Donald Trump broken promise to erase the unsustainable federal debt but guess what? It just hit $40 trillion. OMG

In 2016, Trump pledged to erase the federal debt. It just hit $40tn
Echo article published in The Guardian by Steven Greenhouse.

The trillion💲 in tax cuts going to the rich and corporations could have instead been used to address the affordability crisis.

Dear reader, I recognize that your eyes might glaze over at any mention of the nation’s $40tn federal debt. But your reaction to this mind-boggling number shouldn’t be ennui; it should be outrage and dismay.

Outrage is in order because the nation’s debt has climbed to more than $40tn under Donald Trump, even though back in 2016, when the debt was less than half what it is today, candidate Trump insisted that he’d totally eliminate the debt within eight years. That was yet another example of the Demagogue-in-Chief’s willingness to say anything, no matter how insincere or untrue, to woo voters.


Not only has Trump failed to reduce the debt, he has spectacularly increased it. Take Trump’s “big, beautiful (hideous❗) bill” and the huge tax cuts it lavished upon the very rich and corporations. 

That legislation is expected to increase the nation’s debt by a whopping $3.4tn over the next decade. Worse, during Trump’s time as president, including his first term, the federal debt has climbed by a colossal $11.6tn.
Outrage is also in order because the trillions in tax 💲cuts going to the rich and corporations could have instead been used to address the affordability crisis that is squeezing so many Americans.
Those trillion💲 could have gone to creating more affordable childcare for every family or increasing subsidies to hold down soaring healthcare premiums or expanding government aid to make college more affordable.

Trump’s tax cuts for the rich and the $40tn debt have worsened the affordability crisis in one important and painful way. They have helped push up long-term interest rates to their highest level in nearly two decades, and that has pushed up mortgage rates, too. The unhappy result: housing has become less affordable, when housing affordability has already been a big problem for young Americans. Higher mortgage rates often mean that homebuyers have to pay several hundred dollars more in interest each month.

Interest rates have climbed not only because investors are dismayed that the national debt has hit a record, but also because Trump’s tariffs and war against Iran have fueled inflation and because investors are unsettled by all the chaos Trump has created at home and abroad.

Outrage is also called for because of the way Trump and his Republican yes-men in the Congress jumped to enact giant tax cuts when their super-wealthy donors and friends said jump. In a move that shows how rigged the system is, Trump and the GOP legislated these tax cuts for the rich and corporations even though the wealthy and corporations were already doing perfectly well and would continue doing just fine, with their mansions, yachts and private jets, even without those tax cuts. Of the $4.4tn in tax cuts in the “big, beautiful (hideous❗) bill”, nearly half go to the richest 5% of Americans.

If any further evidence is needed to show how the Republicans in Congress have sold their souls to billionaire💲, millionaires and corporations, the increased debt caused by the big, unbeautiful (hideous❗) bill’s tax cuts will be a burden on our children and grandchildren for decades to come. 

By the mid-2030s, the nation will have to pay more than $2tn in interest payments each year to finance the federal debt. That’s double the $1tn a year we are paying now – $1tn is slightly less than what the government spends on Medicare, is higher than this year’s Pentagon budget and is more than five times what the federal government spends on education each year.

All this is maddening for another reason. In recent decades, Republicans held themselves out as the party of “fiscal responsibility”. But they’ve really become the party of fiscal irresponsibility. During George W Bush’s two terms, with his tax cuts tilted toward the wealthy and his expensive, ill-fated war against Iraq, the federal debt ballooned by 85% (by $4.9tn). In Trump’s first term, the debt soared by $7.8tn (a 39% increase), stemming from his initial big tax cuts for the rich as well as increased Pentagon spending – and then there was more than $2tn in emergency spending to stabilize the economy during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic.

During Trump’s second term, the debt is likely to soar by nearly $8tn once again. Trump is pushing for a record $1.5tn annual defense budget, far higher than any previous year, even though it will send our country’s debt further into the stratosphere. Some of that money will go to redesigning aircraft carriers merely because Trump dislikes how the current ones look.

Bill Clinton was the last president to have an annual budget surplus, but Democratic presidents have also pushed up the federal debt. During Biden’s four years as president, the debt rose $8.4tn, partly because of the annual budget deficits he inherited from Trump and partly because of his $2tn-plus pandemic-era emergency spending package to stabilize families’ finances and ensure the US didn’t sink into a deep economic downturn.

The federal debt has grown even larger than the country’s overall gross domestic product. Indeed, the ratio of the debt to GDP will soon be higher than the record 106% where it stood when the second world war ended. Franklin D Roosevelt ran up huge debts for an urgent reason: to defeat Nazi Germany and its allies. In sharp contrast, under Trump, the US is running big deficits, of approximately $2tn a year, for the opposite of urgent reasons: to finance a disastrous war in Iran and to give big tax giveaways to two powerful groups that were already prospering, eg the ultra-wealthy and corporations.

It would be a very different thing if Trump were borrowing money to build a better future, as people do to build a new house or pay for college. But Trump is not jacking up the country’s debt to improve our future; he’s not spending to improve education, childcare or our country’s infrastructure or to fix the housing crisis.

I am not a fiscal conservative and nor are many Democrats, but it is a real concern that for the first time in US history, other countries and many investors seem truly worried about the record size of the federal debt. Those worries have spooked financial markets and pushed up interest rates.

As the midterm elections heat up, the Democrats should attack Trump and the Republicans over the huge, fast-growing federal debt. Democrats need to make clear that Republicans have become the party of fiscal irresponsibility.

We can agree that the $40tn debt isn’t a sexy issue, but the Democrats can and should turn it into a hard-hitting and winning campaign issue that they can use to hammer Trump and the Republicans, along with the affordability crisis and Trump’s calamitous war against Iran.

Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author.

Donald Trump endorsement puts maga cult candidates at risk of being political losers

Trump’s Grip on the GOP Slips Again With Tennessee Loss
Echo report published in the New York Magazine Intelligencer by Ed Kilgore.

Nothing in politics, not even Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican Party cult, is eternally unshakable. 

In fact, the 47th Trump has had some embarrassing high-profile setbacks in gubernatorial primaries earlier this year, including losses by his endorsed candidates in Iowa, Georgia, and South Carolina. Now he’s suffered his first 2026, loss in a congressional primary: 

Hard-core MAGA ultra and flamboyant Islamophobe Andy Ogles lost to former state agriculture commissioner Charlie Hatcher in Tennessee last night. 

As in the earlier contests lost by Team Trump, the winner naturally asserts he will be a stronger supporter of the Boss than the loser he dispatched. But it does add up to a growing tendency of MAGA-esque Republicans to disregard Trump’s actual preferences. (Ya' Think❓🤔)

Ogles is a two-term House Freedom Caucus militant who has been a trouble magnet in Washington. He’s had a campaign finance scandal and an inflated-résumé scandal, but he is probably best known for smearing Muslims, notably New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, whom Ogles wants to deport. Then again, there are lots of Muslims Ogles would like to deport: Ogles’s demise, however, was partially a by-product of Trump-supported GOP hubris: the gerrymander the Tennessee legislature carried out in May when the U.S. Supreme Court signaled the destruction of Voting Rights Act restraints in Louisiana v. Callais.  Also, the remapping was mostly designed to kill off the state’s one majority-Black congressional district, but the ripple effect was to expose Ogles to a lot of unfamiliar territory and voters. Just as importantly, though, Trump’s backing did not inhibit other leading Tennessee Republicans (notably Governor Bill Lee and former governor Bill Haslam) from supporting Hatcher, who outspent and out-hustled the incumbent. 

Additionally, Hatcher got some unacknowledged help from clean-energy interests who went after Ogles for his obnoxious record on environmental issues.

Trump and Muslim haters weren’t the only people disappointed by the outcome in Tennessee; Democrats were hoping to place the district in play in November behind Columbia mayor Chaz Molder. The stolid Hatcher will be a tougher opponent than the erratic Ogles.

Donald Trump did have one big win in Tennessee yesterday, when U.S. senator Marsha Blackburn turned back two rivals to become the GOP nominee for governor (Lee is term-limited). 

Blackburn, (aka "Medusa Blackie") however, should be grateful Tennessee is the rare southern state without primary-runoff requirements; she won only 43 percent of the vote against John Rose and Monty Fritts. Blackburn’s onetime antagonist Taylor Swift hasn’t publicly commented on the outcome.

Senator Susan Collins has caused financial harm to Maine because her vote to support the Big Ugly bill cut health care for thousands)

COLLINS’S PORK BARREL BALANCE SHEET DOESN’T ADD UP - ….and besides, it’s just more deficit spending

(Op-ed in the Press Herald) Maine can’t afford Senator Susan Collins’ earmarks: The numbers and the reality on the ground don’t lie. 

Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins

Wayne Clark, of Durham, is an eighth-generation Mainer, a retired public relations and marketing executive and author of The Blue Yankee on Substack.

Sen. Susan Collins keeps reminding us how much money she brings into Maine. That money comes from congressional “earmarks” (sometimes known as “pork”). She says she has brought in $1.5 billion over the past five years.

There’s another side to the ledger, though: how much has Sen. Collins’ subservience to Donald Trump and the GOP cost Maine?
Collins (and to be fair most of her colleagues) did not lift a finger to stop DOGE, 😡illegal tariffs, illegal wars, deteriorating foreign relations and the One Big Beautiful (Ugly❗) Bill Act. Nor has she tried to rein in Trump. Can we afford the cost of her votes and inaction❓ First, let’s do a numbers check.

Collins brought in 💲200 million worth of pork in 2022, $308 million in 2023, 💲576 million in 2024, 💲0 in 2025 (no earmarks for anyone that year due to the continuing resolution) and 💲428.6 million in 2026. So, the average per year over the past five years is roughly 💲302 million. Against that 💲302 million number, let’s look at how much Collins’ and Congress’ inaction and obedience to Trump has cost Mainers.

The Maine Center for Economic Policy reports that the total tariffs collected by Trump in the first year equal about 💲1,100 per household. In Maine, that translates to a total of 💲677 million. And that’s just one year. Most of that has been paid by Mainers in the form of higher prices.

The budget bill imposed new work requirements on Medicaid recipients (even though most already work). Maine DHHS estimates that 30,000 Mainers are expected to lose coverage in the first year alone because they can’t navigate the reporting requirements. Just administering the work requirement paperwork will cost Maine $8 million in year one, and 💲5.5 million per year thereafter.
Trump and the GOP declined to extend the tax subsidies that made coverage under the Affordable Care Act actually affordable for many people. A report from Defend America Action says that Mainers who buy health insurance through the ACA exchange will see their coverage costs for next year increase as much as 💲900 per month.
The budget bill adds a work requirement to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and reduces the federal contribution to the costs of running the program. Total loss of money to Maine❓= 💲145 million per year.
Those people who are losing Medicaid covera(ge and many of the ones losing their ACA subsidies will be uninsured. That hits our hospitals: the loss of coverage will cost Maine hospitals 💲66 million per year, and free care is expected to go up by 💲86 million per year by 2034.

Canadian tourism is down (-) 40％, as a result of tariffs and Trump’s insulting behavior toward Canada. In 2024, Canadians spent about $500 million in Maine. So that means Trump and the Congress that let him get away with tariffs and bad behavior cost our tourism sector about $200 million in just one year.

The combination of tariffs and the Iran war have skyrocketed our costs. Coffee is up, beef is up. Gas is up by nearly a dollar in Maine, and it has been up as much as 💲1.40 a gallon. The war Collins didn’t vote against nine times has cost everyone at the pumps.
Now, I wouldn’t add up the numbers above and pretend to have an accurate, defensible total. But it doesn’t take long to overtop Collins’ 💲302.5 million of pork. In fact, the Maine Center for Economic Policy totals the cost to Maine just from the budget bill at 💲400 million per year.

That’s a lot of money talk. The human costs are harder to quantify, but they’re very real. It seems to me we simply can’t afford six more years of this. Pork or not, we can’t afford Susan Collins.

Graham Platner primary democrat senate win received more votes than all other democratic candidates combined!

Echo Maine Primary 2026, Graham Platner Democratic vote margin by Steve Mistler published b Maine Public 

Graham Platner gets more primary votes than any other Democratic Senate candidate in Maine history.

Graham Platner has already received more primary votes than any other Democratic U.S. Senate candidate in Maine history.

Platner has received more than 150,000 votes on primary Election Day so far, according to data compiled by the Associated Press. An analysis of state election data show that's more than any of his predecessors going back to 1918 — the first year Maine began electing U.S. Senators by popular vote.

His vote share was also significantly more than all eight of the Republican candidates running for governor combined as of Thursday, with more than 90% of the votes counted. The GOP gubernatorial primary turnout was the highest it's been since 2010.

An analysis of early absentee data also suggests the combat veteran and oyster farmer may have benefited from the state's second use of semi-open primaries, which allows unenrolled voters to participate in the parties' nomination contests.

More than 18,000 unenrolled voters cast absentee ballots as of Tuesday afternoon. Seventy-five percent of those voters voted in the Democratic primary.

So far, Platner has won every town in Maine except three, Hersey, Moose River and Weston, which went to Gov. Janet Mills.

Courageous Republicans who are brave enough to abandon evil Donald Trump like Maryland Allan Kittleman

Maryland:  Allan Kittleman: Why I’m leaving the GOP (aka "Growing Old Party") | Reader Commentary published in The Baltimore Sun

After 50 years as a registered Republican, I made the difficult decision to leave the GOP party and become an unaffiliated voter.

My family spent generations helping build the Republican Party. 

My grandfather chaired his county GOP, in lowa. My father, Bob Kittleman, led the Howard County (Maryland) Republican Party and served more than two decades in the Maryland General Assembly. I followed the same path, chairing the county party, serving in the Maryland Senate — including three years as minority leader — and later as Howard County executive.

For several years, I hoped this was temporary. I stayed through 2016, through 2020, through January 6, believing the party might eventually reclaim its core values. 

But, tragically, Trump’s 2024, election and his illegal actions during the past year have made the truth unavoidable: The Republican Party has fully become the Trump maga Party. Those who refuse to fall in line are pushed out or ignored.

My own beliefs have not changed. I remain fiscally conservative and socially moderate — a combination that once had room in the GOP. It no longer does. And to be clear: I am not joining the Democratic Party. I cannot support the direction of either party, both of which have drifted toward their extremes and away from the broad middle where most Americans live.

My decision isn’t a rejection of the people in my life who remain Republicans. This is not a conversion to the other side. 

Rather, this is simply me saying I can no longer put my name next to a culture that treats disagreement as warfare and political opponents as enemies.

Yet, I try to remain optimistic about our future.

But the GOP party we devoted our lives to no longer exists.😟😥

The GOP once stood for limited government, fiscal discipline and individual liberty. Today, it is defined by loyalty to one man: Donald Trump. Principles that once guided Republican leaders — even in moments of national crisis — have been replaced by a demand for personal allegiance. The independence Republicans showed during Watergate has all but vanished. Too many elected officials now treat dissent as betrayal.

Most Americans want something better ❗than the politics of fear, outrage and blind loyalty.

What we want are leaders who tell the truth, who listen, who solve problems and who put country above personal ambition. We want public service grounded in integrity, not intimidation. I will continue to advocate for these principles and for leaders who fit this profile.

For me, leaving the Republican Party is painful. It means stepping away from a lifelong identity and a family legacy I deeply respect. But staying meant accepting what the party has become — and I refuse to do that.

From— Allan H. Kittleman, West Friendship, Maryland

Kittleman is a former Republican Senate minority leader in the Maryland General Assembly and was the Howard County executive.

Donald Trump said he does not think about consumers! Yes, he said that!

Donald Trump Is Now the Un-Populist

Donald Trump, on May 12, 2026, while taking questions from reporters about the Iran conflict. When asked if he was considering Americans' financial situations during negotiations, he responded, "Not even a little bit."

Published in New York Magazine Intelligencer by Ed Kilgore

From the expensive and unnecessary ballroom to the illegal Iran war, to blatant self-dealing, Donald Trump is ignoring the will of the people — to his Growing Old Party's peril.

Less than four months from now, early voting begins in the 2026, midterm general elections. Political scientists differ on exactly when voting intentions are formed, but the consensus is that for the vast majority of the electorate, it happens well before the last-minute rush of campaigning. Most Republicans, whose control of Congress is at risk in November, are acutely aware that they are running out of time to convince swing voters that their sour perceptions of Donald Trump’s job performance — always the single most important variable affecting midterm outcomes — are erroneous. And at almost every turn, the president seems to be on a mission to make that as hard as possible.

While assessments of Trump’s handling of a broad range of issues have remained well underwater for over a year now, there are particularly and especially salient negative perceptions of how well he’s dealt with high living costs (arguably the issue that most determined his 2024 victory over Kamala Harris) and whether his strange and aimless war with Iran was a good idea. Trump’s two biggest problems are dangerously interactive, since the Iran war’s effect on global energy prices has clearly boosted domestic inflation, and his prosecution of this “war of choice” has come to symbolize his refusal to focus on the public’s actual concerns. For all the interminable discussion of a GOP “affordability agenda,” it’s getting very late in the year for that agenda to suddenly appear.

And, most recently, despite the intense loyalty congressional Republicans have consistently shown toward Trump, an unprecedented revolt has broken out, for the moment shutting down the legislative process. The growing GOP grievance is that Trump is continuing to elevate personal hobbyhorses (e.g., his White House ballroom project, which he now wants taxpayers to subsidize, and his bizarre new slush fund for alleged victims of Biden administration persecution) over the measures Republicans need to stay in office.


The implications of this revolt go beyond smooth executive-legislative relations or even the unity of the GOP. Whatever one thinks of Donald Trump from the perspective of ethics, policy, the U.S. Constitution, or the health of democratic institutions, his prowess as a gut-level politician has been universally, if grudgingly, respected. An essential ingredient of the loyalty he has inspired in the Republican ranks has been his ability to bend traditional conservatism to “populism,” a voter-friendly blend of themes and proposals that probably saved the GOP from the irrelevance it seemed to be courting before he came down the escalator in 2015. He famously convinced a party in love with “entitlement reform” to lay off trying to slaughter the sacred cows of Social Security and Medicare. He talked Republicans out of a near century of free-trade orthodoxy because culturally conservative blue-collar voters hated NAFTA. And he convinced the militarist wing of the GOP that massive defense spending didn’t require actually using it in unpopular “forever wars.”

Now comes the terrifying possibility that the man who made Republicans “populists” is himself becoming the ultimate un-populist. Trump is not just ignoring (or, because he can only acknowledge praise of himself, actively denying) public opinion; he seems to be courting unpopularity. Americans really dislike his beloved tariffs, and although Trump has the perfect legal excuses to stop pursuing them, he still persists. Trump can’t stop bashing Obamacare, even though he got badly burned on the subject in his first term and has no coherent replacement for it. His war in Iran was the rare U.S. war that was unpopular from the get-go, but he can’t seem to let go of it, and it’s an even bet he’ll start another war before suppertime. The political “outsider” who was too rich to bribe is now the consummate insider grabbing money with both hands to enrich his family and friends and the most disreputable of his supporters.

Most astonishing of all, the veteran entertainer who understood the intense resentment of working people for elites who seemed to mock them while fleecing them is now becoming the elitist-in-chief. He is explicitly annoyed that people struggling to make ends meet don’t appreciate they are living in a “golden age” in which stock markets climb dizzily upward on record corporate profits. He’s angry that Americans don’t just take his word for it that they need to pay higher prices for gasoline or light and heat so that he can win some more wars and peace prizes. And he is indifferent at best to how very bad it looks that he is devoting more time to his many tacky and self-glorifying vanity projects than to his day job. Many regular folk used to enjoy watching Trump thumb his nose at the powers that be. Now he’s the Man, the very opposite of a plucky underdog.

For Republicans who desperately need his help to retain their offices and their power, it increasingly appears that Trump has lost touch with the country. Yes, he’ll help them in the midterms by rigging congressional districts and perhaps interfering with the vote itself, but not by bending to adverse public opinion. It would be one thing if like some second-term presidents of the past, he drifted toward lame-duck status and began ceding power to his allies and successors. But no: Trump dominates news media and the political landscape more forcefully and ubiquitously than ever. (The more Trump talks, the more he contradicts himself and his advisors.)

He’s in danger not only of squandering his party’s midterm-election hopes, but of handing his putative heir J.D. Vance an anvil and the GOP an indelible MAGA brand — even as the idea that he has restored “American greatness” becomes ridiculous to all but his fiercest acolytes.

It’s possible, of course, that such assessments once again underestimate the 47th. Perhaps, against all expectations, he will snap out of his extended fugue state and begin listening to the public and his party leaders. But, Donald Trump would be well advised to make his 80th-birthday wish Make Trump popular again. In the meantime, the candle  he’s already🕯️ blowing out is his own.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must face the truth. Donald Trump has a list of impeachable offenses Senator Susan Collins alert!

Trump will be impeached in 2027.  Philadelphia Inquirer opinion, by columnist Will Bunch.

(BTW, where is Maine's Republican Senator Susan Collins❓)

War❗ Good God, y’all. Since my music brain stopped growing around age 11, Edwin Starr’s “War,” a No. 1 hit from the fall of 1970, always gets stuck in my head every time the United States starts dropping bombs on yet another foreign land, and the tune usually stays there for a long time. 

Meanwhile, there’s not much new to say about Donald Trump’s folly in the Persian Gulf. The bombs keep coming down. Gas prices keep going up. And what is it good for❓ Absolutely nothing.

A political bombshell fell over the weekend. You just didn’t hear it, thanks to all the real bombshells that fell across the Persian Gulf and the Middle East as Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s war of choice against Iran slogged into its third week.

It had to do with one of the 1,700 pardons or commutations that Donald Trump has issued since he returned to office 14 months ago — including just about everyone involved in the attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021 but also a rogue’s gallery of ex-GOP officials, crypto scammers, and politically connected folks making massive donations.

Thanks to federal prosecutors, the dark underbelly of the Trump pardon machine was unexpectedly revealed in a court case that, the New York Times reported, appears to be related to a nursing home mogul named Joseph Schwartz. He pleaded guilty in 2024, to federal charges around failing to pay 💲40 million in payroll and Social Security taxes and was sentenced to three years. But, Schwartz only served about three months, after Trump abruptly issued the millionaire a pardon last November.

The Times reported that Schwartz hired a conservative lawyer and friend of Donald Trump Jr. named Josh Nass as a “pardon broker,” an increasingly lucrative business under Trump Sr.’s lax interpretation of his clemency responsibilities. Records show that Schwartz paid Nass 💲100,000, but — according to the Times account — the lawyer apparently believed he was owed a lot more.

According to a federal indictment, Nass hired a Russian-speaking convicted felon to collect another 💲500,000 from his client, telling his alleged goon to “do anything and everything” to get the money. Prosecutors in Brooklyn have now charged Nass with extortion in the matter.

What did the president, and his aides and allies, know about Nass’s pursuit of a pardon payday, and when did they know it❓ 

We don’t know, nor do we know the facts behind the October pardon of Binance cryptocurrency founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, who does substantial crypto business with the Trump family, or auto billionaire Trevor Milton, also pardoned last year after donating 💲900,000 to pro-Trump groups, or Paul Walczak, a Florida nursing home executive whose mom gave 💲1 million to a pro-Trump super-PAC and 12 days later ... you guessed it, got a pardon.

Thanks to federal prosecutors, the dark underbelly of the Trump pardon machine was unexpectedly revealed in a court case that, the New York Times reported, appears to be related to a nursing home mogul named Joseph Schwartz. He pleaded guilty in 2024, to federal charges around failing to pay 💲40 million in payroll and Social Security taxes and was sentenced to three years. But Schwartz only served about three months, after Trump abruptly issued the millionaire a pardon last November.

What did the president, and his aides and allies, know about Nass’s pursuit of a pardon payday, and when did they know it❓ We don’t know, nor do we know the facts behind the October pardon of Binance cryptocurrency founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, who does substantial crypto business with the Trump family, or auto billionaire Trevor Milton, also pardoned last year after donating 💲900,000 to pro-Trump groups, or Paul Walczak, a Florida nursing home executive whose mom gave 💲1 million to a pro-Trump super-PAC and 12 days later ... you guessed it, got a pardon.

There’s a lot more like this, but you get the point.

Trump’s dodgy pardon practices, with millions of dollars changing greasy palms, deserve a major, Watergate-style investigation. That’s not going to happen — not in 2026, anyway. One Brooklyn blip doesn’t change the reality that Trump’s Justice Department and its lapdog attorney general, Pam Bondi, mainly only do white-collar probes of Trump’s perceived enemies. The Republicans who control both houses of Congress would rather wield their subpoena powers against Hillary Clinton.

But it’s looking more and more likely that a big part of this equation is going to change in January. Nothing is a lock in American politics — sorry, Polymarket bettors — but Democrats have a healthy lead in the polls ahead of this fall’s midterm election, have flipped seat after seat since 2024, and are posting big early turnout numbers.

With Trump’s popularity falling with every uptick of the gas pump, November is looking now like a wave election for Democrats who only need a couple more seat flips to regain the House majority. The party’s new committee chairs will find themselves with power to investigate whatever suspected misdeeds of MAGA World they want to, And — as we saw twice during Trump’s first term — it only takes a simple majority vote to impeach a president.

As Trump himself is well aware. “You got to win the midterms, because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just going to be — I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me,” POTUS 47 told House Republicans at a gathering in January, Well, there actually are reasons.

It’s kind of the opposite of what happened in 2023 when the GOP retook the House with a burning zeal to impeach Joe Biden but didn’t really have anything to charge him with. With Trump, it’s more than a matter of, where does one start? For example:

• The pardon mess, as described above. Trump’s outrageous abuse of his clemency pen has proved America’s founders made a big mistake in granting such absolute power to just one man. Congressional hearings can and should spur pardon reform, but could also expose evidence that could be used in a Trump impeachment case.

• Cryptogate. Presidents used to put their assets in a blind trust, as Jimmy Carter famously did with his peanut farm. Trump, on the other hand, keeps doing deals and has seen his net worth roughly triple to more than $6 billion in just the first year of his second term. There are many tentacles to what I called Cryptogate with this handy guide I published last spring. Trump’s pump-and-dump meme coin launched on inauguration weekend seems a high crime unto itself.

• War crimes. The war in Iran is illegal,❗. The president did not seek congressional approval to start dropping bombs up and down the Persian Gulf as required by both the U.S. Constitution and the 1973 War Powers Act. It’s also an illegal, aggressive war under international law. Ditto his regime-change assault on Venezuela, which killed more than 100 people. Ditto his regime’s unending lethal attacks on boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific, which have no legal basis. Congress can reassert its authority by impeaching Trump.

• Abuse of power in the justice system. The flip side of Trump’s pardons has been the unprecedented attempt to use the Justice Department to go after the president’s perceived enemies, from former FBI chief James Comey to Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell. These investigations, directly urged on by Trump in Truth Social posts, have repeatedly failed to pass muster with judges or grand juries, but that doesn’t erase the stain of such clearly wrongful prosecutions.

This list doesn’t even cover some of the more morally repugnant aspects of the Trump regime, such as the brutal and too often deadly mass deportation program and the push to build inhumane warehouse detention centers. Nor does it anticipate future surprises, like the Ukraine phone calls that sparked Trump’s first impeachment in late 2019.

It also doesn’t include the political calculation facing House Democrats. Baring a dramatic change in the zeitgeist, there still won’t be the 67 Senate votes needed to remove Trump from office — a likely replay of his first two impeachments. 

Some will argue that impeachment would be a distraction or even a time waster, preventing Congress from tackling meat-and-potatoes legislation.

That’s not the point. Arguably the biggest task facing the 120th Congress will be simply proving that the United States is still governed by the rule of law. Nothing is more central to that than reestablishing that high crimes and misdemeanors against the Constitution have consequences — including the stain of impeachment.

Most importantly, impeachment hearings are the vehicle to air Trump’s wrongdoing before the American people — much as it was during his first term. 

A national denunciation of a president’s abuse of power — even if it doesn’t end Trump’s presidency — is the first step toward making sure it never happens again. 

All American with an ethical conscience ask the same political question? How did our nation get to this terrible place?

In "Who Speaks for Us?" (March 2026), Marilynne Robinson argues in The New York Review of Books that true democracy, not "populism," is the essential response to corruption and the abuse of power. She emphasizes the dignity and authority of the people, warning against the degradation caused by arrogance and avarice.

An echo essay published in New York Review of Books:

The political leaders and elected representatives of our two-party system have made it into a weapon that works against the people.

• Core Argument: Robinson contends that modern two-party politics often weaponizes systems against the people.
• The Solution: She advocates for a return to genuine democratic principles and warns that populist movements often merely reflect the "inchoate" - not yet fully developed or in the process of becoming- resentments of a subordinated class.
• Perspective: As a novelist and essayist known for her Christian, Calvinist-influenced perspective (e.g., Gilead), she often critiques contemporary political culture from a moral and intellectual standpoint.
  
  When Donald Trump was first elected to the presidency, a British friend asked me if his authoritarian tendencies were a real threat to America. No, I said, because the country had so many autonomous centers of power to constrain him—the press, the unions and professions, the universities, the courts, the states, and, of course, various types and sources of political opposition. Not all these supposed checks on his power have capitulated absolutely, but enough of them have capitulated to raise fundamental questions about the country we thought we had and the country we have now. It will always be true that we have seen the Constitution effectively brushed aside by a superannuated game show host who galvanizes his base with talk of showerheads and windmills and the demonic nastiness of the other party. All this is so strange that it is hard to imagine how history will take any lessons from it. It would seem grossly improbable that a billionaire—rich from birth and repeatedly bankrupt yet still a billionaire—could lead a movement of angry “populism.” But here we are.
  
  There are too many answers to the question “What went wrong❓I turn to the two-party system because, although it is at present its own worst enemy, there is still hope that it can allow the great public to make decisions about the course of government. It has gone wrong, too, but it can change, almost passively, if it happens to channel the decisions of an impassioned electorate. 

Insofar as it gives voters power, it is imperiled. It can thwart the intentions of very powerful interests and individuals. This is an assertion of democracy, wonderful or regrettable and benighted, but in any case essential if the historical character of the country is to be preserved.

Our elections have been based on there being two great factions that alternate in roles of power without much conflict. The problems of the system have been largely manageable. Three or more parties lead to the rule of a minority able to provide or deny the numbers necessary to produce a ruling plurality. Government by a group few people actually voted for, that can always threaten to withdraw their support if its interests are not looked after, is not an improvement. One-party government is synonymous with dictatorship.

Any free election is, in effect, a referendum. Our binary system can be taken to express either a Yes or a No. More granular interpretations are left to commentators or the opinion polls, or the parties themselves. This leaves the public voice vulnerable to being misread, or to being tendentiously misinterpreted. To the extent that this takes effect, the public has been denied its voice.

Recently there was a Democratic sweep of a series of special elections. What did this mean? In a moment as fraught as this one, it would be good to know what the people are thinking. An issue that supposedly decided these various contests was settled upon immediately—affordability❗

This six syllable word assumes that the problem is not that income has stagnated but that certain grocery items, lettuce and eggs, are too expensive. Higher wages would transform the economy. It would be a redistribution of wealth, however modest. Fiddling around with the price of a few groceries would be cheap and easy. An added, much more significant advantage, it would preempt and dismiss the possibility that the great, sovereign electorate might have anything serious, anything relevant to the well-being of their country, anything generous, on their minds.

• billfold and 
• kitchen table.

These are the two terms used to express the condescension that entraps the voting public, in the way they are addressed by politicians and campaigns, and in the way they and their views are understood and brought to bear on public life. I was instructed by a Democratic candidate for state office on the mesmeric power of the word “affordability,” recently demonstrated so effectively. So the meaningfulness of a solid No to the present regime is reduced to an issue Trump can neuter by waving his (the Treasury Department’s) checkbook.

At one time, the two-party system fit fairly nicely within the structure of our government. The U.S. House and the Senate were deliberative bodies with important constitutional authority, which meant that there were differences within the parties as well as between them. 

Then came Newt Gingrich, a Roman Catholic convert and the creation of GOP party discipline. Republicans discovered the wrongminded power that came with sticking to the party line, however this tactic disempowered individual lawmakers and their constituencies, not to mention the institution of Congress itself. Constitutional obligations lost out to partisan power. Then came the next evil inspiration. They could change the constitutional order by simply playing dead. When they controlled the House, they could refuse to govern, leaving it to the president to fill the void, to do by executive order what should be done by legislation. This strengthens the president, weakens the law by circumvention, and defeats the intentions of the Founders with consequences they insistently predicted. And, it excludes opposition influences and radically minimizes public discussion.

So, now we have a grotesquely 🤢empowered Donald Trump. 

Because of Trump's hubris, great institutions are diminished and humiliated, the House of Representatives being first. 

The No available to the people in our binary system is associated with the Democratic Party, whoever they are. 

The great issues of these days must be confronted by the people. Whatever their (our) shortcomings are, we are figures of shining integrity compared with those who now presume to govern. 

A braver press would educate us better, certainly, but we know enough to be appalled at the grave threats to freedom and justice we see in our streets.

Only consider: Donald Trump claims that many billions of dollars have come in as a result of his tariffs. He speaks of this as a sort of slush fund that he can use as he sees fit, maybe reducing taxes or just mailing out checks to the public, benevolently repairing injuries done by his government to those he thinks will vote for him. But the fact is,  Americans are paying the cost of those tariffs. 

So, it is Americans’ money💲 that is being siphoned into this vast pool, with inevitable consequences for “affordability.” They never voted for tariffs, and in the recent special elections they might well have voted against them. If all this money were collected by taxation, at least the public might have some input into the use of it, especially if they had a functioning House. If Trump extracts $10 billion from his suit against the IRS, where will that money go? This bizarre super-economy of ultra-wealth can create self-protective arrangements neither the laws nor the Founders anticipated, together with a culture of cynicism ready to exploit its worst possibilities.

Money and power corrupt. The proper response to this ancient truth is not “populism,” which expresses the inchoate resentments of a subordinated class, and which has shown itself to be helpless against gross abuses. The one thing needed is democracy. We have seen the people speak and act from a deep awareness of their uniquely legitimate authority. We have seen their humanity, their dignity, and their wisdom. At the same time we have also seen the degradations that follow from arrogance, avarice and impunity. The contrast is as stark and instructive as any moral fable.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans have no plan for the evil and illegal World War in Iran causing Middle East instability

Trump’s war on Iran is already a muddled mess | Echo Editorial published in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Nearly two weeks into the war, Donald Trump’s chaos and confusion have remade the world into a more dangerous place.

Donald Trump has no plan for the World War with Iran and is surrounded by unserious people like Pete Hegseth, the clownish defense secretary.

On the same day Donald Trump said the war in Iran could end “very soon,” the Defense Department declared on social media, “We have Only Just Begun to Fight.” 😟😒

The mixed messaging was in keeping with the president’s circular reasoning for his war of whim. He has cycled through an ever-changing list of reasons for starting the war, including regime change, preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, stopping terrorist proxies, and wiping out its navy.

Out of the confusion this much is clear: Trump has no idea what he is doing, and his word is no good. Nearly two weeks into the war, Trump’s chaos and confusion have remade the world into a more dangerous place.

More unsettling perhaps, it appears Trump was misled into war by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister who faces corruption charges at home and allegations of having committed war crimes abroad. Talk about a role model. 🙄😓

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. entered the war because Israel was prepared to act first. He tried to walk back the comments but the New York Times detailed a timeline of how Netanyahu manipulated Trump.

Netanyahu has already destroyed most of Gaza. Is that the plan for Iran❓


U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) hinted at a different endgame when he said once the Iran regime is toppled, “we’re gonna make a ton of money.” (His claim makes no sense. What is a "ton of money"❓ Meaningless, just a figure of speech expression.)

Send in Trump’s profiteers, son-in-law Jared Kushner and developer Steve Witkoff. Never have two unelected and unqualified men made more money for themselves while accomplishing so little.

If only some of the U.S. firepower used to bomb Iran went to stop Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine, then Trump may have had a legitimate claim to the Nobel Peace Prize.

Instead, when asked about Russia sharing intelligence to help Iran attack U.S. warships, aircraft, and other military interests, Trump called the question “stupid.”

Trump’s continued subservience to Putin is a stunning abdication of his duty to protect and defend the United States.

Likewise, the Republicans in Congress (like Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins) remain uninterested in fulfilling their constitutional duty to act as a check on the president after voting down a resolution to halt the war in Iran.

U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, the Democrat from Pennsylvania who frequently represents Mar-a-Lago, joined with the GOP in paving the way for more war. In the House, all the Republicans from Pennsylvania, including Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick from Bucks County, did the same.

No debate and just a blank check from Congress.

So, what exactly have Trump and his enablers gained by attacking Iran❓

Here’s a quick accounting:

• Oil prices surged and the stock market was whipsawed.
• The economic shock could stoke inflation and fuel the faltering job market.
• The war is costing taxpayers almost $1 billion a day.
• Seven U.S. service members died and about 140 have been injured, eight severely.
• More than 1,200 Iranians have been killed, including roughly 175 people, most of them children, at a school struck by a U.S. missile that Trump refuses to own up to.
• Thousands of Americans were left stranded in a war zone.
• Bombing Iran’s oil depots unleashed thick black smoke and a toxic rain that threatened the air quality and the food and water supply.

The inhumanity risks turning the Iranian people further against America, while making the U.S. a pariah state.

The only positive development was the removal of Ali Khamenei, Iran’s ruthless supreme leader.

However, Khamenei, 86, was replaced by his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, who is likely to continue Iran’s hard-line theocratic rule.

So, essentially Trump traded an aging ayatollah for a younger version who lost his father, wife, and a son in the attacks.

Don’t expect any olive branches from Tehran, which responded with missile and drone strikes in 10 countries across the Middle East.

The regime may be battered but it remains dangerous.

An unrestrained and vindictive Trump is also dangerous. He has no plan and is surrounded by unserious people like Pete Hegseth, the clownish defense secretary.

The White House social media account celebrated the war with a disgusting juvenile video that wove snippets of Hollywood movies and video games with real footage of the military strikes in Iran.

Goodbye to the greatest generation. The U.S. is now led by a confederacy of dunces.

Trump looked every bit the head fool as he sported a branded white baseball hat with USA emblazoned in gold that he sells for $55 on his merch website while attending the dignified transfer at Dover Air Force Base of the first six U.S. soldiers killed in the war.

While the war in Iran drags on, Trump is already talking about toppling Cuba.

Apparently, all the world’s a stage as the president wreaks global chaos and accomplishes little beyond sowing death, destruction, and suffering.