Republicans are enabling the destruction of America. Impeach Trump NOW! Attention Senator Susan Collins

Baltimore Sun opinion echo by Tom Jurkowsky

The unwillingness of our U.S. friends, allies and alliances to help the U.S. in its efforts against Iran should come as no surprise.

Donald Trump has spent time during both of his terms in office criticizing, insulting and demeaning NATO leaders — even going so far as to insult the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron and criticizing the pope.

Unfortunately, Trump’s bullying style of diplomacy does not engender a willingness by allies and friends to step forward and provide assistance to our efforts in Iran. Berating foreign leaders who complained about his tariffs, continuing with threats to take over Greenland and accusing British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of cowardice are just a few examples that don’t create feelings of warmth, friendship and respect.

After a recent meeting in the White House with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, Trump berated allies and told Rutte that he was considering reprisals against NATO countries for their lack of support in the war against Iran. According to Politico, the conversation was nothing but a tirade of insults.

Throughout his terms in office, Trump has continued to repeat claims that the NATO alliance has never done anything to help the U.S. He continues to ignore the fact that when the U.S. was attacked on 9/11, many NATO countries supported our efforts in Afghanistan. In fact, approximately 3,600 NATO-led coalition troops died in Afghanistan, while over 23,000 were injured. The president’s staff should remind him of those numbers. Failing to acknowledge NATO’s contributions during our 20 years in Afghanistan is insulting.

Donald Trump’s inept style of failed diplomacy stands in stark contrast to that of former Secretary of State George Shultz, who served under President Ronald Reagan.

Shultz compared diplomacy to gardening. “You go around and talk to people, you develop a relationship of trust and confidence, and then if something comes up, you have that base to work from.”

Shultz used his “tending the garden” metaphor throughout his tenure as secretary of state. He said the term described the continuous, daily nurturing of international relationships and diplomatic alliances. Shultz felt that neglecting those relationships, like neglecting one’s garden, will grow weeds.

Trump obviously is unwilling to buy into Shultz’s experienced foreign policy style, choosing instead to bully, threaten and belittle allies and friends because they would not send naval forces to help open the Strait of Hormuz.

Clearly, the Iranian regime is evil. Its sponsorship of global terrorism and murdering dissident citizens if they deviate from the Iranian ideology should not earn the country sympathy. Nor should Iran earn gold stars for supporting its murderous network of allies that includes Hamas and Hezbollah.

However, the unwillingness of countries to answer Trump’s call for help in Iran is understandable. First and foremost, Trump did not provide an argument to either the American people or Congress for his decision to attack Iran. He similarly failed to consult with any allies or friends about the war in advance of his taking kinetic action. This was reckless and careless. Many of our European and Asian allies are dependent on oil and gas from Iran. Blind-siding them with his actions on Iran was a fundamental mistake.

Did Trump not realize what Iran’s reaction would be to being attacked — closing the Strait of Hormuz and a resultant global economic impact? There have been many war games conducted regarding the Middle East over the last several decades. Not one has ever left the Strait of Hormuz open.

Nicolas Burns, a former ambassador to NATO, said, “If you prepare the ground diplomatically before you go in, even if they don’t want to fight alongside you, they understand your strategy, and you get so much more buy-in.”

Two former defense secretaries writing in The New York Times, Chuck Hagel and Leon Panetta, say problems arise when our country engages in conflicts that drift without clear objectives and end points. “They often become tragic, unwinnable wars that history does not remember kindly,” they contend.

“America needs allies, trading partners and friends. But now, instead of working together with them to maintain a global system that has brought real geopolitical and economic benefit to us all, we are isolating ourselves,” say Hagel and Panetta.

Unfortunately, Trump’s thoughtless “do it alone” actions have destabilized the world and are cultivating anti-American sentiment not just in Europe but among people in the Middle East and Pacific. Many countries in those regions are looking to China as a better strategic economic partner.

One of my foreign service friends once told me that diplomacy is based around “ships.” Being a Navy guy, I immediately thought he meant the use of seapower and Navy ships when discussing diplomacy. He quickly corrected my train of thought by saying diplomacy centers around three different kinds of “ships” — partnerships, relationships and friendships.

Adhering to those three ingredients in one’s diplomatic pouch will lead to a weed-free garden that George Shultz strove to achieve, along with friends and allies who will support you. Donald Trump should take heed.

Tom Jurkowsky is a retired rear admiral in the U.S. Navy who served on active duty for 31 years. 

#ImpeachTrumpNOW❗

Donald Trump and maga Republicans causing a brain drain of students who are academic refugees in Europe

Politico: The first American ‘scientific refugees’ arrive in France: Aix-Marseille University is wooing researchers who feel targeted by the Trump administration.

From afar, American students in France feel the shockwaves of Trump By Audrey Parmentier Published in Le Monde.

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/campus/article/2026/03/24/from-afar-american-students-in-france-feel-the-shockwaves-of-trump_6751786_11.html

While academic freedom declines in the US, some young people are choosing France to pursue master's and doctoral degrees. 

Yet, between delayed scholarships, intrusive questions and stereotypes, their experience remains shaken by the latest developments in their country.

Sitting on the banks of the Saône, phone in hand, Luke, age 20, scrolled through the nonstop flow of news. At the University of Oregon, where he is studying for a degree in history and political science, some of his classmates had been arrested. "They were protesting against Donald Trump's immigration policy. I wish I could have been with them." He himself had demonstrated, in 2025, against the war in Gaza.

Since January, the Boston native – who did not give his last name, like all people cited by their first name in this article – has been taking part in an exchange program at Sciences Po Lyon. From afar, he has watched his country tip into turmoil: aggressive raids by immigration police, calls to boycott the media, military strikes in Iran. "I am worried about the new war in the Middle East, it wasn't necessary," he said quietly. These events have only strengthened his desire to one day enter politics in the United States. Until he returns, scheduled for June, he does not miss a single article on the cultural heritage of the European Union in The New York Times, reading between classes.

In 2024-2025, France welcomed 6,381 American students, according to Campus France (the French government agency promoting higher education abroad), representing a 5% drop compared to 2022. Meanwhile, their presence elsewhere in Europe increased by 6.2% over the same period. "Since 2020, the number of Americans at our university has clearly decreased, and French is being taught less and less in American universities," lamented Lucie De Carvalho, coordinator of the International Student Exchange Program (ISEP) in Lille, France.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are attracting evil Nazi labels in the media and do nothing to end this scary association

Republicans Have a Real Nazi Thing Going On: echo essay published in the New York Magazine Intelligencer by Matt Stieb 

As Republicans are trying to find futile ways to push the Trump (authoritarian) agenda through Congress during the government shutdown, they are finding themselves sidetracked by an annoying and difficult image problem. Some of their young staffers seem to be obsessed with Nazis — and not in a “Nazis are bad” way.

The latest issue comes from the office of Representative Dave Taylor of Ohio. On Wednesday, Politico reported that the U.S. Capitol Police were called to his office because an “American flag altered to include a swastika” was displayed on a cubicle wall behind the seat of legislative aide Angelo Elia, who graduated from college two years ago.

“The content of that image does not reflect the values or standards of this office, my staff, or myself, and I condemn it in the strongest terms,” Taylor said in a statement before calling for an investigation into the flag. Elia did not respond to Politico’s request for comment, and it remains unclear who pinned the swastika to the cubicle board, how long it had been there, or why it hadn’t been noticed before.

Taylor said on Thursday that the swastika flag was part of a “ruse”:

Numerous Republican offices have confirmed that they were targeted by an unidentified group or individual who distributed American flags bearing a similar symbol, which were initially indistinguishable from an ordinary American flag to the naked eye. My office was among those that were subjected to this ruse.

Politico reports that other GOP congressional offices received similar flags in the mail back in February, according to a Hill aide who said their office threw the flag away.

The news of the swastika flag came just a day after Politico reported on a foul Telegram chat by young GOP operatives and at least one state legislator in which they frequently used racial slurs and texted one another statements like “I love Hitler.”

Already, the fallout from that message has Republicans scrambling to condemn chat members, which include the vice-chair of the Kansas Young Republicans, several people in the New York State Young Republicans organization, and Samuel Douglass, a state senator in Vermont. The state’s Republican governor, Phil Scott, has called for Douglass’s resignation. In New York, Representative Elise Stefanik — who may challenge Governor Kathy Hochul next year — called the story a “hit piece” on social media, while a senior adviser for her campaign called on those in the chat to resign.

Even the Vice-President J.D. Vance (former Marine corporal) weighed in, downplaying the racist and antisemitic language as “a college group chat,” although its members named by Politico are well past college age. (Vance took oaths as a Senator, as a Marine corporal and as vice-resident to uphold the Constitution❗)

Vance added that anybody who was concerned by its many racial slurs and love for Nazis was just “pearl clutching.” (Shameful from a former Marine corporal.)

Vice-President JD Vance author of Hillbilly Elegy was a former Marine corporal.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans in Texas use threats to force a vote on redistricting but Democrats broke quorum

Echo essay by Heather Cox Richardson published on Substack in "Letters from an American". 

Democratic lawmakers from the Texas House of Representatives left the state to deny Republican lawmakers the quorum—the number of legislators required to pass legislation—they need in order to push through a new district map that would take five seats currently held by Democrats and give them to Republicans.

Donald J. Trump demanded this rare mid-decade redistricting in an attempt to hold control of the House of Representatives in 2026. He is urging all Republican-dominated states to make a similar change to guarantee Republican dominance regardless of the will of voters.

Republicans in the Texas legislature rushed a bill that would make the new map law through committee on Saturday morning after the one public hearing they held on it showed overwhelming opposition. Sophia Beausoleil of NBC 5 in Dallas–Fort Worth reports that the Texas House would vote on the bill Monday; but Democrats breaking the quorum prevents the bill from being brought up for a vote.

“My Democratic colleagues and I have just left our beloved state to break quorum and stop Trump's redistricting power grab,” Texas state representative James Talarico said in a video posted to social media. “Trump told our Republican colleagues to redraw the political maps here in Texas in the middle of the decade to get him five more seats and protect his majority in Congress. They're turning our districts into crazy shapes to guarantee the outcome they want in the 2026, elections. If this power grab succeeds, they will hang on to power without any accountability from the voters. 

But Texas Democrats are fighting back. They left Texas, breaking quorum and preventing Republicans from silencing their voices and rigging the next election. "We are not fighting for the Democratic Party. We are fighting for the democratic process, and the stakes could not be higher. We have to take a stand,” he said.

Texas legislators traveled to Boston, Massachusetts, and to Albany, New York, to confer with Democratic leaders. About 30 of them, though, went to Chicago, Illinois, where Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker welcomed them at a press conference.

Texas House Democratic Caucus Chair Gene Wu emphasized that the Democrats tried to work with the Republicans, but Texas governor Greg Abbott and Republican lawmakers were forcing the new map through, against the will of the voters, because Trump told them to. Wu’s explanation mirrors that of Republican state representative Cody Vasut, who told Natasha Korecki and Ryan Chandler of NBC News: “This map was politically based, and that’s totally legal, totally allowed and totally fair.”

Wu warned that the attempt to grab five new seats in Texas to maintain control of the U.S. House of Representatives against the will of voters is a threat not only to Texas, but to the entire country and to the concept of America. “If Donald Trump is allowed to do this, if he is allowed to once again cheat and get away with it, there's no stopping this. This will spread across the country, and…will occur everywhere. Because if one person's going to cheat and no one's going to stop it, why doesn't everyone just do it then? And that is not a society, that is not an America that works.”

Wu continued: “Everyone is already tired of the hyperpartisan bickering and all the fighting because we never get anything done. And they are creating a system that will reinforce that and make it even worse. And we're telling people, please come out, stand up against it, rise up and say no more. Enough."

Wu said the Texas Democratic representatives “did not make the decision to come here today…lightly, but we come here today with absolute moral clarity.”

Governor Pritzker has been in contact with the Texas Democrats to plan for such a moment. His staff will provide logistical support to the visiting Texans. Tonight he made it clear that the Texas Democrats’ fight against Trump’s power grab is the fight of all Americans to protect democracy. “Let's be clear,” Pritzker said, “this is not just rigging the system in Texas. It's about rigging the system against the rights of all Americans for years to come.”

Pritzker continued: “Texas Democrats were left no choice but to leave their home state, block a vote from taking place, and protect their constituents. This is a righteous act of courage.” Pritzker urged other Americans to “take a page from these leaders's playbook. When you show people that you have the will to fight, well, they can muster the will to fight, too. Courage is contagious.”

“To be in public office right now is to constantly ask yourself, how do I make sure that we’re standing on the right side of history❓ There's a simple answer. The wrong side of history will always tell you to be afraid. The right side of history will always expect you to be courageous. Expect courage from people around you, and it will show up. Expect fear, and fear will rule the day. Let the courage of these leaders be an example to the rest of the country. I'm proud to stand side by side with our friends from Texas today.”

Tonight U.S. Representative Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) told an audience in Phoenix, Arizona: “My former colleagues from the Texas House—those Texas Democrats—decided to get the hell out of Texas…and breaking quorum is where they’re at right now. And they didn’t just do it by themselves—they went to Illinois, where there is a governor that gives a damn. You see, this fight is going to take all of us.”

Crockett’s comments came at tonight’s launch of the “Won’t Back Down” Tour, organized by MoveOn and MeidasTouch, to hold Republicans accountable and organize for 2026. Crockett, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), and Representative Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) spoke tonight; Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Representative Maxwell Frost (D-FL) will take the tour to Nebraska next.

Texas governor Abbott responded to the Texas House Democrats' quorum break by threatening to remove from office any Democrats who are not back in their seats for Monday’s vote and to replace them “swiftly” with his own appointees thanks to his power to fill vacancies. He also suggested he would consider them felons for accepting money to pay for their food and housing in Chicago and that such a designation would enable him to cross state lines to get them back. He threatened to use “my full extradition authority to demand the return to Texas of any potential out-of-state felons.”

When a reporter asked about Abbott’s threat, Pritzker responded: “They’re here in Illinois. We’re going to do everything we can to protect every single one of them…. It’s the leaders of Texas who are attempting not to follow the law. They’re the ones that need to be held accountable.”

In the Texas legislature, bills can only be introduced during the first 60 days of a regular session unless a four-fifths vote of the members present approves it.  

Politico reports how Texas Governor Abbott and other Texas Republicans face a hard deadline as they are preparing to adopt maps that could net the GOP five seats in the U.S. House, potentially cementing the party’s majority in Congress. Maps need to be completed before the end of the year so that election officials can prepare for the state’s March 3 primaries. The move has also prompted retaliation threats by Democratic governors in other states and roiled expectations for the 2026 elections, when Democrats hope to take the House and act as a check on Donald Trump.

Main Stream Media must report about the physicians lawsuit against incompetent RFKjr because of his stupid vaccine policies! DANGER!

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFKjr) is a lunatic incompetent who has appointed himself to be an uneducated authority about the public health value and the administration of disease preventive vaccines. 

Report published in Politico, Yahoo news and STAT: 

Vaccines save lives. Moreover, virus germs hate vaccines, because when humans and animals are immunized against viruses, this prevents the virus from mutating into an even more morbid form. 

If the American public, or humans and animals in general, stop getting influenza vaccines and COVID immunizations, this gap in immunity will quickly be preyed upon by mutant hungry viruses. Viruses will create a new DNA configuration to create another deadly pandemic, because that is what viruses do.

Glad to see legal push back from physicians groups❗ 

WASHINGTON — Six major medical groups, and a pregnant physician, are suing health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (JRKjr) over changes he made to Covid-19 vaccine recommendations that they say were unlawful and undermine the public trust in health care.

The suit argues that a May 19, 2025, directive signed by Kennedy, which said that the Covid-19 vaccine would no longer be recommended for healthy children and pregnant people, violates decades of policy governing how vaccines are reviewed, approved, and recommended in the U.S.

Doctors’ groups are suing Kennedy over COVID shot changes for kids and pregnant women.

They say the decision “erodes trust” by pitting providers against federal recommendations that aren’t grounded in evidence.

A coalition of doctors’ groups led by the American Academy of Pediatrics filed a lawsuit against (the incompetent❗) Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., arguing that his May announcement that the government would no longer recommend Covid-19 vaccines for healthy pregnant people and children violated longstanding norms governing U.S. immunization policy.

(RFKjr is crazy and his policies about vaccines and other stupid stuff are dangerous to the public health.) ⚠️

The organizations filing suit say Kennedy’s May 19 “Secretarial Directive” documenting his move to pull the vaccine from the CDC’s immunization schedule constitutes a final agency action ripe for challenge, noting that he cited no emergency or specific circumstantial changes to support the move.

The Secretarial Directive is contrary to the wealth of data and peer-reviewed studies that demonstrate the safety and efficacy of Covid vaccines for children and pregnant women,” the plaintiffs said in the lawsuit.

Health and Human Services (HHS) didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Organizations on the challenge include the American College of Physicians, the American Public Health Association and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

The directive, they wrote, has put doctors “in the untenable position of telling their patients that the country’s top-ranking government health official’s advice and recommendations are wrong and that we are right.”

“This erodes trust, which is the foundation of a healthy physician-patient relationship and vital to the success of AAP members’ medical practices,” they added.

Kennedy announced the change in a May 27, video posted to X, in which he was flanked by FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary and NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, both of whom gained notoriety during the Covid pandemic for their opposition to mask and vaccine mandates. (All of them grossly incompetent❗)

The three officials said there wasn’t sufficient data to show healthy children and healthy pregnant women benefited from Covid vaccination. “Most countries have stopped recommending it for children,” Makary said in the video.

The plaintiffs in the case said Kennedy had unlawfully sidelined the CDC and its independent vaccine panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which are the federal bodies responsible for the immunization schedule.

“The statutory scheme that regulates the vaccine infrtructure in this country demonstrates Congress’ repeated policy decision to require that ACIP recommendations, made by a fairly balanced ACIP membership, 51 be the basis for what is put on or taken off of the CDC immunization schedules — not the unilateral decision of a single individual,” the plaintiffs wrote.

Public and private insurers are largely obligated to cover ACIP-recommended vaccines with no cost-sharing under the Affordable Care Act, and states often tie their daycare and school vaccine requirements to the panel’s recommendations.

While the CDC ultimately didn’t pull the recommendation from the childhood schedule, it did downgrade it to one involving “shared decision making” — a differentiation the physician groups say has made it harder for providers to counsel patients and for practices to assess insurance coverage.

The lawsuit was filed in federal district court in Massachusetts, where a landmark vaccine policy case set national precedent in the early 20th century. The Supreme Court’s 1905 Jacobson v. Massachusetts decision upheld states’ authority to mandate vaccinations.

Republicans are one hundred percent responsible for the comparisoms between Trump and Naziism

People Magazine report  Al Gore Attacks Trump in a Fiery Speech, Says He Sees Parallels to Early Nazi Germany for This Reason by Meredith Kile.

Former Vice President Al Gore blasted Donald Trump during a speech in San Francisco, accusing Trump of dismantling efforts to combat climate change and threatening American democracy.

Politico echo by Debra Kahn:  Al Gore compares Trump administration to Nazi Germany

"Our constitution, written by our founders, is intended to protect us against a threat identical to Donald Trump,” the former vice president said in a pointed speech at San Francisco Climate Week.

SAN FRANCISCO — Former Vice President Al Gore on Monday compared Donald Trump’s administration to Nazi Germany and issued a dire warning about Trump’s use of power in a speech devoted to climate change.

Speaking at an event at the start of San Francisco’s Climate Week, Gore said the Trump administration was “trying to create their own preferred version of reality” to achieve their sweeping objectives similar to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party in the 1930s, and ‘40s.

“I understand very well why it is wrong to compare Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich to any other movement,” Gore said to an audience of roughly 150 climate advocates and policymakers gathered at a science museum on San Francisco’s waterfront. “It was uniquely evil, full stop. I get it. ❗ But there are important lessons from the history of that emergent evil.”

Gore’s remarks follow sharp attacks on the Trump administration by a throng of party luminaries and former leaders in recent weeks.

Former President Barack Obama in a recent speech said he was “deeply concerned with a federal government that threatens universities if they don’t give up students who are exercising their right to free speech,” adding that the values of the U.S. under Trump have eroded. Former Vice President Kamala Harris accused the Trump administration of taking unconstitutional actions and said they are contributing to a “sense of fear.” And former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote in a New York Times guest essay that Trump was “squandering America’s strength and threatening our national security” — contributing to the battery of free-wheeling attacks as current officeholders in the Democratic Party calibrate their day-to-day approaches to the White House.

Gore, for his part, cited German philosophers’ “moral autopsy on the Third Reich” in the aftermath of World War II.

“It was [Jürgen] Habermas’ mentor, Theodore Adorno, who wrote that the first step in that nation’s descent into hell was, and I quote, ‘the conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power,”’ Gore said. “He described how the Nazis, and I quote again, ‘attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false.’ End quote. The Trump administration is insisting on trying to create their own preferred version of reality.”

White House officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Gore’s remarks.

Gore, whose 2006, documentary about global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” won an Academy Award, also reeled off a series of assertions by Trump about climate change and energy technologies as part of his broadside on the administration’s dismantling of previous Democratic administrations’ climate policies.

“They say the climate crisis is a hoax invented by the Chinese to destroy American manufacturing,” he said. “They say coal is clean. They say wind turbines cause cancer. They say sea-level rise just creates more beachfront property.”

Gore also invoked Martin Luther King, Jr., and the late Pope Francis in his 25-minute speech, which was largely devoted to exhorting the crowd to continue pursuing action on climate change.

“We’ve already seen, by the way, how populist authoritarian leaders have used migrants as scapegoats and have fanned the fires of xenophobia to fuel their own rise of power,” he said. “And power-seeking is what this is all about. Our constitution, written by our founders, is intended to protect us against a threat identical to Donald Trump,” he said, to applause.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie were in attendance and spoke after Gore. 

Pelosi highlighted climate policies like the Inflation Reduction Act and Pope Francis’ climate advocacy, while Lurie touted San Francisco’s recycling and renewable energy policies and investments in electric vehicle infrastructure.

Sophia Cai contributed to this report.

Donald Trump made a terrible mistake when he pardoned January 6th criminals who assaulted the Capitol police

Federal judges in January 6th cases slam Trump’s pardons
Echo report published in Politico by Kyle Cheney

Riots on January 6th were caught on camera, plain for the world to see. As millions around the world watched in horror, thousands of supporters following calls to action from President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol. Their aim was to disrupt the joint session of Congress assembled to count electoral votes that would formalize then-President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said President Donald Trump’s action could never change the “immutable” record of violence and heroism of law enforcement, which will remain enshrined in court records. | John Minchillo/AP

It’s the judges’ first substantive comments after Trump’s sweeping clemency and dismissals of the more than 1,500 January 6 criminal cases.

A prominent federal judge ripped President Donald Trump’s mass clemency for January 6 rioters, saying the justification he offered in his proclamation — to correct an “injustice” and trigger a “national reconciliation” — was “flatly wrong” and a “revisionist myth.”

“No ‘national injustice’ occurred here, just as no outcome-determinative election fraud occurred in the 2020, presidential election,” U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell wrote in an eight-page order in the case of two January 6th defendants who pleaded guilty to felonies. “No ‘process of national reconciliation’ can begin when poor losers, whose preferred candidate loses an election, are glorified for disrupting a constitutionally mandated proceeding in Congress and doing so with impunity.”

Howell’s remarks are the most pointed yet in response to Trump’s decision to wipe away the nearly 1,600 criminal cases stemming from the attack — including hundreds of charges of assaults on police, as well as seditious conspiracy convictions. She said his decision “merely raises the dangerous specter of future lawless conduct by other poor losers and undermines the rule of law.”

Howell, who presided over several secret proceedings in special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal cases against Trump — issuing key rulings that required some of his top aides to testify to a grand jury — was not the only judge Wednesday to defend the January 6 prosecutions.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan — who was slated to preside over Trump’s own criminal prosecution for seeking to subvert the 2020, election before his 2024, victory ended the case — said Trump’s mass pardons “cannot whitewash the blood, feces, and terror that the mob left in its wake.”

“It cannot repair the jagged breach in America’s sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power,” Chutkan wrote in an order connected to a Jan. 6 felony case. “In hundreds of cases like this one over the past four years, judges in this district have administered justice without fear or favor. The historical record established by those proceedings must stand, unmoved by political winds, as a testament and as a warning.”

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said Trump’s action could never change the “immutable” record of violence and heroism of law enforcement, which will remain enshrined in court records.

“Dismissal of charges, pardons after convictions, and commutations of sentences will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote in a six-page order dismissing charges against Dominic Box, whom she had previously convicted of two felony counts for his role in the riot.

“What occurred that day is preserved for the future through thousands of contemporaneous videos, transcripts of trials, jury verdicts, and judicial opinions analyzing and recounting the evidence through a neutral lens,” Kollar-Kotelly wrote. “Those records are immutable and represent the truth, no matter how the events of January 6 are described by those charged or their allies.”

Howell and Chutkan, both Obama appointees, and Kollar-Kotelly, a Clinton appointee, are the first judges to make substantive comments after Trump’s sweeping clemency and dismissals of the more than 1,500 January 6 criminal cases. Judges have been steadily processing the dismissals of hundreds of pending cases since Monday evening, when Trump signed his clemency proclamation.

But none of them had offered any public commentary on the matter yet, despite having warned repeatedly prior to Trump’s inauguration that they were fearful of attempts by the president and his allies to bury the truth about January 6.

Kollar-Kotelly said the “heroism of each officer who responded” could also not be erased.

“Grossly outnumbered, those law enforcement officers acted valiantly to protect the Members of Congress, their staff, the Vice President and his family, the integrity of the Capitol grounds, and the Capitol Building — our symbol of liberty and a symbol of democratic rule around the world,” she wrote.

Howell’s remarks came in the case of Nicholas DeCarlo and Nicholas Ochs, two leaders of the Proud Boys who admitted to throwing smoke bombs at officers at the Capitol. Howell noted that judges are permitted to seek a factual basis for the reasoning behind DOJ’s decision when it abruptly dismisses a case, and she said the Trump administration had offered no such facts.

As a result, Howell opted to dismiss the case “without prejudice,” meaning the charges could be brought again if prosecutors reconsider, despite the Justice Department’s effort to drop them in a way that would prevent them from being lodged in the future. Chutkan, too, dismissed her cases “without prejudice.”

“The prosecutions in this case and others charging defendants for their criminal conduct at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, present no injustice, but instead reflect the diligent work of conscientious public servants,” Howell wrote, “including prosecutors and law enforcement officials, and dedicated defense attorneys, to defend our democracy and rights and preserve our long tradition of peaceful transfers of power—which, until January 6, 2021, served as a model to the world—all while affording those charged every protection guaranteed by our Constitution and the criminal justice system.”

“Bluntly put,” she continued, “the assertion offered in the presidential pronouncement for the pending motion to dismiss is flatly wrong.”

Democrats must strategically educate voters about how Donald Trump will fail. Chaos will damage average people

Voters will witness the metaphoric impact of political Narcan when Donald Trump signs his draconian executive orders and pushes unqualified nominees into public hearings for Senate confirmation.

Democrats may be in the (very slim) minority, but they are not yet an opposition. What’s the difference?

Echo opinion published in The New York Times by Jamelle Bouie.

An opposition would use every opportunity it had to demonstrate its resolute stance against the incoming administration. 

Opposition would do everything in its power to try to seize the public’s attention and make hay of the president-elect’s efforts to put lawlessness at the center of American government. 

An opposition would highlight the extent to which Donald Trump has no intention of fulfilling his pledge of lower prices and greater economic prosperity for ordinary people and is openly scheming with the billionaire oligarchs who paid for and ran his campaign to gut the social safety net and bring something like Hooverism back from the ash heap of history.

An opposition would treat the proposed nomination of figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth as an early chance to define a second Trump administration as dangerous to the lives and livelihoods of ordinary Americans. It would prioritize nimble, aggressive leadership over an unbending commitment to seniority and the elevation of whoever is next in line. Above all, an opposition would see that politics is about conflict — or, as Henry Adams famously put it, “the systematic organization of hatreds” — and reject the risk-averse strategies of the past in favor of new blood and new ideas.

The Democratic Party lacks the energy of a determined opposition — it is adrift, listless in the wake of defeat. Too many elected Democrats seem ready to concede that Trump is some kind of avatar for the national spirit — a living embodiment of the American people. They’ve accepted his proposed nominees as legitimate and entertained surrender under the guise of political reconciliation. Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, for example, praised Elon Musk, a key Trump lieutenant, as “the champion among big tech executives of First Amendment values and principles.” Senator Chris Coons of Delaware similarly praised Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a glorified blue-ribbon commission, as a potentially worthwhile enterprise — “a constructive undertaking that ought to be embraced.” And a fair number of Democrats have had friendly words for the prospect of Kennedy going to the Department of Health and Human Services, with credulous praise for his interest in “healthy food.”

Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey said last month. “I have concerns, obviously, about people leading in our country who aren’t based in science and fact.” 

And at least two Democrats want President Joe Biden to consider a pardon for incoming President Trump. “The Trump hush money and Hunter Biden cases were both bullshit, and pardons are appropriate,” Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania wrote in his first post on Trump’s social networking website.

Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina also said that Biden should consider a pardon for Trump as a way of “cleaning the slate” for the country. “If we keep digging at things in the past, I’m not too sure the country will not lose its way,” he said in a conversation on MSNBC with Jonathan Capehart. 

But, unmentioned was Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon, which did not clean the slate of American politics as much as it made legal and political impunity the lodestar of Republican presidential politics.

Other Democrats have decided, in the wake of Trump’s popular vote victory, that aggressive, full-spectrum opposition to his priorities is a mistake. “Here is what I am not going to do for the next two years and the next four years,” Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, said in a news conference after the election. “I’m not going to deal with ‘It’s Tulsi Gabbard one day, then an hour later it’s Matt Gaetz, then the next day it’s Robert F. Kennedy Jr., then he says something on Truth Social, and then the people connected to him are doing something outrageous.’ No, that I’m not doing, because that’s all a distraction.”

It seems strange to think that it is not the job of an opposition to oppose — especially when the people in question have little business in government — but Jeffries isn’t alone in thinking that it is to the advantage of Democrats to hold their powder and avoid direct confrontations. He is in line with high-level Democratic strategists who also think that it is a mistake for Democrats to make noise, draw attention and seize the initiative.

“A pollster to Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign told top Democratic Party officials recently that they must confront President-elect Donald Trump far differently than they did during his first term,” Holly Otterbein reported in Politico, “urgently pressing them not to focus on every outrage but instead argue that he is hurting voters’ pocketbooks.” According to the pollster, voters don’t care about who he’s putting in cabinet positions and will “give him a pass on the outrageous” if costs come down. (❓- but Trumpzi  already admitted that his fake promise to bring down costs will be difficult❗ to accomplish - ya'think❓. IOW, he lied to voters and they bought the "pig in a poke" message. OMG❗)

At the heart of all of this — whether it comes from congressional leaders, ordinary lawmakers or top pollsters — is the idea that Democrats can float above the fray and reap the political rewards of any chaos and dysfunction. Besides, voters say they want compromise — and what else can Democrats do but follow the polls?

It’s as if Democrats see politics as a stable landscape — a static field with clear rules. They can respond to voters, but they cannot shape the basic orientation of the electorate. 

By this view, most Americans are fixed in place and Democrats must meet them where they are. If voters don’t seem to care about corruption, impropriety and incompetence, then there’s nothing Democrats can do to make them care.

But this is not true. We know as much because Trump just won an election demonstrating that it’s not true. Trump rehabilitated himself through relentless self-promotion. He built a constituency for tariffs and mass deportation through endless repetition connected to some basic concerns. His “stop the steal” obsession put him at the center of Republican Party politics. He captured space in American cultural life and refused to let go, winning political power in the process.

Democrats can’t replicate this behavior, but there are lessons to learn from it — the first and foremost being that the public will not make connections and draw conclusions unless you do it for them. And that takes a willingness, again, to seize attention, to throw everything at the wall with the hope that something will stick. 

If Democrats, following the pocketbook strategy, want voters to blame Trump for any price hikes during his administration, they need to do everything they can now, in as dramatic a fashion as they can manage, to make Trump the culprit — to give voters a language with which they can express their anger at the status quo.

If Democrats want voters to blame Trump for any potential foreign policy failures, they must work now to highlight and emphasize the extent to which the president-elect - Trumpzi- wants a more or less inexperienced set of hacks and dilettantes to lead the nation’s national security establishment. 

Even something as obvious as the connection between Trump’s billionaire allies and his support for large, upper-income tax cuts has to be dramatized and made apparent to the voting electorate.

At this stage, there’s little evidence that Democrats are willing to do any of this. Given the opportunity, for example, to effect a changing of the guard — to promote younger and more aggressive voices like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to leadership, even if it upsets the usual rules of seniority, as I mentioned earlier — Democrats said, in effect, No thanks.

This is a grave mistake. Trump’s hand is not as strong as it looks. He has a narrow, and potentially unstable, Republican majority in the House of Representatives and a small, but far from filibuster-proof, majority in the Senate. He’ll start his term a lame duck, with less than 18 months to make progress before the start of the next election cycle. And his great ambition — to impose a form of autarky on the United States — is poised to spark a thermostatic reaction from a public that elevated him to deal with high prices and restore a kind of normalcy. But Democrats won’t reap the full rewards of a backlash if they do nothing to prime the country for their message.

There are other reasons for Democrats to try to take the initiative. There are still many Americans rightfully concerned with an authoritarian turn in the United States. Again, just over half the electorate did not vote for Trump. They deserve leadership, too. Indeed, the party’s refusal to fight sends ripples through civic life. If Democratic leaders won’t fight, then it’s hard to expect civil society, or just ordinary people, to pick up the slack. Either democracy was on the ballot in November or it wasn’t, and if it was, it makes no political, ethical or strategic sense to act as if we live in normal times.

It is not a distraction to vocally oppose Trump’s would-be nominees or highlight his extreme intentions. Democrats should look at every aspect of the next Trump administration as an opportunity to do, well, politics — to demonstrate their values and show the extent to which this president has no plan to pursue the public good. The quiet and supposedly responsible approach of the past four years is a dead end. Attention is the only currency that matters, and Democrats need some to spend.

Abraham Lincoln was assisted in his first campaign for president by a cadre of young, costumed men who campaigned, marched in the streets and showed militant enthusiasm for the Republican Party. These “Wide Awakes” were as flamboyant and provocative as any movement that has ever emerged in the history of American politics, and they soon held the attention of the entire nation, friend and foe alike. The 1860 election was not, the historian Jon Grinspan wrote, “a dry government process but a public confrontation, and the Wide Awakes had formed to help Republicans fight back.”

So it was and so it is. American politics has always been a game of performance and spectacle, from the whiskey-fueled street debates of the early Republic to the raucous conventions of the first Gilded Age. To be sterile and sober-minded in this arena is to be, for the most part, a loser.

Donald Trump obviously learned nothing during his first chaotic term, evidenced by his unqualified cabinet nominees

"No amount of blame-shifting, false equivalence or reality-distorting can cover up the insanity, chaos, incompetence and callousness that is Trump."

Opinion letter below my comment, published in the Beaver County Times, a Pennsylvania newspaper:  

Makes no sense for Donald Trump to nominate incompetent loyalists to the positions where they can do the most harm to averge people regardless of age, race, immigrant status or political opinions. When he nominates the unqualified Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFKjr) to be the Secretary for Health and Human Services, Trump is falling victim to the proven cliche about insanity- "doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result", a phrase often attributed to Albert Einstein, meaning that repeatedly performing the same action while hoping for a different outcome is considered illogical or foolish. In other words, "Wash, Rinse, Repeat".

As a refresher to provide proof of the above, this opinion letter (below) is a reminder about just how bad the "repeat" cycle can be, unless Trump nominates qualified people to crucial health care leadership positions.  

Trump’s response to the pandemic has been indefensibly disastrous❗ That does not prevent disciples of his political cult from defending him, for example, in a letter sent to this paper from April 26. No amount of blame-shifting, false equivalence or reality-distorting can cover up the insanity, chaos, incompetence and callousness that is Trump. More than anything, it's his own words that prove that.

Remember when he praised the tests we still don’t have and compared them to his Ukraine call? “The tests are all perfect, like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right?”

Last month at the CDC, Trump bragged from beneath his red hat, “Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability.”

Then on April 24: “I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning?”

"I'd rate it a 10," Trump has said of his response.

“The numbers” are now more than 76,000 American lives lost.

"I don't take responsibility at all," said 😒😠Trump.  (Politico)

From David Ninehouser, in Ambridge, Pennsylvania

When asked in March about bringing coronavirus-stricken Americans ashore from a cruise ship, Trump said, “I don’t need the numbers to double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.”

Mexico Strong: Thank you President Sheinbaumgive- Immigrants are welcome here!

"Trump, and Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaumgive differing reviews of - their opinion about a  'wonderful conversation'  😕😮on border, illegal immigration," Politico

Letter from President Sheinbaurmgive link to source here.

“Dear President-elect Donald Trump (Translation in English),

I am writing to you regarding your statement on Monday, November 25, concerning migration, fentanyl trafficking, and tariffs. 

You may not be aware that Mexico has developed a comprehensive policy to assist migrants from different parts of the world who cross our territory en route to the southern border of the United States. As a result, and according to data from your country’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP), encounters at the Mexico–United States border have decreased by 75% between December 2023 and November 2024. Moreover, half of those who arrive do so through a legally scheduled appointment under the United States’ CBP One program. For these reasons, migrant caravans no longer arrive at the border. Even so, it is clear that we must work together to create a new labor mobility model that is necessary for your country, as well as address the root causes that compel families to leave their homes out of necessity. If even a small percentage of what the United States allocates to war were instead dedicated to building peace and fostering development, it would address the underlying causes of human mobility. On another note, and for humanitarian reasons, Mexico has consistently expressed its willingness to help prevent the fentanyl epidemic in the United States from continuing. This is, after all, a public health and consumption problem within your society. So far this year, Mexican armed forces and prosecutors have seized tons of various types of drugs, 10,340 firearms, and have detained 15,640 individuals for violence related to drug trafficking. Furthermore, the Mexican Congress is in the process of approving a constitutional reform to classify the production, distribution, and commercialization of fentanyl and other synthetic drugs as a serious crime without bail. However, it is publicly known that the chemical precursors used to produce this and other synthetic drugs are illegally entering Canada, the United States, and Mexico from Asian countries. This underscores the urgent need for international collaboration. You must also be aware of the illegal trafficking of firearms into my country from the United States. Seventy percent of the illegal weapons seized from criminals in Mexico come from your country. We do not produce these weapons, nor do we consume synthetic drugs. Tragically, it is in our country that lives are lost to the violence resulting from meeting the drug demand in yours. President Trump, migration and drug consumption in the United States cannot be addressed through threats or tariffs. What is needed is cooperation and mutual understanding to tackle these significant challenges. For every tariff, there will be a response in kind, until we put at risk our shared enterprises. Yes, shared. For instance, among Mexico’s main exporters to the United States are General Motors, Stellantis, and Ford Motor Company, which arrived in Mexico 80 years ago. Why impose a tariff that would jeopardize them❓ Such a measure would be unacceptable and would lead to inflation and job losses in both the United States and Mexico. I am convinced that North America’s economic strength lies in maintaining our trade partnership. This allows us to remain competitive against other economic blocs. For this reason, I believe that dialogue is the best path to understanding, peace, and prosperity for our nations. I hope our teams can meet soon to continue building joint solutions.”

Letter to Donald Trump from the President of Mexico
Mexico Strong

JD Vance is an embarrasement! Yale University gave this man a diploma? What were they thinking?

Echo essay published in Politico by Greta Reich:

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear came out swinging against the former president and his current running mate when he said on ABC’s “This Week” that “there is no lie too big for Donald Trump and JD Vance,” referring to their refusal to acknowledge that Trump lost the 2020, election.

Governor Beshear has the highest approval rating of any Democratic governor in the country,

“I mean, when you ask [Vance] about the last election, all you’re asking him to do is admit reality,” Beshear, a Democrat, told “This Week” host Martha Raddatz. “And we deserve to have a Vice President who believes in democracy and can say, yes, DonOLD Trump lost the last election, and now we’re running in this election.”

Beshear appeared on “This Week” just moments after an appearance by Vance himself, where Raddatz questioned him repeatedly about whether or not Trump lost the 2020, election.

Vance’s responses echoed what he said during the vice presidential debate, and multiple times after, when asked the same question.

“I’ve said repeatedly, I think the 2020, election had problems. You want to say rigged, you want to say he won, use whatever vocabulary term you want,” Vance told Raddatz, adding that he wants “to focus on the fact that we had big technology firms censoring our fellow citizens in a way that violated our fundamental rights.”

This censorship is in reference to independent studies that have — Vance has said — suggested affected the vote.

Adding to his critique of intentionally spreading misinformation, Beshear also slammed Trump and Vance for lying about FEMA’s disaster response during Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton.

“In Kentucky, we went through our worst tornado disaster and our worst flood disaster in our history, and I didn’t have to deal with any of the shenanigans that Donald Trump is putting out right now, and these lies can hurt people,” Beshear said, presumably referencing the lethal tornadoes that hit his state in May.

“I mean, the line that $750 is all that’s available,” he said. “That means that individual might not apply for the $40,000-plus in individual assistance.” ($750 is the initial money given to those affected to help with immediate needs.)

He continued: “If you truly care about the people that are harmed more than yourself, you wouldn’t politicize this. You wouldn’t be putting out all this misinformation. As somebody who has led through national disasters, it hurts.”

When asked why the race appears so tight despite the lies, and the record-breaking amount of money raised for Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, Beshear blamed heightened partisanship.

“It’s something that I hope after this election that the Vice President can move us beyond, that she can remind us that this isn’t supposed to be an us versus them, that Donald Trump seems to do in everything that he’s about,” he said. “She can remind us that we are all Americans first, and Democrats, Republicans, and independents, second, third, or fourth.”

By the way, shame on Yale University! When J.D. Vance applied to law school, he viewed it as a pathway out of his chaotic upbringing in working-class Middletown, Ohio. Then he won a spot at his dream school. Yale Law not only accepted him for the fall of 2010, but also offered a nearly full ride the first year (What were they thinking?)

Donald Trump speaks in jibberish dog whistles with racist euphemisims but makes no sense

Yes, this is what DonOLD Trump really sounds like. Echo editorial opinion published in The Washington Post - Democracy dies in darkness. 

No, you cannot ignore it.

The former president’s rallies and interviews should remind voters what he really represents.

In her “60 Minutes” interview last week, Vice President Kamala Harris asked voters to watch DonOLD Trump’s rallies, particularly because Trump chose not to follow custom (surprise) and ditched appearing on the show. For those who can sit through the rally exercise, it’s revealing.

But if you haven’t been able to take Ms. Harris up on her suggestion, here is some of what you would have heard. It’s a useful reminder of what the Republican candidate for president has been saying.

Last month in Wisconsin: “They will walk into your kitchen,” Trump said of undocumented immigrants. “They’ll cut your throat.” Later, he called the same people “animals.”

Scranton, Pa., Trump claimed (impossibly) that he would pay off the national debt despite his promises of massive tax breaks and new expenditures. After sniping at “stupid” Mitt Romney, whom he said attendees should be glad to be getting “the hell out of here,” he took aim at his opponents. Ms. Harris, he claimed, is a “radical left Marxist” — a tame attack in comparison with another contention: that she was born “mentally impaired.” 

In Reading, Pa., he called “The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg “demented” as well as “filthy dirty, disgusting.”

Then there is Trump’s latest crusade, to re-rename North Carolina’s Fort Liberty by dubbing it Fort Bragg once more, so that the base will again honor a Confederate general. This reignites a fight he waged as president, when he vetoed a bipartisan military spending bill over the issue — and saw that veto, also in bipartisan fashion, overridden.

On Thursday at the Detroit Economic Club, he returned to the matter of immigrants: “We allowed them to come in and raid and rape our country. ‘Oh, he used the word rape.’ That’s right, I used the word rape. They raped our country.”

Trump has acquitted himself no better in the various radio and podcast interviews he has given these past few weeks.

To conservative commentator, (Romn Catholic) Hugh Hewitt, he conjured a fantastical statistic on global warming: “The ocean will rise one-eighth of an inch in the next 500 years.” (Hewitt is a Post Opinions contributor - (Although he claims to be Catholic, he talks like a right wing anti-immigration fanatic.)

In the same conversation, Trump embraced discredited theories of eugenics. Returning to the theme of illegal immigration, he again called immigrants murderers — asserting that “it’s in their genes.” He continued, “We got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”

It’s hard to discern degrees of bad, but the former president’s lies about the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the wake of two major hurricanes pummeling the Southeast have been particularly insidious. On (fake❗)Fox News, he insisted: “They’re being treated very badly in the Republican areas. They’re not getting water, they’re not getting anything.” Elsewhere, he declared that “Kamala spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars, on housing for” — you guessed it — “illegal migrants.” These allegations of a politically motivated emergency response are false, but they have discouraged people in need of aid from going to the agency for help. (And, as it turns out, Politico reports, it was Trump who as president hesitated to give disaster relief to blue parts of the country.)

Sometimes, Trump’s rhetoric is harmless, and, to be sure, he does not follow through on every outlandish thing he says. There’s arguably ridiculous entertainment in his invocation of “the late, great Hannibal Lecter” or in business leaders inquiring of the candidate, “How do you get up in the morning and put your pants on?” Yet the line between amusing and discomfiting cuts too close for comfort, and irresponsible rhetoric on a rally stage would make for a bleak reality in the Oval Office. 

Trump’s chaotic term as president showed that he often means what he says. Certainly, voters should examine Ms. Harris’s record and rhetoric. But they should also take seriously the words expressed by her (dangerous❗⚠️ ) opponent❗

Even the Wall Street Journal critizing former Marine Corporal JD Vance!

Echo opinion letter published in Midland Daily News, in Midland Michigan.

Former Marine Corporal J.D. Vance either received a poor legal education or he has adopted the Donald Trump attitude toward the constitution which is that of disdain.

I heard J.D. Vance say he would have done the opposite of Mike Pence on January 6, 2021. He would have sent everyone home with instructions to seat the alternate (fake) electors and then come back. If that is the kind of character he has, he should not hold any office and should not represent that he has a law degree.

From Mark Brissette, from Sanford, a village in Michigan

And wait....❗😉there's more from the Wall Street Journal (WSJ)...

Get a chuckle out of this Google Doodle on July 29, 2024. 😀😉

THE VANCE CATFIGHT — The WSJ editorial board is joining the pile-on over Sen. JD VANCE’s (R-Ohio) comments about “childless cat ladies.”- published in Politico's "Playbook", by Ryan Lizza, Eugene Daniels, Garrett Ross and Bethany Irvine.

In a tough piece posted last night, Paul Gigot and colleagues call the comment “the sort of smart-aleck crack that gets laughs in certain right-wing male precincts” but that “doesn’t play well with the millions of female voters, many of them Republican, who will decide the presidential race.”

They see the speed and breadth of the coverage of Vance’s remark as evidence “that this is Mr. Vance’s first big cultural impression, and not a good one.”

The WSJ editorial board are unimpressed with Vance’s efforts to clean things up on Megyn Kelly’s podcast yesterday (“he wasn’t at all apologetic”), and they come away with this surprising conclusion about the episode: “One possibility is that at some level Mr. Vance really doesn’t respect people who make different life choices.”

And then they move on to attack some of Vance’s other past (👽👺weird) ideas. His proposal that families without children should pay higher taxes is “bad policy” and “bad politics” and would amount to using the tax code “as a political and cultural weapon against people who don’t share his values.”

The editorial gives voice to what’s been a quiet murmur we’ve been hearing from some corners of the right all week: Does DONALD TRUMP regret picking Vance? (Ya'think❓😒😵😮)

The Trump campaign “can’t be happy about having to defend” Vance instead of attacking VP KAMALA HARRIS, the Journal writes. They end with a stinging conclusion about how Vance should start using his wife as a surrogate because USHA VANCE “might help persuade swing voters that Mr. Vance respects women more than his comments have made it seem.”

The piece is a notable escalation of the war within the GOP over the Vance pick. The (WSJ) Journal editorial board has sharply divergent views from Vance on foreign policy and trade and doesn’t have much use for his populist bashing of corporations. RUPERT MURDOCH reportedly lobbied Trump not to select Vance, and Vance allies see this piece as simply the continuation of that fight, with the Journal doing Murdoch’s bidding.