Donald Trump and Republicans continue to divide Americans with fear and Democrats cannot remain silent

Sunday Paper echo essay by Maria Shriver:  Beautiful essay!

Elon Musk went off the rails this week, but I’ve got to admit that I wasn’t surprised. In fact, I’ve been waiting for this moment.

That said, I can’t believe how embarrassing and depressing it was to watch the fighting that unfolded between him and Trump.

I know many people are laughing at their back-and-forth, but make no mistake: it’s serious when someone starts to unravel in the public square.

This president has somewhat normalized insane tweets—the kind people laugh at and share—but to me there is nothing funny about this...

That said, I can’t believe how embarrassing and depressing it was to watch the fighting that unfolded between Musk and Trump. I know many people are laughing at their back-and-forth, but make no mistake: it’s serious when someone starts to unravel in the public square.

"....but make no mistake: it’s serious when someone like Musk goes off in the public square and then the president jumps in."

This president has somewhat normalized insane tweets—the kind people laugh at and share—but to me there is nothing funny about this...between Musk and Trump. 

Governing is really serious business, especially at this moment. The economy is fragile. People are struggling as they try to make decisions for their families and their businesses. There are multiple wars going on. Chaos isn’t good for the business of running our country, and our leadership is chaotic right now. That hurts us at home and abroad.

While many are obsessing over this spectacle, fear is quietly taking over our lives. And for some, it’s not quiet at all.

Here in Los Angeles this weekend, fear is front and center as federal immigration agents clashed with hundreds of people protesting a recent series of raids in the city. 

So many of our country’s immigrants, our friends and neighbors, are living in daily fear that they or someone they love will be swept up in a raid and separated from their families. 

As of Saturday evening, the White House announced Donald Trump is ordering 2,000 National Guards to be deployed in Los Angeles County, which will undoubtedly stir up even more fear.

Fear seems to be everywhere I look. This week, it was another headline that really stopped me in my tracks. It said “Jews Are Afraid Right Now."

I stared at it for the longest time. Then I closed my eyes. I have so many friends who are Jewish and I wanted to take a moment to pray for each of them. In fact, I wanted to pray for everyone of Jewish faith.

I know many say thoughts and prayers do nothing, but I don’t agree. I know they’re not the only solution to our problems, but I do think they are essential parts of our toolbox. They’re by no means the only tools, but they are two important ones in my life. This I know to be true.

Another important action I believe in is condemning violence, like what we witnessed in Boulder and what happened to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. His op-ed after a targeted attack on his home and family (you can read it here in case you missed it) still resonates. It’s a call to each of us to rise up, call out hate, and tap into our better angels, because now is a time when we need to collectively do better and be better.

Together, we have to start using our voices to speak up instead of allowing fear to stop us from taking action. We have to let others know where we stand and what we believe. Jews are afraid, yes, and that’s wrong. It actually turns my stomach, fuels my anger, and breaks my heart. It also breaks my heart that people in Gaza continue to face death and starvation amid a terrifying war.

Fear is in every conversation I have. In fact, this week when I traveled to Cleveland for our forum on women’s health and research, fear came up several times in people’s questions.

People are often afraid to question doctors and advocate for themselves. 

But you often have to push for a second opinion. You always need to speak up in the doctor’s office and believe in your own instincts, because often times your life depends on it.

Speaking of one’s life last week, I posed a question about bravery and a reader responded with her own heartbreaking but powerful story, which you can read here. This is a headline that will stop you cold as well. In "This Is What Being Brave Means for Me," this Sunday Paper reader writes that after being a victim of assault, she is still fighting for justice—not just for herself, but for other women. That’s courage. That’s pushing through fear.

It’s also brave to tell the truth, as Molly Jong-Fast has done in her new memoir How to Lose Your Mother. In the book, she writes how she inherited a world of complexity from her famous mother, and finally decided to tell her side of the story. In doing so, she embraced her grief and found grace.

That’s what bravery looks like in real time. That’s what fear transformed into power can do.

The other night, two longtime friends (who just happen to be Jewish) came to dinner. We started talking about fear in our political dialogue, and somehow the topic turned to women. We started talking about how the fear women face isn’t just in health care or religion—it’s everywhere. That’s when my son Christopher spoke up in the conversation and said, “Men are scared too.”

“In fact, do you all know that the number one predictor of suicide today is just being a man?” he said.

Men are taking their lives in record numbers. They are lonelier than ever. They are losing jobs to AI. And when a man loses his provider role, he often spirals into depression, addiction, despair, and suicide. I listened as my beautiful, strong, tender-hearted son spoke about the challenges men face in today’s society. My heart cracked.

Jews are scared. Women feel afraid. Men are hurting. Gays are worried. Scientists and researchers are in panic mode. Journalists speak about the challenges our profession faces. Even CBS, the one-time “Tiffany Network of News,” is afraid to fight a lawsuit by a sitting president—so afraid that they’re discussing folding, much like another network already did. Ugh, ugh, ugh.

Fear is everywhere. The synagogues in my city look like armed military establishments. So do schools. People are afraid to walk down the street, live in our neighborhoods, or post on social media. What in God’s name is happening to us?

All the while, millions of podcasts and newsletters and TikTok accounts pop up daily, telling us how to draw boundaries with our parents, how to deal with toxic relationships, how to breathe, emotionally regulate, jump in cold plunges, dress to feel young, exercise to ward off aging, and build our brands so we can compete in this brand-obsessed society we are all players in.

My friends, that is not going to dissolve our fear. That is not going to ease our heartbreak, our pain, our fear of one another, our fear of retribution if we speak our minds.

So then what will?

Dare I suggest… love? 💖💙💛Dare I suggest compassion? 

Dare I suggest community? Dare I suggest friendship? Dare I suggest prioritizing our own healing so that we can step forward without taking out our fear, anger, or rage on one another?

Fear is going to back us further and further into our collective corners. Fear is going to make us silent at a time when our voices are our most powerful weapons. Fear is paralyzing.

I’ve felt its effects in my life. I’m not proud to say it, but there have been times in my own life when my fear got the better of me. When I didn’t act. Didn’t use my voice.

But over time I found that every time I was scared and acted anyway, I gained strength. I gained courage. I found my footing—often on behalf of others, then eventually on behalf of myself. I gained courage by watching others. I gained strength by feeling their friendship, their love, and their support.

Love is expensive. Courage comes from recognizing our fear and then using our voices anyway. It comes from reaching out anyway and standing with others who may be afraid in order to ease their fear.

Standing with one group doesn’t mean you can’t stand with another one. People who stand with Jews can stand with Palestinians who are afraid for their lives. Women can stand with men. And vice versa.

My circle is broad and diverse. I want to be able to stand with men and women, with the LGBTQIA* community, and with Jews and Black Americans. I have friends who immigrated here from Ukraine, from Russia, from Iran, from Israel and Palestine. I’m a Catholic who has friends from different faiths.

The Pope inspires me, and so do my other fellow Catholics including Father James Martin, Father Richard Rohr, Father Greg Boyle, and Sister Joan Chittister. But so too do Rabbi Steve Leder, Pastor Ed Bacon, and Pastor Sarah Jakes Roberts and Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde.

My father, Sargent Shriver, Jr. (1915-2011), was an ardent Catholic, was the first person who spoke to me about the dangers of Hitler and the power of Jesus Christ’s message of love, forgiveness and peace.

My parents introduced me to the Berrigan brothers, who spoke out fiercely against the war; Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Worker Movement and spoke out against poverty; Cesar Chavez, who fought the establishment for workers’ rights; Rosa Parks, who said, “No, I will not get off the bus”; Fred Guttenberg, who has turned his own pain into purpose by speaking out against gun violence, hoping to spare another parent what he and his family have gone through. The list goes on.

These were the days before social media could scare you into a corner. Before the days when the leader of the free world called people derogatory nicknames in the public square.

Maybe it’s time for us all to look back and remind ourselves that there have been many fearless people throughout the ages who used their voices to stand up and stand alongside their neighbors—and often total strangers. Human beings who felt afraid due to their faith, the color of their skin, or their gender, but who spoke up anyway.

There will always be people who are afraid. May we believe there will also always be people needed who will stand up straight alongside them. Otherwise, fear will win, and we will all lose everything worth caring about.

That’s what this moment is asking of us: to recognize our fear, and the fear of our fellow humans, and turn toward them instead of away.

Perhaps turning towards one another looks like this:
T.U.R.N.

• Talk - Have one honest conversation this week with someone who might be afraid.
• Unite - Stand with at least one group or person facing fear (even if it's outside your usual circle).
• Reach out - Contact a friend, neighbor, or community member who might feel isolated.
• Name it - Speak up against hate or fear-mongering when you see it, even in small ways.

May we rise up collectively in friendship, in love, and in community. This moment demands that of us. There’s no doubt about that.

*lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual

Mike Johnson's do nothing one vote GOP majority statistically rounds out to zero

An echo opinion by journalist Molly Jong-Fast published in Vanity Fair magazine:

Mike Johnson’s (right wing!) House Is Imploding

At a time when Republicans want voters to give them more power, by putting them in control of the Senate and White House with ballots in November, let’s take a look at the job they’ve done running the House. The 118th Congress, first under -right wing- Speaker Kevin McCarthy and now Mike Johnson, has truly been a do-nothing Congress, responsible for an anemic 47 laws; the original “do-nothing Congress,” which Harry Truman ran against in the 1940s, actually passed 906 bills. And several of the bills passed by the current GOP majority have simply been meant to keep the government open, with Johnson and company again bringing the country to the brink of a shutdown before Congress passed a $1.2 trillion spending bill a little after 2 a.m. on Saturday.

The GOP majority have simply been meant to keep the government open, with Johnson and company again bringing the country to the brink of a shutdown before Congress passed a $1.2 trillion spending bill a little after 2 a.m. on Saturday.

Johnson, of course, is in way over his head, having vaulted from backbencher to the most senior official in the House after three Republicans with more leadership experience failed to get the votes. What pushed Johnson over the top was not his talent for legislating nor his dexterity with vote counting, but instead the work he did with Donald Trump’s election-denial scheme. 

In fact, (Bible thumping!📖) Johnson promoted the fringe “independent state legislature” theory that even the Trumpified Supreme Court shot down. 

This is the person Republicans chose, unanimously, for the Speaker job, which is a really hard gig, even if Nancy Pelosi made it look easy.

The ascension of Johnson came in the weeks after McCarthy was ousted by the “Gaetz eight” for passing a debt-limit deal and helping prevent the economy from crashing (though it may have also been payback from Matt Gaetz for a congressional ethics investigation). And now Johnson finds himself potentially on the chopping block for keeping the government funded. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a charter member of the burn-it-all-down 🔥GOP caucus, filed a motion to remove Johnson after the (essential❗💲) spending package passed.

“I filed a motion to vacate today, but it’s more of a warning and a pink slip,” Greene told reporters Friday. It was a statement that, in typical MTG fashion, made little sense; something that is a pink slip is very much not a warning but a firing. Greene, a former McCarthy ally who opposed his removal, added that she did “not wish to inflict pain on our conference and to throw the House into chaos.”

Good luck! Greene’s motion to vacate was a topic of conversation on the Sunday shows, with CNN’s Jake Tapper asking Chip Roy if he’d support it. Roy “suggested that Johnson should not put a bill that would approve funding for Ukraine on the House floor when answering the question,” The Hill noted.

Congress is on vacation for two weeks, so maybe Greene will forget about it. But the mood was grim as members of the House and Senate left Washington, with Punchbowl summing it up in Monday’s newsletter headline: “Everyone’s mad at each other.” As John Bresnahan wrote, “The 118th Congress is the least productive in decades. And everyone left town mad as they do the bare minimum legislatively with the November election looming.”

The bad news about Johnson is that he’s a Trumpist—ergo, he doesn’t really believe in democratic norms and cares more about his religion than your rights. But the good news about Johnson is that he’s truly terrible at being Speaker and his majority keeps shrinking. This is yet another case of American democracy being saved by Trumpists’ incompetence rather than institutional guardrails.

House Republicans, who held a five-seat majority six months ago, will soon only have one vote to spare. 

Mike Gallagher recently announced he’ll be leaving early, an exit that will follow those of McCarthy, George Santos (though not by choice), and Ken Buck, who voiced his disgust on the way out.

“It is the worst year of the nine years and three months that I’ve been in Congress, and having talked to former members, it’s the worst year in 40, 50 years to be in Congress,” said Buck, who criticized his own party, which has been trying to impeach Joe Biden despite not having any evidence of wrongdoing. “We’ve taken impeachment, and we’ve made it a social media issue as opposed to a constitutional concept—this place keeps going downhill, and I don’t need to spend more time here.”

House committee chairs Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Mark Green announced last month that they will not seek reelection, while Kay Granger, who also won’t be running for reelection, plans to give up early her perch as House Appropriations Committee chair. Members of Congress with powerful committee assignments tend not to leave those posts. McCarthy, for all his faults, was able to keep his caucus together. Not so with Johnson.

Johnson has committed a breathtaking number of unforced errors along the way. He decided not to whip the vote against removing fraudster and inadvertent comic genius George Santos, and though all of the House GOP leadership voted against removing him, Santos ultimately didn’t have the numbers to stay. This made leadership look incompetent. Perhaps this was a case in which good old-fashioned math would have been more helpful than prayers? Johnson later said it was a “regrettable day,😕” and with that, he completely ceded the moral high ground after expelling a member.

Then there’s the vibes-based impeachment crusade against Biden, which has been egged on by the twice-impeached former guy. Star impeachment witness Alexander Smirnov, who has been charged with lying about the Bidens, was described as a “fraudster” in a previous case and is known to have had credibility issues. Then there’s the impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas, a stunt that, while passing by one vote in the House, is unlikely to go anywhere in the Senate. As Democrat Glenn Ivey told The New York Times, “I think the dog caught the truck here; they’re stuck and they don’t know how to move forward.”

Once again, Republicans have let Trump drive the party straight into a ditch. However, McCarthy, on CBS this past weekend, urged Republicans to “just move forward” with the very slim majority they still have. “Do not be fearful of a motion to vacate,” McCarthy said on Face the Nation on Sunday. “I do not think they could do it again.”

Okay, but one should never doubt the burn-it-all-down caucus’s capacity for self-immolation.