people who are destroying this country, and they call it a charity. It's just ridiculous.

To inform yourself, you might want to take a look at what the Ford Foundation and the Gates Foundation actually fund. I would imagine that Henry Ford and Bill Gates would be surprised to learn that the current vice-president thinks that the money they made and gifted to their foundations amounted to "ill-gotten accumulated wealth." But that's a story for another day. 

This is all relevant today because there's lots of chatter about the Trump administration going after non-governmental organizations (NGO's) and the groups that fund them. The president has already asked the IRS to rescind Harvard's tax exempt status. Last week he said that tax-exempt status has "been abused by a lot more than Harvard. We’ll be making some statements. It’s a big deal.”

According to Andy Stephanian of The Sparrow Project, the administration will likely take aim at organizations like the Ford Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Gates Foundation, and Open Society (Soros). Not targeted will be the Bradley Foundation, the Koch Family foundations, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Scaife Family foundations, and the Adolph Coors Foundation - the top five right wing foundations.

As is always the case with these guys, every accusation is a confession.

Two minutes worth of Republicans JD Vance, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, Jim Jordan, and John Thune criticizing the use of the IRS to punish organizations for their politics:

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— Republican Accountability (@accountablegop.bsky.social) April 16, 2025 at 5:59 PM

Here's the good news. Via the Council of Foundations, over 400 organizations have already signed a statement reflecting their resolve and solidarity.

We don’t all share the same beliefs or priorities. Neither do our donors or the communities we serve. But as charitable giving institutions, we are united behind our First Amendment right to give as an expression of our own distinct values. Especially in this time of great need, we must have the freedom to direct our resources to a wide variety of important services, issues, and places, to improve lives today and build a stronger future for our country. The health and safety of the American people, our nation’s economic stability, and the vibrancy of our democracy depend on it.

As someone who worked at non-profits for my entire professional career, you can bet that I'll be keeping an eye on this one! 

Watch what they're doing, not what they're saying

As the Trump administration talks openly about deporting U.S. criminals to prisons in El Salvador, it is worth taking a look at how they're abusing language in an attempt to make that case.

The first thing to notice is that they are twisting the meaning of the word "criminal." The definition of the word crime is "an illegal act for which someone can be punished by the government." In our judicial system, a criminal is someone who has been convicted of committing a crime. 

When it comes to the men this administration has already sent to El Salvador, Bloomberg reports that 90% of them have no criminal record. In other words, they're sending immigrants to those prisons - not criminals. So when Trump talks about sending "homegrown criminals" to El Salvador, take just a minute to think about what that means. 

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem might have said the quiet part out loud when she suggested that "We should only have people in our country that love us." When you pair that with statements the president has made accusing critics of being treasonous, you get some idea of what they mean by the word "criminal." 

The second word that is worth noting is the suggestion that the administration is "deporting" people to El Salvador. Here's the definition of that word: "the removal from a country of an alien whose presence is unlawful or prejudicial."

The Trump administration isn't simply removing immigrants from the U.S. He's sending them to a prison in El Salvador. The correct words for that are "extraordinary rendition" - which is defined as "the seizure and transfer of a person suspected of involvement with a terrorist group to another country for imprisonment and interrogation without legal process." Confirming that as the correct term, the White House and its allies regularly refer to those non-criminal immigrants as "terrorists."

Some parallels are starting to emerge.

Seems like a good day to remind everyone that Auschwitz — a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps — was not located in Nazi Germany either.

— Andrea Junker (@strandjunker.com) April 14, 2025 at 2:16 PM

Given all of that, there is a more accurate term we should use to describe the Salvadorian prison.

While I always want to avoid being overly-alarmist, the picture that begins to emerge when we look at what they're doing is pretty threatening. Their actions suggest that they are preparing to use extraordinary rendition to send their critics to concentration camps in El Salvador. 

How Trump is killing this country's reliability

In the eleven days since Trump ignited a trade war with the rest of the world, here's what has happened:

• The White House bounced back and forth on whether the announced tariffs were permanent or negotiable. 
• Commerce Secretary Lutnick said, "I don't think there's any chance that President Trump's going to back off his tariffs. This is the reordering of global trade."
• One of the rationales given for the tariffs is that they would bring manufacturing jobs back to America - with Lutnick specifically citing the making of iPhones. 
• When it became clear that these moves were causing a major sell-off of U.S. bonds, Trump paused the tariffs that the administration was referring to as "reciprocal."
• Treasury Secretary Bessent said the pause in "reciprocal" tariffs was the strategy all along.
• The higher tariffs on China were not paused. But members of the Trump administration were confused about whether they were 125% or 145%. 
• Smartphones (including iPhones) and computers were exempted from the tariffs on China. But as Paul Krugman noted, "we’re now putting much higher tariffs on intermediate goods used in manufacturing (ie, Chinese batteries) than on final goods. This actually discourages manufacturing in the United States."
• The next day, Lutnick and Trump announced that the exemptions for electronics would be temporary.

I defy anyone to claim that, behind all of this, is some three-dimensional chess strategy. It's simply nuts! 

The truth is that, as economist Justin Wolfers said, we are currently in the midst of two crises: "A tariff crisis, and a crisis of confidence built upon incompetence." According to experts, it is that crisis of  confidence that caused the sell-off of U.S. bonds. 

As Jerusalem Demsas points out, all of this poses a long-term problem for the United States.

Countries can and will move on without the United States. Their firms will establish new supply chains and pursue other markets. Even if the U.S. were the ultra-dominant trading partner it used to be, the credibility of the nation’s promises, its treaties, its agreements, and even its basic rationality has evaporated in just weeks...

America’s economic dominance has long been supported by alliances, faith in U.S. debt, and the independence of the Fed. Those three things “were all built on trust that took decades to build,” the economist Ernie Tedeschi told me...

The problem facing future administrations—and this one, in the unlikely event that it gains a modicum of rationality—is that the country has killed its reliability.

In case you needed some more gaslighting, the administration that killed this country's reliability is responding by simply saying, "Trust Trump." That's like asking you to trust the pyromaniac who is in the process of burning down your house. 

Donald Trump is incapable of making rational decisions. Instead, he openly brags about making them "instinctively." For example, when asked how he would decide whether to give tariff relief to particular companies, the president responded by saying, "Instinctively, more than anything else. You almost can’t take a pencil to paper. It’s really more of an instinct, I think, than anything else.” 

As a recovering therapist, let me assure you that the instincts of a narcissistic sociopath are the opposite of rational. 

It's the insanity, stupid!

As Heather Cox Richardson documented, "Wall Street billionaires tried desperately and unsuccessfully to change Trump’s mind on tariffs. This week they have begun to go public, calling out what they call the 'stupidity' of the new measures." 

But one company - Fundstrat Market Strategy & Sector Research - went even farther than that, writing this is their newsletter today (emphasis mine):

In the last few days, we have had many conversations with macro fund managers. And their concern is that the White House is not acting rationally, but rather on ideology. And some even fear that this may not even be ideology. A few have quietly wondered if the President might be insane.

That is something that many of us have been talking about for years now.  As others search for a political or economic strategy behind the president's actions, Jamelle Bouie goes to the heart of things.

It is a fool’s errand to try to rationalize President Trump’s obsession with tariffs... 

[Trump] did not reason himself into his preoccupation with tariffs and can neither reason nor speak coherently about them. There is no grand plan or strategic vision, no matter what his advisers claim — only the impulsive actions of a mad king, untethered from any responsibility to the nation or its people. For as much as the president’s apologists would like us to believe otherwise, Trump’s tariffs are not a policy as we traditionally understand it. What they are is an instantiation of his psyche: a concrete expression of his zero-sum worldview.

The fundamental truth of Donald Trump is that he apparently cannot conceive of any relationship between individuals, peoples or states as anything other than a status game, a competition for dominance...For Trump, there is no such thing as a mutually beneficial relationship or a positive-sum outcome. In every interaction, no matter how trivial or insignificant, someone has to win, and someone has to lose...

The upshot of this understanding of Trump’s personality is that there is no point at which he can be satisfied. He will always want more: more supplicants to obey his next command, more displays of his power and authority and more opportunities to trample over those who don’t belong in his America.

During a speech last night, Trump shared his delusional thinking about his own dominance. 

Trump: "These countries are calling us up. Kissing my ass."

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 8, 2025 at 7:27 PM

Tony Schwartz, ghostwriter for Trump's "The Art of the Deal," laid it all out for us eight years ago.

To survive, I concluded from our conversations, Trump felt compelled to go to war with the world. It was a binary, zero-sum choice for him: You either dominated or you submitted. You either created and exploited fear, or you succumbed to it...

Trump grew up fighting for his life and taking no prisoners. In countless conversations, he made clear to me that he treated every encounter as a contest he had to win, because the only other option from his perspective was to lose, and that was the equivalent of obliteration.

I recognize that it's hard for a lot of people to come to terms with the idea that the U.S. has elected a president who is insane. They want to console themselves with the idea that, behind these policies is some kind of political and/or economic strategy that can be countered via rational arguments. But the reality is that we have a president who is bragging that our (former) allies are now calling him up to kiss his ass. It is an affront to three year olds to claim that is simply childish. It is insane.  

As a musical side-note, I've been thinking about this one a lot lately. Paul Simon said it's the most neurotic song he's ever written. But on a communal level, it perfectly describes Trump's "America first" mentality.

In this moral moment, perhaps Cory Booker is exactly what we need

As someone who has been impressed with Cory Booker since the days before he was a United States Senator, it didn't surprise me that on Tuesday, he rose to the occasion. Here is just one clip of his 25-hour speech on the Senate floor (you can find more here). 

"I don't want a Disney vacation of our history! I don't a whitewashed history, I don't want a homogenized history. Tell me the wretched truth about America, because that speaks to our greatness" -- 20 hours into his speech, Cory Booker is spitting absolute 🔥

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) April 1, 2025 at 2:46 PM

Joining in the kind of rhetoric that we heard from Bishop Mariann Budde, Booker ended with a clarion call: "This is a moral moment. It’s not left or right, it’s right or wrong.”

I'd like to share just one reaction that I saw on BlueSky. A mother wrote:

If you could see the look on my 14 year old son’s face watching Senator Booker filibuster on behalf of Americans. My son is a historian, in honors history, a passionate expert on world history. He was devastated when Trump was re-elected and this is the first time I’ve seen hope in his eyes.

 Wow, bringing the first glimmer of hope to a 14 year old is a BFD! 

As I've watched Booker over the years, I've seen how mainstream journalists basically dismiss him. Hayes Brown captured that in his response to Booker's efforts yesterday.

“Is Cory cringe or is this refreshing?” a colleague messaged me at one point during Booker’s speech. The answer, as my colleague immediately noted, is “yes.” Booker can be the cringiest of senators, which is saying something, wearing his heart on his sleeve and brandishing an inspiring quote at every possible chance. His lack of cynicism can be off-putting in a time when doomerism is rampant and hope can feel like a lie in the face of harsh reality. But maybe what America needs right now is a little cringe, a recommitment to being genuine and earnest in our desire to help others.

I'd suggest that, while some journalists dismissed Booker as being "cringe," he has often been a source of inspiration for many of us. As just one example, I'd remind you of the time Booker demonstrated what it means to be an ally. 

Here's what I wrote about that at the time:

The senator from New Jersey just gave us a master class on how to be an ally. He didn't settle for simply debunking the attacks on Judge Jackson. He built her up in the midst of others trying to tear her down. He gave her room to breath again, shoring up her ability to continue to take on those attacks with dignity and grace. Booker focused - at least for a moment - on what Judge Jackson needed rather than use his time to preen for the camera in order to score political points. That's precisely what it means to have empathy.

I've always believed in Cory Booker. While cynics might cringe at his open-heartedness, I've seen it for long enough to know that he's the real deal. Beyond that, he's smart as a whip and consistently supports policies that are not only progressive...but pragmatic. Here's just one example:

Booker is proposing “baby bonds” to give each child in the United States a savings account with $1,000. The account would grow in size every year, depending on the income of the child’s family, to as much as $50,000.

When the child turns 18, that money could be used for a number of things but not anything — including a down payment on a house or money to go to college.

One estimate from Columbia University researcher Naomi Zewde found that baby bonds would come close to wiping out the racial wealth gap, in part by increasing the assets held by young people across the board.

With all of that said, perhaps you will understand why it was no surprise to me that Senator Booker is the one who stepped up to the plate during this moral moment. He's exactly what we need right now.