"As America slides into recession, this is a struggle over who owns America’s future: a broad middle class—or a locked-in economy run by the richest few…"

 

America is in or on the verge of a seriously bad recession and the Trump regime is hiding the numbers; the signs are everywhere. His incoherent tariffs, massive tax breaks for billionaires, and gutting the Inflation Reduction Act are kneecapping our economy.

In response, Trump visited Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania this week and tried to pitch himself as a champion for the little guy, the middle class, small farmers, and working people. Which raises the question: who do Trump and the GOP really work for?

— Putin was furious that the Biden administration had been providing Ukraine with weapons systems, including air defense munitions and HIMARS rockets, so in March of this year Trump abruptly suspended delivery of most US military aid and Republicans in Congress never restarted it.

— American billionaires didn’t want to pay their damn taxes, so Trump and the GOP gave them trillions in new tax breaks with their Big Beautiful Billionaire’s Bill while increasing the taxes paid by the bottom 80% of Americans.

— After giving the Trump family gifts, trademarks, and patents, President Xi of China wanted Nvidia chips to help bring his military and AI capabilities up to where he could easily defeat a US effort to defend Taiwan, so Trump changed the rules so Xi could get his chips and Republicans in Congress are refusing to stop him.

— Both Putin and Xi were constantly irritated by the Voice of America broadcasting truthful news and pro-democracy programming so Trump killed off the broadcasts, is shutting down the stations and transmitters, and Republicans in Congress are letting it happen.

— Massive airline monopolies hated the $200-$775 per incident that they had to pay passengers as compensation for being bumped or having flights cancelled, so Trump had his reality-star FAA head undo the rule.

— Putin and Xi hated the “soft power” America got by saving millions of lives around the world every year with anti-poverty, anti-AIDS, and famine relief programs across the Third World, so Trump killed off the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and Republicans in Congress didn’t object.

— Rightwing billionaires who don’t believe they should have to pay taxes to “subsidize the little people” didn’t want Trump and Republicans to extend the taxpayer-funded subsidies of the Affordable Care Act that kept insurance rates down (Mike Johnson called them a “boondoggle” even though they keep rates low for millions of his Louisiana constituents), so Trump and the GOP obliged by refusing to continue them.

— Saudi Arabia, massive American fossil fuel corporations, and petrostates like Russia were offended by the Paris Agreement and other UN and Biden efforts to phase out petroleum and mitigate climate change, so Trump and the GOP pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement and refused to attend the most recent COP30 meeting in Belém, Brazil.

— The morbidly rich wanted to be able to pass their massive fortunes to their trust-fund babies without paying estate taxes, so Trump and Republicans in Congress passed a tax cut that primarily benefits the 400 richest families in America, costing our nation trillions that will be added to our debt and paid for by working-class people.

— Fossil fuel billionaires and their corporations were worried that the money Biden allocated for green energy projects might cut into their future profits, so Trump and the GOP slashed trillions from them, as well as subsidies and rebates for saving energy and electric vehicles.

— Rightwing billionaire-funded media operations were offended by how NPR and PBS kept showing up their lies, so Trump and congressional Republicans cancelled federal funding for the networks. Rightwing billionaires are enthusiastically buying up as much of the American media landscape as they can.

— Billionaire Elon Musk was reportedly facing billions in regulatory costs and fines that he was able to get rid of when Trump and Republicans hired him to start and run the DOGE program that gutted our government to the benefit of Russia and China.

— Bitcoin billionaire Changpeng Zhao was serving a lengthy prison sentence for violating federal anti-money-laundering laws, but Trump pardoned him when he promoted a new stablecoin issued by a crypto firm that made billions for the Trump family.

— Giant corporations and their morbidly rich owners wanted to screw their workers so they could increase their profits, so Trump and congressional Republicans took over 100 individual actions that cut pay, gutted union protections, and slashed benefits for workers but helped the most massive corporations.

— Big banks that make billions every year on interest from student loans hated Biden’s efforts to pay them off and reduce interest rates, so Trump and congressional Republicans rolled them back and are ending the last of the loan forgiveness programs.

Have Trump or congressional Republicans done anything of major consequence to help out average working people or small businesses in the 44 years since the beginning of the Reagan Revolution?

Nope. Instead, the neoliberal Reagan Revolution has seen the American middle class go from over two-thirds of us to around 43 percent of us today, and it takes two paychecks to have the lifestyle a single one could produce in 1981. Only the morbidly rich have benefited from every GOP action during all these years. And Trump is making it all worse.

The 2026 elections are coming sooner than most realize, which is why Republican secretaries of state are vigorously purging the voting rolls in their Blue cities. Double-check your registration every month at vote.org and make sure everybody you know is informed and ready.

It’s going to take a huge effort to defeat these monsters, so we need everybody on board. Pass it along…

-Thom Hartmann