America's $39 trillion debt

Delayed flight. Gate C14. And God himself decided to entertain me by placing two people directly behind me solving America's $39 trillion debt problem between bites of a $22 airport sandwich.

#1 turns to his friend:
"If capitalism is so great, why are we $39 TRILLION in debt?"

#2, without missing a beat:
"Because of socialist programs, obviously."

I closed my laptop. I needed a moment. Because let's actually look at where the $39 trillion came from. Not feelings. Not talking points. Numbers.

💣 THE IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN WARS: $8 TRILLION
No WMDs found. No democracy built. Two countries left in chaos. That's not socialism. That's bipartisan warmongering with a Lockheed Martin logo on it.

💣 THE 2008 BANK BAILOUT: $700 BILLION (+ $12 TRILLION in Fed support)
Wall Street gambled with your mortgage, crashed the global economy, then got handed a check with YOUR name on it. The banks kept their bonuses. You kept your debt. That's not socialism for the poor — that's socialism for the rich.

💣 THE 2017 TAX CUTS: $1.9 TRILLION added to the debt
Sold as a gift to the middle class. Apple alone saved $47 billion. Your check? Maybe $40 a month. The debt? $1.9 trillion heavier.

💣 THE US HEALTHCARE SYSTEM: $4.5 TRILLION per year
America spends MORE per person than any country on Earth — and gets LESS. A hip replacement in Spain? €6,000. In the US? $40,000. Medical bills are the #1 cause of personal bankruptcy in America. That's not too much socialism. That's the cost of having none.

💣 PENTAGON BUDGET: $886 BILLION in 2024 alone
Larger than the next 10 countries COMBINED. Meanwhile your bridge is crumbling and your kid's school has a GoFundMe for pencils.

Now. Let's talk about socialism "failing."
MEXICO — right next door. Nobody's paying attention.
Claudia Sheinbaum became president in 2024. She has a PhD in climate science. An actual scientist running a country. Not a TV personality. Not a failed businessman. A scientist. She expanded universal pensions, free internet nationwide, and scholarships for millions of young Mexicans. Foreign investment is flooding in. Nearshoring is making Mexico one of the hottest manufacturing destinations on Earth. And she's navigating Trump's tariffs and border provocations with more dignity than any US politician has managed in years. She doesn't tweet at 3am.

Must be infuriating for some people. 😊

BRAZIL — and this story needs to be told.
Lula was a factory worker. A union leader. A man who lost a finger in a machine press and turned his pain into a political movement. He was imprisoned on charges later thrown out by Brazil's Supreme Court — many believe to keep him from power.

He came back. Won the election. Returned to the presidency at 77.

Under Lula:
• Bolsa Família restored — lifting millions out of extreme poverty
• Minimum wage raised above inflation for the first time in years
• Amazon deforestation dropped 50% in his first year back

A man who came from nothing, survived prison, and came back to feed the poor and protect the rainforest. That's not a communist villain. That's a story Hollywood would make a movie about — if he were American and right-wing.

CHINA — and this one will really hurt.
Nominally communist. And yet:

• 45,000 km of high-speed rail. The US has zero.
• 5 million engineers graduated per year. The US graduates 200,000.
• BYD just outsold Tesla worldwide.
• 800 million people lifted out of poverty in 40 years — the greatest anti-poverty achievement in human history.

Someone forgot to tell the second largest economy on Earth that socialism always fails. While America spent $8 trillion blowing up the Middle East, China was building infrastructure, educating engineers, and buying up the debt America kept creating. Who's actually winning here?

And yes — Venezuela. We know. A corrupt petro-dictatorship that printed money, destroyed private institutions, and was strangled by US sanctions. Not a social democracy. Not what any serious economist proposes. Comparing Venezuela to these countries is like comparing a gas station hot dog to a Michelin star restaurant and concluding that food is dangerous.

Here's what those two people at Gate C14 — and half of Facebook — can't grasp:

America doesn't have too much socialism.
America has socialism for the wrong people.

Subsidies for oil companies that made $200 billion in profit? Socialism.
Bailouts for banks that gambled and lost? Socialism.
Tax breaks for private jets and yachts? Socialism.

Free school lunch for a hungry 7-year-old? Suddenly that's communism. The $39 trillion wasn't built by teachers, nurses, food stamps, or public libraries.

It was built by wars nobody wanted, tax cuts nobody needed, bailouts for people who needed them least, and a healthcare racket that would make the mafia blush.

But sure. Blame the socialism. Flight's still delayed. They're still talking.

I ordered another coffee. ☕

-FB

"American consumers bore the costs of Trump’s tariffs"

 

On “Liberation Day” in April 2025, Donald Trump imposed a massive set of tariffs on imported goods from around the world. The federal government then collected those funds — raking in ten upon tens of billions of dollars — for nearly a year, until the Supreme Court ruled that the president had unconstitutionally usurped Congress’s taxation powers.

As a result, the federal government has now begun the process of refunding about $166 billion in illegal tax revenue — payable to the corporations that originally handed over the money to the U.S. Treasury. But did these corporations actually pay the tax? Or, after all, was it you and me?

In truth, the fat tax-rebate checks from the IRS will be going to corporations that already passed those costs on to shoppers in the form of tariff-bloated prices. American consumers paid the premium, but Treasury’s refunds will be going to huge companies. Ford announced it expects a $1.5 billion payback; General Motors anticipates a $500 million return. Both companies will reportedly be using the cash to boost their earnings.

Whether by incompetence or dark design, Trump’s illegal tariffs have worked like a reverse-Robin Hood scheme, on steroids. The pockets of the poor and middle classes were picked — during an affordability crisis, no less. And, following a detour through the IRS, that cash is now topping off the coffers of multinational corporations for whom the economy is already delivering record profits.

The economic ins and outs of tariffs, or import taxes, can be confusing at the best of times. And Donald Trump has added to that confusion with a constant stream of lies. To hear the addled president tell it, foreign countries pay the bulk of tariffs. But that is not true: A study by the New York Fed shows that foreign exporters absorbed only a small fraction of the costs of Trump’s tariffs. Instead, roughly 90 percent of the costs were paid by Americans.

An independent study by the Kiel Institute, a leading European economic think tank, pegs the cost paid by Americans even higher, at 96 percent. The report, titled “America’s Own Goal,” also illuminates how the costs of Trump’s tariffs, though initially paid by importers, are “ultimately” passed through to consumers via higher prices. The net effect of Trump’s tariffs, the study described, was to “transfer wealth from American consumers to the U.S. Treasury.”

In other words, American consumers bore the costs of Trump’s tariffs. The corporate importers were just the middleman. And yet, those same corporations are now in line to pocket the massive rebates from the Treasury, leaving consumers all the poorer.

To be plain: This isn’t a little bit of money around the edges. According to Congress’s Joint Economic Committee, the Trump tariff burden per household over the last year was about $1,700 — or more than the cost of one month’s groceries for a family of four.

In aggregate, that money could have supported important investments in the common good. Assume, conservatively, as the New York Fed found, that 90 percent of the $166 billion in tariff revenue was paid for by American consumers — or about $150 billion.

Below is a list of national expenditures that also each total about $150 billion:

37 Artemis II missions (at $4 billion a pop.)

20 years of funding for WIC — the nutrition program for infants and mothers

15 years of housing for everyone now in a homeless shelter

12 years of Head Start — the federally funded preschool program for disadvantaged kids

8 years of expanded SNAP or “food stamp” benefits (since cut under Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill”)

5 years of expanded Obamacare subsidies (also cut under Trump’s bill)

4 years of Pell Grants — the federal needs-based grants for college

1 year of funding for the Department of Transportation, to repair and revamp the nation’s highways, airports, and rail lines

Instead, all of that money will be boosting the bottom lines of American companies that rely on imports to run their businesses. According to an analysis by Citi Research, some of the biggest refunds are going to the likes of Walmart ($10.2 billion), Target ($2.2 billion), Nike ($1 billion), Kohl’s ($550 million), and Home Depot ($500 million).

Outside of a few shipping companies like DHL — which, for technical reasons, became the “importer of record” and tariff payor on behalf of other businesses — almost no companies are vowing any kind of rebate to consumers. (Costco, an outlier, has made a vague commitment to “find the best way to return this value to our members through lower prices and better values.”)

The net effect, then, of collecting and rebating Trump’s failed tariffs has been to create a massive transfer of wealth from normal people to already rich corporations. Forget “trickle-down.” This is hoover-up economics, and it is an outrage.

But surely the economic pain for everyday Americans must have served some greater patriotic policy purpose. Right? Not so much. Tariffs did not, as Trump promised, spark a domestic manufacturing boom — factory jobs in the U.S. have dropped by about 90,000. Tariffs also did not shrink the nation’s trade deficit in goods, which actually grew about 2 percent. The tariffs did, however, make life worse in other ways, primarily by goosing inflation. 

(Fed chair Jerome Powell recently blamed “elevated readings” in the nation’s inflation rate “largely” on “inflation in the goods sector, which has been boosted by the effects of tariffs.”) That, in turn, has kept the Federal Reserve from lowering interest rates, keeping everything from mortgages to car payments more expensive.

Perhaps it should not surprise us that Trump’s signature economic policy ended up being A) illegal and B) a massive giveaway to the already wealthy, at the cost of his base. But it is yet another reminder that the populism he applies to his agenda has never been more than a gloss. And that Trump has nothing but contempt for those who struggle — but will ever be the billionaire’s best friend.

Tim Dickinson is the Senior Political writer for The Contrarian

---

The Contrarian is reader-supported. To enable our work, help with litigation, hold those in power accountable, and keep this opposition movement alive and engaged, please join the fight by becoming a subscriber.

 

It's that time of the year again: A Selection of Final Exams for Your Perusal

                                                                                                  

Public Speaking:  Thirty-eight riot-crazed aborigines will storm the classroom in three minutes.  Calm them.  You may use any ancient language, except Sumerian, Latin, or Greek.

Music: Write a piano concerto.  Orchestrate and perform it with kazoo and bongos. You will find a piano under your seat.

Biology:  Create life.  Estimate the difference in subsequent human cultures if this form of life had developed 500 million years earlier.  Give special attention to its probable effect on the English Parliamentary System.  Prove your thesis.

Engineering:  The disassembled parts of a high-powered rifle have been placed in a box on your desk.  You will also find an instruction manual, printed in Swahili.  In 10 minutes, a hungry and irritated Bengal Tiger will be admitted to the classroom.  Take whatever action you feel appropriate.  Be prepared to justify your decision.

English:  Using a formalistic or Machiavellian perspective, compare and contrast Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland with the “The Patriot Act” (107^th Congress), the Bush-Cheney Doctrine of pre-emptive strike, and Trump's Iranian obsession.  Draw your own intelligent generalizations based on the content and development of the English language and Orwell's Double-speak. 

History:  Describe the history of the papacy from its origins to the present, concentrating especially but not exclusively, on its social, political, economic, religious, and philosophical impact on Europe, South and North America. Be brief, concise, and specific.

Political Science:  There is a red telephone on the desk beside you.  Start World War III. Report at length its socio-political effects, if any.

Economics:  Develop a realistic plan for refinancing the national debt.  Trace the possible effects of your plan in the following areas: Cubism, the Annual Darwin Awards, and the wave theory of light.  Outline a method for preventing these effects.  Criticize this method from all possible points of view. 

Sociology:  Estimate the sociological problems which might accompany the end of the world.  Construct an experiment to test your theory. 

Psychology:  Based upon your knowledge of their effects on the world, evaluate the emotional stability, degree of adjustment, and repressed frustrations of each of the following: Vladimir the Impaler, Genghis Khan, Ivan the Terrible, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Kim Jong-Il, Richard Nixon, Vladimir Putin, and Donald J. Trump.  Support your evaluation through use of a priori and a posteriori data and synthetic reasoning.

Epistemology:  Take a position for or against truth.  Prove the validity of your position without reference to Cartesian doubt.

Medicine:  You have been provided with a razor blade, a piece of gauze, and a bottle of Scotch: remove your appendix.  Do not suture until your work has been inspected.  You have 40 minutes.

Decades ago, I passed a Not-So-Humorous Comprehensive Exam in English & American Literature. The instructions for this real absurdity:

“The exam contains two parts, each a session of two hours, administered on successive days. In the first session, candidates are examined on a standard reading list which is given below. Questions will ask you to demonstrate a good knowledge of the listed texts and an ability to draw intelligent generalizations on the content and development of English and American literature based on those texts. The second day’s session will consist of intensive questions on a specific text or texts to be announced approximately five weeks before the exam dates. In this session you are asked to demonstrate competence in critical reading apart from historical considerations.”

The Reading List:

Beowulf

Chaucer: Knight’s Tale, Miller’s Tale, Nun’s Priest’s Tale

Second Shepherds’ Play (Towneley Cycle)

Sidney: An Apology for Poetry

Spenser: The Faerie Queene, Book 1

Marlowe: Dr. Faustus

Shakespeare: King Lear

Jonson: The Alchemist (or) Volpone

Donne: Satire III, “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning,” “Love’s Alchemy,” “Good Friday 1613, Riding Westward”

King James Bible: Ecclesiastes

Milton: Paradise Lost, Books I, III and IX; Areopagitica

Marvell: “The Garden,” “To His Coy Mistress,” “An Horatian Ode”

Dryden: Preface to Fables, “Alexander’s Feast,” “Mac Flecknoe”

Congreve: The Way of the World

Swift: Gulliver’s Travels

Pope: The Rape of the Lock

Johnson: Preface to Shakespeare, Life of Cowley, Life of Milton

Austen: Pride and Prejudice

Blake: Songs from Innocence: “The Lamb,” The Divine Image,” The Chimney Sweeper,” “The Little Black Boy”; Songs of Experience: “The Tyger,” “The Chimney Sweeper,” “London”

Wordsworth: The Prelude, Books I & II; “Tintern Abbey”; Preface to the Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads

Keats: “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Autumn”

Dickens: Great Expectations (or) Bleak House

Browning: “My Last Duchess,” “Fra Lippo Lippi”

Arnold: “the Function of Criticism at the Present Time,” “Wordsworth,” “The Study of Poetry”

Shaw: Arms and the Man

Yeats: “Sailing to Byzantium,” “Among School Children,” “Byzantium”

Conrad: Lord Jim

Lawrence: Women in Love

Joyce: “Araby,” “The Dead”

Beckett: Waiting for Godot

E. Taylor: “Meditation One,” Meditation Eight,” “Huswifery”

Franklin: Autobiography

Hawthorne: The Scarlett Letter (or) The Blithedale Romance

Melville: Moby Dick

Emerson: Nature, “The American Scholar,” “Experience”

Thoreau: Walden, “Civil Disobedience”

Whitman: “Song of Myself,” “When Lilacs Last in Dooryard Bloomed,” “Democratic Vistas”

Dickinson: “There’s a certain slant of light,” “The soul selects,” “A bird came down the walk,” “After great pain,” “I died for beauty,” “I cannot live with you,” “Pink, small, and punctual”

Twain: Huckleberry Finn

James: The American (or) The Ambassadors (or) The Portrait of a Lady

O’Neill: The Iceman Cometh

Frost: “Home Burial,” “The Death of the Hired Man,” “West-Running Brook”

Eliot: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “Burnt Norton,” “Tradition and Individual Talent”

Faulkner: The Bear

Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms (or) “The Killers,” “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” & “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”

Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby

Stevens: “Sunday Morning,” “The Emperor of Ice-Cream,” “Anecdote of the Jar”

Miller: Death of a Salesman

Ellison: Invisible Man

Plath: “Black Rook in Rainy Weather,” “Morning Song,” “The Rival”

P.S.

The second part of the exam was on Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man. I would have preferred Major Barbara.   -Glen Brown

Trump's Friday Night Posts

Late on Friday night [May 1st], President Donald J. Trump took to social media. At 11:03 he posted an AI-generated image of himself, alongside Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, all shirtless, along with an unidentifiable woman in a bikini, appearing to be relaxing in a swimming pool. But the “swimming pool” was the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Then, at 11:04, Trump posted an image of First Lady Melania Trump grinning at the press conference Trump held after the incident at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, when he said that incident proved he needed his proposed ballroom for his security.

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

Then, at 11:15, he posted an image of himself smiling and holding six wild cards from the game Uno. The caption read, “I HAVE ALL THE CARDS.”

Then, at 11:22, he posted a profile image of himself in gold.

Then, at 11:26, he posted an image showing him standing near Mt. Rushmore, with the angle arranged to make his head the fifth sculpture on the mountain, so from left to right they were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and Donald Trump.

Then, at 11:32, he posted an image of himself and the first lady.

Then, at 11:37, he posted an image of himself and King Charles III.

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

Then, at 11:41, he posted an AI image of the reflecting pool appearing bright blue, under the caption “American Flag Blue.”

Then, at 11:45, he posted another AI image of the reflecting pool appearing bright blue under the caption “American Flag Blue.”

It was some 43 minutes. The president appeared to have been triggered by graffiti that appeared in the reflecting pool Friday morning: “86 47” spray-painted across it in a message that was about 15 feet by 30 feet.

The message was double edged. To “86” something in slang means to get rid of it, and Trump is the 47th president. But the phrase has taken on a second meaning since April 28, when the Department of Justice under Trump launched a criminal case against former director of the FBI James Comey for posting a picture of seashells spelling out “86 47” on Instagram a year ago. But “86 47”—and, for that matter, “86 46”—is such a common meme that there are a wide variety of shirts and hats for sale with those letters on Amazon today, prompting the host of NBC’s Meet the Press, Kristen Welker, to ask Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche if other people who shared that meme would also face charges. He said no and suggested that there was other evidence in Comey’s case, although he did not explain what that was and the indictment only talks about the seashell post.

As Trump’s popularity has sunk to new lows, he has renewed his efforts to remake Washington, D.C., into a monument to himself, almost as if he is trying to anticipate history by making future Americans think that he must have been great because of all the tributes to him in the capital. Part of that effort has been his decision to paint the reflecting pool bright blue, like a swimming pool, at a cost of about $2 million in taxpayer money.

Yesterday, Rick Maese and Dan Diamond of the Washington Post reported that one of Trump’s top fundraisers is collecting money to turn the heavily used, low-cost East Potomac Golf Links on the Washington, D.C., waterfront, one of three D.C. public golf courses the administration is taking over, into a championship golf course and to establish Trump’s National Garden of American Heroes nearby. That imagined sculpture park will feature about 250 Americans Trump believes are significant to our history.

The plans have not yet been made public, nor have they been approved by Congress or gone through the federal review process. The new golf course would erase the area’s public bike paths and open recreational space. Spokesperson Davis Ingle said: “President Trump continues to beautify and honor our Nation’s Capital during America’s historic semi-quincentennial celebration.”

The Trump administration planned to take control of the East Potomac Golf Links today, shutting it down for the renovation. Today, Democracy Forward, a watchdog group, asked a judge to stop the administration from going ahead with plans that would shut down the course.

Trump’s alterations to the capital seem to be a welcome distraction for the real estate developer from the crises around him. His claim that he has “all the cards” appears to be a boast about his dealings with Iran, but that is a wildly optimistic version of events.

On Thursday, Iranian officials sent a 14-point offer for a resolution to the war to mediators from Pakistan. An Iranian official said that Iran hopes to end the war and resolve questions around the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports now and deal with Iran’s nuclear program later.

On Friday, Trump said he was “not satisfied” with Iran’s offer but did not say why he disapproved. Then, at 6:47 yesterday evening, he posted: “I will soon be reviewing the plan that Iran has just sent to us, but can’t imagine that it would be acceptable in that they have not yet paid a big enough price for what they have done to Humanity, and the World, over the last 47 years.”

And yet, Iran said today it had received a response to its offer from the U.S. and is reviewing it.

The Trump administration continues to look for a way to open the Strait of Hormuz. Today Trump announced that on Monday the U.S. will launch “Project Freedom,” an effort to escort stranded merchant ships through the strait. U.S. Central Command said tonight that Project Freedom will include “guided-missile destroyers, over 100 land and sea-based aircraft, multi-domain unmanned platforms, and 15,000 service members.” Iran has said the use of U.S. Navy ships for the escort would be a violation of the ceasefire; it is not clear if Navy ships will participate.

As Barak Ravid of Axios notes, Trump says the attempt is “humanitarian”—ships stuck from the strait’s closure are running low on supplies and are facing sanitation problems—but it’s clear the administration is trying to challenge Iran’s control of the strait. It is also worth noting that Trump often makes announcements that appear designed to move the market, and the price of oil dropped after the announcement of Project Freedom.

As Chandelis Duster of NPR reported today, gas prices jumped more than thirty cents a gallon last week. According to the American Automobile Association (AAA), regular gas averages $4.446 a gallon. Two days before the Iran war began, the average price per gallon was $2.98.

Last week, German chancellor Friedrich Merz said that “[t]he Americans obviously have no strategy” and suggested that Iranian officials were outwitting the Trump administration, saying the U.S. was “being humiliated by the Iranian leadership.” Trump didn’t take that comment well, posting screeds attacking Merz repeatedly and claiming, “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about!”

On Wednesday, Trump talked to Russia’s president Vladimir Putin for an hour and a half—the twelfth phone call between the two leaders since Trump took office a second time—and just hours later posted about removing U.S. troops from Germany. Putin has wanted to weaken the U.S. commitment to Europe and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for a long time. As Jack Detsch, Paul McLeary, and Stefanie Bolzen of Politico note, European officials worry that Putin is making plans to attack a NATO country.

On Thursday, Trump suggested to reporters that he might also pull troops out of Spain and Italy, “Why shouldn’t I?” he said. “Italy has not been of any help to us. And Spain has been horrible. Absolutely horrible.”

On Friday the Defense Department said it was pulling 5,000 troops from Germany and was cancelling a plan formulated under the Biden administration to put an artillery unit equipped with missiles in Europe. The U.S. had increased its European presence after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. These moves will take U.S. forces back to where they were before the invasion. As scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder wrote: “You can apply lots of normalizing frameworks or you can just make a timeline of his calls with Putin. We don’t have a sovereign foreign policy. We have superpower suicide.”

Julian E. Barnes, Helene Cooper, and Megan Mineiro of the New York Times reported that senior defense officials wanted the force reduction to be understood as a punishment for Germany after Merz’s comment. In fact, U.S. bases in Germany are staging areas for U.S. operations in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa.

The Politico journalists report that defense officials were “stunned” by the announcement, and on Saturday the chairs of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House Armed Services Committee, Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Representative Mike Rogers (R-AL), declared they were “very concerned by the decision to withdraw a U.S. brigade from Germany.” 

They noted that “any significant change to the U.S. force posture in Europe warrants a deliberate review process and close coordination with Congress and our allies. We expect the Department to engage with its oversight committees in the days and weeks ahead on this decision and its implications for U.S. deterrence and transatlantic security.”

And yet Trump is clearly worried about the upcoming midterm election, especially after Democratic-backed Quentin Wiltz yesterday flipped a seat in the Houston suburb of Pearland, Texas, that had been a reliable Republican stronghold.

After his Friday post calling Jeffries a “thug,” Trump posted yesterday that Democrats had “RIGGED the 2020 Presidential Election. GET TOUGH REPUBLICANS—THEY’RE COMING, AND THEY’RE COMING FAST! They’re no good for our Country, they almost destroyed it, and we don’t want to let that happen again!” He demanded Republicans “approve all of the necessary Safeguards we need for Elections to protect the American Public during the upcoming Midterms.”

Tonight, again, he posted that Jeffries was “a Low IQ individual” and called for his impeachment, although neither senators nor representatives can be impeached. His post went on to say more about his own fears than about Jeffries.

“I got impeached for A PERFECT PHONE CALL,” Trump wrote. “Where are you Republicans? Why not get it started? They’ll be doing this to me!”

—Heather Cox Richardson

 

Gutted Voting Rights Act

 

The US supreme court has gutted a major section of the Voting Rights Act through a landmark decision on Louisiana’s congressional map, in a major upheaval in US civil rights law that threatens to weaken the voting power of minorities. In a 6-3 decision along partisan lines, the court demolished section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the last remaining powerful provision of the 1965 civil rights law that prevents racial discrimination in voting. Section 2 has long been used to ensure minority voters are treated fairly in redistricting. In a 6-3 ruling along ideological lines, the supreme court found that Louisiana’s congressional maps violated the equal protection clause. Writing for the majority, the supreme court justice Samuel Alito maintained that section 2, which has been used for decades to challenge maps producing racially discriminatory results, does not require states to draw majority-minority districts.

How have lawmakers reacted? Terri Sewell and Shomari Figures, who are now at risk of losing their seats in Alabama’s Black congressional districts, have decried the decision as sending the nation “backwards”. How did the ruling come to pass? It is the culmination of justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito’s joint campaign to roll back civil rights legislation.

Map of seats gained by possible partisan redistricting plans. Illustration: Guardian Design

How could midterm maps be changed by redistricting? While the supreme court decision leaves little time to redraw maps ahead of the midterms, here is what midterm maps could look like if both parties achieve all their current redistricting ambitions. -The Guardian

Saturday Report from Thom Hartmann

 

Russia’s main goal for years has been to cripple NATO by getting US troops out of Germany. Putin called Trump this week (we wouldn’t have known except Russian media bragged about it) and apparently gave him his instructions; yesterday the Pentagon announced we’re pulling 5,000 troops out of Germany and putting massive tariffs on EU goods to further weaken NATO member nations. They’re toasting their success with champagne in the Kremlin and planning their strategy to take the Baltic states once the war against Ukraine is over.

Thanks to six corrupt bought-off Republicans on the Supreme Court, Louisiana Republicans are colluding in broad daylight to rig this fall’s election and silence the voices of Black voters. Jeff Landry is one of the most corrupt governors in America, having been accused of accepting free flights and gifts, illegal use of campaign funds, and giving government jobs to top donors, among other things. Now he’s suspending the upcoming primaries (voting was already underway) so he and his cronies in the legislature can re-gerrymander the state to make sure the state will never again send a Black representative to Washington DC. 

Democracy Docket’s Marc Elias noted, “What is happening in Louisiana right now is both a redistricting power grab and a dry run for authoritarian election subversion this fall.” And this is just the beginning; with the six Republicans on the Court okaying new maps that shatter majority-Black districts, the Congressional Black Caucus is bracing for a major loss of members this fall and in 2028. John Roberts and his buddies on the Court claim that they’re not “seeing race” and that the problem of minority voters being victimized by Republican policies is long in the past; in fact it’s very, very real now and their and Landry’s actions prove it. Hypocrites and racist liars…

The Trump regime is the most lawless in America’s history. The War Powers Act of 1973 requires two things: If the United States has come under attack or an attack is imminent, the president may order an immediate commencement of war-making against the attacker; when that happens, he then has 60 days to try to resolve the situation, but after that must seek approval from Congress to continue kinetic action. Trump has already broken that law: Iran represented no immediate threat to the US at all but he bombed them anyway.

And now, as Democrats are joining Republicans in pretending he didn’t commit that crime and so are asking for the 60-day request for war authorization from Congress, Whiskey Pete Hegseth told senators yesterday that because our military isn’t currently shooting or bombing, “the clock is paused” and they don’t need to go to Congress. The law requires a cessation of hostilities within 60 days, and if blockading the Strait of Hormuz isn’t a hostile action then apparently the next step is for the Pentagon to declare that gravity is optional and wars only count when someone bothers to keep score. 

Meanwhile, ICE murders American citizens and ignores the 4th and 5th Amendments, the DOJ ignores court orders, Trump criminally impounds funds Congress had appropriated for Blue states, and the entire regime is in open and blatant violation of the Epstein Transparency Act. Hopefully, Democrats will find their spines and voices and hold these criminals to account once they acquire the power to do so and begin shadow hearings in the meantime to inform the American people of Trump’s and his people’s lawlessness.

Americans of all stripes and political affiliations agree: Data Centers are a plague. Big AI have been buying off politicians across the country, often even getting tax deferrals and free land as they burden local electric and water resources, all to increase the profits of a handful of morbidly rich AI oligarchs. Residents in the areas the tech bro oligarchs are eyeing are getting active, although a few well-placed “contributions” and “tips” to politicians often frustrate their efforts. Maine’s legislature, for example, passed a moratorium on the centers last month by a wide margin but then Governor Janet Mills, apparently feathering her nest for her upcoming retirement, vetoed the legislation. In other states it’s less obviously corrupt, but people are genuinely freaked out as AI transforms not just the physical landscape of America but the employment landscape as well.

In Michigan, The New York Times reports: “In towns across the state, suspicions are still rife, sometimes far-fetched. Residents in different towns expressed worries about effects on fertility. Others worried the centers could end up as military targets, pointing to Iran’s strikes on data center infrastructure in the Persian Gulf. People in Michigan also pointed to two contracts between a data center project in Saline Township and the state’s main electric utility that were so heavily redacted that the state’s attorney general is challenging them in court. A special fast-track process was used to bypass public hearings. Even the signatures are blacked out.”

AI is here and not going away, and Moore’s Law suggests many of these monster data centers will soon be scaled back, perhaps even bursting the AI bubble that keeps driving the stock market regardless of the Iran conflict. Keep an eye on this; it’s going to change the world our kids are inheriting in ways that are still unclear.

The Trump grift is multigenerational. Uday and Qusay…er…Don Jr and Eric just jumped into the defense contracting business, hooking up with three new drone companies. Suspiciously, the companies all are bidding for or just got massive multi-million-dollar contracts with the Pentagon, with more to come. Remember when Republicans screamed about Jimmy Carter’s brother Billy “cashing in on the presidency” by licensing his name to a brand of beer? Or when Republicans held endless hearings, press conferences, and years of Fox “News” reports about Biden’s son making $5 million for sitting on the board of an energy company? They were pikers. The Trump Crime Family is the most corrupt first family in American history and hopefully their reign will be short-lived when Democrats get the power of impeachment back.

Democracy around the world is under assault by right-wingers who get themselves elected and then flip their nations into autocracy and oligarchy. An estimated half of all the world’s democracies are under such an assault — including the United States — and Uganda is the most recent to go all in. President Yoweri Museveni says he wants to sign legislation that’s working its way through the Ugandan legislature that would criminalize opposition politicians, most types of reporting and opinion writing, and any group affiliated with foreign organizations. Russia, through diplomatic outreach and via their massive social media influence operations, has been pushing this sort of thing across the free world, and this bill is a virtual clone of Russian legislation that lets Putin imprison or even execute dissidents and reporters. And Trump, trying to help out his mentor and owner, has shut down Voice of America to make Putin’s job even easier.

Joe Walsh UNLEASHES Tea Party smear machine on a Democrat fighting for us working people. Former Republican congressman Joe Walsh went on his podcast and spewed a vitriolic tirade against Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner, calling him “despicable,” a “bullshitter,” even throwing around accusations like “anti-Semitic,” and then said he wouldn’t support him even if it helps keep a Republican in power. This from Joe Walsh, a former Tea Party bomb-thrower who built his career on outrage, division, and some of the ugliest rhetoric of the last decade.

And let’s not rewrite history here: this is a guy who helped normalize the very politics that damaged our democracy. Yet when he decided to rebrand himself, Democrats and progressives said fine, come on in, we believe in a big tent. We gave him grace; I’ve even invited him onto my program several times. And now? Now he turns that same scorched-earth, character-assassination playbook on a real progressive who’s actually connecting with voters on the number one issue in this country, affordability. That’s not principle, that’s hypocrisy dripping with arrogance. Walsh doesn’t want a “big tent,” he wants a tent where he gets to decide who’s worthy.

And when someone comes along with a message that resonates with working people, he panics and goes for the jugular. It’s the same old Tea Party venom, just dressed up in a different jersey. You don’t strengthen democracy by trashing candidates fighting for economic justice, you weaken it. And if that’s where Joe Walsh is going to stand, then he hasn’t changed nearly as much as he wants people to believe and will not be welcome on my show again until he publicly apology.

-Thom Hartmann, The Hartmann Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Rev. Andrew Guljas, C.S.C.

REV. ANDREW R. GULJAS, C.S.C. July 21, 1938 – April 20, 2026, Notre Dame, Ind. – Rev. Andrew Roland Guljas, C.S.C., 87, died on April 20, 2026, at Holy Cross House after a short illness. Fr. Guljas was born in South Bend, Ind., on July 21, 1938, to Michael and Genevieve (Penkala) Guljas and is the second oldest of seven children. 

After attending St. Joseph High School from 1953-1955, he entered the Holy Cross High School Seminary in Notre Dame, Ind., graduating in 1957. After his postulant year, he entered Holy Cross Novitiate in Jordan, Minn., on August 15, 1957, and pronounced his First Vows the following year. In 1962, he graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, while also making Final Vows on August 16th. 

In 1966, he earned his master’s in theology from Holy Cross College in Washington, D.C. and was ordained a Holy Cross priest on June 8, 1968. After ordination in 1968, Fr. Guljas assisted and taught at Notre Dame High School for Boys in Niles, Ill., until 1973, before serving as a guidance counselor at Holy Trinity High in Chicago, Ill., for the following school year. 

From 1974-1984, he assisted the District of Chile before doing advanced studies at Illinois Professional School of Psychology in Chicago, Ill., and a three-year internship at Fr. Meade Veterans Med Center in Rapid City, S.D., earning a PsyD in 1990. From 1990- 1995, he assisted the District of Chile again, before returning to Notre Dame, Ind. From 1995- 1997, he served as counselor for Life Treatment Center in South Bend, Ind., before assisting at AIDS Ministries from 1997-2022 and Victory Clinical Services from 2001-2022. 

Beginning in 2022, he resided at Holy Cross House in Notre Dame, Ind., until his passing. Fr. Guljas was preceded in death by his parents and brothers Fredrick (Loretta) and Michael (Susan). He is survived by his brother Edward (Valerie) and sisters Bonita Holderman (Jerry), Rose Kelsheimer and Mary Howie (Mark). He is also survived by many beloved nephews and nieces. 

A Wake Service was held on Monday, April 27, 2026, at 7:30 p.m. at Moreau Seminary and Scholasticate, Notre Dame, Ind. A Funeral Mass was held at 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 28, 2026, at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, Notre Dame, Ind.  You may join via livestream at https://funerals.holycrossusa.org. Burial will be at the community cemetery at Notre Dame... 

Memorial contributions in support of the mission and ministries of the Congregation of Holy Cross can be made to: United States Province of Priests and Brothers, Office of Advancement, P.O. Box 765, Notre Dame, IN 46556-0765 or online at https://donate.holycrossusa.org

Fr. Guljas was my favorite teacher and priest at Notre Dame High School, where we had many discussions about religion, philosophy, and music. 

                 "No man is an island, entire of itself...  
                   Each man's death diminishes me, 
                   for I am involved in mankind; 
                   therefore, send not to know 
                   for whom the bell tolls, 
                   it tolls for thee."  
                                                    -John Donne