"Their success will determine the fate of our democracy"

Democrats should not wait until Labor Day, the traditional kickoff of the midterm campaign, to pivot and begin sprinting toward November. No one who genuinely cares about the fate of democracy should be kvetching about primary polling (which partisans trolling for donor dollars, but not real voters, obsessively focus upon) or relitigating the relative electability of primary opponents after primaries are decided. 

(Kudos to Rep. Haley Stevens for fully embracing Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed in recognition of the stakes.) Fortunately, a batch of insightful Democrats have stepped forward to offer a pathway to win decisively on a populist economic message with broad-based appeal. Leading the way, Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico delivered a speech last week that adeptly framed the argument for Democrats:

"For fifty years, billionaire mega-donors and puppet politicians have been stealing from the American people. Stealing the wealth we created. With their bribes, their bailouts, and their billionaire tax breaks. This 'affordability crisis' isn’t something that happened in the last five years. This affordability crisis has been fifty years in the making. Since the late 1970s, mega donors and corporate special interests have been buying politicians in both political parties, and then those politicians turned around and rigged this economy to benefit their wealthy donors at our expense. We have an affordability crisis because we have a corruption crisis."

Pushing back on the notion that Democrats despise capitalism, Talarico makes the case that the far right has destroyed free markets. Corruption, tariffs, and dark money have influenced regulatory favors and tax giveaways, and massive corporate consolidation are the antithesis of a competitive free market that would create wealth for a wide cross-section of Americans.

“[T]he idea behind capitalism was simple and revolutionary: people should get fairly compensated for their labor. We should get paid for our work. But that’s not what we have right now,” he argued. “You can’t tell me the market is working as it should when billionaires are becoming trillionaires — while the people who do all the work can’t afford the basics.” He added, “Adam Smith is rolling over in his grave. This is not capitalism; this is crony capitalism.”

Talarico’s proposed agenda, dubbed the New American Dream, includes raising the minimum wage, expanding overtime, repealing tax cuts for the super-rich, protecting labor organizing, and investing in college and vocational education. He also includes items that genuine fiscal conservatives used to favor — such as reducing the national debt (“closing tax loopholes, cracking down on tax cheats, and ending forever wars that send billions of our tax dollars overseas”) and removing red tape that impedes housing construction.

Talarico’s pro-worker proposals include universal childcare and paid family leave, an expanded child tax credit, and “cracking down on the data centers jacking up our utility bills and using up our water — and preventing new ones from being built unless they meet our demands.” Positions such as these, which legacy media would characterize as “progressive,” and MAGA operatives would denounce as “socialism,” are embraced by super-majorities of Americans. Here is where Talarico adeptly turns MAGA hacks’ rhetoric against them:

"They’re going to claim this new dream is radical. They’re going to claim it’s extreme. They’re going to claim we’re socialists, or communists, or whatever sounds scariest in a headline. And we’ll say: Is that the best you can do? These are the same old scare tactics. The same old politics of the past. The names they’ll call us only reveal how small their dreams are. The people at the top want this to be a contest of names because they know they’ll lose a contest of ideas."

Pete Buttigieg, speaking at a unity rally in Michigan on Friday, made a similar argument in the context of the Michigan Senate race: "[W]e have Abdul El-Sayed, who insists that money in politics has gone too far. And we have him running against Mike Rogers, who insists on being part of the problem. We have one candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, who wants to expand affordable health care and keep more money in your pocket. And we have another candidate, Mike Rogers, who literally voted against the Affordable Care Act. And you better believe he will cut health care one more time if you give him a chance in the United States Senate."

Cranky Democratic establishment-types will find it hard to find substantive differences between bogeyman El-Sayed and their favorites such as Talarico and Buttigieg. In truth, their real objection is hearing their corporate donors fingered for rigging the economy.

In a parallel vein, Democratic Senators Chris Murphy (CT), Adam Schiff (CA), Tina Smith (MN), and Elizabeth Warren (MA) put out a memo in January arguing Democrats should not only advance populist economic measures but should sound serious about “tak[ing] on corporate power and the billionaires who are making it impossible for the American people to provide for themselves and their families.” When Democrats don’t mince words and instead underscore realities such as “big corporations get massive tax breaks and then turn around and lay off American workers,” voters take them seriously.

Citing a raft of polling, the Democratic senators urged their colleagues to sharpen the message and point directly at the culprits. Ordinary voters “do not want insurance companies denying treatments prescribed by doctors, or giant corporations driving small neighborhood shops out of business,” they explain. Regardless of party, voters deeply resent it when “wealthy people and big corporations get away with breaking the law — all while Trump is giving special treatment to his friends, enriching his own family, and pardoning corporate wrongdoing all the time.”

As the senators put it, the “backlash” to this outrageously corrupt presidency is “laying the foundation for a large popular majority to wrestle government back from the billionaires and corporations and give the power back to working people.” Democrats can reap the benefits if they embrace “a platform rooted in true economic populism.”

That’s exactly what El-Sayed and other Democrats in Michigan did at their unity rally. Skewering Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), El-Sayed framed the election as a choice between an advocate for ordinary voters and an oligarch-serving MAGA foot soldier, wisecracking that Rogers’s last name is “very fitting for him… [‘c]ause that’s his answer every time a corporation or Donald Trump tells him to do something”:

“Mike, we need you to put a data center in the backyard.” — “Roger!” “Mike, we need you to hike their prescription drug prices.” — “Roger!” “Mike, we need you to rubber-stamp this war we shouldn’t be fighting.” — “Roger!”

Democrats should follow the unity message from Michigan and flatly repudiate self-absorbed voices in their ranks still waging internecine battles. Launching a war now against Democratic Socialists [!] shows a jaw-dropping lack of perspective, suggests they care more about soothing their corporate donors’ bruised feelings than saving democracy, and inevitably amplifies Trump’s hysterical “socialist” smear against Democrats.

In sum, to win decisively, Democrats must avoid distractions and challenge the billionaire class’s pet policies and oligarchs who have rigged the system against the interests of ordinary workers. Their success will determine the fate of our democracy.

Join The Contrarian community to support bold journalism and help fund critical lawsuits to stop Trump’s corruption — Subscribe now.

 

"We get it, Mitch. Paid sick leave for me but never for thee."

 

Welcome to August and the kickoff to Month Three of Sen. Mitch “MIA” McConnell’s taxpayer-funded medical leave. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear recently wrote a letter demanding that McConnell make a public address or issue his immediate resignation. The hypocrisy in collecting a paycheck since June 14, the last date McConnell showed up at work, makes one thing abundantly clear: the Republican Party has zero shame.

When it comes to paid sick leave, the United States is a global outlier in its refusal to require employers to provide it for workers. Of course, this is in large part thanks to McConnell’s decades-long tenure in the Senate. In 1993, he notoriously voted against the landmark Family and Medical Leve Act (FMLA), one of only 27 senators to do so. 

Thanks to the FMLA, most employees are guaranteed 12 weeks of unpaid leave after the birth or adoption of a child, to recover from an illness, or to care for an immediate family member with a serious health condition.

[Personal note: FMLA was the only form of maternity leave I was afforded for my firstborn in 1996, and I was back on the job 12 weeks later; grateful as I was for the legal mandate that my position be held for me, our nation’s inability to ensure universal and paid parental leave is beyond a disgrace. But I digress]. 

McConnell’s FMLA vote to derail even unpaid leave was hardly a career one-off. During the height of the pandemic, he blocked various federal paid sick and family leave extensions in congressional stimulus packages — and then laughed about it. In 2022, he voted against a proposal that would have guaranteed seven days of paid sick leave for freight rail workers.

We get it, Mitch. Paid sick leave for me but never for thee.

The double standard goes even deeper. Conspiracy theories flooded the Internet over a pair of Weekend at Bernie’s-style photos, a response to public speculation as to his whereabouts (which achieved exactly the opposite of assurance that he is alive and kicking). 

But it was his companion written statement crowing about the excellent health care he’s receiving while hospitalized that was so galling — something millions of fellow Americans can barely imagine today thanks to his longstanding effort to repeal and stymie the Affordable Care Act.

McConnell’s written statement was also rife with reminders of his lifelong physical challenges from childhood polio and his fears of being on the receiving end of age discrimination. He’s not been a vaccine-denier, I’ll give him that, but his overall record on supporting truth in science and equal treatment under the law is long, self-serving, and ugly.

Meanwhile, McConnell is not even the only Republican in Congress who has been off the job while collecting a paycheck. Rep. Thomas Kean Jr. also failed to show up for nearly four months, missing every House vote from March 5 to June 30. He, too, has rallied against legislation to require employers provide paid sick leave for workers during his prior stint in the New Jersey state Senate.

When Kean eventually returned to work, he grudgingly shared that he had been receiving inpatient mental health treatment and sought to maintain his privacy. Privacy, ahh, must be nice — now unheard of for any female of reproductive age in this country. 

I dare say McConnell’s singular and most significant contribution to the downward spiral of American democracy is his engineering of the current composition of the U.S. Supreme Court, which made its first order of business decimating a constitutional right to privacy when it overturned Roe v. Wade. 

As for Kean, pro-choice groups uncovered a trove of deceptive statements about abortion he’s made over the course of his political career. Privacy, dignity, and control of one’s healthcare are similarly “me” and not “thee” rights.

[Another presumably missed vote by McConnell will be the confirmation of Todd Blanche as U.S. attorney general; Politico reported yesterday that Blanche was caught on tape pledging he would deploy the Justice Department in concert with Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration, and the White House to curtail abortion rights nationwide].

We all surely know that the dysfunction of our democracy means the likes of McConnell and Kean have little incentive to serve, let alone empathize with, their constituents. The way they’ve flouted decency and flaunted their respective leaves-of-absence proves it. 

With fewer than 100 days to go until the midterms, the moment is ripe to make a lesson out of these stories. That entails doing more than calling out the hypocrisy — bald-faced and infuriating as it is — but pointing toward real policies like paid sick (and parental) leave, access to healthcare, and reproductive freedom and dignity, all of which undergird the benefits in which they’ve basked. We all deserve the same.

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU School of Law. She also leads strategy and partnerships at Ms. Magazine.

---

The Contrarian is community-supported. Help fund bold journalism and critical lawsuits to stop Trump’s corruption by becoming a paid subscriber. Join the fight now.

 

Trump’s ‘thriving economy’ is a disaster.

Trump keeps insisting that the economy under his watch is the “greatest” ever, declaring during a trip to Michigan last week that “Michigan is thriving,” and “America is winning like never before.” This is batty. Last week, two doses of rotten economic news underscored how delusional Trump’s thinking is and provided evidence that Americans should not expect sunny economic times anytime soon.

First, “Mortgage rates jumped to their highest level in a year, dealing another blow to a long-stalled housing market that shows little sign of recovering,” the Wall Street Journal reported. 

“The 30-year fixed rate averaged 6.66% this week, up from 6.58% the week prior, according to Freddie Mac. That marked the fourth consecutive week of rising rates, as intensifying conflict in the Middle East pushed up inflation expectations and a divided Federal Reserve sowed doubt about the path of interest rates.”

Trump’s “sock puppet,” Federal Reserve Chairman Ken Warsh, who Trump moved heaven and earth to install (after firing and attempting to prosecute greatly respected former Fed chairman Jerome Powell) to obtain lower interest rates, not only has failed to deliver, but has triggered the opposite effect. Warsh spooked the markets after his appearance at the latest Federal Open Market Committee meeting, when he failed to convince investors that he is serious about fighting inflation.

Once more, Trump’s preference for sycophancy over merit or experience has come back to haunt him. 

“The verdict from one of the most closely read Fed watchers in the business was blunt. ‘Warsh didn’t convey the message clearly or explicitly, and the bond market puked on him,’” Wall Street Journal reporter Jon Hilsenrath wrote. “The evidence sat right there on the screen: the 30-year Treasury yield jumped as much as 14 basis points to nearly 5.23%, its highest level since 2007. A 19-year high, delivered in the hours after the chairman stepped down from the podium.”

Meanwhile, economic growth has slowed under Trump. 

“Gross domestic product, a broad measure of goods and services, increased just 1.5% for the April-through June period, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis numbers adjusted for seasonality and inflation,” CNBC reported. “Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a growth rate of 1.8%, following the 2.1% increase in the first quarter.” Separately, “the personal consumption expenditures price index, which is the Federal Reserve’s primary forecasting gauge, fell a seasonally adjusted 0.1% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 3.7%.”

Trump’s pathological narcissism — specifically, his insistence on surrounding himself with mediocre flunkies who refuse to challenge his delusional thinking, paired with his inability to admit error or accept any facts that reflect poorly on him — prevents him from taking any measures to change course. He will never acknowledge that his poor economic policies (exacerbated by his inflation-fueling war) have produced results far worse than his Democratic predecessors. 

Instead, he doubles down on the very things that create economic pain (tariffs, extending the war); insults voters by insisting their affordability crisis is fictional; and laughably blames former president Joe Biden, who has not been in office for more than 18 months and produced, on average, over 300,000 jobs per month.

No wonder Trump’s approval ratings have fallen off a cliff, hitting new lows in multiple surveys. 

In poll after poll, voters say Trump is not concerned about the right things. And who can blame them for thinking that Trump is not listening to their concerns, when he spends so much time spinning conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, obsessing over prosecuting enemies, raising prices by implementing new tariffs, making healthcare more expensive, and fixating on an unwinnable forever war that raises fuel prices and accomplishes nothing for the American people?

Republicans, who lack the nerve to challenge Trump’s self-destructive policies, will bear the burden in November of voters’ anger over an economic agenda that has been rubber-stamped. 

Rather than provide relief to millions who have lost healthcare coverage, or restore SNAP benefits to 4 million Americans (including 1 million children), their toadyism to Trump and the billionaire donor class has prompted them to throw tens of billions at rogue, murderous ICE storm troopers and an unprecedented $1.15 trillion on the Pentagon (which the Senate has blocked for now). 

As Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy put it, “This budget tells you everything you need to know about what the Republican Party really stands for: unlimited taxpayer dollars for war and handouts to billionaires, and not a penny left over to help the American families who can’t afford to buy groceries or fill up their gas tank.”

Trump’s unbridled corruption only heightens the accurate perception that Trump views the presidency as his personal money-making operation, the results for ordinary Americans be damned. In refusing to lift a finger to stop the orgy of self-enrichment, Republicans have aggravated the populist anger bubbling over nationwide.

Recall that the same interplay between economic malpractice and corruption spelled the end of Trump’s pal, former Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán earlier this year. As in Hungary, Americans are feeling both poor economic performance and revulsion over self-dealing. 

Voters understand that Trump is interested in maximizing his wealth (which he has boosted by more than $2B since returning to office), not improving family finances for the American people. 

By a stunning 49-19 percent margin (the outsized undecided tally likely reflects Republicans too browbeaten to admit their guy is a crook), Americans label Trump “corrupt.” Trump and his right-wing media enablers can no longer conceal the glaring contrast between ordinary Americans’ economic hardship and the unprecedented self-enrichment Trump and his oligarch pals are reaping.

In sum, Trump’s personal economy may be “thriving,” thanks to $2B in ill-gotten gains since returning to office, but Americans are not. 

Republicans have every reason to fear they will pay a political price for this rotten economic record, unmitigated corruption, misguided priorities, and gross incompetence. And they should. In ceding their constitutional obligations and becoming yes-men for a fetid, corrupt, and thoroughly incompetent president, they have proven themselves unworthy of voters’ trust. Voters’ only recourse will be to throw them out of office en masse in November.

-Jennifer Rubin, The Contrarian is community-supported. Help fund bold journalism and critical lawsuits to stop Trump’s corruption by becoming a paid subscriber. Join the fight now.

 

The Death of the Federal Firewall

The dismantling of privacy safeguards is an unprecedented consolidation of domestic surveillance power. In the quiet, behind-the-scenes machinery of American governance in Washington, D.C., there are few things as vital or central — or as invisible — to the average citizen as the firewall. For decades, strict legal and technical barriers have dictated how federal agencies handle our most private information.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) keeps your tax filings sealed from political appointees. The Social Security Administration (SSA) guards your life history, employment records, and benefit eligibility.

These data silos were designed with a clear, bipartisan intent: to prevent any presidential administration from weaponizing the massive apparatus of Americans’ data against the public or political opponents.

Today, those firewalls are being quietly dismantled.

Recent reporting from The Wall Street Journal revealed that the current head of the IRS and the Social Security Administration in the Trump administration built a track record in the private sector of breaching internal firewalls to spy on his own corporate colleagues.

When the leader of Trump’s IRS and SSA who has a habit of workplace spying comes to an administration dismantling personal privacy protections, every American should be alarmed. In truth, that history alone should raise immediate alarms about fitness for public office. But when placed within the broader context of current Trump White House policy, it signals something far more structural and dangerous.

Over the past 18 months, we’ve witnessed a systematic purging of senior career personnel across key civil agencies. These are the very administrators whose professional duty was to uphold regulatory standards and resist unlawful data sharing.

In their place, new initiatives under the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and Trump White House directives have aggressively pushed to interconnect agency databases, effectively eroding the barriers between federal privacy records.

Having served as deputy commissioner of Social Security in a previous administration, I know firsthand why these separations exist. The personal data held by the SSA and IRS covers virtually every living American. Combined, these records construct a near-complete blueprint of a citizen’s financial health, personal relationships, employment status, and physical location.

When you eliminate the technical and administrative firewalls separating these agency repositories, you create an unmonitored central registry. And when you place that centralized capability in the hands of political operatives with a documented willingness to cross privacy boundaries, you eliminate independent oversight entirely.

This isn’t merely an abstract debate over administrative procedure or bureaucratic efficiency. It is a fundamental shift in the relationship between the citizen and the state.

When personal data can be shared, aggregated, and scrutinized across agency lines without warrants, statutory authorization, or career civil service oversight, the potential for selective enforcement and political retaliation becomes an everyday reality.

A government that can effortlessly link your tax returns, benefit claims, and personal records can target anyone, anytime, for any reason.

The dismantling of federal privacy firewalls represents an unprecedented consolidation of domestic surveillance power. If the public and Congress fail to demand the immediate restoration of these statutory safeguards, the damage to civil liberties will outlast any single administration.

Jeff Nesbit was the deputy commissioner for communications at the Social Security Administration in the Biden-Harris administration.

---

-Jeff Nesbit, The Contrarian is community-supported. Help fund bold journalism and critical lawsuits to stop Trump’s corruption by becoming a paid subscriber. Join the fight now.

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

 

Democrats Stick It to Hegseth

 

Senate Democrats do not always shine when interrogating Trump regime flunkies at public hearings. But this week, a full court press at the Senate Armed Services Committee revealed the extent of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s dishonesty and incompetence. One after another, Senate Democrats skewered his disastrous mismanagement of an illegal, catastrophic war. Democrats pressed their advantage as we learned the Trump team has been lying about its military success.

“Iranian attacks on nine U.S. locations across the Middle East in the two weeks since the ceasefire broke down show that the country maintains an ability to inflict damage on precise targets, despite the Trump administration’s repeated claims that Iran’s military capabilities have been diminished or destroyed,” the New York Times reports. 

Hegseth testified during a week that Donald Trump reprehensibly claimed that dead service personnel supported his catastrophic war and disgusted millions of Americans by noting on social media that the 18 military deaths due to his fruitless war wasn’t nearly as high a count of fallen soldiers as other historic wars (including Vietnam). 

Meanwhile, the Trump crew maintained a tight lid on casualty statistics, lest Americans learn the extent of our unpreparedness and the accurate toll Trump’s folly has taken. Ranking member Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) was in top form at the Armed Services hearing: Reed noted that the Pentagon had spent years planning for a potential military campaign against Iran — and that any such plan would have assumed the strait could be closed.

“Were you unaware of that?” Reed asked. Hegseth did not dispute it. Of course, the Strait of Hormuz was front and center in every single aspect of that,” Hegseth replied before defecting by attacking the Biden administration. “We had U.S. boats that surrendered to Iranian ships under the Biden administration,” the defense secretary argued.

“Listen, we’re talking about the war you started,” Reed said, cutting him off. “Not a situation in which oil was flowing freely,” he continued. “There was no conflict. We weren’t losing personnel as a result of Iranian actions. So, your fallback to the Biden administration is just a very, very obvious excuse for what I think is probably — as you described so often — gross negligence.”

“You did not fully inform the president that you would be in a situation where the Strait of Hormuz could be effectively closed, oil prices could surge, and effectively, the Iranians could maintain their ability to strike back as they are right now. They just killed some of our servicemen last weekend.”

When Hegseth resorted to slobbering praise of Donald Trump, Reed interjected: “Excuse me,” Reed replied. “He should be praised for starting a war without authority, creating a situation in which the world economy is suffering tremendously [?] We have to have extra money for our farmers, and we have no outcome — at least no realistic outcome — in sight yet.”

As we have come to expect, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) was devastating in his takedown of Hegseth. Ossoff repeatedly used Hegseth’s own baseless bravado to reveal he had grossly exaggerated about our military accomplishments (e.g., destroying Iran’s missile program):

Ossoff demolishes Hegseth -- then Hegseth has an epic crash out Sen. Jon Ossoff used Hegseth's premature declarations of victory against him during his Senate testimony, repeatedly reading back statements Hegseth made in March and April about Iran's military being "destroyed"

That helped set the stage for Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), who lambasted Hegseth. “You, sir, are the failure. Not the men and women who are on that front line. Not the men and women who hold up their honor with distinction. But if there’s a lack of a winning strategy, they’re in harm’s way. Their leaders have failed them.” Peters continued, “You don’t have a strategy. You don’t have a long-term plan to actually win this war.”

Democrats also didn’t hesitate when going after Hegseth for making an exorbitant funding request. Underscoring the $37.5B the Pentagon burned through on a senseless war, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) demanded to know: “At what point do you stop asking Americans to foot the bill for a war they don’t support, on top of an inflated budget request and billions in reconciliation funds that you still haven’t spent?”

Hegseth, unsurprisingly, was out of his depth and lacked any cogent answers. When he tried to filibuster with a canned Islamophobic rant, Shaheen was ready: “I don’t want to hear your speech because I have limited time. So, if you can’t answer my question, then I will move on to my next question.”

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) also pressed Hegseth on the funding issue, pointing to Americans’ fury at spending billions on a war they never wanted rather than on critical items they desperately need. “You are asking for unlimited money for bombs when people can’t feed their families, and I don’t know how this administration intends to defend those decisions to the American people,” she said. She also blasted his conflicting claims:

“We just don’t know which version of the war to believe,” she observed. Democrats’ persistence seemed to shame at least one Republican into pressing Hegseth for real answers. When Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Dan Caine danced around questions about Iran’s nuclear capabilities, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) couldn’t conceal his frustration:

HEGSETH: This is a regime hell-bent on nuclear ambitions. And...

JOHN KENNEDY: Guys...

HEGSETH: President Trump’s...

KENNEDY: We need straight answers.

HEGSETH: ...Been willing to go after this.

KENNEDY: We need straight answers.

Frankly, Democrats should demand straight answers from Kennedy and his Republican colleagues: Was it a mistake to confirm Hegseth, an abjectly unfit nominee? Why didn’t they demand his removal after Signalgate? Why have they allowed Hegseth to repeat obvious lies without consequences? Why are they not demanding his resignation now?

On Wednesday, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) appeared on PBS and summed up the situation. “We have provided billions of dollars to this Defense Department. The fact is that Hegseth has not managed it well, and this administration has taken us into a war that has no strategy,” she said. “It has no justification. 

It has no exit strategy. And now they are asking us, the taxpayers, through Congress to spend literally billions of more of our taxpayer dollars.” She added, “It is hurting our military readiness. It is misusing our defense spending and our troops who are fighting for us, and it is hurting Americans’ pocketbook in many ways.”

She also let Hegseth have it for blaming Joe Biden, who left office more than 18 months ago. “Hegseth’s … in fact, many of the Cabinet members’ go-to responses if they don’t have a good response, blame Biden,” she said.

“Look, Biden did not get us into this war. Trump and Hegseth started this war, and they refuse to take responsibility for it. I find that appalling.”

In sum, undaunted Senate Democrats on the Armed Services Committee demonstrated unwavering and unrelenting grilling of Trump’s grossly unfit flunkies, effectively revealing the extent of their unfitness — and the degree of culpability that Trump’s congressional enablers bear for serial, catastrophic failures. In the case of Iran, they must continue to hold the Trump regime and its Republican collaborators responsible for the rising death toll, soaring costs, and diplomatic/geopolitical disaster unfolding before our eyes.

The Contrarian is community-supported. Help fund bold journalism and critical lawsuits to stop Trump’s corruption by becoming a paid subscriber. Join the fight now.

 

Democrats Cannot Blow It in 2028!

 

As the only pro-democracy national political party, the Democrats have the awesome responsibility of selecting a 2028 presidential ticket that can win the election convincingly, rescue the White House and executive branch from the most noxious and destructive regime in history, and forge a path to restore and bolster our democracy.

While a winning presidential ticket can certainly emerge from a chaotic, poorly designed nominating process and, conversely, a losing ticket can certainly emerge from a pristine nominating system, Democratic Party members and those concerned about the fate of our nation must maximize chances of winning by a non-contestable majority. Putting in place a coherent system of governance that does not create its own headaches officially begins this week.

“Members of the Democratic National Committee’s rules and bylaws committee are meeting at the Salamander Hotel on Thursday and Friday to recommend which states should ‘receive waivers to hold early nominating contests,’” The Hill reported. States that do not follow the calendar will lose all delegates and face a stiff $270,000 fine.

Twelve states divided among four regions (East, West, South, Midwest) are vying for 4-5 spots that would get the early position in the weeks before Super Tuesday. Whatever the Rules and Bylaws Committee decides, its decision will require approval by the full DNC in August.

Governors and U.S. senators whose names are already part of the 2028 buzz (Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock), 2020 winners in the early state contenders, and favorite sons (e.g., Pete Buttigieg, who won Iowa in 2020 and now resides in Michigan) would certainly like their states in the mix. 

However, for that very reason, the likelihood that the DNC picks a state that favors one or more obvious contenders reduces the likelihood that the state will get an early position. States with diverse electorates — such as South and North Carolina, Nevada, or New Mexico — that do not obviously favor one or more specific contenders will certainly be favored to snag a spot in the pre-Super Tuesday lineup.

“As the DNC considers its presidential primary calendar, it’s important that they build a calendar that allows the party and the candidates to hear from a broad cross-section of Americans, because listening to voters and understanding and responding to the issues that matter to them is essential to victory,” Lavora Barnes, the former Democratic chair of Michigan, told me. “This is why states with populations that look like all of America should be prioritized.”

Democrats should also look beyond the specific early primary states chosen. Zero energy should be expended trying to dissuade various candidates not to run. Having the largest, most robust debate at the start makes it less likely any segment of the electorate will feel disenfranchised or ignored. Who cares if you think Kamala Harris will never win (Turn the page! She had her shot!) or that no one outside the legacy media pays attention to Rahm Emanuel. 

Let them run; the voters will sort it out. What is clear is that even if they were to weigh in, party elders (or those purported to know what the electorate will want in 2 and a half years, or crotchety moderates who incorrectly foresaw disaster if Zohran Mamdani ran for office, or a sliver of the electorate that lives on Bluesky) carry no weight with voters.

The staid format of debates, especially the trite podium line-up of a dozen or more candidates ready to chime in with canned responses, also does not serve voters well. Rather than promoting nasty soundbites or reducing candidates to playing pundit (What makes you think you can win?), Democrats would be smart to innovate with different formats, special topics, subgroups of candidates, and nontraditional moderators. (I would love to hear Heather Cox Richardson ask candidates about their vision of American democracy or Paul Krugman discuss economic inequality with candidates in a small roundtable setting).

Allowing billionaire or corporate-owned legacy media — which has enabled Trump and evidenced scant understanding of the existential threat to democracy we face — moderate debates is foolish in the extreme. “They forced Democrats [in 2020] to distinguish themselves from each other on questions that there’s no hope of actually being able to accomplish in the short term, like Medicare for all,” Michael Podhorzer, former AFL-CIO political director and progressive political analyst, told me. That just forced Democrats to “exaggerate their differences.” 

Left to their own devices in 2027--2028, those same media figures will almost certainly “want to create internecine battles over issues of less relevance to most voters,” Podhorzer explained, leaving some candidates racing to take sides with Republicans (to prove their “moderate” bona fides) and leaving everyone aggrieved over issues of little import. Democrats should pledge not to repeat that experience.

There are enough journalistic refugees from legacy media, highly skilled independent media interviewers, and engaging think-tank gurus to sideline the corporate media crowd, thereby giving candidates room to shine while helping to rejigger the media landscape to benefit pro-democracy forces.

Finally, voters, activists, and engaged pundits really should drop the entire subject of “electability.” No one knows. Donald Trump has won twice, Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York, and countless incumbents lost in primaries. Trying to game out in advance which candidates will match up well against a yet-to-be-determined Republican nominee on issues not remotely clear years in advance is entirely pointless.

It makes for lazy punditry, but worse, it promotes an ‘if the other guy wins, we are doomed’ or ‘we cannot win unless my gal wins’ mentality, which is intellectually dishonest and the last thing a big tent party charged with building a giant coalition needs.

In sum, as the first stages of officially constructing the 2028 presidential primary process get underway this week, the stakes will be astronomically high for the DNC, party activists, candidates, and voters. However, by abiding by the political equivalent of the Hippocratic Oath (don’t make the primary system the province of a tiny number of overwhelmingly white states, don’t chase people out of the race, don’t let legacy media run the show, don’t fall into the “electability” trap), Democrats can avoid some of the pitfalls of past election cycles. 

Above all, the greater pro-democracy coalition must remember that — whenever the nominee is chosen — past grievances must be put aside. Our democracy’s future depends upon it.

-Jennifer Rubin, The Contrarian is community-supported. Help fund bold journalism and critical lawsuits to stop Trump’s corruption by becoming a paid subscriber. Join the fight now.

 

Trump’s Speech About 2020 Proved He Was a Loser — and Still Is

Thursday night’s self-ballyhooed presidential address was the same old Donald Trump. Six years on, he still refuses to accept the clear and unambiguous fact that he lost the 2020 election. Thursday’s speech was the same desperate claims — this time from the East Room in the White House. No wonder almost every respectable network refused to carry it, with CBS — now owned by his enablers the Ellisons — a notable exception.

Pay close attention: Trump didn’t claim that there was any actual interference in voting or election results. At no point did Trump say or point to any evidence that a single vote was changed or altered. Indeed, even White House conspiracy theorist John Solomon admitted as much to reporters afterwards. That’s because it did not happen. Audits, recounts, certifications, federal investigations, and more than 80 judges, including those appointed by Trump himself, have all uniformly rejected his attacks on the 2020 election. What we got instead on Thursday was a rehash of four myths, all of which fall apart on close examination.

Myth #1: Purported Vulnerabilities in Electronic Voting and Ballot-Counting Systems

Trump spoke broadly about vulnerabilities in voting machines, but he did not say there is evidence that voting machines or votes were breached. And that’s because they weren’t. He wants to scare you with the hypothetical, but truth is that our election officials put safeguards in place to minimize any vulnerabilities. Their dedicated work and vigilance ensure our elections work as intended, protected from technological exploitation.

Myth #2: China’s Acquisition of American Voter Data

This is a scare tactic. Trump made wild claims about the compromise of election data, but let’s be clear: He did not say that votes were exploited or compromised. The voter registration data he is in a twist about actually consists of basic and publicly available data such as names and addresses — far less personal information than what the average American shares when ordering clothes on Temu.

Myth #3: Michigan Voter-Registration Investigation

Again, there was zero evidence of voting fraud here. Trump didn’t point to any and can’t. Though there were isolated cases of irregularities in registration, local election officials flagged them in real time. Our elections systems worked as intended to unearth them. This is a backhanded endorsement, not a critique.

Myth #4: Noncitizens on State Voter Rolls

Trump has made these wild claims of folks improperly registering over and over again using baseless allegations and wrong lists, such as the error-ridden and oft-abused Department of Homeland Security SAVE databases. The truth is that Americans follow voter registration laws and cast ballots in good faith, as we documented in our Democracy Defenders Action report with LULAC on The Big Lie.

Then there was the avalanche of documents Trump said would prove him right. They did just the opposite. For example, they show Russia, not China, was working to interfere in the 2020 election — to help Trump! If all of this is the best he and the election deniers have, they are in trouble.

Thursday was a flop — a predictable one. One of us (Norm) was asked by cable TV to do a curtain raiser for the speech. The forecast was for a comically loony mishmash along the lines of other famous conspiracy theories, and boy did Trump deliver.

Trump lost in 2020. This will remain true no matter how many pieces of bogus evidence he invents or floats. The truth is Trump and his fellow election deniers are not just trying to prove bizarre counterfactuals about prior elections. They’re trying to fool us into doubting the next one... 

More from The Contrarian: Department of Injustice

Trump’s Cronyism Signals a Chilling — and Familiar — Story

Brian Tyler Cohen analyzed how Trump’s corruption is following an all-too-familiar global playbook — Putin’s — and what we need to do to step out of Russia’s post-Soviet footsteps. “If the next Democratic administration doesn’t take note and prosecute the criminals of today to the fullest extent of the law, then that criminality is doomed to repeat itself.”

The Tea ft. Alphonso David

Global Black Economic Forum President Alphonso David joined April Ryan to talk about Lindsey Graham’s Senate replacement, Trump’s renewed attacks on Georgia’s senators, and what a Todd Blanche DOJ would mean for minority and underserved communities.

Trump DOJ’s NYT Subpoenas Are the Latest Encroachment on Press Freedom

Josh Levs wrote on the latest moves of an administration actively hostile to a free press and how coverage has fallen short by ignoring the history of reporter subpoenas. “It’s crucial information because it shows the media’s successful track record in fighting back.”

Trump’s Lawyers Should Be Sanctioned

Erwin Chemerinsky argued — apropos of a federal judge shutting down Trump’s outrageous IRS lawsuit this week — that all lawyers complicit in Trump’s abuses of power should expect repercussions for egregious misconduct. “Abuses of the legal system, even at the direction of the president, are unacceptable.” […].

-Norman Eisen and Sarah Jackel, The Contrarian

 

Academic Freedom Advocates Stand Up at Yale: Democracy does not defend itself

It is all too common, as Anne Applebaum wrote of Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, for a Republican politician to “abandon his previous ideals, to bury the patriotism that was once so important to him, and to become, instead, a loud, opportunistic collaborator.” We have seen a horde of figures in civil society make their Faustian bargain with Donald Trump and his authoritarian, white supremacist regime. However, for those in positions of responsibility in academe, Big Law, media, and business, there is an alternative to slavish careerism and unbridled ambition to climb the inner rungs of power.

Even when elite institutions appear ready to buckle, individuals and groups with modest financial resources and limited legal protections have proven that they can stand up — at great risk to themselves— and shame the accommodationists, thereby slowing the rush to collaborate with a tyrannical regime. 

The contrast between feeble ingratiators and principled dissenters has been especially vivid in the realm of higher education. Harvard, Penn, and a batch of elite universities have compromised academic independence and thrown diversity under the bus to ward off Trump regime threats to slash funding by signing off on agreements that compromise academic independence, allow government oversight, forfeit efforts to recruit a diverse student population, and cede protection for vulnerable LBGTQ+ students.

These sorts of agreements, which have been imposed at Penn and the University of Virginia, have been roundly condemned for abrogating First Amendment rights and academic freedom, two cornerstones of our democracy. “These agreements are vague, contradictory and contain unlawful terms that subject universities to ongoing legal jeopardy,” wrote two Yale alums currently teaching at Penn. “For example, following Virginia’s policy could imperil Yale’s laudable efforts to expand access to low-income and first-generation college students.” 

Some of these extortionist deals have limited foreign student enrollment and forced schools to discriminate against trans students. They’ve also opened a Pandora’s box of ongoing litigation. “Provisions that conflict with the law and with one another expose institutions to liability from all directions. Also, the use of vague terms such as DEI, gender ideology, and domestic terrorism bolsters executive discretion and invites overcompliance.”

Last month, we learned that the Trump regime was “conducting a far-reaching investigation into whether Yale University’s admissions practices violate anti-discrimination laws, prompting one of the country’s most elite schools to pursue settlement talks with the government,” the New York Times reported. 

The Justice Department, as it has time and again, has speciously claimed that efforts to expand diversity amount to illegal discrimination. In this case, DOJ is not only attempting to bully the medical school (the focus of its original allegations of “illegal preferential treatment to Black and Hispanic applicants”), but also the law school and undergraduate programs. Not everyone at Yale, however, has been willing to roll over and play dead.

Yale Law School (Credit: CHUYN)

Fortunately, Yale’s law school dean and other faculty are leading the charge against the latest infringement on academic freedom and the crusade against diversity. “The dean, Cristina M. Rodríguez, and a group of law school faculty members have quietly lobbied top Yale leaders in recent days, arguing that the Trump administration cannot be trusted, and that settling would threaten the rule of law and the university’s reputation,” the New York Times reported. “They have even explored whether the law school could be excluded from any settlement with the federal government. Students, faculty, and alumni have been openly pressuring Yale President Maurie McInnis,” a sign that Rodríguez has a reservoir of support.

In an insightful interview with the Yale Daily News, Yale alum and former FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter (whom MAGA Supreme Court justices ruled that the president had unlimited power to fire without cause), reminded the Yale community that “it cannot be that I, Becca, normal human, had the wherewithal to challenge something that was wrong and an abuse of power, and Yale — with its $44 billion endowment — does not.” She acknowledged, “It’s not fun to push back — it’s much nicer to sort of think about how to walk away or make it go away in the short term — but it’s so much better in the long term to stand on principle,” adding that “especially as an academic institution, I think Yale has an incredible obligation to do that, and that obligation is to its students, to its alumni, to its faculty, to its employees, to its partners.”

Courage may prove contagious at Yale, where an array of groups — including the Yale College Council, Yale College Democrats, the Yale chapter of the American Association of University Professors, and an alumni group “Stand Up for Yale” — have mobilized to put the kibosh on capitulation. Yale’s chapter of AAUP put out a letter declaring, “The choice before Yale is not simply whether to settle one investigation. It is whether to participate in a broader campaign to turn civil rights enforcement into a mechanism of political control.”

On Friday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) spoke at Yale alongside Yale students, alums, professors, and Mayor Justin Elicker to push back against collaboration. “We’re at a legacy-defining moment,” Blumenthal said. “Yale will be regarded either as a beacon and a fighter for academic freedom or as the weakling who succumbed and obeyed.”

Whether defenders of academic freedom can prevail at Yale or not, the concerted effort to object to spineless capitulation and force institutional elites to justify their actions is critical in the fight for democracy, preservation of First Amendment rights, and defense of civil society. When elites learn that capitulation will spark fierce criticism and exact lasting personal and institutional cost, they are much less likely to engage in Quisling behavior and more inclined, however reluctantly, to resist authoritarian intimidation.

As the Trump administration and its MAGA enablers now face frequent legal setbacks and edge closer to a potentially devastating midterm election, it is especially critical for democracy advocates to hold the line, refuse to give away precious democratic ground, and deny the Trump crowd any easy wins. Now, more than ever, it is time for Yale, higher education, and civil society as a whole to keep their nerve and refuse to voluntarily concede critical freedoms to a faltering fascist regime growing more desperate by the day to cling to power.

-Jennifer Rubin, The Contrarian is community-supported. Help fund bold journalism and critical lawsuits to stop Trump’s corruption by becoming a paid subscriber. Join the fight now.

 

Confirming Blanche Might Finish Off Republicans’ Careers

 

Senate Republicans who vote to confirm Todd Blanche for attorney general should take heed: They will be haunted for the rest of their careers (some of which may very well end with the midterms) by the courageous survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s monstrous crimes.

CNN reported that last week 19 Epstein victims “responded to The New York Times’s reporting that Blanche and other senior officials participated in Situation Room meetings to discuss how to respond to growing pressure for more transparency as the issue became a public relations crisis for the administration.” The survivors’ statement read in part:

"We are deeply disturbed to learn that so many senior members of the administration gathered in the Situation Room to discuss the release of the Epstein files as a reputational problem, rather than an opportunity to pursue investigative leads and try to figure out what actually happened."

The reporting, they said, only confirmed their “worst fears about the administration prioritizing political expediency over justice for survivors and truth for the American people.” And they blasted Blanche, who “has consistently minimized legitimate concerns about how the files have been handled, including problematic redactions and the exposure of survivors’ personal information.” They concluded that he “failed to deliver transparency, and he has gravely failed survivors.” (Their jab that promoting him to AG would “failing upward, plain and simple” aptly describes the Trump DEI program for elevating unqualified, ethically deficient white males to top posts.)

Even before Blanche’s nomination, Republicans were under siege for their handling of the Epstein files. But Trump’s nomination of Blanche amounts to a gratuitous slam at Epstein victims, puts the issue back in the news, and forces Republicans (many past the primary season) to decide: Save their own careers or promote Blanche?

The perpetually concerned but never courageous Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) is infamous for Trump-friendly votes when it matters (e.g., acquitting Donald Trump in the first impeachment trial; confirming obvious opponents of Roe v. Wade for the Supreme Court; sending the big, ugly bill to the floor when she could have stopped it in its tracks). She has been at her most spineless in rubber-stamping unfit, unqualified, and morally decrepit Cabinet members such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Health and Human Services secretary, Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence, and Pam Bondi for attorney general. Would Collins now double down and confirm yet another Trump stooge over the objections of Epstein survivors?

Surely, even she understands that a vote to confirm Epstein victims’ nemesis could be a career-ender. If “character” is what Republicans want to talk about in Maine, Democrats may be more than willing to engage. (Indeed, Democratic Senate nominee Graham Platner wasted no time last week making an issue of Republicans’ support for the “Epstein class.”)

Collins’ biggest problem may be finding enough colleagues willing to take the heat for voting to confirm Blanche so she can duck (i.e. vote no without imperiling Blanche and incurring Trump’s and MAGA’s wrath). Consider Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio), the governor- appointed replacement for now-Vice President JD Vance. It would be wholly foolhardy for him to ignore the Epstein abuse victims’ pleas.

Former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) already has put out ads against Husted pointing to Husted’s receipt of six-figure donations from the infamous Ohio billionaire and Republican donor Les Wexner, who hired Epstein as a financial adviser and was named in an FBI email as “co-conspirator” in Epstein’s sex trafficking crimes. (Husted has tried to muddy the waters by fishing around for names in the files who wound up giving to Brown, but, as fact checkers have noted, “[n]one of the donors the Husted campaign identified has been charged with a crime related to Epstein, nor has any been identified as a co-conspirator.”)

Blanche puts Husted on the hot seat: Should he support the Epstein cover-up architect for attorney general when no reasonable voter would believe Blanche is anything but a Trump stooge willing to perpetuate the heinous coverup? Husted could well conclude a “yes” vote for Blanche would doom his already-shaky campaign.

Likewise in Alaska, Blanche’s confirmation fight could very well aggravate Republican Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan’s own problems with the Epstein cover-up. Sullivan last September joined other Republicans (including Husted and Collins) in blocking a vote (on defense authorization) aimed at forcing release of the files.

As a local Alaska journalist at the time noted, Sullivan blithely declared in a constituent letter, “I trust [!?!] the Department of Justice to carefully consider the release of relevant materials, while simultaneously ensuring that Epstein’s victims remain protected and that legal protocols are upheld.” As absurd as his faith in the Department of Justice was back then, a vote now for the man who thwarted the law and obstructed the release of the files would cement Sullivan’s image that he is Trump rubber stamp who would throw victims under the bus to keep his job.

Finally, even though Texas Sen. John Cornyn will not be on the ballot, Blanche’s confirmation fight is already roiling the race of the man who defeated him, MAGA extremist and scandal-plagued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. (Cornyn should consider if he wants one of his last important votes in the Senate to be a tip of the hat to Blanche and a kick in the teeth of Epstein’s victims.)

Houston’s Chron. reported on the ongoing fallout from Paxton’s sweetheart plea deal with Adam Hoffman, who was tried for first-degree sexual abuse of a child. (Seriously, what is it with Republicans cutting deals with accused pedophiles?) Democratic nominee James Talarico emailed the paper: “Adam Hoffman—an admitted child molester—just became a registered sex offender in Nebraska but still doesn’t have to register in Texas because Ken Paxton gave him an Epstein-style sweetheart deal.” Talarico continued: “Hoffmann was supposed to serve 25 years to life, but today he walks free after the most corrupt politician in America put the well-being of pedophiles over the safety of Texas children.”

Yikes. Talarico’s argument (“Does America really need someone who authored his own ‘Epstein-style sweetheart deals‘roaming the halls of Congress”) may hit home even in deep-red Texas. No wonder Republicans would rather talk about veganism and transgender kids; perhaps supporting pedophiles’ victims is a better way to measure masculine virtue.

In short, by insisting on nominating Blanche — already under fire for masterminding the coverup, botching the files’ redaction, and conducting a nefarious interview with Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell — Trump has again handed Democrats a club to pommel Republicans who cannot resist Trump’s outrageous demands. If cowardly Senate Republicans vote to install Blanche to run DOJ, many voters may well conclude it is time to throw Republican senators out en masse. At some point, all Americans must decide whether to stand with the Epstein and his enablers or with his victims.

---

The Contrarian is community-supported. Help fund bold journalism and critical lawsuits to stop Trump’s corruption by becoming a paid subscriber. Join the fight now.