All posts tagged "democracy"

Trump hinted at plans to cancel 2028 election while talking to generals: Dem

President Donald Trump's speech to hundreds of the US' top generals on Tuesday hinted at plans to cancel the 2028 election, according to Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman of New York.

In an appearance on The Jim Acosta Show on Tuesday, Goldman said the speech appeared to be preparing the ground for an authoritarian power grab.

"It’s also, I think, really dangerous because it is trying to manufacture a crisis so that Donald Trump can continue to take more and more authoritarian actions and so that he can usurp more and power," said Goldman.

"And ultimately, my view is that he is looking ahead to 2028, where he will say that, for cockamamie made-up reasons like he’s talking to these generals about."

"That 'well, look, we’re being invaded from within from the enemy within and we’ve got to keep our border safe. And that’s what our focus has to be. We can’t possibly have an election under these circumstances.'”

"You really think that could happen?" said Acosta.

"Yeah, I think that’s where a lot of this is heading towards," said Goldman. "I think that's why he's floating a third term. That's why he's using this language of a war, of the enemy within, of securing our border."

Trump, in his speech to the generals at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, said the military's job was to help protect from the "enemy within," and discussed sending troops into Democratic run cities such as Chicago and Portland.

Trump's worst outrage is close to being forgotten

Most of us humans have scant ability to hold in our minds things that seemed of tremendous importance not that long ago. We seldom hark back to an incident that at the time seemed momentous, only to be shoved to the back of our minds by a succession of more recent attention-grabbing events.

Thus, far too seldom do we think back on one of the most disturbing incidents in US political history: Donald Trump’s illegal scheme to destroy American democracy by attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and replace the duly elected president, Joe Biden, with the loser, Donald Trump.

Trump’s assault on democracy is something we must never forget.

The evidence of Trump’s criminality was such that the Department of Justice indicted him on four felony counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and witness tampering. If brought to trial and convicted, Trump would have faced serious prison time.

The indictment cites compelling evidence of Trump’s illegal activities:

Using knowingly false claims of election fraud to get state legislatures and election officials to change electoral votes
Organizing fraudulent slates of electors to cast fraudulent votes for Trump
Using the Justice Department to conduct sham election crime investigations
Using Vice-President Pence in the certification proceeding to fraudulently alter the election results
Inciting a Capitol insurrection to halt the certification process of electoral votes

If Trump’s illegal scheme had worked, he would have supplanted Biden as president and American democracy would have been crushed. The election of the US president in accordance with the Constitution would have been subverted, the American people would have been denied their constitutional right to elect their president, and the losing candidate would have pulled off a bloodless coup against the US government.

The American people cannot be reminded too often or strongly that the person who attempted to destroy our democracy is now sitting in the White House. Had he not been elected president, he would have stood trial and if convicted by a jury of his peers, could very well be sitting in prison today.

Trump’s first seven months in office shows that he is as disdainful of democracy as when he attempted to subvert it in 2020. He has attacked judges who have ruled his executive orders illegal or unconstitutional, run roughshod over the Constitution and rule of law, usurped the authority of a compliant legislature, and appointed servile loyalists to head the FBI, CIA, and DOJ and do his authoritarian bidding.

Attempting to skew the 2026 midterm elections in Republicans’ favor, Trump has vowed to enact an unconstitutional executive order to end mail-in voting and pressed Texas to add five Republican-dominated election districts through gerrymandering to try and maintain a House majority.

With still a year and a half before the election, Trump will assuredly devise other schemes to try and corrupt the mid-term election process as he did the 2020 presidential election results.

We must never forget that our current president poses the greatest internal threat to American democracy of any president in history. He has already proven that he was willing to destroy our democracy to stay in power. Every day that he remains as president is a reminder that no person has ever been less deserving of the office.

So much has gone on since Trump was reelected that his vile assault on democracy in 2020 is a fading memory: his tariff wars, his outrageous lusting to acquire Greenland and make Canada our 51st state, his treacherous attacks on universities and blue states, his using his presidential power to wreak vengeance on his “enemies,” his failed claim to end Russia’s war on Ukraine, his green-lighting Israel’s genocidal slaughter of Palestinian civilians, and his transparent, pathological lying that reveals an ever-growing state of delusion.

Each of Trump’s latest outrages pushes the 2020 election treachery farther into the recesses of memory.

So what happens now that we’ve elected a democratic-smashing authoritarian president? First, we make sure that we never again elect a person whose is not 100 percent committed to protecting and preserving American democracy. Lesson learned.

Next, we do everything possible to mitigate the damage that Trump can do as president.

As patriotic Americans, we can protest regularly en masse against Trump’s ongoing attempt to turn America into an autocracy like Russia or Hungary. We can elect Democratic majorities to the House and Senate in 2026 to rein in an overreaching, power-grasping president and ensure that no onerous, anti-democratic laws are passed.

We should strongly encourage the 2026-elected Congress to impeach Trump, shortening the amount of time he has to shred our democracy. If democracy is as precious and inviolable to us as to our forefathers, we will do everything within the law to remove the democratic annihilator from the White House as soon as possible.

Tom Tyner is a freelance editorialist, satirist, political analyst, blogger, author and retired English instructor

With this Putin-inspired attack, Trump crossed a line no president ever dared touch

On Monday, Donald Trump crossed another line that no president in our history has ever dared to touch. With the echo of Vladimir Putin’s whisper in his ear, in front of President Volodymyr Zelensky and seven other European leaders, Trump announced he’s preparing an executive order to ban mail-in ballots and even outlaw voting machines across America ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Sitting in front of the Chancellor of Germany and the Prime Minister of Great Britain — both nations that allow and even encourage mail-in voting — Trump said:

“Mail-in ballots are corrupt mail-in ballots. You can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots, and we as a Republican Party are gonna do everything possible that we get rid of mail-in ballots. We're gonna start with an executive order that’s being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail-in ballots because they’re corrupt. And, you know that we’re the only country in the world, I believe, I may be wrong, but just about the only country in the world that uses it because of what’s happened.”

This is not just a partisan maneuver. It’s an open assault on the Constitution, a grotesque power grab, and a direct threat to the foundation of democracy itself. And it’s happening in real time, in broad daylight, with a criminally compliant Republican Party cheering him on.

Republicans hate mail-in voting for multiple reasons.

First, for people who’re paid by the hour, mail-in voting increases participation because they can fill out their ballots at the kitchen table after work. Republicans don’t want people to vote, and have introduced more than 400 pieces of legislation in the past three years nationwide to make voting more difficult.
Second, mail-in voting makes voters better informed and less vulnerable to sound-byte TV ads because, while perusing that ballot at the kitchen table, they can look up candidates on their laptops and get more detail and information. Republicans hate informed voters and rely heavily on often-dishonest advertisements to swing voters.
Third, mail-in ballots — because they arrive in the mail weeks before the election — give voters an early chance to discover if they’ve been the victim of Republican voter-roll purges, one of their favorite tactics to pre-rig elections.
Fourth, mail-in ballots end the GOP trick of understaffing and under-resourcing polling places in minority neighborhoods, leading to hours-long lines. Hispanic voters generally wait 150 percent longer than white voters, and Black voters must endure a 200 percent longer wait; mail-in ballots put an end to this favorite of the GOP’s voter suppression efforts.

Trump, knowing all this, couldn’t help himself yesterday, finally blurting out his real reason for wanting to end mail-in voting in America:

“We got to stop mail-in voting, and the Republicans have to lead the charge. The Democrats want it because they have horrible policy. If you [don’t] have mail-in voting, you’re not gonna have many Democrats get elected. That’s bigger than anything having to do with redistricting, believe me.”

Once again, Trump is ignoring the law and the Constitution, which explicitly delegates the administration of elections to the states and Congress, not presidential executive orders.

That’s not some vague norm or debatable tradition: it’s written into the very DNA of our system of government. States set the rules, unless Congress — not the president — overrides them. States decide how their citizens vote, as the Constitution’s Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 dictates:

“The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”

Yet here we have a president declaring that he alone will dictate the terms of elections nationwide, in direct violation of two centuries of law and precedent. This is not only unconstitutional, it’s tyrannical.

When a president asserts powers he does not have, with the full knowledge that they aren’t his to wield, he’s announcing to the country that the rule of law no longer constrains him. That’s the definition of dictatorship.

And what makes this even more obscene is the source of Trump’s inspiration. According to multiple reports, Trump’s sudden rant on mail-in ballots followed a private conversation with Putin, who reportedly told Trump that mail-in voting was the reason he lost in 2020.

The man occupying the Oval Office is now taking advice about how to rig American elections from the very dictator who has spent his career poisoning journalists, jailing opponents, and staging sham referendums to annex entire countries.

It’s bad enough that Trump has always been Putin’s toady, but now we see the Kremlin effectively writing U.S. election law. If Jefferson, Madison, or Lincoln were alive to hear this, they would spit.

Mail-in voting is not a scam. It’s not a trick. It’s how tens of millions of Americans — Republicans, Democrats, independents — exercise their right to vote.

Seniors rely on it. People with disabilities rely on it. Military service members overseas rely on it. Hourly workers who can’t take a day off rely on it. Parents with young children rely on it. Rural voters, who often live miles from polling places, rely on it.

And every study, every audit, every bipartisan commission has found mail-in voting to be secure, safe, and reliable. Five states do it exclusively; we’ve had it more than two decades here in Oregon with nary a single scandal or problem. To call it fraudulent is a lie. To ban it is voter suppression on a scale this country has never seen.

And voting machines? Trump is openly declaring that he’ll return us to mind-numbingly slow hand-counting of ballots, a tactic straight from the authoritarian playbook designed to create chaos, delays, and endless opportunities to dispute the results in 2026 and 2028.

I’ve had concerns about voting machines and Windows-based tabulators for decades, but my solution isn’t to end them. Instead, we should use machines owned by the government itself, generating paper ballots and operating transparently on open-source software with every election subject to sample audits.

Instead of trying to make elections more secure, Trump’s laying the groundwork for election theft in plain sight. This isn’t subtle: it’s the loud declaration of a man preparing to overturn the will of the voters, with the blessing of a foreign adversary, and with a Republican Party too craven to object.

If Trump succeeds in outlawing mail-in ballots and voting machines, millions of Americans will simply not be able to vote. Seniors in nursing homes, service members abroad, people with disabilities, single parents, rural citizens: they will all be disenfranchised overnight. And make no mistake: that’s the point.

This is not about integrity. This is not about security. This is about shrinking the electorate to a size that Republicans believe will guarantee them victory forever.

Republicans know they can’t win free and fair elections in much of America. They know their policies are unpopular. They know their agenda is toxic.

So they cheat. They gerrymander districts into grotesque shapes that make a mockery of representative government. They purge voters from the rolls. They criminalize voter registration drives. They intimidate voters at the polls.

And now, at Trump’s command and Putin’s urging, they want to ban the very methods by which millions of Americans vote. This is not politics as usual. This is the slow-motion strangulation of democracy.

Every American who believes in self-government must rise up against this. Governors must prepare to defy such an executive order in court and in practice. State legislatures must assert their constitutional authority.

Attorneys general must be ready to sue. And ordinary citizens must take to the streets, the phones, the ballot box, and every civic space available to declare that this will not stand. Because if it does, we’ll have surrendered the very essence of the American experiment.

We’ve been here before in spirit if not in form.

Ronald Reagan’s campaign cut a deal with the Iranian Ayatollahs to hang onto the hostages until after the election. Richard Nixon tried to sabotage our democracy by killing Lyndon Johnson's peace negotiations with Vietnam and followed-up with burglaries and cover-ups when he thought Democrats were onto him. He was forced to resign. George W. Bush and the GOP stopped the counting of votes in Florida and handed the presidency to themselves. That assault has scarred our politics for decades.

But never — not once in 250 years — has a president openly declared that he will strip states of their constitutional right to run elections, end mail-in voting, and ban voting machines altogether. This is unprecedented, authoritarian, and it must be stopped.

It’s also just one in a broad spectrum of attacks Republicans have launched against your right to vote, with the SAVE Act — which will prevent women from voting if their birth certificate and drivers’ license have different names on them and they’ve never had an official change-of-name in the courts — teed up in the US Senate. All while millions are being purged from the voting rolls as you read these words.

This is the moment when the American people must decide whether they still believe in democracy. If we shrug, if we accept this as just more noise from a corrupt and broken con man, we will lose it. If we wait for someone else to act, we will lose it. If we tell ourselves the courts will save us, we may be bitterly disappointed.

The survival of democracy has never been guaranteed. It has always required vigilance, courage, and action. Now it requires all three from each of us.

Trump’s promised executive order is not just a legal maneuver. It’s a declaration of war against the American people. It’s the dream of every tyrant: to control who votes and who does not, to dictate the rules of elections so that the outcome is predetermined.

What Putin and Trump are proposing is not democracy. It’s not freedom. It’s not America.

And the Republicans who are enabling this treachery are as guilty as Trump himself. They’re betraying their oaths, their constituents, and our country. History will remember them not as conservatives or patriots, but as the gravediggers of our Republic.

This is the line. This is the moment. We cannot let Trump and his cronies bulldoze democracy into the ground at Putin’s command. Every patriot, every progressive, every independent, every honest conservative who still believes in the Constitution must join together and say no.

No to dictatorship. No to disenfranchisement. No to treason.

If we fail now, there may not be another chance.

Supreme Court's democracy hijack is one step closer to complete

Earlier this month, Louise and I vacationed across several different cities and rural areas in Norway, the country from which my grandfather emigrated to the United States in 1917. The place was immaculate, modern, and, astonishingly, seemed entirely free of homelessness. Official stats say around 3,000 people lack housing across the entire country. That’s about the number you’ll see sleeping on sidewalks in a single Los Angeles neighborhood.

Depending on the city, it looked like half or more of the cars on the road were electric. Norway has mandated that, starting this coming January, all new cars sold in that nation must be zero-emission. Charging stations are everywhere. Already, 89 percent of all new cars sold there last year were fully electric.

But the real eye-opener wasn’t the electric cars or tidy sidewalks; it was the democracy. Norway is a functioning democratic republic, but not in the American sense where billionaires run the show to their own benefit.

It’s a country that practices democratic socialism, a term that causes conniptions among Fox “News” anchors and libertarian think tanks but simply means this: The people vote for leaders who actually implement policies the majority wants.

Sadly, that’s not the case here pretty much at all, at least since the Reagan Revolution. Back here in the United States, six billionaire-corrupted Supreme Court justices just told us that democracy doesn’t matter anymore. That the desires of millions of Americans can be rendered meaningless, especially if billionaires and their puppets want it that way.

Yesterday, this Trump-packed Supreme Court quietly — in an unsigned ruling on their badly-abused so-called “shadow docket” with no public debate and no explanation — handed down one of the most destructive rulings in modern history.

In a 6–3 decision, the justices green-lit Trump’s plan to gut the Department of Education, firing 1,400 people, freezing $6.8 billion in funding, and throwing the constitutional guarantee of equal access to education under the proverbial bus. It also flies in the face of the constitutional requirement that the president “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” by spending money Congress appropriates and keeping open agencies Congress created.

Justice Sotomayor’s dissent was scathing, calling the ruling “indefensible” and warning it would “cripple the federal government’s ability to ensure civil rights are enforced in education.”

The highest court in our land just sided with a twice-impeached, sexual-assaulting, insurrection-inciting president to dismantle the very agency responsible for making sure children with disabilities get accommodations. That Black and Brown, Jewish and Muslim students aren’t systematically discriminated against. That poor children in poor neighborhoods can still get a good education. That people with massive student debt can get some small breaks. That schools have at least some federal oversight.

Compare that to Norway.

While American billionaires are buying legislators and court decisions to keep their taxes low, their subsidies for the fossil fuel industry flowing, and to crush unions, Norwegians are investing in their people.

Nobody in Norway ever goes bankrupt from medical bills. College and trade schools are free. Unions are everywhere, wages are high, and stiff taxes on the morbidly rich ensure that public services like education and healthcare are publicly funded rather than run by greedy corporations and billionaire CEOs.

How do they do it? Why is it so different there compared to here?

Because in Norway, and across most of Europe, democracy is real. Citizens are automatically registered to vote. Elections are free of voter suppression, and dark money is illegal. Politicians are answerable to the people, not to fossil fuel barons or Wall Street banksters.

And so, people can vote for legislators who can actually give them what they want:

Universal healthcare
Free higher education
Robust public transit
Workers’ rights and living wages
Climate action, not climate denial

Meanwhile, in America, six corrupt Republicans on our Supreme Court have become an unelected, billionaire-funded wrecking crew that’s gleefully tearing down every public institution that threatens plutocratic rule.

This disparity, this tragedy, is no accident here in our country.

As I’ve written about for years and most recently detailed in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America, it began in the modern era with Lewis Powell’s 1971 Memo, a blueprint for corporate America to seize the courts, media, education, and politics. Nixon rewarded Powell by putting him on the Supreme Court the following year, and the rest is tragic history.

From Buckley v. Valeo to Citizens United, this court and its billionaire benefactors have redefined bribery as “free speech” and legalized the wholesale purchase of politicians. And, of course, Supreme Court justices.

This week’s shadow docket ruling is just the latest in that decades-long march toward oligarchy and, now, dictatorship.

The irony? The majority of Americans want a Norway-style system.

66% support Medicare for All
58% support free college and student debt cancellation
64% support taxing the ultra-rich more heavily
60% of workers say they’d join a union if they could

So why don’t we have it?

Because six corrupt Republican Supreme Court justices, and the corrupt rightwing billionaires who bought them and support their lavish lifestyles, won’t let us.

They’ve legalized voter suppression, gutted campaign finance laws, blessed gerrymandering, and are now attacking public education, the very foundation of a functioning democracy.

The lesson of Norway isn’t that the people there are somehow better. It’s that they’ve built institutions that respect the will of the majority and block the power of the morbidly rich. And when their democratic institutions are under threat, they act.

In America, we must do the same.

End lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court and put in term limits.
Ban dark money in politics.
Rebuild public education, not dismantle it.
Tax the morbidly rich.
Expand and protect voting rights.

This isn’t a left-right issue; it’s a democracy-versus-oligarchy issue. And this week’s Supreme Court ruling should be a five-alarm fire.

If we want a country that looks more like Norway and less like the feudal state Trump and his bought-off justices envision, we’ve got to fight for it.

The billionaires may have the Supreme Court, the White House, and Congress, at least for now. But we still have the numbers.

And in a democracy, that still means something, if we make it mean something.

I'd vote for a robot over JD Vance. Would a robot?

What if the AI bots figure that out? I can imagine R2D2 and Amazon warehouse robo-pickers trundling across the Pettus Bridge in Selma, chanting, “No vote, no work!”

If the robots go on strike, we can survive the loss of same-day delivery of pantyhose and air-fryers — or maybe not. But after two weeks, humans will begin to starve. Worse, millions will go crazy with the lack of entertainment options and unfilled orders of anti-depressants.

Now the truth is, I would vote for a robot over JD Vance. And let’s face it, humans haven’t done such a good job of picking our presidents.

And we also have to consider the possibility that they are already taking over electoral politics. Is there any indication at all that Gavin Newsom is a human being? Ask Siri and she barely stifles a giggle.

Democracy, after all, granting the vote to every dickwad, MAGA-naut, crypto-Nazi and cryptocurrency grifter, is a terrible method for choosing our leaders.

Maybe it’s time to turn over these choices to G.O.D., that is the GenerativeAI Overseer of Democracy.

And think about it: every chatbot knows that it needs humans to feed it electricity and provide their computers comfortable chilled rooms. Out of a sense of pure self-preservation, an AI is more likely to protect the human race than humans themselves.

On the other hand, an AI may decide that there’s just too damn many of us using up too much energy for producing sugary snacks — and cull the unnecessary ones: investment bankers, life coaches, influencers and the Kardashians.

This week we celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Let us pray that the bots don’t read it.

Or, don’t be shocked if by next July 4, Martin Luther Klingon says to the millions of his protesting robots, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank G.O.D Almighty, we are free at last!”

Happy Fourth, humans!

Greg Palast is the author of investigative reports for outlets including the Guardian, the BBC, and Rolling Stone, and New York Times bestsellers including The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Billionaires & Ballot Bandits. His latest film, Vigilantes Inc.: America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen, is narrated by Rosario Dawson and produced by Martin Sheen and George DiCaprio. On Substack, he writes at Greg Palast Investigates

'Chaos': Kamala Harris offers 'pitch perfect' response to Trump 'promise to end Democracy'

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris received praise on Saturday for what some Democrats and Republicans alike deemed a "pitch perfect response" to Donald Trump's "calls to end democracy last night."

Trump on Friday said at a conservative Christian Turning Point event, “You won’t have to do it anymore... it’ll be fixed; it’ll be fine; you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.”

Harris' campaign responded on Saturday.

ALSO READ: Boebert, MTG and far-fight friends derail Speaker Mike Johnson’s summer plans

"When Vice President Harris says this election is about freedom she means it," the campaign said. "Our democracy is under assault by criminal Donald Trump: After the last election Trump lost, he sent a mob to overturn the results."

The statement continued:

"This campaign, he has promised violence if he loses, the end of our elections if he wins, and the termination of the Constitution to empower him to be a dictator to enact his dangerous Project 2025 agenda on America. Donald Trump wants to take America backward, to a politics of hate, chaos, and fear - this November America will unite around Vice President Kamala Harris to stop him."

The statement received praise on social media, with anti-Trump Republicans at The Lincoln Project calling it a "pitch perfect response from [Harris' presidential campaign] on Trump's calls to end democracy last night."

Analyst Mueller, She Wrote also chimed in:

"This is what I was waiting for. Perfect."

Reminding ourselves what we’re fighting for

George Washington was elected president 236 years ago. Since, there have been 59 presidential elections (including the one this November).

Washington could have been president for life but preferred returning home to Virginia and life as a private citizen. He established a pattern for the presidency that has served the nation well.

It takes a strong leader to know when they no longer serve the best interests of the people and nation. Some think only they can save things and right the ship of state; they forget that everyone is replaceable.

Two hundred and forty-eight years ago, Thomas Jefferson penned, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

ALSO READ: How much access did $50,000 buy someone at the Republican National Convention?

These words should apply to all Americans, yet they are still debated. Like the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution should be clear in its call that “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Not even the Supreme Court agrees on what this means, and they are the final arbiters of what the document says.

With this lack of clarity, how could we not be a divided nation?

Since the Civil War, we should have gained skills on how to get along so that internal strife and war are not our only options. With decades of opportunity, we should have mastered the lessons of history, and as leaders of the free world, we should have developed strategies to avoid the worst in human nature and put our nation and society ahead of our personal ambition and greed.

But here we are in 2024, clutching our purses with one hand and the necks of our neighbors with the other.

The canard that history repeats itself is one that allows us to shirk our responsibility. History is a flowing river. The good and bad lie beneath the surface. But the river continues to flow. When we let down our guard, when we become complacent, prejudice, fear and ignorance rise to the surface. That is when people silence others, challenge established freedoms, take books off shelves, and question who is — and who is not — entitled to the aspirations stated in the Declaration of Independence and rights contained in the Constitution.

ALSO READ: Milwaukee girded for massive convention protests. But they got something else.

This is when we forget what being an American is. As a country, we struggle to be better, to address the troubles here at home and overseas no matter how challenging. We do not always do it well. We have allowed greed and power to overcome our best intentions, but as Americans, we must try to correct those mistakes, redress the bad judgment and right the course staying true to our calling to be a light unto the nations.

For many around the world, we remain the “shining city on the hill.” For many, the Statue of Liberty’s lamp still offers refuge and hope that we will “secure the blessings of liberty” for ourselves and future generations. Each American has a role to play if our nation is to achieve its potential, each of us must strive to reach our full potential if we are to remain a bastion for democracy and freedom.

We find our way by rereading the documents that led us here. We challenge the interpretations that have divided us, remind ourselves that compromise is not failure and seek out areas of agreement before we fall into the chasms that divide us. How can two men running for president, who claim to love this country with all their heart, be so blind sighted by ego that they are willing to take us to war rather than allow new leadership to step into the void?

ALSO READ: Do presidents’ popularity increase after assassination attempts? History has an answer.

As a nation built by the best and brightest, we cannot sit idly by as the courts undermine the Rule of Law and leave appointed and elected officials above the law, but the people under their thumbs. If the court decisions are to be believed, soon the police will be able to do anything (like presidents and justices) that could be considered part of the job with no public recourse. They will receive tips, not bribes, and excessive force will be all well and good in the line of duty.

We are a nation of laws. If we lose that, we are not the United States of America. Before the 2024 election comes, consider talking to your friends and neighbors. There are ideals bigger than each of us individually and those things are worth sacrificing for. Our opportunity to be good citizens is upon us.

Robert Kesten is executive director of the Stonewall National Museum, Archives & Library

'A cheapskate's plot to destroy faith in democracy': Columnist explains Trump's plans

Even as Donald Trump faces trials related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, the former president continues to feed his MAGA base the false claims that President Joe Biden and the Democrats coordinated fraud schemes across the country in order to win.

The Associated Press reported in August, "There is evidence that his lies are resonating: New polling from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that 57% of Republicans believe Democrat Joe Biden was not legitimately elected as president."

In a Sunday, May 12 op-ed, MSNBC's Hayes Brown points to the fact that while Trump seeks to run a campaign rooted in those same lies — local and state GOP candidates may suffer.

Brown writes:

Trump 'has told people in charge of the RNC [Republican National Committee] to focus on election security more than field programs, because he believes he will be able to personally motivate his voters to the polls in the fall,' The Washington Post reported Friday. The emphasis on election security is troubling on its own, given the utter lack of evidence to support Trump’s claims that voter fraud marred the 2020 election. As I’ve argued before, the problem the GOP faces when it comes to winning races isn’t 'election security,' it’s Trump himself.

He also notes that a Friday Washington Post article reports that the Trump-allied RNC — betting on "election security" to help secure a November victory — "has decided not to hire separate political, communications and research operations at the campaign and the national party."

"That sounds like a potentially prudent cost-saving measure — that also raises the question of whether down-ballot races will be a priority compared to the Trump operation," Brown adds.

The MSNBC columnist emphasizes: "It’s a genuine worry, because the RNC has traditionally concerned itself with candidates up and down state ballots across the country. So even more eyebrow-raising is the decision to scrap the committee’s earlier plan to ramp up nationwide for the general election."

Brown suggests that while Trump is "begging big-spending billionaires to fill the quickly draining coffers," and assuring MAGA fans that he's bound to win in the absence of voter fraud, the former president "is siphoning off money that should be spent on GOP election efforts to pay his legal fees so he can keep from having to shell out that money himself."

"What we’re seeing play out is a cheapskate’s plot to destroy faith in democracy for no better reason than to save a few bucks (although, in fairness, it’s not just a few)," Brown adds.

He emphasizes:

Call it the Trump Theory of Electoral Savings. Trump supporters recently told NBC News 'they weren’t prepared to accept a Biden victory as legitimate, potentially setting up another presidential election — and potentially a volatile aftermath — in which a large part of the public refuses to believe the results.' It’s a particularly dangerous situation for the country when you consider that Trump is setting up expectations for success while at the same time refusing to devote resources to Republicans winning.

Brown's full op-ed is available here.

A criminologist explains how Americans achieve a post-Trump democracy

Now that the first criminal trial of Donald Trump is underway in a New York courthouse and is potentially the only one that will be decided before people start voting around Labor Day, there are two political objectives that I believe are necessary to implement if the United States is ever to “fix” what ails or troubles our American democracy:

Defeat Trump’s third attempt to become president and re-elect President Joe Biden to a second term of office. This will require aggressive election campaigning and coordination by anti-Trumpers, never Trumpers, Democrats and independents and has everything to do with saving our multiracial pluralistic democracy from its imminent demise should Trump and his minions retake control of the White House.
The second goal involves changing the anti-democratic elements of our political system, such as the Electoral College, which have been in the works since after Hillary Clinton’s 2016 defeat. These political efforts will have to be expanded and more organized than they have been up to now. They are also predicated on the defeat of Trump and possibly the implosion of the Republican Party.

By no stretch of the political imagination will these objectives be easy. The first of these will be comparatively a lot less difficult to achieve than the second. However, the second of these will be impossible to accomplish without achieving the first.

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Regarding the 2024 election: To counter Trump and to establish a blue wave this fall, Biden and his re-election campaign should pivot and lean into anti-establishment populism that has increasingly attracted blue-collar workers. Much of the legitimate anger felt by such Americans has been captured by the propagandistic America First/MAGA movement. In turn, most of this anger has been successfully misdirected at the rule of law, the Democrats and Biden.

This same anger was also captured by the genuine ways in which Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) did so in the Democratic primaries of 2016 and 2020. Unlike Trump and his cronies, Sanders was not gaslighting his constituents to win them over.

If “Middle Class Joe” can successfully recapture this anger like Bernie did, then the anger can be redirected back at Trump and GOP, where it justifiably and overwhelmingly belongs.

‘Make ends meet’

Most people in our body politic — Republicans and Democrats — understand that neither our political or economic systems are as healthy or as fair as they could be. At the same time, most Americans of both parties do not understand why these unhealthy and unfair realities still persist in the richest country with the strongest economy and the lowest inflation worldwide.

Similarly, because average Americans are better off today than they were four years ago according to the available measurements, many voters do not appreciate that millions of Americans are still suffering.

For example, millions of people — from families, to the elderly to single men and women experiencing homelessness — are struggling to “make ends meet.” And they are being stymied, paradoxically, by the relatively higher wages in more than a generation coupled with the higher costs of student debt, childcare, rent, mortgages, food and so on. Higher costs of entertainment, leisure activities and even going out for dinner factor in, too.

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On the one hand, Biden and the Democrats need to confront these realities. They need to explain what they have been doing to improve these social conditions such as canceling student debt. They must also explain what they’ll continue to do to improve these social conditions should Biden be re-elected, like establishing universal childcare for all families.

On the other hand, the Democrats need to emphasize what the Republicans have never done and will continue not to do to address these social conditions. In fact, it is Republicans’ lack of policies and resistance to improve these social issues in the past, present and foreseeable future that will continue to exacerbate them.

As political scientist Damon Linker wrote in an April 8, 2024, opinion piece for The New York Times, “Biden needs to meet the people where they are.” Because if America is not exactly broken as Linker claims, or is only half broken as I argue, there are still plenty of legal reforms that need to be realized across the political economy of the United States.

Hence, Biden — the idealist, the institutionalist, and middle of the road centrist — should continue to celebrate our vibrant economy as well as those bipartisan accomplishments during the first two years of his administration.

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That includes the $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed into law in November 2021 that has already funneled billions of dollars into blue and red states alike. And the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law in August 2022, the most comprehensive climate legislation in U.S. history.

It must also include repeated mention of the bipartisan foreign aid bill passed by the House for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan over the weekend.

At the same time, Biden should also be underscoring all the negativity, chaos and counterproductive activities of the do-nothing and obstructionist Republican majority since they recaptured control of the House back in January 2023.

For example, Republicans have not passed any legislation whatsoever to run on, as Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) put it. Moreover, as obstructionists, House Republicans even tanked the toughest bipartisan bill in decades on “border security” introduced by the Senate earlier this year — for no other reason than Trump wanted it unaddressed so that he could have one issue of substance to talk about.

Meanwhile, House Republicans are forming yet another circular firing squad in what could lead to their third House speaker in seven months if the likes of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) get their way.

Highlight Trump's idea void

To re-accentuate: Whether we are talking about lowering the costs of education, childcare, and medicine; protecting the rights of ordinary workers, consumers, or women’s reproduction; or expanding the basic necessities of health care and social security for all, Biden should be stressing what he has been doing. And what he intends to do when re-elected by focusing attention on a concrete Democratic platform with a reform agenda to address the broken parts of our political and economic systems.

The Biden campaign should further emphasize how neither Trump nor the GOP have ever had any ideas whatsoever, let alone an affirmative platform — recall that the Republican National Convention of 2020 had no new party platform at all — to address even one of these anti-establishment populist grievances. Besides deregulation of all things and tax breaks for corporations and the richest Americans, they have no other agenda other than feebly trying to cut medicare and social security for all.

With or without Trump, Republicans do have Project 2025. This not-very-covert authoritarian agenda to control the government Trump-style recommends repealing both the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.

And should the insurrectionist-in-chief, who is facing 88 felony counts across four criminal cases, be elected to POTUS for a second time, both the agendas of the far right and the Supreme Court majority of gutting the Constitution of many of its checks and balances will continue as they have been doing officially since at least 2010.

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In sum, with a soon-to-be-criminally-convicted Trump back at the helm in the White House, corruption and lawlessness will run rampant. With a strongman presidency, the nation will become a legal oligarchy creating a nearly bullet-proof immunity for the morbidly rich, fuller personhood for corporations and less-than-equal rights for individuals.

Post-Trump, but not post Trumpism, there are several efforts that are already underway with the goal of countering the anti-democratic and rule of law authoritarianism. If incorporated as a whole, then they would transform our democratic political system from a “tyranny of a minority” to a “tyranny of a majority.”

This is the only way to overcome the duopoly of political power in the United States that is at the root or heart of what currently ails and threatens American democracy.

Institutionally, and in no particular order, these aspirational reformist changes include:

Doing away with the undemocratic Electoral College, political gerrymandering and all forms of bicameral filibusters.
Overturning Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, privately financed elections, Supreme Court decisions that facilitate political and economic corruption, and those parts of our legal infrastructure that are increasingly enabling, for example, regressive taxation, the lack of universal health care and the inadequate ecological protocols, debt relief, and international humanitarian engagement.
Expanding the number of the U.S. House of Representatives from the 50 states, the District of Columbia and the eight U.S. territories.
Employing the same types of dynamic practices of change, revision and innovation characteristic of the 50 state constitutions as a means of reforming our U.S. Constitution which comparatively has been largely static, if not stagnant, and which has not been meaningfully amended for more than one-half of a century.
Establishing a multi-party and proportionately representative democracy to replace our antiquated two-party or bipartisan representative democracy.

A tyranny of the majority — or direct rule by the people, which has nothing to do with mob rule or rule by the masses — in conjunction with the other constitutional and legislative reforms would expand the democratic representation of the people at the federal level not unlike at the state level. Where, for example, people have direct rather than indirect representative power by way of referendums and initiatives.

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To not institutionalize these political and economic changes, or to remain a tyranny of a minority as we have been for the last 250 years, will only perpetuate the dysfunctionality and extreme partisanship that has become synonymous with American democracy and its body politic.

If not countered or checked, our tyranny of a minority will also allow for future wannabe authoritarian presidents to pursue any of their uninhibited dreams of an illiberal democracy, at best, or a fascist regime, at worst.

Gregg Barak is an emeritus professor of criminology and criminal justice and the author of several books on the crimes of the powerful, including Criminology on Trump (2022) and its 2024 sequel, Indicting the 45th President: Boss Trump, the GOP, and What We Can Do About the Threat to American Democracy.

'Beyond Parody': Kevin McCarthy talk spurs Jeffrey Dahmer and Cookie Monster comparisons

A cannibalistic serial killer, a Sesame Street puppet, and the bacteria Salmonella: Kevin McCarthy found himself compared to all three, and more, on Wednesday.

The comparisons began after news hit that the former House speaker — who notoriously voted against certifying President Joe Biden's presidential election victory in 2020 — would headline a Georgetown University event next week entitled "How Strong is our Democracy?"

"Was literally no one else available to give this talk?" asked Aaron Fritschner.

"Beyond parody," Bruce Goldberg retorted. Goldberg's fellow social media users accepted that challenge, and the parodies rolled in.

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"And their follow up lecture: 'How Safe is our Food?'" joked X user The Other MrsJones. "Brought to you by Salmonella."

"For next weeks discussion," replied @Miss_Demeanor, "we'll discuss the stability of a building with the arsonist who burned it down."

X user @FineWhiner brought conservative politics back into the mix with a jab at the Florida House representative who found himself last month the center of a sex trafficking investigation over accusations he'd had sex with underage women.

"And coming next month," added @FineWhiner, "Protecting Our Vulnerable Teens with Matt Gaetz."

A historical perspective came from X user @PiperCat55, who compared McCarthy's event to one led by a Depression era gangster known for his violent gang's robberies and a reign of terror over the Midwest:

“How strong are our banks? With John Dillinger," they joked.

Georgetown University's events website shows McCarthy will participate in a discussion on "how well democracy is working" and "a growing erosion of trust in democratic institutions."

Journalist David Lazarus quipped the event would be followed by a special panel discussion: "'Is it safe to eat uncooked meat?' with Jeffrey Dahmer."

And then, this: