Once upon a time. Elon Musk was Trump’s best friend. No longer. Despite his best effort to slash the government, he failed. Originally, Musk offered to secure a cut of $2 trillion, but came nowhere near that figure, eventually he dropped his goal to only $175 billion. That number may actually be much lower because of errors in the count.
When Musk learned that Trump’s new budget was vastly increased, he went ballistic.
He said that the new budget was “disgusting.” He did not mention that his companies–especially Starlink and SpaceX–will be showered with federal funding in the “one big, beautiful bill.” Starlink will have a large role in Trump’s plan to build a “Golden Dome” to protect the U.S. and that his Space X will lead the effort to travel to Mars.
Elon Musk on Tuesday called President Donald Trump’s sweeping legislation making its way through Congress “pork-filled” and “a disgusting abomination.” Musk, who recently left his cost-cutting role in Trump’s administration, issued his strongest condemnation to date of the massive tax and immigration bill that narrowly passed the House and is pending in the Senate. “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong,” Musk wrote on social media. “You know it.” On Monday night, Trump re-upped his call for Congress to send the bill to his desk by July 4.
Maurice Cunningham, a retired professor of political science at the university of Massachusetts and a specialist on dark money in education, exposes the rightward shift of Democrats for Education Reform, as well as its continuing disintegration. DFER spent years cheerleading for charter schools and test-based teacher evaluation, but its pretense has dissolved. Cunningham said it is now closely aligned with rightwing groups.
Cunningham writes:
Democrats for Education Reform, the front operation for billionaire privateering of public education, has gone all-in for right-wing policies. This likely reflects two factors: the collapse of DFER nationally, and an opportunistic pivot to Trump’s MAGA regime.
DFER was established upon the premise, according to its hedge fund co-founder Whitney Tilson, that it would spend lavishly as part of an “inside job” to turn the Democratic Party away from teachers unions and public education and toward charter schools. Its CEO Jorge Elorza has just announced the organization will race even further to the right: DFER will now “Explore innovative funding models such as education savings accounts (ESAs), vouchers, and tax credit programs.” (emphasis in original). This is the program of billionaires Linda McMahon, Betsy DeVos–and Donald Trump.
Judging by the number of high-level staff fleeing from DFER, Elorza has been driving the operation into the ground. Jessical Giles, who served for six years as Washington, D.C. executive director recently resigned because DFER’s policies “no longer align with my values and vision.”
Other DFER leaders have complained of the group’s gallop toward political extremism. In a complaint filed in Suffolk Superior Court in Boston, former Massachusetts executive director Mary Tamer wrote that Elorza retaliated against her for “inquiring about Mr. Elorza’s decision to join a Koch-funded right-wing coalition that seemed contrary to the organization’s best interests and mission.” The right-wing coalition seems to be the No More Lines Coalition, which includes not only Koch aligned organizations but Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Childrenand the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Elorza has been a guest speaker at the Charles Koch Institute. Tamer is seeking damages against DFER, and the allied Education Reform Now and Education Reform Now Advocacy for gender and age discrimination.
Tamer’s complaint alleges a number of defections by key DFER leaders. Within months of Elorza’s arrival COO Shakira Petit left, and CFO Sheri Adebiyi was fired. Board Chair Marlon Marshall and Charles Ledley, a co-founder, resigned. The complaint further alleges that “Ms. Tamer is one of several women in leadership positions who have been terminated or pushed out by the Defendants.” That list includes Connecticut state director Amy Dowell and Jen Walmer of Colorado, a close adviser on education to Governor Jared Polis and one of DFER’s most effective advocates.
Despite the name, DFER has raised millions over the years from Republican-backing billionaires. The Walton Family Foundation, the non-profit corporation of the notoriously anti-union family that owns WalMart, has sustained DFER. Rupert Murchoch, who regards K-12 education as a $500 billion market gave DFER at least $1 million, apparently in the hopes the operation would help his ed tech company.
Elorza’s announcement of DFER’s shift leans on the “market-based solutions” language of neo-liberal privateering, but the reality is that neo-liberalism is not where the action is in 2025. Families for Excellent Schools, at one time a privateering powerhouse, collapsed in 2018. In 2011 Stand for Children president Jonah Edelman boasted his organization had nine state affiliates and would grow to twenty states by the end of 2015. In 2025 Stand for Children is hanging on in seven states.
Since its 2007 founding, DFER has claimedchapters in nineteen different states plus D.C. and a teachers group. By February 2025 only four chapters remained. In January 2023, DFER listed thirteen national staffers. By February 2025, it had only four. As of May 2025, the “States” and “National Staff” links on DFER’s webpage have disappeared. An Elorza biography lives on.
The action now is with extremist organizations like the Koch and Leonard Leo aligned Parents Defending Education and Heritage Foundation offspring Moms for Liberty.
Self-described “school choice evangelist” Corey DeAngelis accurately sees that DFER has joined with the far right on education privateering. DeAngelis was the face of Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children until he was fired after revelations he had starred in gay sex porn films. He is now a “senior fellow” at the American Culture Project, which is tied to the Koch network through the Franklin News Foundation. DeAngelis is cheering DFER’s embrace of the Republican education privateering platform.
What has DFER really joined here? The end game was spelled out in a 2017 memorandumfrom the secretive Council for National Policy to Trump and DeVos: abandon public education in favor of “free-market private schools, church schools and home schools.”
That is your “choice.”
DFER has never been a membership organization—there are few real Democrats involved. To be sure, it has gotten donations from charter favoring Democratic billionaires as well as an array of Republican privateers, plus millions of dollars in untraceable dark money. DFER’s organizational drift and rank political opportunism have now cemented its bond with Trump’s MAGA regime.
On May 10, Dana Goldstein wrote a long article in The New York Times about how education disappeared as a national or federal issue. Why, she wondered, did the two major parties ignore education in the 2024 campaign? Kamala Harris supported public schools and welcomed the support of the two big teachers’ unions, but she did not offer a flashy new program to raise test scores. Trump campaigned on a promise to privatize public funding, promote vouchers, charter schools, religious schools, home schooling–anything but public schools, which he regularly attacked as dens of iniquity, indoctrination, and DEI.
Goldstein is the best education writer at The Times, and her reflections are worth considering.
She started:
What happened to learning as a national priority?
For decades, both Republicans and Democrats strove to be seen as champions of student achievement. Politicians believed pushing for stronger reading and math skills wasn’t just a responsibility, it was potentially a winning electoral strategy.
At the moment, though, it seems as though neither party, nor even a single major political figure, is vying to claim that mantle.
President Trump has been fixated in his second term on imposing ideological obedience on schools.
On the campaign trail, he vowed to “liberate our children from the Marxist lunatics and perverts who have infested our educational system.”Since taking office, he has pursued this goal with startling energy — assaulting higher education while adopting a strategy of neglect toward the federal government’s traditional role in primary and secondary schools. He has canceled federal exams that measure student progress, and ended efforts to share knowledge with schools about which teaching strategies lead to the best results. A spokeswoman for the administration said that low test scores justify cuts in federal spending. “What we are doing right now with education is clearly not working,” she said.
Mr. Trump has begun a bevy of investigations into how schools handle race and transgender issues, and has demanded that the curriculum be “patriotic” — a priority he does not have the power to enact, since curriculum is set by states and school districts.
Actually, federal law explicitly forbids any federal official from attempting to influence the curriculum or textbooks in schools.
Of course, Trump never worries about the limits imposed by laws. He does what he wants and leaves the courts to decide whether he went too far.
Goldstein continued:
Democrats, for their part, often find themselves standing up for a status quo that seems to satisfy no one. Governors and congressional leaders are defending the Department of Education as Mr. Trump has threatened to abolish it. Liberal groups are suing to block funding cuts. When Kamala Harris was running for president last year, she spoke about student loan forgiveness and resisting right-wing book bans. But none of that amounts to an agenda on learning, either.
All of this is true despite the fact that reading scores are the lowest they have been in decades, after a pandemic that devastated children by shuttering their schools and sending them deeper and deeper into the realm of screens and social media. And it is no wonder Americans are increasingly cynical about higher education. Forty percent of students who start college do not graduate, often leaving with debt and few concrete skills.
“Right now, there are no education goals for the country,” said Arne Duncan, who served as President Barack Obama’s first secretary of education after running Chicago’s public school system. “There are no metrics to measure goals, there are no strategies to achieve those goals and there is no public transparency.”
I have been writing about federal education policy for almost fifty years. There are things we have learned since Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965. That law was part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s agenda. Its purpose was to send federal funds to the schools enrolling the poorest students. Its purpose was not to raise test scores but to provide greater equity of resources.
Over time, the federal government took on an assertive role in defending the rights of students to an education: students with disabilities; students who did not speak English; and students attending illegally segregated schools.
In 1983, a commission appointed by President Reagan’s Secretary of Education Terrell Bell declared that American schools were in crisis because of low academic standards. Many states began implementing state tests and raising standards for promotion and graduation.
President George H.W. Bush convened a meeting of the nation’s governors, and they endorsed an ambitious set of “national goals” for the year 2000. E.g., the U.S. will be first in the world by the year 2000; all children will start school ready to learn by 2000. None of the goals–other than the rise of the high school graduation rate to 90%–was met.
The Clinton administration endorsed the national goals and passed legislation (“Goals 2000”) to encourages states to create their own standards and tests. President Clinton made clear, however, that he hoped for national standards and tests.
President George W. Bush came to office with a far-reaching, unprecedented plan called “No Child Left Behind” to reform education by a heavy emphasis on annual testing of reading and math. He claimed that because of his test-based policy, there had been a “Texas Miracle,” which could be replicated on a national scale. NCLB set unreachable goals, saying that every school would have 100% of their students reach proficiency by the year 2014. And if they were not on track to meet that impossible goals, the schools would face increasingly harsh punishments.
In no nation in the world have 100% of all students ever reached proficiency.
Scores rose, as did test-prep. Many untested subjects lost time in the curriculum or disappeared. Reading and math were tested every year from grades 3-8, as the law prescribed. What didn’t matter were science, history, civics, the arts, even recess.
Some schools were sanctioned or even closed for falling behind. Schools were dominated by the all-important reading and math tests. Some districts cheated. Some superintendents were jailed.
In 2001, there were scholars who warned that the “Texas Miracle” was a hoax. Congress didn’t listen. In time the nation learned that there was no Texas Miracle, never had been. But Congress clung to NCLB because they had no other ideas.
When Obama took office in 2009, educators hoped for relief from the annual testing mandates but they were soon disappointed. Obama chose Arne Duncan, who had led the Chicago schools but had never been a teacher. Duncan worked with consultants from the Gates and Broad Foundations and created a national competition for the states called Race to the Top. Duncan had a pot of $5 billion that Congress had given him for education reform.
Race to the Top offered big rewards to states that applied and won. To be eligible, states had to authorize the creation of charter schools (almost every state did); they had to agree to adopt common national standards (that meant the Common Core standards, funded wholly by the Gates Foundation and not yet completed); sign up for one of two federally funded standardized tests (PARCC or Smarter Balanced) ; and agree to evaluate their teachers by the test scores of their students. Eighteen states won huge rewards. There were other conditions but these were the most consequential.
Tennessee won $500 million. It is hard to see what, if anything, is better in Tennessee because of that audacious prize. The state put $100 million into an “Achievement School District,” which gathered the state’s lowest performing schools into a new district and turned them into charters. Chris Barbic, leader of the YES Prep charter chain in Houston was hired to run it. He pledged that within five years, the lowest-performing schools in the state would rank among the top 20% in the state. None of them did. The ASD was ultimately closed down.
Duncan had a great fondness for charter schools because they were the latest thing in Chicago; while superintendent, he had launched a program he called Renaissance 2010, in which he pledged to close 80 public schools and open 100 charter schools. Duncan viewed charters as miraculous. Ultimately Chicago’s charter sector produced numerous scandals but no miracles.
I have written a lot about Race to the Top over the years. It was layered on top of Bush’s NCLB, but it was even more punitive. It targeted teachers and blamed them if students got low scores. Its requirement that states evaluate teachers by student test scores was a dismal failure. The American Statistical Association warned against it from the outset, pointing out that students’ home life affected test scores more than their teachers.
Race to the Top failed. The proliferation of charter schools, aided by a hefty federal subsidy, drained students and resources from public schools. Charter schools close their doors at a rapid pace: 26% are gone in their first five years; 39% in their first ten years. In addition, due to lax accountability, charters have demonstrated egregious examples of waste, fraud, and abuse.
The Common Core was supposed to lift test scores and reduce achievement gaps, but it did neither. Conservative commentator Mike Petrilli referred to 2007-2017 as “the lost decade.” Scores stagnated and achievement gaps barely budged.
So what have we learned?
This is what I have learned: politicians are not good at telling educators how to teach. The Department of Education (which barely exists as of now) is not made up of educators. It was not in a position to lead school reform. Nor is the Secretary of Education. Nor is the President. Would you want the State legislature or Congress telling surgeons how to do their job?
The most important thing that the national government can do is to ensure that schools have the funding they need to pay their staff, reduce class sizes, and update their facilities.
The federal government should have a robust program of data collection, so we have accurate information about students, teachers, and schools.
The federal government should not replicate its past failures.
What Congress can do very effectively is to ensure that the nation’s schools have the resources they need; that children have access to nutrition and medical care; and that pregnant women get prenatal care so that their babies are born healthy.
Robert Hubbell is a blogger with a huge following. He has that following because he is well-informed, reasonable and optimistic about the power of democracy. In the absence of any coordinated response from the Democratic Party, protests are occurring spontaneously and locally. At Tesla showrooms, where people are picketing. At town hall meetings, which Republicans have suspended. And in other public settings, where people are expressing their anger and frustration about the dismantling of their government.
It is a tough time to be an ordinary American who believes in democracy, the rule of law, and the value of good government. From the cheap seats, it appears that all three are under a brutal assault from Trump and Musk designed to weaken America as a global force for good. In a bizarre twist worthy of The Twilight Zone, Trump and Musk’s campaign of destruction seems carefully crafted to benefit the world’s worst dictator and sworn enemy of American democracy, Vladimir Putin, a goal that is warmly embraced by a party that only a decade ago wrapped itself in patriotism and pro-democracy foreign policy.
But America’s political and media classes seem oddly unconcerned and detached from reality. True, Democrats in Congress express concern—but in the same way, they express concern about policy fights over revisions to the tax code. (To be fair, a handful of notable exceptions are out on a limb without the support of their party.) Our Democratic leaders use their minority status in Congress to justify their strange quiescence—an explanation that accepts defeat as the status quo.
The media is a husk of its former self. Firebrands and self-styled crusaders who took Biden to task for every inconsequential verbal slip now report on grotesque lies and unprecedented betrayals by Trump with the ennui of a weatherman predicting increasing darkness in the late afternoon and early evening.
What is wrong with these people?…
Is the failure of Democratic leaders a lack of ability? Of desire? Or the triumph of personal ambition regarding 2028 presidential politics over their willingness to serve as a leader of the loyal opposition in our nation’s hour of need?
The silence is deafening. There is a grand disconnect. I had no answer for Americans abroad wondering why the deep pool of talented politicians in the Democratic Party was missing in action at a moment of crisis for their beloved country. But I was able to assure them that the grassroots movement is responding to the call without waiting for politicians to lead the way.
Organic protests are spreading across the US, including protests targeting Tesla dealerships. See News24, ‘We are taking action’: 9 people arrested at Tesla dealership as anti-Musk protests break out in US. (“Throngs of protesters also descended on the electric vehicle maker’s showrooms in Jacksonville, Florida; Tucson, Arizona, and other cities, blocking traffic, chanting and waving signs . . . .”)
Like the Civil Rights Era in the 20th Century and the anti-war movement of the 1960s, we are experiencing a moment in our history where the people drag their leaders kicking and screaming into the future—at which point those reluctant leaders will take credit for victory. So be it. We must stop asking, “Where are our leaders?” and start doing the work until they show up to join us on the front lines.
The pattern behind Trump’s embrace of Putin in Friday’s Oval Office meeting
On Friday, Trump ended 80 years of alliance between Western nations by attacking and dishonoring the leader of the European nation on the frontlines of the effort to halt Russian expansionism. As Trump berated President Zelensky, Trump characterized himself and Vladimir Putin as “co-victims” of the US investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
The next day, Elon Musk agreed with a tweet asserting that the US should leave NATO and the UN.
When European leaders met on Sunday in a pre-planned security conference in London, Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev condemned the meeting as an “anti-Trump Russophobic coven [of witches].” Medvedev speaks for Putin.
On Sunday, the NYTimes reported that the US Department of Defense has unilaterally ceased cyber operations against Russia, hobbling the US’s ability to understand Russia’s true intentions at a critical juncture in world politics.
Late last week, The Guardian reported that the US no longer views Russian cyberattacks against the US as a priority. See The Guardian, Trump administration retreats in fight against Russian cyber threats. There is no indication that Russia has stopped cyberattacks against the US or that it has “de-prioritized” American cyberattacks on Russia.
In the span of 72-hours, Trump effectively surrendered to Russia in a cyberwar that has been waged continuously for decades. Trump’s disgraceful actions in the Oval Office on Friday must be viewed in the broader context of Trump’s embrace of Russia.
The media is failing to tell that broader story by trivializing a foreign relations debacle into a “Will he, or won’t he?” story about Trump’s ludicrous demand for Zelensky to “apologize.” See BBCr eport, Laura Kuenssberg, asking Zelensky if he would “express[] some regret to President Trump after your heated confrontation at the White House on Friday.”
The unit that was disbanded was known as “18F.” Its job was to make public-facing websites of the federal government more user-friendly and functional—things like making it easier to complete and file your tax returns for free on the IRS website.
[The terminations were] a surprise to all 18F staff and our agency partners. Just yesterday we were working on important projects, including improving access to weather data with NOAA, making it easier and faster to get a passport with the Department of State, supporting free tax filing with the IRS, and other critical projects with organizations at the federal and state levels.
All 18F’s support on that work has now abruptly come to a halt. Since the entire staff was also placed on administrative leave, we have been locked out of our computers, and have no chance to assist in an orderly transition in our work. . . .
Before today’s RIF, DOGE members and GSA political appointees demanded and took access to IT systems that hold sensitive information. They ignored security precautions. Some who pushed back on this questionable behavior resigned rather than grant access.
The chaos-termination of the 18F computer group is being repeated across the federal government. Doge has apparently targeted 50% of the Social Security Administration staff—a move that will hurt service levels for seniors who depend on SSA payments to meet basic living expenses.
These cuts are painful and will cause chaos. That chaos and pain will spur a backlash against Republicans that should allow Democrats to take back the House (and possibly the Senate) in 2026 if only the Democratic Party can get its act together—PRONTO! We need a daily news conference with effective messaging by dynamic, charismatic leaders who are not Chuck Schumer!…
Concluding Thoughts
Apologies that this newsletter is more like a rant and less like my usual call to action. But I am reflecting the frustration and anger that I am hearing from readers (both in person and in the Comment section). There seems to be a disconnect that is exacerbating an already mind-boggling situation.
The good news is that everyone seems to “get it”—other than politicians and the media. As I noted, they will be dragged along with the tide of history—a tide whose course we will determine by our actions.
It is up to us to save democracy—a situation that does not distinguish this moment from the thousands of perilous moments that have brought us to this point.
I acknowledge that we are living through an extraordinarily difficult moment. Our most important task is to not quit. If all we do is endure and keep hope alive, that will be enough. That is what Winston Churchill did during the darkest hours of WWII. If we can do the same, we will see victory in 2026 and 2028.
But we can do more—much more. The tide is turning. Republicans are retreating from their constituents. Spontaneous protests are spreading across America. It is happening. Be part of the movement in whatever way you can. No effort is wasted. No gesture is meaningless. No voice is unheard. Everything matters—now more than ever.
Tonight, at 9 pm Eastern Time—which is to say, 5 am Wednesday Moscow Time—Co-President Trump will deliver the first State of the Union Address of the Redux. Congressional Democrats must protest this speech like the fate of the nation depends on it—because it does.
The time for traditional party politics has passed. No more “norms.” No more butter knives to gunfights. No more tone-deaf tweets. No more pathetic capitulation. No more infuriating appeals for donations from what’s left of Kamala Harris’s team. We cannot allow Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, the anonymous new DNC chair, and the husk of Joe Biden to Merrick Garland our democracy into oblivion.
The Dems must become a true opposition party. Now. Today. A true opposition party recognizes that the real enemy of the people is sitting in the Oval Office, watching a little kid wipe boogers on the Resolute Desk. Since January 20th, Trump and Co-President Elon Musk have quickly consolidated power, causing all sorts of chaos and pain. This will continue until they have transformed this country into the Russian-style oligarchy of their despotic dreams.
They. Want. To. Hurt. Us. And we must stop them. All of us.
The nation is in urgent need of Washington generals—and not the kind who get beat up every night by the Harlem Globetrotters. Kamala Harris must snap out of her post-election funk and reboot the Joyous Warrior. Barack Obama must step away from his Hollywood party circuit and get his manicured hands dirty; Michelle Obama hates this crap, and I don’t blame her, but we need her help now. George W. Bush needs to put down the paintbrush and take up the mantle. Bill and Hillary need to come to the front. Mitt Romney? This ain’t the moment for dressage. Step away from your Dutch warmblood, mount the Warhorse, and ride in with the cavalry.
Since Election Day, the Democrats as a party have been rudderless, weak, and frustratingly out of touch. Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and the party leadership have been slow to recognize the threat. Hint: look at what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett have been doing, and do that! Or better yet, step down and put them in charge! If the Dems can’t sort this out, and fast, to hell with them. If we have to galvanize behind Liz Cheney, fine, great, let’s do it. We can bicker about policy positions and party planks after the dragon is slain. Right now, we need a leader who isn’t a pusillanimous piece of shit.
On Monday, AOC asked:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @aoc.bsky.social
If you were in Congress, what would you do for the State of the Union? What do you think Dems should do?
All members of Congress who oppose Trump—Democrats, Independents, and whatever Republicans haven’t capitulated—should come to the Capitol at the appointed time. They should have with them a laminated print of that infamous photo from Helsinki, where Trump follows behind Putin subserviently. They should tape the photo to the back of the chair. And as soon as Trump begins to speak, they should all walk noisily out, so that the cameras pan to empty chairs and scores of copies of that embarrassing photo. I wouldn’t object to a crisp “Pu-tin sucks!” chant.
Then, every member of Congress who opposes Trump should repair to his or her office and do a livestream, giving the same speech: a real State of the Union (or State of the Oblast, as it were). This way, every single opposition leader is doing must-see counter-programming simultaneously, to drown out Donald’s hateful lies.
This is what I think they should say:
My fellow Americans, good evening.
What is the state of the Union? Co-President Donald Trump will tell you the state of the Union is strong, but he’s lying, as usual.
Unlike Trump, I’m not going to lie to you. The state of the Union is precarious. It’s precarious and it’s perilous. We are hanging on by a thread. Our democracy is on life support—and Co-President Elon Musk wants to pull the plug and call it “efficiency.”
The Trump/Musk agenda represents a clear and present danger to the people of this country. This threat transcends party politics—like 9/11, like the JFK assassination, like Pearl Harbor. I am speaking to you now not as a Democrat, but as a member of the opposition.
I oppose cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
I oppose the suicidal tariff war Donald has begun with our neighbors, Canada and Mexico.
I oppose the country descending into dictatorship.
I oppose an unelected, unconfirmed South African weirdo—who can’t be bothered to take off his baseball cap while presiding at their first Cabinet meeting—being granted godlike powers to cut funding, kill programs, and fire hardworking Americans—all at the whim of some half-ass algorithm slapped together by the teenage boys who comprise the workforce at the illegal shadow operation he calls DOGE.
I oppose rudeness, cruelty, and lack of respect.
Above all, I oppose the new world order Donald and Elon have created, where they do whatever they can to help that butcher and war criminal, Vladimir Putin.
My fellow Americans, this is the greatest country on earth—the greatest country that ever existed. And I refuse to allow the United States of America to turn into a vassal state of the Russian Empire. The occupant of the White House should be the Leader of the Free World, not some third-rate tyrant’s sidekick.
Donald has consistently denied his long ties to the Kremlin. “Russia Russia Russia,” he says mockingly, whenever some new revelation comes out about something involving him and Moscow. He has ridiculed anyone who suggests he is Putin’s puppet—as Hillary Clinton did, you may recall, in that debate back in 2016, right around the time the U.S. Intelligence Community warned that the Kremlin was attempting to interfere in the election on Trump’s behalf. Later, in Helsinki, Trump would side with Putin over our intelligence professionals!
He claims the Mueller investigation was a “witch hunt.” Same with Volume 5 of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Report on Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election. Even Marco Rubio, Trump’s groveling Secretary of State, signed off on that, admitting the Trump/Russia relationship. It wasn’t a witch hunt, you see. Donald doeshave lots of ties to the Kremlin. And, as he made abundantly clear in Friday’s Oval Office debacle, he is indeed Putin’s puppet.
Putin’s puppet: That sounds like the sort of insult Donald likes to hurl as his opponents, but I don’t mean it as an insult. I mean it as a statement of fact. Trump has thrown in with Putin. He has taken up Moscow’s position regarding the invasion of Ukraine. He has parroted Kremlin talking points about President Zelenskyy.
You don’t have to believe me; you can look it up yourself. This is why so many people were so upset about the abhorrent way Donald and JD behaved at that meeting. People know: that’s not how American leaders are supposed to act!
On Friday, Donald told President Zelenskyy that he didn’t have the cards to play. When he said that, he put his own cards on the table. And now, incredibly, the United States of America is overtly, eagerly sucking up to Moscow. Why? So Co-President Elon Musk and the other new American oligarchs can make even more money—by stealing it from you and me.
Putin regards the United States as an enemy of Russia—as he should. Because he’s certainly our enemy—even if a lot of Americans haven’t quite realized it.
We are now finding out what it means when the President and Co-President are Putin’s puppets. Donald and Elon are charting the course the Kremlin wants for America. They want us broke. They want us sick. They want us stupid. They want us fighting each other. And they want us to leave the rest of the world alone.
Over the first two months of his second term, Donald and Co-President Musk have worked hard to give their whoremaster Vladimir Putin what he wants. So has Speaker Johnson, most of the Republicans in Congress, and the entire Trump Cabinet.
Let me explain what that means, in real terms.
They want us broke. That means they want a recession, a depression, economic tumult. They want mass unemployment. They want the stock market to collapse. They want us to go broke struggling to pay our bills. Have you read the contents of the austerity budget Speaker Johnson wants to pass? Trump and Musk will cut $2 trillion from things like Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and other social welfare programs that Americans of allpolitical persuasions depend on. This will be to pay for tax cuts—which aren’t really tax cuts, because the American oligarch class doesn’t pay taxes like you and me. This is going to be mass theft on the grandest possible scale. This is stealing. You’ve heard of robbing Peter to pay Paul? This is robbing Grandma to pay Elon. The result of this will be financial hardship for most Americans—just what Putin wants.
They want us sick. There is a measles epidemic now in Texas. It’s spreading. This is the result of a massive, decades-old Kremlin disinformation campaign around vaccines. RFK, Jr., who has done more to push this Kremlin lie than any other person on earth, is now in charge of our national health systems. He’s antivax. You know who isn’t antivax? Putin. Putin and Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox News and the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, love their vaccines. Rupert was one of the first people on earth to get the covid vaccine. They know vaccines work—but they want you to think they don’t. RFK also wants to cut funding for cancer research and pandemic preparedness. He wants to get rid of SSRIs, which are incredible drugs that help millions of Americans who struggle with their mental health. Why? Because RFK’s job is to make us all sick—which is what Putin wants.
They want us stupid. Donald put the Department of Education in the hands of the head of a professional wrestling organization. Let me say that again: Donald put the Department of Education in the hands of the head of a professional wrestling organization. And she’s going to cut funding, if not kill the department entirely. They say they want to empower the states to decide how our children are being educated, but that’s just the cover story. All this will do is make our schools exponentially worse. Which is what Putin wants—it doesn’t help Russia if Americans are inventing things, and bringing new technology to the world.
They want us fighting each other, and they want us isolated from the rest of the world. Pete Hegseth, the drunken Fox News host who is somehow our Secretary of Defense, ordered Cyber Command to stand down its defenses against Russia. Why would he do that, if not to please Putin? Tulsi Gabbard ordered mass firings at the NSA, our largest and most important intelligence gathering agency. Why would she do that, if not to please Putin? JD Vance, the pompous imbecile who is a heartbeat away from the presidency, is on an anti-diplomacy tour, insulting all of our longtime allies—the leaders of Western democracies. Why would he do that, if not to please Putin?
This is what it looks like when a Kremlin puppet dictator is in the White House. This is why Hillary Clinton, and James Comey, and James Clapper, and Christopher Steele, and Pete Strzok, and Adam Schiff, and Nancy Pelosi, and Bob Mueller, and Jack Smith worked so hard to expose Donald Trump for what he is.
The message failed. The warning was ignored. And what is happening now, right now, is the result. The chaos, the cruelty, the ignorance, the rudeness, the lack of fundamental human decency, the fear and dread—that is the result.
We have Putin puppets in charge of our country. We are being led by full-on traitors: Donald Trump and Elon Musk, JD Vance and Mike Johnson.
None of those people care about you or your family; if they did, they would occasionally do something to help you. None of them care about what’s good for the United States; if they did, they wouldn’t be trying to burn it down. And none of them care about democracy; if they did, they would not be establishing a Trump/Musk dictatorship, modeled on the philosophy of the Unabomber. I’m not kidding—read the Unabomber Manifesto!
Maybe you think I’m crazy. Maybe you don’t believe me. Maybe you think I’m just trying to score cheap political points. Sooner or later—sooner, probably—it will become obvious to even the most zealous Trump supporter: Change is coming, my friends, and unless you’re one of the new oligarchs, you’re not going to like it.
Ignore me at your peril. Peril. Peril.
The state of the Union is perilous. And we must recognize the threat, and oppose it with every fiber of our beings, and with every means at our disposal. If we don’t, we will dishonor the memory of Abraham Lincoln. If we don’t, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall indeed perish from the earth.
God bless you, and God save America.
…or something to that effect. These motherfuckers have all but announced their plans to steal our Social Security. If you can’t message on that, hang up the spikes.
Or, if the Dems can’t manage something so sophisticated, offer an alternate broadcast—Manning Cam, but for the State of the Union. Have AOC and Jasmine live-stream themselves watching the SOTU, so they can fact-check and mock Donald while he’s speaking. I would certainly watch that.
And as for the rest of us? The course is clear: DON’T WATCH THE SOTU. Deny Donald the ratings he desperately craves.
If the Dems don’t offer suitable counter-programming, I’ve set my State of the Oblast speech to run tonight at 9 pm ET:
Or, if you prefer to ignore the whole shit-show—I don’t blame you!—turn on the telly and flip to TNT, where there’s an NBA doubleheader beginning at 7:30: First, Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors are at Madison Square Garden to take on Jalen Brunson and the New York Knicks. (Go, New York, go, New York, go!) And then, the L.A. Clippers are in Phoenix to play Kevin Durant and the Suns. Remember: keeping the television tuned to a different station hurts Donald’s precious ratings.
There it is. Those are my proposals.
And if we see clips of Jeffries and Schumer and the others just sitting there as Trump rants and raves, looking solemn, clapping softly, normalizing the fascist takeover, we know damned well what that means: craven, cowardly, poltroonish surrender, of the most shameful kind, before the fight has even really begun.
Then we’ll know for sure the Democrats, like the Republicans, are dead as a political party.
In 2001, after the hotly contested election that George W. Bush won by 537 votes in Florida, the nonpartisan Miller Center at the University of Virginia created The National Commission on Federal Election Reform to make recommendations about how to remedy defects in the election system. The co-chairs of the commission were former President Gerald R. Ford and former President Jimmy Carter. I had the good fortune to be a member of that distinguished commission. The commission was comprised of equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans. There was no partisan acrimony. We all agreed on two principles: first, that every qualified citizen should be encouraged to vote; and two, every vote should be counted.
How times have changed! Republicans are so fanatically devoted to the Great Con Artist Donald Trump that they minimize the brazen attempt to overturn the government and the Constitution to keep him in power. They dismiss the pardoning of those who brutalized police officers, smashed windows and doors at the U.S. Capitol and threatened to kill Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker Nancy Pelosi on behalf of their idol.
I immediately sensed that something smelled fishy about the election results in 2024. I saw his lethargic rallies and her passionate, enthusiastic rallies. I didn’t think he could possibly win. Her voters were motivated, his were not. When the results were in, I thought that the election was rigged. I thought that Musk or Putin had fixed the computers.
I was wrong. Not about the accuracy of the outcome but about the means of rigging the vote. Trump partisans couldn’t take the risk of a free and fair election. So they spent four years organizing voter suppression on a grand scale.
Greg Palast is expert at monitoring vote integrity. He did the statistical work, and his conclusion was that Trump lost. He lost due to a sustained Republican effort to suppress the votes of likely Democratic voters.
He wrote:
Trump lost. That is, if all legal voters were allowed to vote, if all legal ballots were counted, Trump would have lost the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. Vice-President Kamala Harris would have won the Presidency with 286 electoral votes.
And, if not for the mass purge of voters of color, if not for the mass disqualification of provisional and mail-in ballots, if not for the new mass “vigilante” challenges in swing states, Harris would have gained at least another 3,565,000 votes, topping Trump’s official popular vote tally by 1.2 million.
Stay with me and I’ll give you the means, methods and, most important, the key calculations.
The result: Trump is an illegitimate president.
Just like “miracle schools” rig test scores by excluding low-scoring students, MAGA desperados rigged the election by excluding likely Harris voters.
Now Trump is busily engaged in destroying the federal government and replacing independent career civil servants with Trump loyalists. Department after department will be led by Trump cronies who pledge allegiance to him, not to the country or the Constitution.
Long-standing policies against discrimination are being trashed.
A completely unqualified MAGA-man was confirmed by the Republican Senate majority and placed in charge of the Department of Defense. Soon, Senate Republicans will decide whether to place a woman with zero experience and dubious foreign connections in charge of all government intelligence agencies. And they will decide whether to place a crackpot in charge of public health.
I am a patriot. I love the United States of America .
The top elected leaders of Texas are far-right extremists–Governor Greg Abbott, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, and Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Abbott is passionate about school vouchers, despite the fact they would harm rural public schools. He called multiple special sessions of the legislature last year specifically to pass vouchers, but failing each time.
Gov. Abbott got more than $10 million from Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass to oust the moderate Republicans who blocked vouchers. He won most of those races, defeating conservatives who prioritized their constituents over the wishes of the Governor, Jeff Yass, Betsy DeVos and the Texas oil and gas billionaires Wilks and Dunn, devout evangelical supports of vouchers.
A new session of the legislature opened. The hard right backed Rep. David Cook to be Speaker of the House. Rep. Dustin Burrows ran against him. Abbott, Patrick, and Paxton supported Cook. Burrows won. Burrows received more Democratic votes than Republican votes.
Burrows won the speaker’s race after two rounds of voting, edging out Cook by a vote of 85-55. During the first round, Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez-Ramos, a Richardson Democrat, received 23 votes from fellow Democratic members — enough to keep Burrows and Cook from reaching the majority threshold of 76.
In the ensuing runoff round, twelve Democrats who had voted for Rodríguez-Ramos switched to Burrows. He also netted two more GOP votes from members who defected from Cook. Nine members marked themselves present without voting for either option, and one member, Yvonne Davis of Dallas, was marked as absent.
Burrows’ winning coalition was made up of 49 Democrats and 36 Republicans, drawing instant backlash from hardline members and activists who vowed revenge in next year’s primaries.
The Abbott wing of the party–more MAGA than Trump–is furious.
The question is: Does this mean that Abbott’s voucher plan will lose again?
Scott Tomlinson, opinion writer for The Houston Chronicle, predicts that MAGA voters, especially in Texas, are soon to have an unwelcome surprise, thanks to the DOGE commission of Elon and Vivek. They voted for deep budget cuts. They voted to downsize the federal government, aka the “Deep State.”
He writes:
President-elect Donald Trump’s coalition splintered over visas for specially skilled workers in recent weeks, which turned especially ugly on Twitter, now known as X.
Elon Musk told critics of the program, including Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson, to “Take a big step back and FUCK YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.”
Solving the immigration crisis is relatively easy compared to balancing the budget, which Musk is supposed to be focusing on. When Trump voters find out what must be cut or whose taxes must rise to stop deficit spending, they’ll start grabbing pitchforks.
U.S. politicians from both parties have unintentionally experimented with the global economy. By running up huge deficits, they tested Modern Monetary Theory, an idea put forward by the left.
MMT was a hot topic during the Obama administration, with proponents arguing that economic powerhouses like the United States don’t have to worry about deficits. Governments can print as much money as they want through borrowing as long as inflation doesn’t rise.
Conventional macroeconomic theory recommends governments spend money, cut taxes and raise deficits during recessions. When the economy grows, governments should spend less, raise taxes and build surpluses. Governments should act as economic shock absorbers. We’re good at spending but not taxing.
Musk promises to cut federal spending by a third, or $2 trillion. The Texas Legislature ranks 10th in the nation for dependency on the federal government to pay for state spending, according to economists at Wallet Hub.
Imagine what would happen to Texas if the Legislature had to come up with $30 billion to make up for federal spending cuts?
Every dollar the federal government spends has a champion somewhere. If Musk tries to cut popular programs, the backlash over H1-B visas will seem like a walk in the park.
Over the past week, the nation was treated to the return of Trump chaos. Congress needed to pass a “continuing resolution” to fund the federal government or it would shut down at midnight last Friday. Because of the process that Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson used, the CR required a vote of two-thirds of the House. The House is almost evenly divided between the two parties, with a slight Republican majority. Mike Johnson had to get a bipartisan deal that satisfied both parties, and he did. On the day of the vote, Elon Musk unleashed a flurry of tweets ridiculing the deal, warning that he would fund primary challengers for any Republican who supported it and lying about the contents of the bill.
Several hours after Musk attacked the bill, Trump chimed in and warned Republicans to vote against it. He too said that any Republican who voted for it would be challenged by another Republican in the next election. Trump demanded that any CR raise the debt limit, so he could renew a big tax cut for the rich and corporations in the spring. The new round of tax cuts is expected to cost $1-2 trillion. The onus for raising the debt limit would be Biden’s, not his, he hoped.
Musk tweeted that the government should be shut down until Trump was inaugurated. Only 33 days, he tweeted. He didn’t care that government employees and members of the military would go without a paycheck for 33 days. Or that many would not have enough to get by. How would he–the world’s richest man–know?
Under pressure from Musk and Trump, the bipartisan deal failed. Speaker Johnson then cobbled together a new budget to please Trump and Musk. It raised the debt limit and deleted items that Democrats wanted. All but two Democrats and 38 Republicans voted against it, and it too failed.
Then Speaker Johnson tried again, forging a deal that members of both parties supported. It passed 366-34.
Here are the 34 Republicans who voted against the bill.
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.)
Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.)
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.)
Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.)
Sen.-elect and Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.)
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.)
Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.)
Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas)
Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.)
Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.)
Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah)
Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.)
Rep. Russ Fulcher (R-Idaho)
Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas)
Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.)
Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas)
Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.)
Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.)
Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.)
Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas)
Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.)
Rep. Greg Lopez (R-Colo.)
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.)
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.)
Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.)
Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.)
Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.)
Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.)
Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.)
Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.)
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas)
Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas)
Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.)
Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas)
Jamelle Bouie wrote that we should all take heart. Trump does not control every Republican in the House. We will find out in February and March whether every Senate Tepublican is willing to confirm Trump’s totally unqualified choices for major roles: Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Kash Patel, and Pete Hegseth.
The recurring theme of my writing the past few weeks is that Donald Trump is not invulnerable. His win did not upend the rules of American politics or render him immune to political misfortune. Like everything we experience, his victory was contingent — a function of specific people in specific circumstances making specific choices. To change any of these variables is to change the ultimate destination.
To put this a little differently, whatever you think of the nature of his win, Donald Trump is still Donald Trump. He is overwhelmingly strong in some areas and ruinously deficient in others. He holds so much sway over his supporters that, as he famously put it nearly 10 years ago, he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose “any voters.” He’s almost incapable of managing himself or the people around him. His White House was notoriously chaotic and he remains as impulsive, dysfunctional and undisciplined as he was during his first term.
There was, in the first weeks after the election, some notion that this had changed, that we were looking at a new Trump, ready to lead a united Republican Party. But as we’ve seen over the past few days, this was premature. First, the Republican Party is far from unified, as their struggle to pass a bill to continue to fund the government showed. It took days. What’s more, Trump is not alone as a figure of influence among congressional Republicans; Elon Musk has imposed himself onto the president-elect as a consigliere of sorts and is trying to build a political empire for himself via X, the social media platform he essentially bought for this purpose.
It was from X, in fact, that Musk urged Republicans to kill the continuing resolution, throwing the House into chaos and prompting Trump to escalate the confrontation to save face, demanding a new resolution that suspended or raised the debt limit. On Thursday evening, Speaker Mike Johnson tried to pass that bill. But a number of Republicans broke ranks, and unified Democratic opposition meant it was dead on arrival.
Together, Trump and Musk have not only walked the Republican Party into an otherwise needless defeat; they also have given Democrats the jump start they apparently needed to behave like a real opposition. According to Axios, House Democrats even broke into chants of “Hell no” when confronted with proposed Republican spending cuts.
That’s more like it.
The absurd battle over the continuing resolution should stand as a vivid reminder that Trump is in a much more precarious position than he may have appeared to be in immediately after the election. With a 41 percent favorability rating, he remains unpopular. He cannot count on a functional majority in the House. He has no plan to deliver the main thing, lower prices, that voters want. And one of his most important allies, Musk, is an agent of chaos he can’t seem to control.
There have been enough presidents that there are a few models for what a well-run administration might look like. This is not one of them.
Other bad news:
There are so many memes on Twitter about “President Musk” that Trump responded, whining that he is the President-elect, not Musk. One meme shows Musk pushing a baby carriage, with Trump in it. Another shows them mouth-kissing.
The one thing Trump can’t tolerate is being laughed at. The term #PresidentMusk was trending on Twitter.
We mostly assume that Trump will not be able to sustain his bromance with Musk because Musk is richer, smarter, and younger than Trump. But Never-Trumper George Conway said in a bulwark podcast that it won’t be easy for Trump to shed Musk. Musk owns the world’s biggest social media platform. Trump can’t afford to alienate him. He also loves Musk’s money. He may be stuck with the one guy who overshadows him and makes him an object of ridicule.
Robert Hubbell is a popular and insightful blogger who has been an inspiration during the campaign. In this post, he takes issue with the pundits who blame Democrats for Trump’s victory, specifically, those who say that Democrats abandoned the working class.
Hubbell wrote:
People continue to be in shock. Many readers report that they have withdrawn from cable news and legacy media outlets. Understandably so. Those outlets are falling over themselves to explain “why” the 2024 presidential election unfolded as it did. The only statement we can make with certainty is that whatever the political commentariat tells us in the short term will be wrong. Spectacularly so.
Don’t believe me? See Jon Stewart’s review of post-election analyses by pundits over the last two decades. See Jon Stewart’s Election Night Takeaway. Watch the entire three minutes. It will help you endure the onslaught of “hot takes” that purport to explain the election—mainly by blaming Democrats.
Before turning to the growing chorus of Democrats blaming Democrats for the loss, let’s acknowledge some good news. Voters in seven states approved state constitutional amendments to protect reproductive liberty: Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nevada and New York. Newcomer Elissa Slotkin was elected as a US Senator from Michigan. US Senator Jacky Rosen was reelected in Nevada. Other races (Ruben Gallego, Bob Casey) are still open or awaiting ballot curing (more about that below).
In North Carolina, Democrats captured the offices of Governor (Josh Stein), Lieutenant Governor (Rachel Hunt), Attorney General (Jeff Jackson), and top schools official (Mo Greene). In addition, Democrats broke the GOP supermajority in the state house! (For those of you who participated in The States Project, breaking the supermajority in NC was a top priority.)
In Wisconsin, Democrats flipped ten seats in the state Assembly after the state supreme court approved new legislative district lines—setting up Democrats to take control of the state Assembly in 2026.
Blaming Democrats for losses in 2024 is not helpful, fair, or accurate
I spent much of the day drafting responses to readers who forwarded articles / posts claiming that Democratic losses in 2024 were due to the fact that they had “lost touch” or “alienated” or “failed to listen to” working class voters or male voters. I won’t link to those articles / posts. They are ubiquitous.
The notion that Democrats “failed to listen to” or “lost touch” with the middle and working classes is demonstrably wrong. Virtually every policy promoted by VP Harris was designed to help the middle class, blue-collar workers, and the working poor:
Childcare tax credits, earned income credits for the working poor, lower prescription drug prices, protecting affordable healthcare, increasing the minimum wage, protecting unions and workers’ rights, providing for in-home care for elderly and homebound, subsidizing first-time homebuyers, building affordable housing, student loan forgiveness, prosecuting price gouging, and a middle-class tax cut.
To the extent that the Democrats speak through policies, virtually all Democratic policies seek to improve the lives of the middle class, working class, and working poor. On a policy level, the assertion Democrats “forgot” or “abandoned” the working class is wrong and corrosive.
What, then, is the source of the false notion that Democrats have “forgotten” the working class? I don’t know for certain, but I have a guess. (I invite others to weigh in; I was an English major and a securities litigation lawyer. I claim no expertise in political analysis.)
Many (not all) in the middle and working classes disagree with Democratic support for women’s reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, equal voting rights for Black citizens, and the fight against human-caused climate change. To the extent that Democrats have parted ways with the cultural and social views of many in the working class and middle class, those groups feel “alienated” and “ignored.”
But it is no answer to those feelings of abandonment and alienation to abandon the struggle for full equality for women, LGBTQ rights, voting rights for Black citizens, and protection of the environment.
So, yes, there is a growing gap between Democratic policies on social issues and many (not all) in the middle and working classes, especially males.
Case in point: Despite unprecedented support for unions by Biden and Harris, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters refused to endorse Kamala Harris. The only rational course of action for unions is to support Kamala Harris. Why, then, did the Teamsters refuse to do so?
My belief: A majority of Teamsters—largely male working-class voters—disagreed with Kamala Harris and Democrats on social issues, like women’s reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, Black voting rights, and efforts to fight human-caused climate change.
So, the fiction that Democrats have “ignored” the working and middle classes is wrong on the merits. It is only on social issues at the core of the Democratic Party’s commitment to social justice that there has been a divergence of opinion.
The answer to the above conundrum is not to abandon the social justice values that are at the core of the Democratic Party but to expand the voting base that is the backbone of the party.
If anyone tells you that Democrats lost in 2024 because they “abandoned” the working class, ask them specifically how Democrats did so. Be prepared to list Kamala Harris’s policies designed to improve the lives of the working class. Ask them how extending the GOP tax cut for millionaires and corporations will benefit the working class. Ask them how the GOP plan to kill Obamacare will help the working class. Or how imposing a 10% tariff on all imported goods will help the working class.
The fiction that Democrats “abandoned” the working class is designed to set Democrats against one another. It is beginning to gain traction because gullible media is willingly spreading the lie. Don’t be seduced by the fiction. Democrats must remain loyal to their roots of social justice and dignity for all. It is the right thing to do. It is the only thing to do. Political victory without justice for all would be hollow and bitter. We are better than that.
Diane Ravitch's blog 