"One group of leaders standing in defense of democracy stood out"

 

The plethora of undaunted, courageous figures both lifts one’s spirits and makes selection of just one individual difficult. After all, this week we got a reminder of Brazilian Federal Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes’s defiant, tenacious prosecution of former president and coup instigator Jair Bolsonaro in the face of Donald Trump’s threats and tariffs.

We also witnessed Democratic state Rep. Nicole Collier (thereafter joined by colleagues) remain “locked in the Texas House of Representatives in Austin after refusing to sign a pledge to return for a vote on Republican redistricting proposals.” And here in Washington, D.C., residents peacefully marched, protested, bore witness, and refused to bend the knee to the autocratic invader. Their defiance, restraint, and dedication to democracy were an example to the entire country.

However, one group standing in defense of democracy stood out. They swiftly rose to a challenge, put egos aside, and stood to help defend another leader on the front line in the battle against an authoritarian bully (actually two bullies, but only one waging physical war). 

United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, President of the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte traveled at a moment’s notice to the White House to stand shoulder to shoulder with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to protect their democratic ally from the predacious Russian President Vladimir Putin and his lackey Donald Trump.

On one level, it is embarrassing that a democratic leader facing down military aggression needed “protection” from a U.S. president, but that is the upside-down world we now inhabit—one in which the U.S. is a greater threat to Ukraine than it is to Russia.

The EU officials’ mission was described throughout legacy media as “presenting a united front.” But it was more than that. It was a precisely choreographed diplomatic maneuver designed to contain and redirect Trump, to drown out Trump’s talk of “land swaps” (Putin’s way of demanding land that Russia occupies and land it has failed to take militarily), and to reaffirm democratic values—even when the world’s only superpower cannot and will not do so.

The individual leaders helped guide the meeting to avoid another Trump explosion. As difficult as it must have been, they soberly listened to Trump’s rants, pretended he was coherent, and kept up the patter of insincere flattery. The leaders followed up with pointed rhetoric after the White House meeting. 

Macron in an NBC interview expressed skepticism that Russia was interested in a deal, and vowed to keep the threat of additional sanctions as leverage. He declared that “if the Russians don’t comply with this approach, yes, we have to increase the sanctions, secondary and primary sanctions.” And in language we used to expect from the U.S. president he stressed, “There is an aggressor, which is Russia. There is a country which decided to kill people, stole children and who refused a ceasefire and peace, so we cannot just create an equivalent situation between Ukraine and Russia.”

Merz provided some diplomatic realism, emphasizing the need for a ceasefire (contrary to the Putin-Trump line) and decrying the idea of pressuring Ukraine to give up territory. He explained after the White House meeting, “The Russian [demand] that Kyiv give up the free parts of Donbas is, to put it in perspective, equivalent to the US having to give up Florida.” The geographic and political clarity was refreshing.

The UK on Tuesday, after a meeting of the EU countries, put out a statement confirming that EU officials would be meeting with U.S. negotiators “to further strengthen plans to deliver robust security guarantees and prepare for the deployment of a reassurance force if the hostilities ended.” Echoing Macron’s warning, the statement added, “The leaders also discussed how further pressure—including through sanctions – could be placed on Putin until he showed he was ready to take serious action to end his illegal invasion.”

The EU leaders grasp several points that evidently elude Trump, who has neither the interest in nor the knowledge necessary to address the substance of any deal. The Europeans understand that without a ceasefire and the threat of sanctions, Putin will stall, continue to bomb Ukraine, and try to wear down Ukraine’s civilian population.

They also understand that handing over land to Putin that he has taken by force would only pose an incentive for further aggression (from him or other countries observing Trump’s fecklessness). And lastly, they understand there is no moral equivalence between Ukraine and Russia. In sum, they are leading the Free World with the conviction to preserve the international order that has been in place since the end of WWII.

The U.S. certainly remains an economic and military superpower. But under Trump it no longer holds the moral and diplomatic high ground needed to influence events. The U.S. is buffeted by events driven by others. Free people around the world are truly fortunate to have this current cast of undaunted European leaders who have learned to manage, ignore, and work around Trump for the benefit of democratic values. For exhibiting such tenacity, patience, and skill (not to mention self-control in refraining from laughing or hollering at Trump), they are deserving of our gratitude and praise.

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Justice Department Investigation

 

In a move that is as performative as sending battleships to fight a cartel, the Trump Justice Department is investigating whether the D.C. Police Department manipulated data to make crime rates appear lower. This move, confirmed by “two senior law enforcement officials,” comes on the heels of Donald Trump falsely claiming there was a crime epidemic in the nation’s capital to justify his attempted takeover of law enforcement. Yet earlier this year, Trump’s favorite failed U.S. Attorney nominee, Ed Martin, had celebrated the favorable numbers.

Trump needed to save face. Hence the investigation. Trump, by the way, took to social media to post about the probe: "D.C. gave Fake Crime numbers in order to create a false illusion of safety. This is a very bad and dangerous thing to do, and they are under serious investigation for so doing!" he wrote on Truth Social. Predictably, he’s tying this to his decision to send federal law enforcement officers and the D.C. National Guard onto the city’s streets.

When asked what the post meant, Trump responded, "They are giving us phony crime stats."

The origin of the federal investigation, overseen by new U.S. Attorney and former Fox News Host Jeanine Pirro, appears to be an investigation conducted by the Metropolitan Police Department itself. Back in May, they suspended a commander as they began looking into allegations, which he denied, that he altered crime data.

NBC reported that “This investigation, however, is expected to go much further, looking at other police and city officials for possible wrongdoing.” That’s odd for a number of reasons. First off, it’s unlikely that the D.C. police would be aggressively investigating if there were a high-level conspiracy inside the Department.

The commander under investigation would almost certainly have raised those allegations himself to protect his position. Even if there is any truth to this, it’s unclear what the charges—let alone federal charges—would be. It would more likely be an administrative matter. There’s nothing unusual about the numbers coming out of the District. They mirror the nationwide drop in crime during the Biden administration. In fact, D.C. slightly underperforms that curve.

Occam’s razor suggests that the simplest explanation is usually the best one. Trump is trying to justify his unpopular strongman tactic in D.C. This is a familiar refrain we’ve heard from him before—calling for a phony investigation to give him room to maneuver.

Under the Biden, Obama, or Bush administrations, word of an investigation like this would have been viewed as one being conducted in good faith. But there is no more presumption of regularity with this administration, which has stretched the limits of the rule of law and even now has launched criminal investigations into Trump enemies like New York Attorney General Letitia James and Democratic Senator Adam Schiff, despite claims from DOJ officials during their confirmations that there was no revenge agenda. This is exactly what we warned about before the election. Using prosecutions as a political weapon is the hallmark of a would-be dictator in a banana republic.

An investigation like this might not seem like a big deal given the broader scope of events this week. Sometimes it’s the details that let us see the forest.

If connecting the dots between law and politics feels confusing, that’s because it often is—and most of the time, the threads are invisible unless you’ve spent years inside the system. That’s what I do here: break down the complexities so they’re clear, useful, and grounded in expertise. If you value that kind of analysis, subscribe to Civil Discourse, if you don’t already, and stay connected to the bigger picture.

We’re in this together,

-Joyce Vance

 

A United Push by R.J. Matson

 

Robert "R.J." Matson draws several editorial cartoons each week for his Substack, e pluribus cartoonum, and for Roll Call, the newspaper of Congress and Capitol Hill. His work is widely syndicated to print newspapers by Cagle Cartoons.

"America's Homegrown Taliban"

This novel 1984, George Orwell warned, “Those who control the present control the past, and those who control the past control the future.” Today, Trump and the GOP have weaponized that prophecy, twisting it into the foundation of their crusade to Make America White Again.

What they are building is not a political movement but a parallel nation — a MAGAstan — where loyalty oaths replace truth, history is scrubbed clean of slavery and racism, and authoritarian obedience is demanded in the name of patriotism.

This is America’s homegrown Taliban, and they’re no longer pretending to hide their intentions.

When the Oklahoma Department of Education rolled out its new “America First” MAGA certification exam for teachers, designed with the help of a rightwing propaganda outlet, it wasn’t about improving education. It was about making sure that any teacher who dares to acknowledge the realities of race, gender, or American history is shut out of the profession.

Applicants from California or New York now must take a test that appears to demand perfect answers on questions about civics, chromosomes, religion, and so-called gender ideology. It’s not an exam, it’s a political loyalty test, and it fits neatly into the larger pattern we are seeing in Republican politics today. They aren’t hiding their racism or misogyny anymore. They’re reveling in it.

That reality was underscored by Donald Trump’s latest tantrum against the Smithsonian and other museums. On his Nazi-infested social media platform, Trump complained that our museums are “out of control” because they talk about “how bad slavery was,” racism, and the struggles of the downtrodden. He whined that there is “nothing about success, nothing about brightness, nothing about the future”

What he really means is that America should stop teaching about slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, and ongoing systemic racism and instead return to a whitewashed myth of national greatness that erases Black, Indigenous, and other marginalized voices.

His words are a plain translation of the GOP’s broader war on what they call “woke.” Being “anti-woke” is just a thinly veiled way of saying “we’re okay with racism and misogyny.”

And Trump is the perfect avatar for this reinvention of the Confederacy, as I detail in my newest book The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink.

Trump’s and his GOP’s pro-racism neofascist purges go far beyond education and museums; they’ve also gone after the federal workforce with a vengeance. They canceled the government’s annual employee survey, gutted DEI programs across every agency, and are mass-firing federal workers, particularly in agencies that employ large numbers of Black women.

The so-called Department of Government Efficiency — run by a Nazi-saluting white South African immigrant — put more than a quarter of a million jobs on the chopping block, devastating communities where civil service has long been the pathway into the middle class.

Black Americans, particularly Black women, have disproportionately relied on those jobs for stability and upward mobility. Taking them away isn’t about saving taxpayer money: it’s a targeted attack, designed to roll back decades of progress.

At the same time, groups aligned with Trump are publishing watchlists of federal workers they call “subversives,” lists overwhelmingly filled with women and people of color. Those people are now being hounded, relocated, or forced out altogether.

Senior women and Black leaders in the military are being fired or pushed into retirement. Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield, NATO’s only woman on its military committee, was removed from her post. Army Lt. Gen. Telita Crosland, who had led military healthcare, was forced to resign after 32 years of service.

These purges are political, not professional. They’re designed to restore the military to a largely all-white, all-male leadership structure. And at the same time, Trump and his enablers are working to rename bases after Confederate generals and restore monuments dedicated to traitors who fought against democracy to preserve slavery.

And now Trump is claiming — against the statistics — that crime in Washington, DC is “out of control.” This is Nixon’s Southern Strategy — blame crime on Black people while turning the country into a police state — on steroids.

Racism is the thread that ties all of this together.

When five Republicans on the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, Republicans wasted no time enacting voter suppression laws that disproportionately disenfranchised Black voters. When Republicans on the Court blessed partisan gerrymandering in Rucho v. Common Cause, Republican-controlled states immediately redrew maps to diminish the power of Black communities.

This is about keeping power in the hands of white conservatives, no matter the cost to democracy.

And the cruelty isn’t limited to our own citizens. The Trump administration has begun deporting Afghan translators who risked their lives working alongside American troops, even as they continue to apply for legal protection through Special Immigrant Visa programs. ICE agents recently detained one such interpreter — someone who had helped U.S. soldiers survive the war — because the new GOP priority is to get as many brown people out of the country as possible.

This is not patriotism. It’s ethnic cleansing by bureaucracy.

I used to believe that maybe 20 percent of white Americans were openly racist. That was based on my experience growing up and on the way racism was often hidden behind polite code.

But looking at today’s voting patterns, at the cheering crowds for Trump’s open bigotry, it seems more like 55 to 60 percent. When a majority of white voters willingly support a party that strips voting rights from Black citizens, erases slavery from classrooms and museums, fires Black leaders from government, and deports brown allies, that’s not a fringe problem. That’s a national crisis.

This kind of “othering” of racial and gender minorities is a classic hallmark of fascism. It’s what we saw in Germany in the 1930s and what Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin are doing in Hungary and Russia today. You dehumanize groups of people, define them as enemies of the state, and then strip away their rights until they no longer have the power to resist.

Trump and the GOP are running this playbook right out in the open. And far too many in the media are still treating “anti-woke” rhetoric as a culture-war issue instead of what it really is: a naked declaration of racism, misogyny, and authoritarian intent.

Democrats and people of good conscience cannot let this language go unchallenged. Every time Republicans sneer about “woke,” it should be called what it is: they’re defending racism and misogyny. They’re trying to drag us back into a world where straight white men hold all the power and everyone else is erased. This is not just an ideological disagreement. It is an attack on the very idea of equality and democracy.

Woke people must stop playing defense and start organizing. We need mass mobilizations — marches, protests, and direct action — to show that Americans will not tolerate a return to white supremacy dressed up as patriotism.

We need to pressure Democrats to go on offense, to stop using mealy-mouthed language and start telling the truth: the GOP is running on racism, period. And we need to demand that the media stop laundering Republican talking points and call out this agenda for what it is: a fascist project to make racism great again.

The stakes are nothing less than the future of American democracy. If we fail to rise to this challenge, they won’t just win the next election; they’ll win the power to define who counts as an American, whose stories matter, and who has a right to belong.

This is the GOP’s vision of MAGAstan: a land where truth is outlawed, history is erased, dissent is punished, and democracy is reduced to a hollow slogan.

It’s not conservatism. It’s not patriotism. It is the same naked pursuit of power through racism, misogyny, and authoritarian rule that we’ve seen in one country after another throughout history.

And here’s the brutal truth: they’re telling us exactly who they are and exactly what kind of dictatorship they want. The only question left is whether the rest of us will stand by in silence while America is dragged into its darkest chapter or whether we will rise up, speak out, and refuse to let our country become the authoritarian nightmare Trump and the GOP are building in plain sight.

-Thom Hartmann

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"It’s absurd to use Trump in the same sentence as 'guarantee'"

 

Trump, after his Alaska abasement, told European leaders he would be open to offering Ukraine “U.S. security guarantees” to end the war.

No, really.

Ukrainians are all too familiar with “U.S. security guarantees.” After the breakup of the Soviet Union (in which Vladimir Putin learned his trade as a KGB agent), the U.S. gave Ukraine a “security guarantee.”

“[O]n 5 December 1994, at a ceremony in Budapest, Ukraine joined Belarus and Kazakhstan in giving up their nuclear arsenals in return for security guarantees from the United States, the UK, France, China and Russia,” the BBC recalled.

At the time, President Clinton declared, “The pledges on security assurances that [we] have given these three nations…underscore our commitment to the independence, the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of these states.” Oh, really. If only the U.S. had consistently stood by that “guarantee” in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea, Ukraine would not still be fighting for its survival.

Ukraine has learned the hard way that U.S. security guarantees are worthless. And when offered under this president, a guarantee is more likely a recipe for extortion (remember the impeachable threat to withhold U.S. arms if Ukraine did not invent dirt on Joe Biden) or a prelude to betrayal (as in agreeing post-summit to stop pressuring Russia for a cease fire).

Donald Trump does not seem committed to upholding the security guarantees already in place with NATO allies. Again and again, he has vacillated, fudged, and shrugged off our most consequential and vital security obligation. To this day, who can be sure he would adhere to the core of our NATO pact, Art. V?

“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.”

It’s absurd to use Trump in the same sentence as “guarantee,” a word defined as: “an agreement by which one person undertakes to secure another in the possession or enjoyment of something.”

It is hard to think of a guarantee/pledge/vow/promise that Trump has not broken (e.g., his marriage vows, his oath to uphold the Constitution). He’s broken pledges to release the Epstein files, to end the Russia-Ukraine War on Day One (!), to immediately bring down prices, and to balance the budget (!).

Time magazine’s Phillip Elliott wrote in May: “All politicians make promises they should frankly know are impossible to keep; with Trump, it’s not entirely clear he knows his bill of goods is a fantasy, or which ones the larger public actually wanted him to pursue.”

Indeed, Trump does not seem to understand that a guarantee or a promise is something that he must keep, as opposed to something he uses in the moment to get his way, polish his ego, or intimidate others.

It would be one thing for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to trust an honorable U.S. president with the fate of his country. It is quite another to trust one who has already repeatedly betrayed Ukraine (not to mention the United States) and who does not necessarily understand the concept of keeping his word.

Neither domestic or foreign friends nor foes should rely on Trump’s guarantees, oaths, promises, vows, agreements, or—frankly—anything he says. A compulsive liar who is loyal to no one but himself turns out to be a worthless ally and unfit dealmaker.

In the case of the international world order, Trump’s untrustworthiness has profound consequences. U.C. Berkeley professor M. Steven Fish explained in an interview in March that the Trump regime is “abandoning” the post-WWII world order to the benefit of dictators. 

“Under Trump, the United States is now abandoning its democratic allies in Europe and may well soon do the same to our allies in the Asia-Pacific.”

He added: “Trump aims to drive America toward autocracy, and he is reorienting America’s foreign relations to align our country with foreign dictatorships.” The result is disastrous for our allies and ultimately for us:

The key now is that other world leaders, especially among our allies — or, tragically, perhaps I should now say former allies — need to understand that they cannot depend in any way on American security guarantees as long as Trump is in office. Trump has made that crystal clear. And the more quickly they realize that fact and adjust their own defense postures, their own defense spending and their own relations with each other to accommodate that reality, the better for them and for the world.

That’s precisely what the Europeans have done as they learn not to count on the U.S.’s defense umbrella or diplomatic heft. That, in turn, means we are less powerful, less influential, and less respected than at any point since the end of WWII.

When the U.S. cannot keep its promises or credibly guarantee that it won’t change sides when it suits its narcissistic leaders’ personal interests, the world enters what Fish calls a “post-American world.” As he puts it, “We are now in Trump’s world, one in which America is dramatically diminished and, if Trump has his way, becomes just another two-bit autocracy.”

So, no, Zelensky is not about to take the president’s “guarantees” seriously. Neither should we. The only guarantee we can trust with certainty is that Trump will always benefit Trump.

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-Jennifer Rubin, The Contrarian

The Trump Debacle

In a summer of serial legal defeats, successive scandals, and sagging poll numbers, Donald Trump’s president hit new lows at the end of the last week. As with the big, ugly bill earlier in the summer, Trump’s attempts to boost his image and enhance his authoritarian reach backfired (several of them to a spectacular extent).

First, one didn’t need diplomatic experience to have predicted that Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin would be a semi-fiasco. No “deal” was remotely possible, given Ukraine’s absence and Putin’s established unwillingness to cease his dream of obliterating Ukraine. But it need not have been this embarrassing.

Recall, rather than sanctioning Russia, Trump invited the known dictator to Alaska, a plum PR get for Putin. By the time he was back at the White House, Trump had dropped the demand for a ceasefire and was parroting Putin’s call for Ukraine to give up land. The best that could be said is that Trump didn’t hand over Alaska.

Trump was mocked widely for rolling out the red carpet for the brutal dictator presumed responsible for enumerable war crimes. He was bashed for allowing Putin to dominate the press availability (droning on in Russian) while Trump rambled incoherently and looked old, weak, and out-muscled. (Don’t take my word for it. His former national security advisor John Bolton remarked, “I thought Trump looked very tired up there. I mean, very tired. Not disappointed. Tired. And we’ll have to reflect on what that means.") When even Fox News pans his performance, you know it’s a bellyflop.

CNN summed up the Trump debacle:

Trump’s lavish stage production of Putin’s arrival Friday, with near-simultaneous exits from presidential jets and red-carpet strolls, provided some image rehabilitation for a leader who is a pariah in the rest of the West and who is accused of war crimes in Ukraine.

And by the end of their meeting, Trump had offered a massive concession to his visitor by adopting the Russian position that peace moves should concentrate on a final peace deal — which will likely take months or years to negotiate — rather than a ceasefire to halt the Russian offensive now…. [But] that just gives Putin more time to grind down Ukraine.

And to add a touch of farce: someone left sensitive State Departments behind on a public printer at an Alaska hotel. (Apparently, Defense Secretary and Signalgate miscreant Pete Hegseth is not the only member of this regime that cannot uphold basic security protocols).

The Alaska charade was far from the Trump regime’s only blunder last week. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s overreaching letter claiming the regime’s intent to “take over” the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department prompted a lawsuit on Friday, which led to a swift federal retreat. 

After a feckless appearance in district court, the Justice Department dropped the takeover bid, although it continues to challenge D.C.’s law prohibiting police from assisting with ICE’s raids. (Unfortunately, in its timid litigation approach, D.C. did not formally challenge the “emergency” declaration based on the lie that crime had surged.)

Meanwhile, Trump’s National Guard deployment (of unarmed, unmasked troops sticking close to federal monuments) was just another empty, performative gesture. (With the addition of troops, perhaps armed, from other states, it is far from clear what all these volunteers will do—let alone how governors, some from states that have worse crime rates, will explain sending their troops to D.C. to serve as the president’s props.) Far more concerning is the mass deployment of feds to conduct violent raids reminiscent of Los Angeles’s illegal sweeps as well as legally suspect random traffic stops.

Trump’s power grab has now emboldened D.C. residents, Democratic politicians, and anti-Trump forces around the country to rise in protest. His militaristic bullying has been met with righteous outrage.

Another Trump blunder played out in Texas and California. Trump’s decision to strong-arm Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to re-redistrict and thereby grab five more GOP seats has not gone as planned. The move provoked a “Day of Action” with thousands in Texas and beyond protesting at hundreds of events in 34 states. The Guardian reported: “In Austin alone, more than 5,000 protestors gathered at the city’s capitol in a show of defiance. Videos and photos on social media showed protestors holding various signs that read: ‘Abbott is a vote thief,’ referring to the state’s Republican governor and ‘Fight the Trump takeover.’”

Moreover, at the urging of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Democrats on Friday released new maps aiming to match the Texas gambit with five new Democratic seats. The maps and a constitutional amendment superseding the independent redistricting commission plan will appear on the Nov. 4 ballot, the Los Angeles Times reported. 

The maps aim to knock out five vulnerable Republicans, but would go into effect only if Texas pushes through its re-redistricting plan. “We anticipate these maps will completely neuter and neutralize what is happening in Texas,” Newsom said. (He has been doing the same to Trump.) In truth, in the re-redistricting arms race, any new MAGA seats could well be washed away in a blue tsunami.

Finally, new evidence appeared last week that the economy under Trump is continuing to sour. Wholesale prices rose much higher than expected, reviving inflation fears. CNBC reported, “The producer price index, which measures final demand goods and services prices, jumped 0.9% on the month, compared with the Dow Jones estimate for a 0.2% gain. 

It was the biggest monthly increase since June 2022.” The core Producer Price Index (PPI), excluding volatile food and energy prices, rose 0.9%, three times the forecast. Bottom line: “On an annual basis, headline PPI increased 3.3%, the biggest 12-month move since February and well above the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation target.” So much for Trump’s promise to lower prices. This news also may compel the Federal Reserve to hold off on interest rate cuts.

In sum, Trump’s “big wins” have turned out to be big negatives. His “summit” looked more like Robert E. Lee’s appearance at Appomattox. His D.C. and Texas bullying galvanized Democrats. And his economic agenda is gutting everyday Americans. 

It is therefore not a surprise that his approval rating sank to 38% while his disapproval rating soared to 60%, Pew Research reported on Friday. Also revealed was that if Trump is relying on Hispanic voters to pull off his Texas re-redistricting, he might re-evaluate, given that 70% of them nationally disapprove of his performance; only 27% approve. On virtually every issue, Americans are not happy with what they are seeing.

Nevertheless—and perhaps all the more—Trump’s dictatorial spasms may increase as he becomes more desperate to disguise blunders and seek revenge on a country that rejects him. Will Trump or our democracy disintegrate first?

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-The Contrarian

 

"After ordering the occupation of DC, Trump threatened to send federal troops to NYC, Baltimore and Oakland"

 

…The real criminals in DC today, who are dangers to the Republic worthy of sending SEAL Team Six to suppress, are the lobbyists for the tobacco, financial, oil, insurance, coal, nuclear, Pharma, and weapons industries (not to mention AIPAC) who have corrupted our political system and profited from using the federal government to inflict death and misery around the globe. Trump is using racial stereotypes to scare his 70+ demographic on Fox News and manufacture a crisis that doesn’t exist so that he can use his Praetorian Guard to shield and distract attention from those who are looting the public estate for private gain.

+ Meet the people in charge of the feds seizing control of DC…

+ The one thing the founders of the Republic feared even more than slave rebellions and tribal uprisings was the kind of standing army Trump has now sent into DC:

“A standing army is one of the greatest mischiefs that can possibly happen.” – James Madison

“The Army is a dangerous instrument to play with.” – George Washington

“Standing Armies are dangerous to liberty.” – Alexander Hamilton

+ Cities whose violent crime rate is higher than DC’s…

Memphis, Tennessee
Kansas City, Missouri
Springfield, Missouri
Alexandria, Louisiana
New Orleans, Louisiana
Monroe, Louisiana
Pueblo, Colorado
Anniston, Alabama
Little Rock, Arkansas
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
Birmingham, Alabama
Atlantic City, New Jersey
Camden, New Jersey
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Louisville, Kentucky
Indianapolis, Indiana
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Cincinnati, Ohio

+ After ordering the occupation of DC, Trump threatened to send federal troops to NYC, Baltimore and Oakland: “They’re so far gone. This will go further. We’re starting very strongly with DC.” By the way, crime in DC is at historic lows…

+ DC Mayor Muriel Bowser:  “I think I speak for all Americans — we don’t believe it’s legal to use the American military against American citizens on American soil.”

+ Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott’s response to Trump’s threat to impose a military occupation of DC, NYC, Oakland and Baltimore: “I think it’s very notable that each and every one of the cities called out by the President has a black mayor, and most of those cities are seeing historic lows in violent crime. In Baltimore, we have the fewest number of homicides through this date on record. That’s 50 years, a 50-year low. Maybe we are too far gone. Too far gone from the broken right-wing policies of zero tolerance policing and all the things that did not make our city safer for all those many years. The president could learn a lot from us. Instead of throwing things at us…”

+ How badly did Reconstruction fail DC? A city with one of the country’s largest and most vibrant black populations, whose residents have never enjoyed the full rights and protections of people living in states, is now under occupation by a military led by a man who is renaming Army bases after Confederate generals.

+ Rep. Troy Downing, the Republican from Montana, on Trump’s takeover of DC: “Hopefully this is a harbinger of what we see in these liberally run cities across the country … We need to send in the troops, which is exactly what we’re doing.”

+ Memo to Troy Downing: Since Illinois adopted bail reform, violent and property crimes have dropped below pre-COVID levels and failure-to-appear rates have also declined–the exact opposite of what the lock-em-up critics predicted.

+ The GOP wants to ethnically cleanse Southeast DC, the way the Israelis have Gaza…Bennie Johnson: “Entire neighborhoods, probably, need to be emptied, need to be bulldozed.”

+ Of course, the ethnic cleansing of DC has been taking place for decades, with the real estate industry as the driving force. When Jerome picked me up from the sidewalk along H Street in 1981, the black population of DC was 445,154 (70% of the District’s population). Now it’s less than 280,000 (41%). Blacks are being forced out of one of America’s greatest Black cities by economic predation and political policy. 

+ Since military personnel commit crimes at a rate higher than the civilian population (one recent study showed one-third of vets with an arrest record compared to one-fifth of the general population), Trump’s flooding DC with National Guard troops seems likely to actually end up increasing the crime rate.

+ In all of the video footage of Trump’s military occupation of DC, I haven’t seen one foot patrol or armored personnel carrier traverse K Street, which probably has more criminals, swindlers & mass killers per linear foot than any other street in the US, perhaps the entire planet…

+ During a White House press briefing, Benny Johnson asked: “Will the president consider giving the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Big Balls?” Karoline Leavitt: “I haven’t spoken to him about that, but perhaps it’s something that he would consider.”

+ Trump during his press conference on sending the National Guard to patrol DC: “It’s embarrassing for me to be up here. I’m going to see Putin. I’m going to Russia on Friday. I don’t want to be up here talking about how dirty and disgusting this once beautiful capital was.” (He’s actually going to Alaska, but maybe if he visits Sarah Palin, he’ll be able to see Russia from her house.)…

-Jeffrey St. Clair, CounterPunch

 

War Crimes Against Those Who Risk Everything to Tell the Truth

 

As noted in Truthout and other media, this week, Israel openly acknowledged assassinating Anas al-Sharif, the 28-year-old Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist hailed as “the voice of Gaza.” An Israeli airstrike deliberately targeted Anas al-Sharif and five of his Al Jazeera colleagues—staff and freelancers—while they sought refuge in a tent designated for journalists outside Al-Shifa Hospital.

Killing journalists is not a “tragic mistake”; it is a calculated act of terror against those who dare to bear witness. He made clear through his fearless reporting the horrors of genocide. He showed that Israel’s policy of forced starvation is not a byproduct of war; it is a deliberate policy, an ancient weapon wielded with modern precision against a trapped and desperate people. He also showed the fierce resistance on the part of Palestinians refusing to surrender to attempts to by Israel to exterminate them

As Amnesty International notes: "The targeted killing of Anas al-Sharif and five other journalists on Sunday means at least 242 Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli forces since the beginning of October 2023. No conflict in modern history has seen a higher number of journalists killed. The intentional targeting and killing of journalists is a war crime. As is the strategy of Israeli authorities that wants to stop its war crimes from being exposed and those responsible being brought to justice."

Netanyahu’s fascist politics thrive on these crimes. They are not aberrations; they are the scaffolding upon which his right-wing regime stands. The bombing of homes, the silencing of cameras, the reduction of children to statistics, these are the tools of a political order that measures its success in erasures, ethnic and racial cleansing, and a unfathomable politics of disposability--as we saw in Augusto Pinochet's Chile, Nazi Germany, and other fascist regimes.

And when confronted with the evidence, Netanyahu once again offers the cameras the smirk, the shrug, the arrogance of a man devoid of any moral responsibility, while spewing endlessly the blatant lies that cover up unimaginable war crimes-committed no less as a designated war criminal.

What we are witnessing with the indiscriminate killing of thousands women and children in Gaza are not signs of reckless military operations, accidental deaths, Hamas induced defense actions, but declarations of power, genocidal madness; reminders that in this machinery of annihilation, not only are the bodies of Palestinian people under siege and subject to ethnic cleansing, but that truth itself is a target.

In Gaza and the West Bank, the project is not merely to occupy land, but to obliterate a people’s memory, dignity, and claim to justice. It is a war on the possibility of history itself, waged with the confidence of those who believe they will never be held to account. This is the essence of fascism: the conviction that some lives are disposable, some voices intolerable, and some crimes untouchable.

-Henry Giroux

"Sickening. Shameful. And in the end, useless"

 

Sickening. Shameful. And in the end, useless. Those were the words that came to mind when we watched the Alaska Summit unfold. On our screens, a blood-soaked dictator and war criminal received a royal welcome in the land of the free — as his attack drones headed for [Ukrainian] cities.

In the lead-up to the meeting in Alaska, U.S. President Donald Trump declared he wanted a “ceasefire today” and that his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin would face “severe consequences” if he didn't go for it.

Yet after a 2.5-hour closed-door meeting, Trump and Putin emerged to share… nothing. “Progress” was made and some “understanding” reached, but the two didn’t come to an agreement on “the most significant point” — clearly, Ukraine.

Trump didn’t get what he wanted. But Putin? He sure did. From the moment he stepped off the plane on U.S. soil, the Russian dictator was beaming. No longer an international pariah, he was finally getting accepted – and respected — by the leader of the free world. Trump’s predecessor once called Putin a murderer; Trump offered him a king’s welcome.

Trump greeted Putin with a red carpet, warm handshakes, a flyover of U.S. bombers, and a backseat limo ride. The chummy display stood in stark contrast to Trump’s hostile reception of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office six months ago. Ukraine’s president endured a public shaming. Russia’s was pampered. Both episodes were disgraceful.

Trump seemed to believe that a warm meeting could appease Putin and make a ceasefire more likely. But there’s a lesson Trump still hasn’t learned: The Russian leader doesn’t really make deals — he takes. He takes what is offered to him and then takes some more — he keeps taking until stopped by force. That is the Russian art of the deal.

Trump fails to grasp that Putin isn’t transactional about Ukraine — he is messianic. He wants Ukraine for Russia, period. For Putin and his inner circle, Ukraine’s independence is an accident, and they are correcting it.

The Russian delegation made no effort to hide their mockery of the talks. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov arrived in Alaska wearing a USSR sweatshirt — bluntly asserting Russia’s claim on Ukraine. Kremlin journalists wrote about how they were served chicken Kyiv on the government plane to Alaska — a not-so-subtle hint that Ukraine was “cooked.” The Russians clearly never took the “peace talks” seriously.

And there was another reason behind Putin’s grin in Alaska. The Russian dictator was gloating because of how unsettling the meeting was for all U.S. allies, far beyond Ukraine. It sent a discomfiting signal to the viewers across the pond. And strategically, undermining the transatlantic alliance is an even more important Russian objective than taking control of Ukraine.

Putin returns from the Alaska Summit with a win — but not a sweeping victory he could have had. If the two presidents failed to reach an agreement, it means that, despite all the chumminess on display, Trump didn’t approve of Russia’s absurd demands for Ukraine — demands that amount to Kyiv’s capitulation.

Trump said he hopes to see Putin again soon. If the U.S. president doesn’t want to hand the next meeting to Russia as well, he needs to let Ukraine join the table. And he must position himself as an ally of Ukraine, not as a referee between two fighting sides.

Only then might we avoid another scene in which the leader of the free world indulges a bloody dictator — in the name of 340 million Americans. After all, agreements with Russia don’t live long. But the images of the U.S. military honor guards kneeling to roll out the red carpet for a murderer? Those will last. And no one will remember this meeting longer — or more vividly — than Ukrainians.

-The Kyiv Independent

Vlad gets red carpet, and Trump gets Epstein off the front pages. A submissive, groveling, obsequious Donald Trump was humiliated yesterday afternoon by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. The American president, accused by multiple women and teenage girls of raping or sexually assaulting them, joined the indicted war criminal and Russian president who has kidnapped over 100,000 children from Ukraine and sold most of them into God-only-knows-what in Russia. It was a disgusting, pathetic display of the moral collapse that is Donald Trump. 

As Senator Richard Blumenthal said: “[M]y stomach turned when I heard the president of the United States characterize Vladimir Putin as his fabulously good friend. Vladimir Putin is a war criminal. He has directed soldiers to kill women and children and bury them in mass graves. He’s kidnapped children as we speak. The reality on the ground is that people are bleeding and dying all around Ukraine because Putin is continuing to bomb them. 

And at the front, he’s continuing to pummel the brave Ukrainian soldiers who are defending the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the town of Pokrovsk.” But Trump did succeed in getting Jeffrey Epstein off the front pages for several days. Will a discussion of the possibility that Trump was joining Epstein in raping young girls return to media prominence? Or has Trump succeeded in making it “old news”? Meanwhile, Putin gets a status boost all around the world as America is once again placed in the gutter by Donald Trump.

-Thom Hartmann

 

"We’ve seen this movie before. So has Putin. But this isn’t Monty Python."

 

...Who among us hasn’t dealt with someone like this? Conceited, intolerant, blind to the obvious, and, when tested, inept but dangerous. Sometimes I feel as if I am watching a version of [Monty Python and the Holy Grail] when President Donald Trump faces a geopolitical security issue. But he doesn’t remind me of King Arthur.

Over the past several weeks, Trump has been flailing to draw attention away from the Jeffrey Epstein story. Whether proclaiming success on tariffs or suggesting President Barack Obama committed treason, none of it stuck.

Then on July 28 former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev posted on social media that Trump’s latest threat—to end the war in Ukraine through ultimatums—was itself “a step towards war.” In response, Trump said on Truth Social the comments were “highly provocative” and declared that he had ordered two U.S. nuclear submarines to be “positioned in the appropriate regions.”

John Bolton, the short-lived national security adviser for the first Trump administration, warned that this was reckless escalation. At the hands of past commanders in chief, such a declaration would be an appropriate concern.

But we’re being led by someone who applies news coverage as much as geopolitical reality to national security decisions. To Trump, warnings of miscalculation are meaningless. Or as the Black Knight reacts when King Arthur severs his other arm: “Just a flesh wound.”

To Russia and China, Trump’s braggadocio is less threat than parody. Who cares if he moved any submarines? The United States has about two dozen submarines on patrol at any one time, including those armed with submarine-launched cruise missiles that can strike from nearly 1,000 miles away and ballistic missile subs, or “boomers,” that can hit targets over 4,000 miles out.

Russian President Vladimir Putin knows this. His spokesman in response said as much, “In this case, it is obvious that American submarines are already on combat duty.” China knows it. So does NATO. So do America’s allies across the Pacific.

Trump’s announcement wasn’t about military leverage. It wasn’t even serious strategic signaling. It was a tired rhetorical tool now applied to a political-military confrontation—chest-pounding designed to look like action. And it came from someone who clearly does not know how the U.S. Navy operates.

Just as the Black Knight errs in the Monty Python movie, Trump mistakes bravado for deterrence, bluster for backbone. But Putin has seen this performance before. And in some cases, first hand—in Hamburg, Danang, Helsinki, Buenos Aires. He’s not alarmed. He might well be thinking what Arthur says out loud when the armless Black Knight claims to be invincible: “You’re a looney.”

Putin had a near-perfect record of calling the bluffs from Trump in his first term and from Joe Biden when it comes to Ukraine. Nothing Trump 48 has done as commander in chief has led Putin to take pause. Not his Truth Social pleas of “Vladimir, STOP!” Not the 50-day ultimatum threatening tariffs. Not when the ultimatum was dropped to a 10-day deadline.

Trump’s direct use of military force in his second term probably hasn’t bolstered his credibility as a bold warrior to give an adversary such as Russia or China pause. Trump’s air strikes in the spring against the Houthi targets in Yemen were briefly intense, quickly declared a success, and followed by a ceasefire with little strategic impact.

The White House touted the strikes in June on Iran’s nuclear weapons facilities as proof of resolve. But the operation was carried out after an Israeli air campaign of more than a week had left Iran with no air defense or escalatory leverage. It was low-risk. Medvedev has said so much. In the same social media post noted earlier, he was blunt: Russia isn’t Iran.

Trump’s pattern is clear: He punches down, never up. When escalation carries real consequences—when the target can respond in kind—he hesitates, blusters, or declares victory before the fight begins. For Beijing, watching how Trump calibrates risk offers clues about how he might react to a crisis over Taiwan. The signal isn’t strength. It’s selectivity.

So where are we now? Russia strikes on civilian targets in Ukraine have gone unabated. Instead of ordering punitive tariffs—set to take effect within days barring a ceasefire—to be imposed immediately, Trump ignored the economic threat. Instead, he sought out an audience with Putin, scheduled for today.

As I see it, Putin today is staring at a shamed opponent—much like King Arthur, who asks the limbless Black Knight, “What are you going to do, bleed on me?” For his part, Trump is now raving about having arranged another meeting—what the White House is now describing as a “listening exercise” but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says s a "personal victory" for Putin.

This is where Trump’s understanding of intimidation becomes a liability. He knows how to look dangerous. But in statecraft, looking dangerous isn’t enough. You have to be credible, and you have to be coherent. If your adversaries know you bluff compulsively, they stop believing your threats—even when you mean them.

And Putin has no reason to be wary of Trump. He knows Trump will arrive at the meeting in the same shape as the Black Knight, who at the end of the joust is reduced to just a head and torso and declares: “All right, we’ll call it a draw.”

Showmanship works until it doesn’t. And once it stops working, every future threat—even a legitimate one—gets discounted. Like the Black Knight, Trump keeps taunting after the fight has moved on: “Running away, eh?... Come back here and take what’s coming to you!”

 

Brian O’Neill, a retired senior executive from the CIA and National Counterterrorism Center, is an instructor on strategic intelligence at Georgia Tech. His Safehouse Briefing Substack looks at what’s ahead in global security, geopolitics, and national strategy.

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"This isn’t just about protecting Trump, it’s about protecting the system that lets Epstein thrive"

 

The real scandal isn’t that Donald Trump’s name appears in the Epstein files. Everyone with a functioning brain and an internet connection already assumed that. The man’s long, sordid friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, beauty pageants, private parties, “younger side” quotes, and all, has been public knowledge for decades. What’s breaking through now, like cracks in a dam, is something far more damning:

The cover-up is the crime, and it runs deeper than anyone imagined.

Thanks to The Wall Street Journal, we now know what Trump knew and when he knew it. Back in May, Attorney General Pam Bondi and her deputy Todd Blanche, both handpicked loyalists, sat down with Trump in the White House and told him point-blank: his name appears multiple times in the Epstein documents. Not once. Not vaguely. Multiple times.

Weeks later, the Department of Justice, under Bondi’s leadership, announced it would not release the full Epstein files to the public. This, after Bondi herself had previously boasted that she had “truckloads” of Epstein documents sitting on her desk, ready to be reviewed. Transparency? That evaporated the moment Trump’s name was confirmed in the stack.

Trump, of course, did what Trump always does: he lied. In July, asked whether Bondi had told him his name appeared in the files, he replied, “No, no,” with all the empty confidence of a man who’s been gaslighting his way out of scandal since the ‘80s. He then pivoted into a word salad about Comey, Obama, Biden, and the “Russia hoax,” trying to drag every past boogeyman into the flames with him.

But now Bondi and Blanche themselves have confirmed the briefing happened. So the president lied, again, on camera. And then tried to sue The Wall Street Journal for reporting a truth he had already privately acknowledged.

That’s just the beginning of the cover-up.

The DOJ filed a weak, doomed-to-fail motion to unseal grand jury records, knowing full well that their reasoning, “public interest” wouldn’t meet the legal threshold. Judge Robin Rosenberg rejected it, correctly noting that the DOJ hadn’t attached the request to an active judicial proceeding. In other words, they wanted the appearance of transparency without the risk of actual disclosure.

Meanwhile, Maxwell’s legal team has entered the chat opposing the release of those same transcripts while simultaneously negotiating with the DOJ in a possible bid for clemency. Her lawyer even released a statement thanking Trump for his “commitment to uncovering the truth,” which might be the most shamelessly transactional quote of the decade.

But Bondi’s fingerprints on this mess go back further than her recent U-turn. As Florida’s attorney general during the fallout from Epstein’s original non-prosecution agreement, she never lifted a finger to challenge the 2008 deal that let Epstein walk with a wrist slap. That infamous arrangement, negotiated by then–U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta, let Epstein plead guilty to state charges, serve just 13 months (with work release), and secured federal immunity not only for Epstein but for any unnamed “co-conspirators.” Bondi’s office, fully aware of the sweetheart terms, declined to pursue any state-level challenge.

Years later, she joined Trump’s administration as AG, the same Trump who rewarded Acosta with a Cabinet post during his first term, naming him Labor Secretary. The message was clear: protect the predator, and you’ll be promoted.

And let’s not forget who just got fired: Maurene Comey, daughter of James Comey and a key prosecutor in the Epstein and Maxwell cases. Coincidence? Sure. Just like it’s a coincidence that the DOJ’s memo now insists Epstein had no “client list,” no conspiracy, and definitely wasn’t murdered, while key evidence remains sealed and new court filings are deliberately designed to go nowhere.

And then there’s the now-infamous Sharpie birthday letter to Epstein, where Trump allegedly drew a naked woman and signed his name below the waist. Trump insists it’s not his “language,” even though he’s been caught on video using the word “enigma” (a key term from the letter) repeatedly. And never mind that this is the same man who once bragged about walking in on teenage girls changing at his pageants, because of course he doesn’t doodle.

This isn’t just about Trump being in the files. It’s about the staggering number of high-ranking officials, media figures, judges, and legal enablers willing to twist themselves into knots to make sure no one ever sees what’s in those files.

It’s about the sudden walk backs, the contradictory statements, the theatrical lawsuits, the sleight-of-hand filings. It’s about how this machine of power, not just political, but cultural, financial, and judicial, is circling the wagons around a man whose connection to Epstein is not just alleged, but documented.

The public backlash is growing, even among Trump’s own base. The same MAGA faithful who once flooded message boards with conspiracy theories about Epstein and the “client list” are now grappling with the reality that their guy may be the one holding the match over the pile of sealed documents. Elon Musk said as much. So did Sean Hannity, in his own passive-aggressive Fox News way. But the truth keeps coming, and still, the walls hold, for now.

This isn’t just about protecting Trump, it’s about protecting the system that lets Epstein thrive. The donors. The CEOs. The foreign royalty. The financiers. The judges. The enablers. The media figures who knew but didn’t say. The government officials who sat on files. The ones who showed up to the parties, cashed the checks, and looked the other way.

It was never about one man. It’s about the network that feeds off secrecy, silence, and the calculated degradation of the vulnerable. The only thing worse than what Trump might’ve done is the cold, coordinated effort to keep the public from ever knowing.

So yes, Trump’s name is in the Epstein files. But that’s not the biggest bombshell. The real story is how many people in high places were willing to burn down truth, law, and decency to keep it hidden.

Follow me at marygeddry.substack.com and @magixarc.bsky.social

#EpsteinFiles #PamBondi #AlexAcosta #DOJ