Death is an obsession with Donald Trump who exploits his fixation for causing harm to others: His support for the death penalty is another dire example of Trump's cruelty

Donald Trump’s death penalty obsession: As with most other developments in the Republican Party, it can be traced back to Donald Trump. Echo opinion published in The Boston Globe by Theo Zenou:

The president’s bloodlust is filtering down to red-state America.

Theo Zenou is a historian and a journalist.

This has been a trying year for Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. Every time someone is executed at Florida State Prison, activists hold a vigil outside the death chamber. They say prayers and, at 6 p.m., the time of execution, they ring a bell. In 2025, they have rung the bell 17 times.

Florida’s 17 executions are more than have taken place in any other state, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, and are by far the highest number carried out in a year in Florida since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. 

But the grim record is about to be topped. On December 9, another inmate is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection.

This acceleration in executions is due to Governor Ron DeSantis, who signed the death warrant and set the execution date in each case. In Florida, unlike other states, this is the prerogative of the governor. Although juries vote for death sentences, DeSantis — and DeSantis alone — decides whether those sentences are actually carried out. In the past, Florida’s governors have held off on signing specific death warrants. As a result, some inmates have spent decades on death row.

“I support capital punishment because I think there are some crimes that are just so horrific the only appropriate punishment is the death penalty,” DeSantis, who has led Florida since 2019, said in May. The Republican believes that the execution spree could serve as “a strong deterrent” against violent crime. 

When he was asked by reporters why he had signed fewer death warrants earlier in his tenure — none between 2020 and 2022, six in 2023 and just one last year — he said he had other priorities to deal with, chief among them the COVID pandemic.

But it’s not hard to imagine another reason for DeSantis’s enthusiasm for the death penalty. The governor is reportedly eyeing a 2028 presidential run, and he could be flexing his muscles to impress the Republican electorate. Taking a hard line on crime has long been popular with conservatives. In recent months, however, the rhetoric has escalated. Take Texas Governor Greg Abbott. After two undocumented immigrants allegedly killed an Air Force cadet in a jet-ski hit-and-run, he tweeted: “Welcome to Texas. Here’s your Death Penalty.” Almost all 44 executions carried out this year in the United States, the highest figure in 15 years, occurred in red states, with 76 percent concentrated in Texas, Florida, Alabama, and South Carolina.

As with most other developments in the Republican Party, it can be traced back to Donald Trump. The president has long been a proponent of capital punishment. Back in 1989, when he was just a New York real estate developer, Trump took out ads in the city’s newspapers calling for the executions of the Central Park Five — men accused of raping a Central Park jogger. “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY,” screamed the all-caps headline. As it turned out, the Central Park Five were later exonerated.

Not that it has stopped Trump from bringing that same gung-ho approach into the Oval Office. The president has been hell-bent on expanding capital punishment at both the federal and state levels — even when his efforts flout the law. This hasn’t made headlines, but it is another sign of the United States’s troubling slide into illiberalism.

Trump claims that his stance enjoys “broad public support.” But that’s not the case. Public support for capital punishment is actually at a 50-year low, according to a recent Gallup poll, with just 52 percent of Americans in favor. Thirty years ago, it was 80 percent.

At present, the death penalty is legal in 27 states and at the federal level. But before this year’s 44 executions and counting, it had become less common. There were a total of 25 in 2024. None were performed by the U.S. government since Joe Biden imposed a moratorium on federal executions in 2021. Even prior to that decision, only a small number had been carried out in the 21st century. The lone exception was during Trump’s first term, with 13 executions.

Now, Trump is back with a vengeance. On January 20, the first day of his second term, he overturned Biden’s moratorium and signed an executive order titled (all caps again) “RESTORING THE DEATH PENALTY AND PROTECTING PUBLIC SAFETY.” 

In it, Trump painted a picture of sinister conspiracy. “For too long,” he wrote, “politicians and judges who oppose capital punishment have defied and subverted the laws of our country.”

No longer. The president, who once told his supporters that “I am your retribution,” was committing himself to delivering that retribution. He called on Attorney General Pam Bondi “to pursue the death penalty for all crimes of a severity demanding its use.” He also ordered Bondi to systematically pursue death sentences in the murders of law enforcement officers and all capital crimes committed by undocumented immigrants.

This has already had consequences on the ground. Although there have been no federal executions this year, federal prosecutors are seeking capital punishment in as many as 20 cases, according to the Federal Capital Trial Project. Luigi Mangione’s, the alleged murderer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan, is the most high profile defendant. 

Although the state of New York abolished the death penalty in 2007, the federal government is still able to seek it for any capital crime committed there. Bondi’s justification was simple: “We carry out Donald Trump's agenda to stop violent crime and Make America Safe Again.”🤢

The Department of Justice is aggressively considering bringing capital charges in additional cases. In the process, the DOJ is testing the limits of due process. Under federal law, defendants are entitled to a “reasonable opportunity” to present mitigating evidence for why they should not face a death sentence. This can be due to physical or mental health issues or a history of trauma. Typically, this mitigation phase lasts around a year.

But the DOJ is now giving defense lawyers as little as two months to make a case for why their clients deserve to live. 

Payments to court-appointed mitigation specialists were also paused during the government shutdown. “This is really unlike anything I’ve ever experienced,” Mairead Burke, a mitigation specialist based in the District of Columbia, told The Washington Post.

In October, a New Mexico murder defendant facing a capital sentence filed an emergency motion demanding that the process be paused until funding is resumed. His attorneys argued that the situation amounted to “a deprivation of his right to counsel while the government seeks his death.” The DOJ denounced their “strained reasoning.”

Not even inmates whose death sentences were commuted by President Biden are safe from government overreach. Trump has said online he wishes for them to “GO TO HELL!” Bondi has done her best to oblige and moved most of them to a Colorado prison so harsh it is known as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.” As Aaron Seitz, a former US assistant attorney general, told the Wall Street Journal: “If you’re not going to be killed lawfully at the hands of the state, well, your prison sentence is going to be hard as hell.”
But Trump’s impact has not just been felt at the federal level. In his January 20, executive order, he also directed Bondi to “encourage” states to seek capital punishment in all applicable cases. Cut to 11 months later and Republican state legislators are obediently doing his bidding. Nine states are currently trying to reinstate the death penalty, according to The Hill, while bills to expand the definition of capital crimes — for instance, to include pedophilia — are on the floor of 14 state houses.

Here too, Florida has been leading the pack. In February, DeSantis signed a bill into law automatically requiring capital punishment for “unauthorized aliens” convicted of a capital felony. That requirement for capital punishment — juries would have no say — is believed to run afoul of the US Constitution. The law’s sponsor, Randy Fine, a former state senator, is hoping that the conservative Supreme Court won’t strike it down. But that doesn’t appear to be his primary concern. His motivation for the law was to show loyalty to Trump. “We wanted to make sure that the state was lined up to follow in President Trump’s lead,” he said.

For decades, America has stood as an outlier among Western democracies for continuing to impose capital punishment. But Trump’s hard-line approach cannot be dismissed as business as usual. Yes, past Republican presidents like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were vocal supporters of the death penalty. But they didn’t flout legal norms the way Trump does. He has not simply defended capital punishment in theory. He has used the bully pulpit to demand the executions of specific individuals, disregarding both their right to a fair trial and the independence of the courts.

His push to expand capital punishment is not happening in a vacuum either. It needs to be understood as part of a broader attack against the rule of law. The president has made illiberalism his credo. He has unleashed the National Guard on U.S. cities. He rails against judges whose decisions he disagrees with. And he treats Immigration and Customs Enforcement like his personal special forces.

Similarly, Trump treats the death penalty as his personal prerogative. It has now become routine for the president to publicly call for the execution of murder suspects. After the Ukrainian refugee Irina Zaratuska was murdered on a train in August, Trump raged on social media: “The ANIMAL … should be given a ‘Quick’ (there is no doubt!) trial, and only awarded THE DEATH PENALTY.” But the president does not even need someone to be accused of a crime to demand their head. He acts like he is judge, jury, and executioner. Recently, after a group of Democratic lawmakers released a video saying soldiers should not obey unlawful orders, he went online to inveigh against “traitors.” His verdict: “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

Such rhetoric is irresponsible. For one thing, in the case of murder suspects, it is clearly prejudicial and threatens the integrity of the judiciary. For another, it turns capital punishment into a grisly form of entertainment. This breeds a desire for vengeance among the wider public. At any time, this is bad for a healthy society. But at a time when political violence is flaring up, it is downright dangerous.

Since his return to power, Donald Trump has been carrying out a carpet-bombing campaign against America’s institutions. Call it the shock and awe approach to governing. It is easy, amid the chaos, to miss some of the damage being done. That has certainly been the case with the Trump administration’s expansion of capital punishment. Because it directly affects only a few individuals, it has elicited little public outcry. But it is no less concerning. Trump’s obsession with “THE DEATH PENALTY” betrays the destructive impulse at the heart of his presidency.

Vice-President Kamala Harris works "for the people". Her visioin for American includes hope and opportunity for all!

 The Boston Globe editorial board endorses Kamala Harris🤗:

She offers a vision of hope🙏 and aspiration against former president Donald Trump’s message of fear and loathing. His supporters should take him at his word when he threatens damaging policies.

For much of the past decade, former president Donald Trump has put his toxic stamp on American politics like few politicians in American history.

He has routinely denigrated the rule of law, undermined faith in our electoral system, and espoused debunked conspiracies. He has befriended autocrats overseas while embracing antidemocratic ideas and personalities at home. He has been found guilty in a criminal court of falsifying business records and awaits trial in two other criminal cases, including for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020, presidential election.

Along the way, he has become the dominant force in American politics, successfully remaking the Republican Party in his own image and forcing Democrats to define themselves largely as a party of resistance to him. He has achieved this distinction in part by demanding that the country confront some important problems, most notably the decline of American manufacturing, the struggles of working-class men, and an overdependence on Chinese goods. But on balance, his influence on our politics and governance has been overwhelmingly malign, marked by self-dealing, disregard for the law, incompetence, and chronic dishonesty.

It is time, then, to bring to a close the Trump era in American political life. It won’t be easy or swift because his influence is deep. But the detoxification must begin with his defeat on Nov. 5. For that reason, and because of the strong vision she offers for the country, this editorial board enthusiastically endorses Vice President Kamala Harris for president.

Harris offers a different path for the nation, one firmly rooted in the best American traditions. Her way welcomes the hard work and innovation of striving immigrants even as it seeks to lift the poor, working, and middle classes. She urges us to uphold the highest ideals of democracy, freedom, and justice. For her, defending democracy overseas is the surest way to bolster prosperity and security back home.

Where Trump relentlessly demonizes migrants, women, the weak, and the vulnerable — indeed, anyone or any institution that has the gumption to stand in his way — Harris promotes the nation’s better angels. His message is one of fear and loathing. Hers is one of unity, hope, and aspiration. Is the choice between those not clear❓

Vice-President Kamala Harris grew up in middle-class communities in the Bay Area, the child of a Jamaican father and Indian mother, both immigrants — a far cry from Trump’s upbringing amid upper-class privilege. 

After law school, she became a prosecutor in San Francisco where her pursuit of marijuana dealers angered progressives even as her support for diversion programs to reduce incarceration rates riled conservatives. She twice won election for California attorney general and served four years in the US Senate before Joe Biden selected her to be his running mate in 2020.

Though Harris has long identified herself as both Black and South Asian American, Trump has fallaciously asserted that she only “happened to turn Black” in recent years. In fact she spent much of her youth in a Black community surrounded by Black friends, graduated from historically Black Howard University, and has proudly identified with both her parents’ cultures.

On economic policy, Trump has benefited from the widespread belief that he would do a better job of managing the economy and that a second term would rekindle what his supporters consider the halcyon days of 2019, when interest rates and inflation were low and there were fewer major global conflicts. Yet many voters seem unaware that at the core of his economic platform is a proposal most economists consider wildly dangerous: imposing tariffs as high as 20 percent on all imported goods, and more for those from China.

Though Trump asserts his plan would raise revenue, reduce the yawning trade gap, and strengthen American industry, economists almost across the board say it is also likely to trigger a global trade war, cause American job losses, and hurt consumers by raising prices on most goods.

At the same time, the economy today is humming along about as well as it ever did under Trump — and Harris shows every indication of continuing the pragmatic policies of her current boss.

Manufacturing jobs are at their highest level in a decade, aided by two signature Biden initiatives — the infrastructure act and the CHIPS Act that injected billions of dollars into American industry. Indeed, JPMorgan Chase recently said the economy had achieved the long-sought “soft landing,” with lower inflation and steady job growth. And Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics, tweeted that the September jobs report “cements my view that the economy is about as good as it gets.”

One sour note is the ballooning national debt, which neither candidate has adequately addressed. But on this front, too, Harris’s plan is superior: According to the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, her agenda would increase the deficit by significantly less than Trump’s, by $3.5 trillion through 2035 to his $7.5 trillion.

Harris has clearly been hurt by the perception that President Biden is responsible for higher costs. Yet many of those high prices — on housing and higher education, for instance — existed long before he became president. 

And just as Trump cannot be solely blamed for the economic nosedive that occurred at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden administration cannot be solely blamed for the supply-chain bottlenecks and manufacturing shutdowns that raised costs on food, oil, and other goods during the pandemic.

Most important, inflation has cooled substantially, allowing the Federal Reserve to begin reducing interest rates and make borrowing cheaper.

On national security, the two candidates differ markedly in style and substance. Harris favors maintaining commitments to NATO and other American allies, and standing up to the antidemocratic behavior of Russia and China. “I will never waver in defense of America’s security and ideals, because in the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny, I know where I stand and I know where the United States belongs,” she said in August.

Her approach is more likely to result in a settlement of the Ukraine war that does not cave to President 😡Vladimir Putin of Russia, as Trump — who has refused to say whether he wants Russia or Ukraine to prevail — seems more than capable of doing. She has also struck a balanced tone on Israel, making clear she supports its right to defend itself while urging a cease-fire to mitigate the vast civilian suffering in Gaza.

Critics of Biden’s Israel policies from the left, some of whom have talked about voting for third-party candidates or staying home on Election Day, should reconsider. There is little reason to think that Trump will do anything beyond allowing the Netanyahu government to continue on as it has. Those protest votes intended to hurt Harris are as likely to hurt Palestinians as well.

Trump has been right to demand that the nation ask itself hard questions about where American interventions overseas truly serve the nation’s good. But it is no accident that scores of national security officials have warned that he is a danger to democracy and to American interests abroad because of his transactional nature and friendly embrace of enemies of democracy like Putin and President Viktor Orban of Hungary.

Even when he has sounded legitimate concerns — such as some NATO nations falling short of their defense spending targets — his blustery threats against American allies have given Putin “what he wanted — a divided alliance,” says H. R. McMaster, Trump’s first national security adviser.

On immigration, Harris has again been saddled with blame for Biden’s slow response to the flood of migrants across the US-Mexico border that created significant costs for Massachusetts, New York City, and many other locales. But she has been right to call for a more humane legislative solution that would both strengthen border security and create a pathway to citizenship for migrants.

Trump’s policy is purely punitive: He says he would use the military to deport❗ millions of migrants, whether or not they are employed and contributing to their communities. Thousands of American businesses — farms, food services, and construction firms in particular — could face major worker shortages if he does what he pledges to do. And why shouldn’t we believe that he will?

On the environment, Harris would do far more to keep the country on track to reduce carbon emissions. Trump’s obsession with ending incentives for wind, solar, and other clean energy industries — measures included in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act — is shortsighted, a retrograde position that even oil companies no longer agree with.

Lastly, it is vitally important to consider the types of people the candidates would bring into the federal government. Harris’s victory would ensure that the Supreme Court, and the entire federal judiciary, would remain closer to the American mainstream on issues like abortion, gun safety, and environmental protection.

It would also mean that the powerful machinery of federal government would not be run by people hired purely for their loyalty to Trump, as The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 envisions. Such loyalists would be the first to follow his commands to use the fearsome machinery of the federal government to punish his enemies — something he loves to tell the crowds at his rallies that he intends to do.

Abortion is perhaps Harris’s strongest argument for voters’ support, and for good reason. Trump has tried to run to the middle by claiming he would not support a national ban that so many in his party profess to want. But he cannot escape history: It was his nominees to the Supreme Court who overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

For Massachusetts, a second Trump administration could seriously affect federal assistance to the region. As president, Trump considered withholding aid to wildfire-ravaged California because it voted overwhelmingly against him in 2016. State officials worry that he would try to do the same to Massachusetts if a natural disaster wrecked havoc here.

He could also block federal grants for rebuilding the Cape Cod bridges. Or support raising taxes on the endowments of the region’s elite universities, as his running mate, Senator JD Vance, has proposed. Or stall support for offshore wind projects the region needs to reach its goals for clean energy. These risks are not purely theoretical.

Some of Trump’s supporters seem to not take him seriously, as if all the threats, extreme positions, rants, and oddball ravings are just part of an insult comedy routine. But we urge every Trump supporter to ask themselves this question before casting their ballot: Do you really want to take the chance that it was all just an act❓❗😟

Consider, instead, the candidate who has pledged to be “a president who leads and listens; who is realistic, practical and has common sense,” as Harris told the nation in August. The candidate who has not sought to bully or demean, but who instead urges the people of America to “show each other and the world who we are and what we stand for: Freedom, opportunity, compassion, dignity, fairness and endless possibilities.”

The choice is as clear as it is vital. On Nov. 5, let us decisively vote to send Kamala Harris to the White House. 👌👍✅

Vote 2024 Blue to protect the American Constitution against dangerous Trumpziism

Echo opinion published in The New York Times by the newspaper's Editorial Board;

Republicans who will gather to cast votes of the 2024, presidential primary season have one essential responsibility: to nominate a candidate who is fit to serve as president, one who will “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Donald Trump, who has proved himself unwilling to do so, is manifestly unworthy. He is facing criminal trials for his conduct as a candidate in 2016, as president and as a former president. 

I  this, his third presidential bid, he intensified his multiyear campaign to undermine the rule of law and the democratic process. He has said that if elected, he will behave like a dictator on “Day 1” and that he will direct the Justice Department to investigate his political rivals and his critics in the media, declaring that the greatest dangers to the nation come “not from abroad but from within.”

(Mr. "Trumpzi-dumpzi")- This orange 🟠😡😈monster has a clear path to the nomination; no polling to date suggests he is anything but the front-runner. Yet, cultist Republicans in these states still have their ballots to cast. 

At this critical moment, it is imperative to remind voters that they still have the opportunity to nominate a different standard-bearer for the Republican Party, and all Americans should hope that they do so. This is not a partisan concern. It is good for the country when both major parties have qualified presidential candidates to put forward their competing views on the role of government in American society. Voters deserve such a choice in 2024.

Trump’s construction of a cult of personality in which loyalty is the only real requirement has badly damaged the Republican Party and the health of American democracy. 

During the fight over the leadership of the House of Representatives in the fall, for example, Mr. Trump torpedoed the candidacy of Tom Emmer, a lawmaker who voted to certify the 2020 election results, to ensure the ascendancy of Mike Johnson, a loyalist who was an architect of the attempt to overturn that election. (Mr. Emmer has since endorsed Mr. Trump.) But some Republicans have set an example of integrity, demonstrating the courage to put their convictions and conservative principles above loyalty to Mr. Trump. 

Examples include people whom he once counted as allies, like former Attorney General Bill Barr, former Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats.

"Cult" voters might wrong mindedly agree with the evil 👿former buy's plans for further tax cuts, restrictions on abortions or strict limits on immigration. 

That’s politics, and the divisions among Americans over these issues will persist regardless of the outcome of this election. 

But, electing Trump to four more years in the White House is a unique danger .

Because, what remains, what still binds Americans together as a nation, is the commitment to a process, a constitutional system for making decisions and moving forward even when Americans do not agree about the destination. That system guarantees the freedoms Americans enjoy, the foundation of the nation’s prosperity and of its security.

Trump’s record of contempt for the Constitution — and his willingness to corrupt people, systems and processes to his advantage — puts all of it at risk.

Upholding the Constitution means accepting the results of elections. Unsuccessful presidential candidates have shouldered the burden of conceding because the integrity of the process is ultimately more important than the identity of the president. “The people have spoken, and we respect the majesty of the democratic system,” George H.W. Bush, the last president before Trump to lose a bid for re-election, said on the night of his defeat in 1992. 

When Trump lost the 2020, presidential election, he sought to retain power by fomenting a violent insurrection against the government of the United States.

It also means accepting that the power of the victors is limited. When the Supreme Court delivered a sharp setback to President George W. Bush in 2008, ruling that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantánamo Bay had the right to challenge their detention in federal court, the Bush administration accepted the ruling. 

Senator John McCain, then the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, said he disagreed with the court, “but it is a decision the Supreme Court has made, and now we need to move forward.”

By contrast, as president, Mr. Trump repeatedly attacked the integrity of other government officials — including members of Congress, Federal Reserve governors, public health authorities and federal judges — and disregarded their authority. When the court ruled that the Trump administration could not add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, for example, Mr. Trump announced that he intended to ignore the court’s ruling. After leaving the White House, Trump refused repeated demands, including a grand jury subpoena, to return classified materials to the government. 

As the government investigated, Trump called on Congress to defund the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice “until they come to their senses.”

Cult voters who are inclined to support Trump as an instrument of certain policy goals might learn from his presidency that changes achieved by lawless machinations can prove ephemeral. Federal courts overturned his effort to deny federal funding to sanctuary cities. Campaign promises to roll back environmental regulations also came to naught: Courts repeatedly chastised the Trump administration for failing to follow regulatory procedures or to provide adequate justifications for its decisions. His ban on transgender individuals serving in the military, announced on Twitter in 2017, was challenged in court and reversed on the sixth day of the Biden administration.

In 2016, Mr. Trump appealed to many caucus and primary voters as an alternative to the Republican establishment. He campaigned on a platform that challenged the party’s orthodoxies, including promises to provide support for domestic manufacturing and pursue a foreign policy much more narrowly defined by self-interest.

Voters who favor Trump’s prescriptions now have other options. The Republican Party of 2024, has been horribly reshaped by the former president’s cultism. 

While there are some meaningful differences among the other Republican candidates — on foreign policy, in particular — for the most part, Trump’s “America First” agenda has become the new orthodoxy.

Trump is now distinguished from the rest of the Republican candidates primarily by his contempt for the rule of law. 

In fact, the sooner Trump is rejected, the sooner the Republican Party can return to the difficult but necessary task of working within the system to achieve its goals.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy obviously not interested in paying for America's obligations

Echo editorial opinion published in the Las Vegas Sun news:
McCarthy, Republican Party not serious about nation’s debt limit.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the Republican Party don’t give two cents about fiscal responsibility or reining in spending. What McCarthy cares about is distracting the American people from the reality that the GOP has saddled middle-class taxpayers with footing the bill for trillions of dollars in tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy's plan to keep the rich "richer"!

McCarthy’s own words all but admit it.

McCarthy strolled down to Wall Street on Monday to rally his corporate overlords about next year’s federal budget. He asserted that his support for raising the debt ceiling is dependent on concessions Democrats must make regarding future spending.

McCarthy conveniently forgot to explain one simple fact: The debt ceiling has nothing to do with the upcoming federal budget or future spending.

The only impact of the debt limit debate on future spending is whether the GOP’s refusal to raise the limit will tank the U.S. good faith and credit, leading to skyrocketing interest rates and permanent inflation. The result? A trashed economy and America vandalized by political zealots.

This bears further explanation.

Contrary to the manipulative GOP narrative that tries to draw a connection between the current debt limit and future spending, the debt limit debate is not a debate about how much money the U.S. is going to spend moving forward. It is a debate about whether the U.S. is going to pay back the money we already borrowed and spent.

In 2017, when then-President Donald Trump proposed welfare for the wealthy in the form of massive tax cuts for billionaires and multinational corporations, the U.S. was forced to borrow $2.289 trillion over the next 10 years to finance the tax cuts. We’re currently in Year 6 of paying for that Trump borrowing spree to support his rich friends.

Yet, now that Joe Biden is president, the same members of the GOP who kissed Trump’s ring and passed the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017, are suddenly concerned that the U.S. is borrowing too much and don’t want to pay back the loans we already took out and spent.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy is asleep when it comes to caring about helping the middle class.

The GOP is quite literally advocating that the U.S. become a freeloading nation, borrowing from creditors around the world and then running away from our debts and refusing to pay them back. This shouldn’t come as a surprise given that this is exactly how Trump financed many of his biggest real estate development projects, using bankruptcy court to leave contractors, architects and more holding the bag for Trump’s woefully bad business leadership and inept management.

What is a surprise, however, is just how openly deceitful and two-faced the GOP is being about its plan to turn the United States into the largest freeloading grifter nation the world has ever known.

It was less than a year ago, when President Biden announced his student loan forgiveness plan, that Republican legislators couldn’t stop talking about the need for borrowers to take responsibility for the debt they signed up for and pay back their creditors. As recently as Wednesday, McCarthy bragged about blocking Biden’s “student loan giveaway for the wealthy.”

Yet, somehow, McCarthy is completely comfortable with the government borrowing money for Trump’s tax giveaways for the wealthy and then refusing to pay them back. He’s also surprisingly comfortable telegraphing to the world that the U.S. government is led by a collection of deadbeat swindlers who can’t be trusted to pay back their debts.

McCarthy and the GOP are putting on a show designed to feign interest in federal spending and good governance while distracting from the reality that they are the ones who keep upping the ante on the cycle of federal debt. 

The GOP is the party that keeps borrowing and borrowing and borrowing and then refusing to take responsibility for its borrowing and spending, let alone pay it back. It has also raided the formerly stable Social Security trust fund to pay for previous tax cuts — a way of shifting the burden to other generations.

Remember, when Trump was in office Republicans voted to raise the debt ceiling three times without so much as a peep about the need to control spending. Not one word.

Worst of all, some Democrats are falling for the Republican dog and pony show.

While Biden has held firm in his conviction that the U.S. must be a nation that can be trusted to repay our debts on the international stage, Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., told Axios, “I respect the White House position, but not in perpetuity. Because negotiation, that’s what this whole institution is about.” Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., echoed that sentiment, saying, “We’re going to have to negotiate. We obviously want to move away from just legislating by crisis ... I’m encouraging continued negotiations.”

Both legislators are missing the point that the time for negotiation regarding this spending has already passed. The U.S. already spent the money. The only possible thing to negotiate is whether we’re going to default on our debt and tank our national creditworthiness, which shouldn’t be up for negotiation at all.

In other words, arguing that the federal government shouldn’t raise the debt ceiling without first making major cuts is backwards.

McCarthy knows it, but it scores him political points so he doesn’t care. He’s bald-faced lying to the American people, trading the full faith and credit of the United States of America and trading the economic health of our children and grandchildren so he can win a game of political chess. It’s shameful.

If Republicans want to argue about future spending cuts, they are welcome to do so — after they raise the debt ceiling and actually work cooperatively to figure out how to pay for the money they already spent.

Wrong messenger - Sarah Huckabee Sanders failed response to the State of the Union

The New York Times: "many Republican leaders want to move on from Donald Trump. I can’t imagine why. His role in a riot that could have gotten some of them killed? His masterful design of their midterm debacle? The possibility he’ll be indicted any day now?"

Trumpzi Groupie Sarah Huckabee Sanders

The most striking thing about the Republican response to President Biden’s State of the Union last week, delivered this year by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, was that it wasn’t actually pitched to the American public at large.

Sarah Huckabee Sander's State of the Union response proves the GOP has nothing to offer. 

Of course, most people do not watch this particular ritual. But it does mark one of the few times each year (outside a presidential election year) when the opposition party has the undivided attention of a large part of the voting public. 

The State of the Union response reaches enough people — an estimated 27.3 million watched Biden — to make it worthwhile for the opposition party to put its best face forward. 

Sarah Huckabee Sanders was the wrong Republican to respond to the State of the Union speech given by President Joe Biden to Congress.  She failed. 

That’s why, when it’s their turn to deliver the response, parties tend to elevate their youngest, most dynamic leaders and showcase their broadest, most accessible message.

Sanders is a young and dynamic leader in the Republican Party, a point she emphasized herself, citing her age, 40, in comparison with the president’s, which is 80, but her message was neither broad nor accessible.

“In the radical left’s America,” she said, “Washington taxes you and lights your hard-earned money on fire, but you get crushed with high gas prices, empty grocery shelves, and our children are taught to hate one another on account of their race, but not to love one another or our great country.”

Sanders attacked Biden as the “first man to surrender his presidency to a woke mob that can’t even tell you what a woman is” and decried the “woke fantasies” of a “left-wing culture war.” Every day, she said, “we are told that we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols, all while big government colludes with big tech to strip away the most American thing there is — your freedom of speech.”

Sanders’s folksy affect notwithstanding, this was harsh, hard and delivered with an edge. But then, there’s nothing wrong with giving a partisan and ideological State of the Union address — that is part of the point. The problem was that most of these complaints were unintelligible to anyone but the small minority of Americans who live inside the epistemological bubble of conservative media. Sanders’s response, in other words, was less a broad and accessible message than it was fan service for devotees of the Fox News cinematic universe and its related properties.

It was not the kind of speech you give if you’re trying to build a political majority. The best evidence for this is that her speech was a version of the message Republicans used in last year’s midterm elections. The result was a historic disappointment, if not a historic defeat, for an opposition party against a relatively unpopular incumbent.

Yes, Republicans won the House of Representatives, but it was a slim victory despite expectations of a “red wave.” And the most unsuccessful candidates, in races across the country, were, in the main, the right-wing culture warriors who tried to make the midterms a referendum on their reactionary preoccupations.

Here, I should say that this critique of Sanders’s response rests on the supposition that Republican politicians want to build national political majorities. And why wouldn’t they? Political parties are supposed to want to win the largest possible majorities. “Unless there’s a countervailing force,” the historian Timothy Shenk notes in “Realigners: Partisan Hacks, Political Visionaries and the Struggle to Rule American Democracy,” “parties bend toward majorities like sunflowers to the light.” A large majority, after all, means a mandate for your agenda. With it, you can set or reset, the political landscape on your terms.

But what if there is a countervailing force? What if the structure of the political system makes it possible to win the power of a popular majority without ever assembling a popular majority itself? What if, using that power, you burrow your party and its ideology into the counter-majoritarian institutions of that system, so that heads or tails, you always win?

In that scenario, a political party might drop the quest for a majority as a fools’ errand. There’s no need to build a broad coalition of voters if — because of the malapportionment of the national legislature, the gerrymandering of many state legislatures, the Electoral College and the strategic position of your voters in the nation’s geography — you don’t need one to win. And if your political party also has a tight hold on the highest court of constitutional interpretation, you don’t even need to win elections to clear the path for your preferred outcomes and ideology.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders did not deliver a broad and accessible response to the State of the Union for the same reason that congressional Republicans refuse to moderate or even acknowledge the existence of the median voter; she doesn’t have to, and they don’t have to. The American political system is so slanted toward the overrepresentation of the Republican Party’s core supporters, rural and exurban conservatives, that even when their views and priorities are far from those of the typical voter, the party is still more competitive than not.

Unfortunately, there’s no one weird trick to change this state of affairs. Republicans may not need to win consistent majorities, but anyone who hopes to build a more humane country must still find and assemble a majority coalition of the willing — and pray that it is 

Columnist Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va., and Washington.

Christian Nationalists ignore truth and the Scriptural quote by Jesus

Maine Writer:  In my opinion, the columnist Cal Thomas does not give enough emphasis to the scriptural message of "truth".

“Christian nationalism” has again appeared in our political life, establishing residence in the Republican Party. 

An echo opinion column by Cal Thomas: 

Unfortunately, Christian nationalism is nothing new, though, having taken many forms in the past, including Moral Rearmament, Prohibition, Christian Reconstructionism, Moral Majority, and the Christian Coalition.

In each incarnation, people have been told that something approaching Heaven on Earth can be accomplished through the political system and through a government led by folks who believe as they do. Each time the push has failed to achieve its stated goals.

Leaving aside for a moment the flaw in Christian nationalist theology, let’s apply some pragmatism to these movements, including the latest called “ReAwaken America,” led by former Donald Trump National Security Adviser (for 22 days), Gen. Michael Flynn (retired - traitor).

As the respected Pew Research Center has noted, “The decline of Christianity continues at a rapid pace.” That is reflected in the profile of people who are attending retired-traitor Michael Flynn’s rallies. They appear to be mostly older and white, hardly the image of an America that will follow their generation. Several polls have shown that when asked their religious affiliation, millennials make up the highest percentage (32 percent) of “nones.”

According to Pew, “sixty-five percent of Americans” self-identify as Christians, but it is a diverse group. Among them are Mainline Protestants, who generally vote for Democrats. 

Among Evangelicals, there are also divisions, with some voting for Democrats and others favoring Republicans. 

Roman Catholics, too, are divided, especially on social issues such as abortion. They also pledge allegiance to competing political parties or identify as Independents.

The question then becomes: how does this minority within a minority within an even smaller minority expect to win elections in sufficient numbers to pass legislation that will reverse what they see as a moral and cultural decline? If it could be done, would it not have been done by the previously mentioned movements which enjoyed a larger percentage of like-minded people?

Oklahoma entrepreneur Clay Clark heads the ReAwaken America (ugh!)  organization. An Associated Press story about a recent rally in Batavia, New York, quotes him: “I want you to look around and you’ll see a group of people that love this country dearly. At this ReAwaken America Tour, Jesus is King* (❓)... (and) Donald J. Trump is our president.”  (NOT❗)

That comment sums up the attempted fusion of faith with politics.

This ideology, this misplaced faith that a fallen humanity can – or should – impose a worldview through government that a majority do not share goes back to at least the time of Jesus. In the Book of Acts, the Disciples asked Jesus, “Lord, has the time come for you to free Israel and restore our kingdom?” (Acts 1:6 NLT). They were looking for an earthly kingdom with themselves in charge. They wanted to throw off the Roman occupation and “take over.” Make Israel great again!

Later, Jesus would respond to Pontius Pilate who asked Him if He was a king: “My Kingdom is not an earthly kingdom. If it were, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish leaders. But my Kingdom is not of this world.” (John 18:36 NLT). That statement is a powerful rebuke to those who seek a kingdom that would be as flawed as they are if it ever came to fruition.

I have always appreciated this observation from C.S. Lewis, which speaks to the current and past movements of “Christian soldiers” wishing to transform America into their image: “Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth ‘thrown in’; aim at Earth and you will get neither.”

Perhaps these well-intentioned but misguided Christian nationalists should obey the commands of the One they claim to follow (and I don’t mean Donald Trump). When that was the priority for Christians in the past, culture changed. 

A re-awakened America won’t come through politics and government, no matter how strongly Christian nationalists wish for it.

* What is truth?: John 18:38. 

"Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, "Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice."

P.S. Maine Writer:  If Christian Nationalists claim to be "Christians", then, they must "Re-awaken" the definition of "truth"! 

Vote Democrats to protect Social Security and Medicare

Opinion letter published in The Concord Monitor, a New Hampshire newspaper.

Retirees who are no longer working full time must support political candidates who will protect Social Security and Medicare.

Retirement has been eased somewhat by the fact that Social Security and Medicare are secure safety nets to supplement incomes and provide access to affordable health care.

Without Social Security and Medicare, the retired citizens would be in dire straits.

Seniors are Social Security beneficiaries because they earned their retirement are in the position of relying on this income to live independently.

Nevertheless, after voting time after time for tax breaks for the rich, the Republicans are coming for retirees' Social Security and Medicare. If they get control of the Congress they’ll be working hard to Sunset Review and end these two very important programs. That along with a women’s right to choose decisions about her own body and the continuation of our democracy are all on the ballot this November.

That is why it is so important voters elect Democrats. In New Hampshire, vote for Tom Sherman, Maggie Hassan, Chris Pappas, and Annie Kuster in the November 2022, election.

Make no mistake about it, their right wing opponents are extremist Republican ideologues who will vote in lockstep to every extremist proposal that comes from a Republican Party. The Republicans will scream the economy but their approach is giving tax breaks to the rich, deregulating business which results in shipping jobs overseas to undercut workers. It is what has led to the collapse of the middle and working classes. They have nothing to offer in the way of stopping inflation or regenerating the supply chain. 

It’s only our Democratic representatives who are working hard on our behalf. We must all do what we can to keep them in power. That means voting for the Democratic ticket. #VoteBlue!

From Wayne Fuller in Concord, New Hampshire

American democracy is dangerously at risk of implosion! Vote Blue!

We need expertise more now than ever; our country and our planet are at stake. Echo opinion letter published in the Delaware State News: 

This letter writer makes the urgent connection between protecting American democracy and the methodology during World War II, in  supporting the Manhattan Project. 

By 1945, the scientists of the Manhattan Project working to develop and build a nuclear weapon had made significant progress. Democrats now need the same kind of urgent strategy.

In Trump world, there is only one value that really matters: (blind!) loyalty. People who make up the “intelligentsia” — the doctors, scientists, judges, the top people in all professions and anyone who thinks for him- or herself — are not to be trusted because their loyalty is to the truth, not to a person. In Trump world, this kind of independence is deemed a threat.

This is not new stuff. Donald Trump’s kind of narcissism is as old as mankind. What is new are the stakes. We sit at the edge of two impending man-made catastrophes: the end of our democracy and runaway climate change. At this critical moment, one of the major players, the Republican Party under Trump, has left the building. 

First, they decided democracy is simply an obstacle on their path to permanent power; and second, they are in denial of the science that tells us that human-caused climate change is an existential threat to mankind.

So Democrats now have a problem much like that facing the scientists of the Manhattan Project in World War II. Those men and women worked night and day to beat the Nazis to the atomic bomb. The Democratic Party now needs to beat the Republican Party to the proverbial button that will blow up our democracy and our world. This can happen only by overwhelming the Republicans at the ballot box. Thank goodness, more and more Democrats and moderates of all stripes are beginning to see the light.

From Fred Longacre in Hockessin, a census-designated place in New Castle County, Delaware, United States.

#VoteBlue  #VoteBlueToSaveDemocracy

Paasleeeze! Vote Blue in 2022: Prevent the contagious Trumpitis danger

The G.O.P.’s Race to the cult leader's "Grumpy Old Party".

Echo essay by Amy Davidson Sorkin published in The New Yorker.

Out-Trump the Trumpists - The midterm elections are approaching, and the Republican Party is heading into them with the former president as its Trumposity cult leader.

Anyone in need of a warning about what the 2022, midterm elections could bring might consider what took place last month at a candidates’ forum sponsored by the Republican Women of Coffee County, Alabama. Katie Britt, a contender for the Republican nomination to replace Senator Richard Shelby, who is retiring, was asked if she had supported Roy Moore in the 2017, special Senate election. 

Moore is the (stupid!) Constitution-defying judge who was accused of sexually pursuing teen-age girls; he denied the allegations, but lost to the Democratic candidate, Doug Jones. “I have never supported or voted for a Democrat in my life,” Britt said, but added, “I also think it’s important to stand with women.” That hedged response appeared to provoke the next candidate to speak, Representative Mo Brooks, who accused her of lacking party loyalty. “We are a team,” he said. “We have a belief system.”

What was most notable in this exchange was Britt’s reply: she accused Brooks of being the disloyal one. “Every single time, I voted for Donald Trump, and stood with him,” she said. “That wasn’t the step you took.” During the 2016, Presidential primaries, Brooks initially supported Senator Ted Cruz. (hypocrisy 101 encore!)

But, the congressman is now best known for the speech he gave at Trump’s January 6th Save America rally, in which he told the crowd that the time had come for “kicking ass.” At a more recent Trump rally, he warned of “godless, evil, amoral socialist Democrats.” Trump has enthusiastically endorsed Brooks, and has derided Britt, who once served as Shelby’s chief of staff, as an unqualified “assistant” to a “rino.” Britt has the backing of Alabama’s business establishment, yet she apparently thought that her best move was to try to out-Trump an unapologetic insurrectionist.

She’s not the only one. Earlier this month, Senator Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, a purported establishment figure who, at eighty-eight, is running for an eighth term, came onstage at a Trump rally in Des Moines. “If I didn’t accept the endorsement of a person that’s got ninety-one per cent of the Republican voters in Iowa, I wouldn’t be too smart,” Grassley said, grinning. The number he cited came from a Des Moines Register poll, which also found that Trump’s favorability rating was forty-eight per cent among Iowa independents. 

A CNN poll last month indicated that, nationally, seventy-eight per cent of Republicans believe that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected President. Increasingly, they seem to expect their party’s candidates to agree.

With the Senate divided fifty-fifty, just to maintain a status quo in which Biden’s agenda depends on the whims of Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema, of Arizona, Democrats need to concentrate on holding on to Mark Kelly’s seat, in Arizona, and to Raphael Warnock’s, in Georgia. (Both men won in special elections, and are seen as vulnerable.) Or they need to pick up seats, perhaps in North Carolina or Pennsylvania, where the incumbents are retiring, or in Florida, where Representative Val Demings is challenging Marco Rubio. In the House, the Democrats’ margin is just eight seats, and midterm voters tend to turn against the party of the incumbent President. At the moment, Biden’s approval rating has dropped to forty-three per cent. The task for Democrats could hardly be more crucial: so much depends on so few seats—including, possibly, another Supreme Court appointment.

Yet, the numbers aren’t all that matters. Even if the Democrats hold the Senate, the dynamic there will change for the worse if their Republican counterparts are more Trumpist—more conspiracy-minded, more jingoistic, more convinced that the people on the other side of the aisle are godless, evil, amoral socialists. Such a caucus would be even more likely to engage in reckless acts of obstruction and conflict. The effect would almost certainly be more exaggerated in the House, where the Marjorie Taylor Greene contingent will likely grow.  As the average level of extremism in Congress rises, it becomes harder to tell true believers from opportunists. The former President, banished from Twitter, can appear marginalized, yet the G.O.P. is heading into the midterms with Trump as its leader.

Earlier this year, when Trump began talking about handing out endorsements, Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, said that he would push back if he thought that Trump’s choices would cost the G.O.P. seats. Last month though, McConnell told Politico, “I don’t believe they’re troubling.” (The exception appears to be in Alaska, where Trump’s effort to bring down Lisa Murkowski hasn’t gained traction.) McConnell was seemingly content with Brooks, and with Trump’s endorsement of Herschel Walker, the former football player with a tumultuous business and personal life who has promoted election-fraud conspiracy theories and will challenge Warnock, in Georgia. “There’s every indication he’s going to be a good candidate,” McConnell said. Whether he would be a good senator didn’t seem to matter.

In Pennsylvania, Trump has endorsed Sean Parnell, a retired Army captain who has written several military-themed books (“Outlaw Platoon,” “Left for Dead”), joined a lawsuit in his state to get mail-in ballots thrown out, and is in the middle of a contentious divorce. 

Parnell's main primary opponent, Carla Sands, was a Trump donor and his Ambassador to Denmark; she got into trouble for posting pro-Trump tweets on her government account, a Hatch Act violation.

There are similar stories in other states. This past spring, Trump pressured Mark Brnovich, the Arizona attorney general, who is challenging Kelly, to “get on the ball” in backing an audit of the 2020, vote in Maricopa County, and he did. (The results, released last month, actually increased Biden’s margin of victory.) 

Nevertheless, one of his rivals, Blake Masters, who is backed by Peter Thiel, the tech billionaire, is attacking him for not doing more for Trump.

Trump, meanwhile, has endorsed Mark Finchem, a state legislator at times associated with QAnon, in the race for Arizona’s secretary of state. (He pointed out Finchem in the audience at the rally in Des Moines.) Trump’s attentiveness to a race for a state election official is unsettling, given the pressure he exerted on such officials to shift results in his favor in 2020. The (cultist!) Republican leaders who defer to his preferences and echo his delusions now are building the scaffolding for his own next campaign. The nomination, at least, appears to be his for the taking. Ahead of 2022, G.O.P. candidates are scrambling for Trump’s endorsement. 

In 2024, the evil Trumposity cult leader could be demanding theirs.

Published in the print edition of the October 25, 2021, The New Yorker issue, with the headline “Who’s the Trumpiest?.”

Maine Writer P.S.- After all, "trumpitis" is dangerous and highly contagious!