Lefty Stacks

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Hi, all, and happy Monday.

Ready to face another week? As much as I know we’d love to put our feet up, resting comfortably in the knowledge that our democracy is secure, it simply isn’t. So once again we must pull ourselves up and get back to the fight.

The good news is, Americans are increasingly realizing what a disaster Trump’s regime is for our country and our democracy. Their voices are growing louder by the day.

We’re hearing them in Trump’s tanking approval ratings, (which are getting under his skin so badly he says he wants to investigate the polling outfits for “election fraud.”)

We’re hearing them in Republican lawmakers’ town halls. (My sister was at this one yesterday! It was brutal!)

We’re hearing them amplified and echoed by lawmakers like J.B. Pritzker and Cory Booker.

We’re hearing them at protests in Milwaukee.

More and more Americans simply won’t tolerate what’s happening. Nor should they. So as new friends and family ask you “what can I do?” simply tell them to pick up an axe—proverbially speaking, of course—and start chopping. It doesn’t matter so much what we do as that we just do something. Make a call. Join a protest. Write a letter. Donate some dollars (I’ve got an ideal place for that below), join a boycott, attend a town hall…the possibilities are endless.

The important thing, as Amelia Earhart once said, is to decide you’re going to do something. To quote her:

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.

Indeed!

We’re making progress, and if we don’t stop, we’re going to win. I can feel it. So can Trump. That’s why he’s growing more desperate and unhinged by the day.

I’ll be doing my weekly Substack Live today from 4-4:30 PT / 7-7:30 ET, during which I’ll talk about Republicans’ plan to go after ACA Medicaid expansion funds, the May Day protests, impeachment, and what Trump’s plunging poll numbers mean for our movement (spoiler alert: a lot). So come if you can! Just open the app at that time and it should pop up.

I’m also doing a Live tomorrow with the amazing That’ll be at 2PM PT / 5PM ET. Mark your calendars! Qasim is a human rights lawyer, Substack author, and an overall brilliant guy. Should be an interesting conversation.

OK, all. Enough talk! Action is how we get through this, so let’s take some action right now!

Call Your Senators (find yours here) 📲

Hi, I'm a constituent calling from [zip]. My name is ______.

I’m disgusted by Trump’s “pay to play” meme coin scheme. It’s without a doubt the most corrupt and self-dealing effort undertaken by any American president in history. I understand that Senators Schiff and Warren are calling for an ethics investigation. I frankly believe Trump must be impeached for this, but since that starts in the House I will ask the Senator, for now, to support an investigation. Will they? [If GOP add:] Or have they abandoned their oath to uphold the Constitution? Because if they have they should resign.

Call Your House Rep (find yours here) 📲

Hi, I'm a constituent calling from [zip]. My name is _______.

First, I’m disgusted by Trump’s “pay to play” meme coin scheme. It’s without a doubt the most corrupt and self-dealing effort undertaken by any American president in history. Add to that Trump’s recent deportation of American citizens—including a 4-year-old receiving treatment for metastatic cancer—and his flouting of a Supreme Court order, and there is absolutely no question: he must be impeached. Will the Congressmember call for it? [If GOP add:] Or have they abandoned their oath to uphold the Constitution? Because if they have they should resign right now.

Extra Credit ✅

Rep. Gerry Connolly announced today that he will not seek re-election and will soon step down as ranking member of the House Oversight Committee.

Let’s call Minority Leader Jeffries and ask him to do what he should have done from the beginning—appoint AOC to this role.

‭(202) 225-5936‬ or ‭(718) 237-2211‬ or ‭(718) 373-0033‬

Say:

My name is ____ and I’m calling from [city, state]. I’m calling Rep. Jeffries in his capacity as Minority Leader to ask him to please, please appoint AOC to the ranking Oversight Committee seat when Rep. Connolly steps down. Rep. Ocasio Cortez is exactly the right person for this moment. Americans connect with her. We trust her. We want her voice to be heard on this committee. We’ve been asking for this for months; it would be really nice to be heard. Thanks.

Extra Extra Credit ✅

If anyone’s interested I have the phone number for U.S. Judge Stephen Dries—the one who signed the arrest warrant for Judge Hannah Dugan. It’s 414-290-2261. I just left him a voicemail saying, essentially, shame on you. Join me if you like.

A script might be:

It’s a terrible day when a U.S. judge signs the arrest warrant for another judge who’s done nothing wrong but show a bit of humanity. Arresting judges is a hallmark of fascist regimes. History will not look kindly on your participation in these attacks on the judiciary, and neither will Americans like me. You had the chance to be stand up for what is right. You did the opposite. I hope next time you make a different choice.

Get Smart—NC! 📚

Happening soon! All In NC’s monthly educational meeting, What We Learned from the 2024 Elections,

TODAY, 4-5 pm ET.

Led by Ashlei Blue of NC America Votes and Theo Luebke of Carolina Federation.

North Carolina was one of the brightest spots in the country in 2024 -- we saw a Democratic landslide for governor, and NC was the only state in the country where Democrats picked up two statewide offices, breaking the gerrymandered supermajority in the state House.

Hear from some of the leading practitioners in North Carolina what the data and their organizing tells them are the big lessons.

RSVP here.

Get Smart—on the Economy!

Join Better Markets tomorrow for a discussion analyzing President Trump’s first 100 days in office. They’ll explore key personnel appointments, policy decisions, and emerging risks, along with their potential impact on the broader economy.

Financial regulatory agencies are now under new leadership, with agency heads abruptly changing policy and enforcement priorities. At the same time, the Trump Administration has taken sweeping steps to reshape the federal government through Executive Orders and changes in how financial regulatory agencies operate under the growing influence of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

These actions—especially when taken alongside the Administration’s chaotic trade policies—carry significant consequences for Main Street Americans, the economy and financial markets.

Tuesday, Apr 29, 10:00 AM PT / 1PM ET

Register here.

Give 💰!

Fundraiser to DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION!

Force Multiplier’s Defending Democracy Fund supports four preeminent groups on the frontlines of the battle to defend democracy in the courts. All are non-profits that hire lawyers to bring an avalanche of lawsuits addressing recent attacks on the rule of law and the pillars of civil society.

On Wednesday, May7 at 7:00-8:00pm ET they will host leaders of two of the groups to report on the current status of litigation and to answer questions. They are: Noah Bookbinder, President and CEO, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)+ Robert Weissman, Co-President, Public Citizen.

Defending the Constitution is a non-partisan activity. These groups are all tax-advantaged 501(c)3 organizations. Your donation is tax-deductible.

Donate/Register here.

Get in the Streets! 🪧

May Day is coming! Find your event and please go if you possibly can! (I’ll be in DTLA here)

Also, here’s a great May Day toolkit which includes some great sample social if you're able to help amplify in these final days! Remember all the people who say “oh I would have gone if I’d known it was happening…”

Make sure they know!

Grab Your Wallet! 💳

As I mentioned in “Extra! Extra!” yesterday, there’s a website listing MAGA-friendly businesses called Public Square. People are now using it to find out what local businesses to boycott. I highly recommend checking it out! You can search your zip code and it’ll pull up a map of every business near you that’s requested to be added to this pro-Trump registry.

I found some surprises in my neighborhood, and I plan on making the information known widely. Please share this tool!

Win Races! 🗳

I’m excited to announce that this newsletter is co-sponsoring two new phonebanks!

The first one is on Mondays and Wednesdays—it’s to ensure we elect Abigail Spanberger as Virginia's next Governor. Register here.

The second one is on Thursdays—in it we’ll call voters in purple California districts to ask them to call their House rep and demand they vote NO on healthcare cuts. Register here.

Resistbot Letter (new to Resistbot? Go here! And then here.) 💻

[To: all 3 reps] [H/T Coleman Rogers] [Text SIGN PGYUVR to 50409, or to @Resistbot on Apple Messages, Messenger, Instagram, or Telegram]

The alleged attempts by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to illegally access private taxpayer data and other highly sensitive information are deeply concerning. Reports from within the Internal Revenue Service indicate that DOGE personnel may have improperly obtained and shared confidential taxpayer records in violation of strict privacy laws. This represents a flagrant overreach and abuse of power that undermines public trust in government institutions.

Furthermore, the apparent efforts by the Director of National Intelligence to suppress federal employees from speaking out about unethical or illegal activities occurring within agencies are unacceptable in a free society. Public servants must be able to report wrongdoing without fear of retaliation or legal consequences. Attempting to muzzle those with insider knowledge of misconduct is an obstructionist tactic that only serves to enable further abuses.

In light of these grave issues, it is imperative that Congress exercise its constitutional oversight authority and launch a comprehensive investigation into DOGE and OMB's actions. The American people deserve full transparency regarding any improper access or sharing of their private data by government entities. Those responsible for violating privacy laws or attempting to silence whistleblowers must be held accountable.

Protecting citizens' civil liberties and safeguarding the integrity of federal agencies are paramount duties. Robust congressional scrutiny is vital to upholding these democratic principles and restoring faith in the institutions tasked with serving the public interest. Inaction is unacceptable when fundamental rights and ethical standards are being violated. Congress must act decisively to defend the rule of law and preserve government accountability to the people.

OK, you did it again! You’re helping to save democracy! You’re amazing.

Talk soon.

Jess

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Hey, everyone!

Here are links to some of the stuff we talk about today:

Here’s the article about Medicaid expansion:

xpostfactoidTwelve Republican House "moderates" sell out the ACA Medicaid expansionPunchbowl News provides valuable daily intelligence as to the progress of the Republican reconciliation package, but they have this story exactly backwards…Read more13 days ago · 6 likes · 2 comments · Andrew Sprung

The May Day website is here.

Impeachment details are here.

The unlocked Times Sienna poll is here.

Thanks for watching!

Chop Wood, Carry Water is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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Get more from Jessica Craven in the Substack appAvailable for iOS and AndroidGet the app

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Hi, all,

Was just informed that the line in my call script about the Smithsonian removing the lunch counter turned out to be false. So sorry! I trusted the source I linked to but I guess I shouldn’t have.

I’ve removed that script from the online version of the newsletter until I can regroup and make sure I know of what I speak. There are, obviously, real attacks happening on Black history and on the Smithsonian, but I don’t have time to rework the whole script right now so I’ll just include it another day.

Sorry about that—and so sorry to have to send another email.

Jess

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From Chop Wood, Carry Water via this RSS feed

I express my sympathy and condolences to the Canadian and Filipino people and to the victims and families touched by the mass killing at the Filipino festival in Vancouver on Saturday evening. The incident is a tragedy on many levels. Your American friends stand with you in your sorrow and grief.

Sit-in on the Capitol Steps

In another sign that some congressional leaders “get it,” Senator Cory Booker and minority leader Hakeem Jeffries led a “sit-in” on the Capitol steps beginning on Sunday morning. The sit-in began one day before Congress returns to consider the punitive continuing resolution and budget framework proposed by Republicans. See The Guardian, Hakeem Jeffries and Cory Booker livestream sit-in against GOP funding plan

Upon its Monday return from recess, Congress will undertake the task of converting a Republican budget framework into an actual spending bill. If the Republicans manage to stick to their framework, programs such as Medicaid and healthcare will be cut by as much as $880 billion, while tax cuts for the rich and corporations could increase the deficit by $5.7 trillion.” See Bipartisan Policy Center, What’s in the FY2025 Senate Budget Resolution | Bipartisan Policy Center.

Most Americans have no idea that the proposed Republican budget would gut Medicaid while codifying permanent tax cuts for the most affluent Americans and corporations.

The effort by Senator Booker received scant coverage over the weekend. No matter! The protest is a start—and will continue. The fact that it occurred at all is big news.

Democrats in Congress must engage in creative protest activity to take control of the media narrative. We cannot predict which small protest will spark the flames of mass resistance, so the efforts of Senator Booker, Rep. Jeffries, and others deserve our attention, respect, and amplification. Tell a friend!

The resistance continues to organize and strengthen

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that ten major universities have formed a strategic coalition to plan resistance to attacks by the Trump administration. See Elite Universities Form Private Collective to Resist Trump Administration. (Accessible to all.)

Per the WSJ,

The group comprises figures at the highest levels, including individual trustees and presidents. Maintaining close contact, they have discussed red lines they won’t cross in negotiations and have gamed out how to respond to different demands presented by the Trump administration, which has frozen or canceled billions in research funding at schools it says haven’t effectively combated antisemitism on their campuses.

The group’s aim is to avoid the fate of some top law firms, where one deal led to others following suit. The universities want to make sure other schools don’t go so far as to strike deals that create a worrisome precedent that others would be under pressure to follow, say the people familiar with the effort.

Speaking of “the fate of some top law firms,” an article in Business Insider provides insight into Susman Godfrey's decision to fight the Trump administration—and the benefits that have accrued to Susman and other firms that refused to capitulate. See Business Insider, Susman Godfrey's Decision to Sue the US Government Took Just Two Hours. (“So far, there is little evidence those four firms have suffered serious consequences for choosing to fight.”)

Per Business Insider, the Justice Department is having difficulty finding lawyers to work on the cases brought by Susman Godfrey, Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, and others. Business Insider notes that the two veteran DOJ attorneys who were leading the defense of Trump's executive orders against law firms have “dropped out” of the cases.

In place of veteran attorneys at the DOJ are two lawyers who seem to be ill-equipped to handle the high-stakes constitutional questions at the heart of the cases. One lawyer is Pam Bondi’s “Chief of Staff,” and the other is a lawyer who joined the DOJ from a Stephen Miller non-profit organization.

The Stephen Miller protégé—Richard Lawson—will be forever famous for impersonating Sergeant Schultz while defending Trump's executive orders, repeatedly answering Judge Beryl Howell’s questions with some version of, “I know nothing! Nothing!” See Bloomberg, Trump Attorney for Big Law Attacks Says Little as Losses Rack Up.

The lesson from resistance by universities and a handful of law firms is that Trump loses in court and backs down when challenged.

The capitulation of Paul Weiss, Skadden Arps, Kirkland & Ellis, Willkie Farr, A&O Shearman, Milbank, Cadwalader, and Latham & Watkins will be remembered as the biggest mistake in the history of those firms—while Perkins Coie, Wilmer Hale, Susman Godfrey, Jenner & Block, Covington & Burling, and Munger Tolles will long be viewed as having acted in the highest traditions of the legal profession.

Ugh. Trump's tariffs appear to be having a major effect on international shipping.

Over the weekend, reports emerged that inbound shipping container traffic into US ports has fallen off a cliff. The Port of Seattle reportedly has no international ships offloading cargo, and ports on the East Coast are experiencing declines in the 40% range. See WSJ*,* China-to-U.S. Cargo Shipments Dwindle as Ship Cancellations Increase. (Accessible to all.)

Per the WSJ,

Dozens of canceled sailings from China were due to reach U.S. seaports in the coming weeks. Freight demand from China to the West Coast of the U.S. could fall 28% next week, while demand at East Coast ports could plunge 42% the following week, according to Alan Murphy, chief executive of Denmark-based data firm Sea-Intelligence.

”The impact is staggering,” he said.

Empty ports this week translate into empty warehouses next month—unless something dramatic happens.

The good news is that Trump claims he is talking to China daily about trade. The bad news is that China says no such talks are taking place. See The Independent, Trump admin keeps claiming trade negotiations are happening every day with China. No one in Beijing or Washington seems to know who is making them.

As noted in Concluding Thoughts, below, consumer confidence is plummeting, and Trump's approval rating in his second term has hit a historic low, exceeding the prior worst performance of any president, Trump during his first term.

There is nothing to celebrate in bad news for the American economy. Millions of Americans will be hurt. But we must remember that Biden left an economy that the foreign financial press called “the envy of the world.” Republicans nonetheless managed to convince Americans that Biden was incompetent because of inflation.

What we are about to see will be significantly worse than the inflation under Biden, and we must be prepared to open the eyes of voters to see that Trump is solely responsible for crashing the American economy. We must convince regretful Republicans and persuadable Independents that voting for Trump and his GOP enablers was a mistake.

We can do that, but it requires us to be knowledgeable about the damage inflicted by DOGE and Trump. Read on!

DOGE’s “cuts” may cost the US more than the alleged savings.

The cuts by DOGE have sparked chaos in government—which increase costs. An independent study indicates that the DOGE cuts have increased costs to the US taxpayers by $135 billion—compared to an alleged $160 billion in savings from DOGE cuts. See CBS News, DOGE's $160 billion in savings have cost $135 billion, analysis finds.

The headline understates the impact of DOGE's increased costs. Per CBS News,

The $135 billion cost to taxpayers doesn't include the expense of defending multiple lawsuits challenging DOGE's actions, nor the impact of estimated lost tax collections due to staff cuts at the IRS.

Other reports have suggested the IRS taxes collected through April 15, 2025, were about half a trillion dollars less than prior years.

While some of that shortfall may be timing differences, it is reasonable to assume that dramatic decreases in IRS staffing will result in lower-than-average collection results. See CNBC, Tax revenue collected by the IRS set to plummet, report says. (“The loss of tax receipts is expected as more individuals and businesses don’t file taxes or attempt to avoid paying balances owed to the IRS. The amount of lost federal revenue could top $500 billion, the paper said.”)

A reader posted a comment on Sunday that suggested we always refer to DOGE as “the DOGE disaster.” I agree. Most Americans understand that DOGE has been a disaster. Reinforcing that concept will make it easier to message Trump's ownership of the poor state of the economy in 2026.

Concluding Thoughts

There is more to discuss, but that is all I can muster on a Sunday evening after a day celebrating my birthday by serving as a human catapult for my three granddaughters in the pool. (“Again, grandpa! Again!”)

As Trump approaches the 100-day mark of his second term, he is historically unpopular. See ABC News, Trump has lowest 100-day approval rating in 80 years. I invite you to read the ABC News poll to see how broadly the electorate disapproves of Trump and his policies.

I frequently remind readers to “Ignore the polls,” mainly because polls can give people false hope and are subject to manipulation by the sponsoring organization. But I believe the polls are helpful at this moment, not because they should provide us with comfort, but rather because they should spur us to even greater resistance and effort in the next 100 days!

The ABC poll says less about Trump than it says about us—both about how we feel about Trump and how effective our resistance efforts have been. The decrease in Trump's approval rating is about as dramatic as it gets. Something unusual is going on.

Much of the drop in Trump’s approval rating is organic and would have happened in all events, but some of the drop is attributable to the sustained, widespread, passionate anti-Trump protests led by a revitalized grassroots movement.

I realize it is a bold claim to say that some of the drop in Trump's favorability is because of the protests and other resistance efforts. However, I note that Elon Musk spent the opening minutes of the Tesla first-quarter earnings call complaining about the protests and protesters.

Musk engaged in full-throated conspiracy claims about the protesters—i.e., that they are being paid and are protesting to ensure that they continue to receive fraudulent benefit payments to which they are not entitled.

Musk’s tirade fooled no one but managed to make a fool out of Musk. He humiliated himself in front of the most sophisticated financial analysts in the world, who know everything worth knowing about Tesla. And they know that Tesla’s problem is Musk.

Here’s my point: Musk told us that the protests are working. They are changing the public’s view of Tesla’s brand by associating it with an out-of-touch white supremacist billionaire. Those anti-Musk views are embedded in Trump's plummeting favorability rating.

So, the ABC poll tells us, “Keep it up! Do not relent! Double down!” The weaker Trump becomes, the more likely that a handful of Republicans will find the courage to vote against him in the upcoming battles over the budget. Time is of the essence if we hope to stop the horrific GOP budget proposal from becoming law.

At the 100-day mark, we have received our first report card. And it is darned good. Let’s keep up the good work!

Talk to you tomorrow!

Daily Dose of Perspective

It was cloudy and cold in Los Angeles on Sunday, so no astrophotography was possible today. I received a book of Hubble Space Telescope (HST) photographs for my birthday. As I flipped through the photos, I paused on the HST photo of the Orion Nebula. I pulled out my phone and compared my image of the Orion Nebula—and concluded I had done a pretty good job of capturing the nebula (compared to the HST). So, with more than my usual pride in sharing photos of deep sky objects, see my photo of the Orion Nebula below. Enjoy!

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From Today's Edition Newsletter via this RSS feed

Gov. Kathy Hochul had held up passage of the New York State budget until it included bill language regarding several public-safety issues.

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From NYT > Top Stories via this RSS feed

Last night a new club opened in the wealthy Georgetown neighborhood in Washington, D.C. It’s called “Executive Branch,” and it’s an invitation-only club backed by Donald Trump Jr. and megadonor Omeed Malik. Dasha Burns of Politico reported that it costs more than half a million dollars to join. The exclusive club is designed to allow top business executives to talk privately with Trump advisors and cabinet members. Burns reports that the club already has a waiting list.

When then-candidate Donald Trump celebrated the administration of President William McKinley, it was always clear he saw it as the triumphant marriage of the very rich to the U.S. government. It was the era of so-called robber barons, industrialists and financiers who flooded political campaigns with money to convince voters that those trying to rein them in were socialists or anarchists, then called upon the politicians they put into power to pass laws that benefited their businesses.

“Behind every one of half the portly well-dressed members of the Senate can be seen the outlines of some corporation interested in getting or preventing legislation,” the Chicago Tribune wrote in 1884, “or of some syndicate that has invaluable contracts or patents to defend or push.” Last Sunday a new filing with the Federal Election Commission revealed that donors delivered an astounding $239 million for Trump’s inauguration. Theodore Schleifer of the New York Times notes that Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee raised $107 million. The $346 million raised by Trump’s two inaugural committees is more than the monies raised by all other inaugural committees since Richard Nixon’s committee raised $4 million in 1973. While Trump’s allies have said the money that wasn’t spent on festivities will go to other projects Trump is behind, including his presidential library, there is no oversight on how Trump uses that money.

Spending on the election was even more dramatic. Earlier this month, Americans for Tax Fairness analyzed spending in 2024 and discovered that just 100 billionaire families donated a record-breaking $2.6 billion to federal campaigns, up by 160 times from billionaire spending in elections before the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. Seventy percent of that money went to Republican candidates or causes. In the three races that determined control of the Senate—Montana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania—outside money from billionaires made up 58.1%, 56.8%, and 44.5% of the outside money coming in. Elon Musk donated about $290 million, giving four times as much money to political campaigns in 2024 as he paid in income taxes between 2013 and 2018.

Those investments in a Trump administration are paying off. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is withdrawing a Biden-era rule requiring poultry companies to keep the levels of salmonella bacteria below a certain level in their meats to prevent illnesses commonly known as food poisoning. When the Biden administration proposed the rule, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explained that salmonella causes 1.35 million infections a year and kills 420 people. The USDA said that about 125,000 of those infections came from chicken and another 43,000 from turkey. Officials estimated that the new rule would reduce salmonella illnesses by 25%.

The National Chicken Council celebrated the Trump administration's reversal of the rule, saying it would have had “no meaningful impact on public health.” On Friday, Charisma Madarang of Rolling Stone pointed out that the poultry company Pilgrim’s Pride gave $5 million to Trump’s inaugural committee, making it the largest donor to that effort. Two of the company’s executives, chief executive officer Fabio Sandri and head of the company’s food safety and quality assurance Kendra Waldbusser, serve on the board of the National Chicken Council.

Last month, Rick Claypool of the consumer rights organization Public Citizen noted that the Trump administration has dropped federal investigations and lawsuits against 89 corporations, many of whose leaders donated heavily to Trump’s inaugural fund. Another of those who has benefited significantly from the new policies is Elon Musk. Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, told Laurence Darmiento of the Los Angeles Times: “I think the overall goals of Donald Trump and Elon Musk are to slash regulations, to slash budgets and to cut positions all with this claim they are going to increase efficiency and fight fraud.”

But corporate ties to the government are not just about avoiding oversight; they are also about snagging lucrative federal contracts. Gilbert noted: “I would say it’s a smoke screen and cover for personal profit and corporate power—and that’s where Musk’s personal conflicts of interest come into play, as well as the other corporate actors across this government.”

On Friday, Andrew Perez and Asawin Suebsaeng of Rolling Stone reported that staffers for billionaire Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” have been working on a multimillion-dollar communications project called “Project Lift” at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The plan appears to be to insert Musk’s Starlink into the $2.4 billion contract Verizon currently holds to upgrade the FAA’s systems, but DOGE staff have made FAA employees sign nondisclosure agreements, so details are scarce. An FAA spokesperson told Perez and Suebsaeng: “The federal employees running Project Lift are exploring a variety of solutions to modernize the FAA’s telecommunications network. Current contractors are part of the discussion.”

In the Trump administration, the connections between the government and business include the president’s family members.

Zach Everson of Forbes has been following the story of the Trump family’s involvement in artificial intelligence company Dominari Holdings, Inc. In February, Everson reported that just weeks after Trump announced the administration's push to loosen regulations and expand infrastructure for AI, his sons Donald Jr. and Eric invested in Dominari and joined its brand new advisory board, for which they received 750,000 shares each in the company although they had no official duties. The company then launched another company, American Data Center, Inc., in which the Trumps also invested. That company focused on the “high-performance computing infrastructure” to support AI, cloud computing, and cryptocurrency.

According to Amber Jackson of the U.K.’s Data Centre Magazine, Dominari stock leaped more than 1,000% after the Trump sons joined the advisory board. On Friday, Everson reported on a Securities and Exchange Commission filing revealing that Dominari has applied for conditions that would enable the shareholders, including Don and Eric Trump, to sell their stocks earlier than a normal timeline would allow. Each Trump brother now controls 1.2 million shares of Dominari, each holding now worth $5.8 million.

On Wednesday, Trump made the pay-to-play nature of his administration explicit when he announced that the top 220 holders of his $TRUMP cryptocurrency token would be invited to a dinner with Trump at his private club and that they would be offered a “VIP White House Tour” the next day. MacKenzie Sigalos and Kevin Collier of CNBC reported the meme coin jumped more than 50% on the news, netting Trump and his allies nearly $900,000 in trading fees.

Just before sunrise this morning, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) began a live-streamed sit-in protest and discussion on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to call attention to the Republicans’ budget bill. On Friday, Alan Rappeport and Tony Romm of the New York Times reported that the Republicans’ proposed 2026 budget would slash federal support for “child care, health research, education, housing assistance, community development and the elderly,” and for foreign aid. Attacking “woke” programs, it appears to implement much of Project 2025. Russell Vought, who was director of the Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s first term and has returned to that position in his second, was a key author of that playbook.

Cuts to programs that protect ordinary Americans will help to fund the extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. Extending those tax cuts will cost at least $4 trillion over the next decade. Congress returns to session tomorrow, and it will take up the budget. In a statement, Jeffries and Booker said: “Republican leaders have made clear their intention to use the coming weeks to advance a reckless budget scheme to President Trump’s desk that seeks to gut Medicaid, food assistance and basic needs programs that help people, all to give tax breaks to billionaires.”

Throughout the day, Democratic lawmakers, activists, and passersby joined Jeffries and Booker’s twelve-hour sit-in.

An AP/NORC poll released yesterday showed that Trump’s approval rating has dropped to 39%. Today a Washington Post–ABC News–Ipsos poll confirmed that number. Trump’s approval rating at almost 100 days in office is the lowest of any president in 80 years.

For his part, Trump announced today that he “is bringing Columbus Day back from the ashes!”

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Notes:

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/26/donald-trump-washington-club-00311720

Chicago Tribune quoted in Harper’s Weekly, February 9, 1884, p. 86.

https://apnews.com/article/chicken-turkey-food-poisoning-salmonella-usda-58e2813065011613d0922a03ce1e4d89

https://apnews.com/article/poultry-salmonella-food-poisoning-usda-081dafd3c8a75c3ef2203d260584a893

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/20/us/politics/trump-inauguration-donors.html

https://americansfortaxfairness.org/billionaires-buying-elections-theyve-come-to-collect/

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/usda-salmonella-poultry-withdraw-biden-plan-1235325722/

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/25/trumps-memecoin-dinner-contest-earns-insiders-900000-in-two-days.html

https://www.citizen.org/article/corporate-clemency-trump-enforcement-report/

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-03-27/elon-musk-trump-doge-conflicts-of-interest

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-musk-doge-faa-nda-secret-project-lift-1235325667/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2025/02/20/trump-eric-don-jr-ai-american-data-centers-dominari-artifical-intelligence-ethics/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2025/04/25/donald-jr-eric-trump-stock-sale-dominari-holdings-sec-filing/

https://datacentremagazine.com/technology-and-ai/dominari-how-the-trump-family-are-investing-in-data-centres

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/60271

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/us/politics/trump-budget-cuts.html

https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/the-new-cost-for-2025-tax-cut-extensions-4-trillion/

https://jeffries.house.gov/2025/04/27/jeffries-booker-sit-on-capitol-steps-begin-live-stream-speaking-directly-with-americans/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/27/hakeem-jeffries-cory-booker-livestream-protest-republican-funding-bill

https://apnorc.org/projects/100-days-in-and-the-public-feels-trumps-presidency-is-proceeding-mostly-as-expected/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/tablet/2025/04/25/april-18-22-2025-washington-post-abc-news-ipsos-national-poll/

https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/27/politics/booker-jeffries-democrats-sit-in-capitol/index.html

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/best-wishes-to-all-who-celebrate

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/another-39-approval-poll

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-lowest-100-day-approval-rating-80-years/story?id=121165473

Bluesky:

zacheverson.com/post/3lno54irwgc2u

lebassett.bsky.social/post/3lnsvf7tn5s2i

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From Letters from an American via this RSS feed

General Oleksandr Syrskyi, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, has held a monthly comprehensive meeting on basic, professional and collective training of servicemen.

Source: Commander-in-Chief on Facebook

Details: Among the achievements, Syrskyi noted an increase in the volume and content of the Basic General Military Training (BGMT) curriculum. Now it is necessary to steadily improve its quality.

He said that efforts will be focused, in particular, on recruiting instructors – both in military units, combat brigades and training centres – on the professional training of instructors and sergeants.

The Commander-in-Chief heard reports from responsible officials, including Brigadier General Oleh Apostol, Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who oversees the area of BGMT.

Quote from Syrskyi: "There are still many unresolved issues in this area; they were analysed during the meeting, along with proposals for their effective resolution. Meanwhile, many effective projects are being implemented, starting with pilot projects and scaling them up to the entire Armed Forces.

Among other things, we are creating an information and communication system for the army called the Experience Learning and Implementation Portal, which will allow us to systematise and disseminate the experience of combat units, accumulate AAR (after-action review) materials, etc.

We are making changes to the existing training courses in small arms and combat vehicle marksmanship and sniper training.

Importantly, we have already modernised the BGMT programme in terms of tactical pre-hospital care, namely the use of turnstiles. The approach has been clarified, and the amount of time for training in this module has been increased. After all, we have to save not only the lives but also the healthy limbs of our soldiers.

I paid special attention to the implementation of a pilot project to recruit citizens aged 18-24 to serve in the Armed Forces. We are stepping up our efforts to increase the motivation of future young contractors."

Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!

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From Ukrainska Pravda via this RSS feed

Friends,

Today is the start of the 14th week of the odious Trump regime. Wednesday will mark its first 100 days.

The U.S. Constitution is in peril. Civil and human rights are being trampled upon. The economy is in disarray.

At this rate, we won’t make it through the second hundred days.

Federal judges in more than 120 cases so far have sought to stop Trump — judges appointed by Republicans as well as Democrats, some appointed by Trump himself — but the regime is either ignoring or appealing their orders. It has even arrested a municipal judge in Milwaukee who merely sought to hear a case involving an undocumented defendant.

Recently, Judge J Harvie Wilkinson III of the court of appeals for the fourth circuit — an eminent conservative Reagan appointee who is revered by the Federalist Society — issued a scathing rebuke of the Trump regime. In response to its assertion that it can abduct residents of the United States and put them into foreign prisons without due process, Wilkinson wrote:

“If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home? And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies? The threat, even if not the actuality, would always be present, and the Executive’s obligation to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed’ would lose its meaning.”

Judge Wilkinson’s fears are already being realized. Early Friday morning, ICE deported three U.S. citizens — aged 2, 4, and 7 — when their mothers were deported to Honduras. One of the children, having Stage 4 cancer, was sent out of the United States without medication or consultation with doctors.

Meanwhile, the regime continues to attack all the independent institutions in this country that have traditionally served as bulwarks against tyranny — universities, nonprofits, lawyers and law firms, the media and journalists, science and researchers, libraries and museums, the civil service, and independent agencies — threatening them with extermination or loss of funding if they don’t submit to its oversight and demands.

Trump has even instructed the Department of Justice to investigate ActBlue, the platform that handles the fundraising for almost all Democratic candidates and the issues Democrats support.

At the same time, Trump is actively destroying the economy. His proposed tariffs are already raising prices. His attacks on Fed chief Jerome Powell are causing tremors around the world.

Trump wants total power, even at the cost of our democracy and economy.

His polls are dropping yet many Americans are still in denial. “He’s getting things done!” some say. “He’s tough and strong!”

Every American with any shred of authority must loudly and boldly sound the alarm.

A few Democrats and progressives in Congress (Bernie Sanders, AOC, Cory Booker, Chris Van Hollen, Chris Murphy) have expressed outrage, but most seem oddly quiet. Granted, they have no direct power to stop what is occurring but they cannot and must not appear to acquiesce. They need to be heard, every day — protesting, demanding, resisting, refusing.

Barack Obama has spoken up at least once, to his credit, but where is my old boss, Bill Clinton? Where is George W. Bush? Where are their former vice presidents — Al Gore and Dick Cheney? Where are their former Cabinet members? They all must be heard, too.

What about Republican members of Congress? Are none willing to stand up against what is occurring? And what of Republican governors and state legislators? If there were ever a time for courage and integrity, it is now. Their silence is inexcusable.

Over 400 university presidents have finally issued a letter opposing “the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.” Good. Now they must speak out against the overreach endangering all of American democracy.

Hundreds of law firms have joined a friend-of-the-court brief in support of law firm Perkins Coie’s appeal of the regime’s demands. Fine. Now, they along with the American Bar Association and every major law school must sound the alarm about Trump’s vindictive and abusive use of the Justice Department.

America’s religious leaders have a moral obligation to speak out. They have a spiritual duty to their congregations and to themselves to make their voices heard.

The leaders of American business — starting with Jamie Dimon, the chair and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who in normal times has assumed the role of spokesperson for American business — have been conspicuously silent. Of course they fear Trump’s retribution. Of course they hope for a huge tax cut. But these hardly excuse their seeming assent to the destruction of American democracy and our economy.

Journalists must speak out, too. In the final moments of last night’s “60 Minutes” telecast, Scott Pelley, one of its top journalists, directly criticized Paramount, CBS’s parent company. “Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways,” he told viewers, explaining why the show’s executive producer, Bill Owens, had resigned.

“Stories we pursued for 57 years are often controversial — lately, the Israel-Gaza War and the Trump administration. Bill made sure they were accurate and fair. He was tough that way. But our parent company, Paramount, is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it.”

Shari Redstone, the controlling shareholder of Paramount, is seeking the Trump regime’s approval for a multibillion-dollar sale of the media company, and Paramount is obviously intruding on “60 Minutes” content to curry favor with (and not rile) Trump.

Kudos to Pelley for speaking out and to Bill Owens for resigning. We need more examples of such courage. (They both get this week’s Joseph Welch Award, by the way, while Shari Redstone and Paramount get this week’s Neville Chamberlain.)

***

Friends, we have witnessed what can happen in just the first hundred days. I’m not at all sure we can wait until the 2026 midterm elections and cross our fingers that Democrats take back at least one chamber of Congress. At the rate this regime is wreaking havoc, too much damage will have been done by then.

The nation is tottering on the edge of dictatorship.

We are no longer Democrats or Republicans. We are either patriots fighting the regime or we are complicit in its tyranny. There is no middle ground.

Soon, I fear, the regime will openly defy the Supreme Court. Americans must be mobilized into such a huge wave of anger and disgust that members of the House are compelled to impeach Trump (for the third time) and enough senators are moved to finally convict him.

Then this shameful chapter of American history will end.

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From Robert Reich via this RSS feed

Tesla Takedowns continued unabated this weekend! This picture was taken in Old Town, Pasadena.

Hi, all, and happy Sunday!

It’s been another crazy, chaotic, and disturbing week, but we’ve also got a long list of wins to celebrate. So let’s take a few minutes away from doomscrolling to really bask in everything that went right.

Remember, lists like these come about because of people like you. You, and the actions you take, are the reason we’re making small but meaningful progress in all kinds of areas. So yes, things are still very bad, but because of your hard work they’re moving in the right direction—even if slowly. That matters a whole lot!

I’m proud of you. I’m grateful for you. And I can’t wait to see what you add to the list next week!

Celebrate This! 🎉

New Jersey is now among 16 states that have declined to sign a letter from the Trump administration asking states to certify that they are not using "illegal DEI" policies in public schools.

Tesla saw profits slide 71% in first-quarter earnings! SEVENTY-ONE PERCENT!! You guys played a role in that. Nice work!!

Rep. Garcia was able to extract a promise from the US Ambassador in El Salvador that he would look into the whereabouts of Andry Romero, the wrongly disappeared-to-El-Salvador gay hairdresser.

A jury found that the NYT did not libel Sarah Palin.

Harvard University has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration.

Rep. Byron Donalds got booed and yelled at almost continuously by hundreds of pre-screened, in-district participants at his Town Hall in a safely red district.

A federal judge in Maryland has ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of a 20-year-old Venezuelan man deported to El Salvador, whose removal violated a previous court settlement.

A judge paused the NYC Deputy Mayor’s executive order allowing ICE to operate out of Riker’s Island jail.

More than 150 current presidents of U.S. colleges and universities — large and small — have signed a letter denouncing the White House’s “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” with higher education. (I like to think that our letters to our alma maters helped make this happen!)

A federal judge ordered the state of Florida to address water pollution that led to a record number of manatee deaths.

The West Sacramento, CA City Council unanimously approved the first reading of a new ordinance that would change city zoning code to allow tiny homes on wheels to be considered legal dwellings.

The Old Growth Forest Network has officially recognized 32 acres of old-growth forest within the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge, which contains trees estimated to be 300 years old.

​Despite Trump administration orders, a coal-fired power plant in Colorado is still set to shut down this year. Because coal is over, Donny. Accept it.

A panel of Brazil’s supreme court justices unanimously accepted criminal charges against six more allies of former president Jair Bolsonaro, over an alleged coup plot to keep him in office after his 2022 election defeat.

Wyoming’s only abortion clinic is resuming abortions after a judge suspended two state laws that were blocking them.

The bipartisan Federal Election Commission unanimously dismissed a complaint from conservative activists who alleged NPR is controlled by the Democratic Party and “clearly and unmistakably” advocated for 2024 presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

CA Gov. Newsom made $24 generic Narcan available to all Californians.

A federal judge found the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle Voice of America and affiliated news services likely were unlawful, indefinitely blocking the shuttering of the government-funded news outlet and affiliated news services.

The Treasury Inspector General for the Tax Administration office, Heather M. Hill, has opened a criminal investigation into Elon Musk and his DOGE team for accessing and stealing highly restricted taxpayer information.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed a pair of bills into law that safeguard access to abortion and gender-affirming care in the state.

Rep. Don Bacon, a prominent Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, became the first sitting GOP lawmaker to suggest Trump should fire Pete Hegseth.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Sen. Cory Booker have been doing a sit-in on the Capitol steps all day to defend—and protest cuts to—Medicaid.

A federal judge ruled that President Trump’s proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act exceeds the President’s authority.

A federal court temporarily blocked North Carolina from taking steps to throw out ballots in the Griffin-Riggs lawsuit.

Three career prosecutors at the DOJ resigned rather than apologize for prosecuting Eric Adams.

The DNC announced it is making its biggest investment ever in state parties, including doubling down on investments in red states

IL Gov. JB Pritzker announced that he is making moves to have the state of Illinois boycott companies controlled by El Salvador, as a way to push back against Abrego Garcia’s unlawful detention in the country.

A new global study found that endangered sea turtles are showing signs of recovery in a majority of places where they are found in the world. Experts say it’s a “real conservation success” story.

​Colorado passed a bipartisan bill requiring medical research animals to be put up for adoption before they are euthanized.

A record-breaking 3.8 million poundsof compost was collected in the second week of a new recycling mandate in New York City — a number so overwhelming that the city is opening a new site dedicated to the “black gold.”

A dozen states sued the Trump administration in the U.S. Court of International Trade in New York to stop its tariff policy, saying it is unlawful and has brought chaos to the American economy.

The European Union fined Apple $570 million and Meta $228 million for breaking its new rulebook on digital regulations.

Michigan’s supreme court ruled that it is unconstitutional to impose an automatic sentence of life without the possibility of parole on young adults up to age 20

Larry David mocked Bill Maher for normalizing Donald Trump — by writing a satirical New York Times op-ed titled “My Dinner with Adolf.”

AZ Governor Katie Hobbs vetoed a bill passed by the GOP-run legislature that would have forced local officials in Arizona to comply with ICE directives and that would have required administrators to allow ICE agents to come into schools.

U.S. grid-scale battery storage is on track to nearly double this year compared to 2024.

The Supreme Court appears likely to keep the Affordable Care Act’s provision requiring insurers to cover some preventive services at no cost, such as health screenings, tests and HIV drugs.

A group of international students whose legal statuses were revoked by the Trump administration took the matter to court — and won.

The HHS is not going to create a new “autism registry” after all. Blowback works, all.

Maryland has now become the first state to reach its pledge to protect 30% of the state’s land — s​​ix years ahead of schedule.

A huge 89% majority of the world’s people want stronger action to fight the climate crisis.

HUGE! A panel of North Carolina judges struck down a new Republican-led law that sought to move the state’s elections board under the control of the GOP state auditor — siding with Democratic Gov. Josh Stein and declaring the law unconstitutional.

A federal judge blocked Trump administration directives that threatened to cut federal funding for public schools with diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

On the same day, a different federal judge blocked the Trump administration from immediately enacting certain changes to how federal elections are run, including adding a proof-of-citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form.

On the same day, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from withholding federal funding from more than a dozen sanctuary jurisdictions that have declined to cooperate with the Republican president's hardline immigration crackdown.

The Pentagon will resume gender-affirming care for transgender service members.

Elon Musk’s net worth has declined by a staggering $122 billion this year.

Donald Trump’s polling “is freefalling.”

During a recent ceremony for the Breakthrough Prize, which rewards innovations in science, actor Seth Rogen called out Silicon Valley for its support of Trump and Elon Musk.

The Trump Admin reversed the cancellation of 1800 student visas.

Seven in 10 Republican voters now believe that the richest Americans should pay more tax – a significant increase from 62% six years ago, according to Morning Consult. What’s more, two-thirds back proposals to raise taxes on those earning more than $400,000.

A majority of likely voters (52%) now support impeaching Trump, including a majority of independents (55%).

George Santos was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Vaccine scientists and medical leaders announced they are launching “the Vaccine Integrity Project,” an initiative to react to vaccine misinformation and scientifically unfounded vaccine decisions by the U.S. government.

A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from gutting collective bargaining for most federal employees.

A website listing MAGA-friendly businesses (it’s called Public Square, in case you’re wondering) is backfiring as people are using it to find out who to boycott.

Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez got raked over the coals at a town hall this week for her vote on the SAVE Act.

Kentucky's Supreme Court made history, swearing in Justice Pamela Goodwine — the first Black woman elected to serve on the commonwealth's high court.

In Washington, Governor Ferguson signed a bill into law that ensures people can access a one-year supply of birth control upon initial prescription.

In Tennessee the cruel Lamberth & Watson bill to kick undocumented kids out of schools is DEAD FOR THE YEAR, after huge pushback.

They’re turning the Freshkills landfill in Staten Island into a haven for pollinators! The Freshkills Park Alliance launched its 50,000 Violets Project, which aims to attract bees, monarch butterflies, and other pollinators to the purple fields, this week. Amazing!

Watch This! 👀

Look at what the attendees of the Key West, Florida April 19 event did. Beautiful! I think we should make this a thing at all of our protests.

[H/T subscriber Marilyn K.]

Chop Wood, Carry Water is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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From Chop Wood, Carry Water via this RSS feed

Friends,

Please submit your caption in the Comments section and, as before, please use the Comments section only for captions.

Winners will be announced next Sunday. For consideration, please post your caption by Monday at 9 pm PT, 12 midnight ET.

Leave a comment

Last week’s winner:

“Where’s my Sharpie?!”

(Congratulations, Susie.)

Runners-up:

“Why are all you idiots holding those charts upside down!”

(Congratulations, Cynthia Hollis.)

“The charts are falling because of gravity. I am very good at gravity. Better than anyone. I know everything about gravity.”

(Congratulations, Andrea.)

“Snake…stick…worm…tail….spaghetti.”

(Congratulations, Billy D.)

“Tell the markets they must go up! I’m signing an Executive Order!”

(Congratulations, Kathy Kirkland.)

“When you read them from right to left, those are beautiful numbers!!”

(Congratulations, Donna Maurillo.)

“Fake news!”

(Congratulations, CharleyHa.)

“No problem. Now we declare bankruptcy. I’ve done it many times.”

(Congratulations, Tom Kirvin.)

“Its all Biden’s fault.”

(Congratulations, StevenG.)

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From Robert Reich via this RSS feed

This brief note opens the Comment section for Sunday, April 27, 2025.

Los Angeles is experiencing rain showers and thunderstorms, so I have been unable to capture new astrophotography images on Saturday. I am re-publishing a photo of the Cocoon Nebula, which is located about 4,000 light years from Earth.

Talk to you tomorrow!

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From Today's Edition Newsletter via this RSS feed

Friends,

I know how upset you are about what Trump is doing to our nation and the hardship he’s bringing to millions of innocent people, every day.

As outrage mixes with sadness, we feel the magnitude of our loss. Several of you weep at what’s happening. I have wept too.

But I urge you not to dwell solely on the loss. We have much to do.

Our first responsibility is to help protect the people in our communities who are most vulnerable to this regime. ICE is now arresting, abducting, and deporting some of our neighbors and friends. It is ignoring their rights to due process. It is spreading fear among international students. (The FBI even arrested a Milwaukee Circuit Court judge who tried to protect an undocumented immigrant in her courtroom.)

We can help ensure they know their rights by getting them red cards in their own languages. We can help prevent local law enforcement from cooperating with ICE (especially in access to schools, hospitals, courts, and other necessary facilities) by getting our mayors and city councilors to join us. We can give vulnerable people in our communities our moral — and, if possible, financial — support.

A second responsibility is to give courage to the leaders of our communities, universities, libraries, law firms, local media, museums, and other civic institutions. They need to be fortified to stand up to the Trump regime. Organize and mobilize your colleagues and community members to support courageous leadership.

Third, if and when we hear anyone repeat Trump’s lies — especially his hateful lies about immigrants, transgender people, LGBTQ+ people, women, Black people, or Latinos — correct them with the truth, and explain to them how dangerous, hurtful, and divisive such lies can be.

Fourth, we can help public servants who have lost their jobs find new ones. Many need access to job training, assistance with job searches, and jobs in local or state government that draw on their experience.

Fifth, help lay the groundwork for the midterm elections on November 3, 2026 (and any other elections between now and then) by making sure good people run for office, and you and your compatriots are organized to get out the vote.

Finally, continue to demonstrate loudly and boldly against the regime, so others gain the courage to join us and speak up for decency and democracy.

To paraphrase Thomas Paine in 1776, these are the times that try people’s souls. As Paine also wrote:

When a people agree to form themselves into a republic … it is understood that they mutually resolve and pledge themselves to each other, rich and poor alike, to support this rule of equal justice among them … (and) they renounce as detestable, the power of exercising, at any future time any species of despotism over each other, or of doing a thing not right in itself, because a majority of them may have the strength of numbers sufficient to accomplish it.

Keep the faith, my friends. We will get through this.

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From Robert Reich via this RSS feed

Friends,

I’m sad to share with you the news that Alexis Herman, who succeeded me as secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, has died.

Alexis was the first Black person to hold that job.

I knew her as a gifted administrator and dedicated public servant.

Under President Carter, she was the youngest person to direct the women’s bureau at the Labor Department. She continued to seek to empower women in her roles at the Urban League and the National Council of Negro Women, where she worked alongside her mentor, Dorothy Height.

I saw Alexis champion efforts to increase diversity in government and the workplace and encourage young people to get involved in politics.

At the Labor Department, she successfully settled the United Parcel Service (UPS) strike, the largest strike in the United States in two decades — meeting privately with Teamsters’ president Ron Carey and the UPS chairman and helping end the strike after 15 days.

As labor secretary, Alexis supported the 1996 and 1997 raises to the minimum wage — arguing, justifiably, that the wage hike would increase the buying power of workers, which would be good for the economy.

I recall Alexis talking about her childhood in Mobile, Alabama — the challenges she faced as a Black woman, the obstacles she had to overcome, and the help she provided to advance the careers of countless young people from Mobile, as well as other places around the country.

I’ve often thought that the causes one fights for define someone’s life. Alexis was a fighter for civil rights, women’s rights, and worker’s rights.

My thanks to Alexis Herman for a life well led.

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From Robert Reich via this RSS feed

Early yesterday morning, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent three U.S. citizens aged 2, 4, and 7 from Louisiana, including one with Stage 4 cancer, to Honduras when they deported their mothers. The three are children of two different mothers who were arrested while checking in with the government as part of their routine process for immigration proceedings. The women and their children were not permitted to speak to family or lawyers before being flown to Honduras. The cancer patient was sent out of the country without medication or consultation with doctors although, according to Charisma Madarang and Lorena O'Neil of Rolling Stone, ICE agents were told of the child’s medical needs.

The government says the mothers opted to take their U.S. citizen children to Honduras with them. But as Emmanuel Felton and Maegan Vazquez of the Washington Post noted, because ICE refused to let the women talk to their lawyers, there is only the agents’ word for how events transpired.

ICE also deported Heidy Sánchez, a Cuban-born mother of a one-year-old who is still breastfeeding, leaving the child in the U.S. with her father, who is a U.S. citizen. Like the women flown to Honduras, Sánchez was detained when she showed up at a scheduled check-in with ICE.

In March, ICE agents sent four U.S. citizens, including a 10-year-old with brain cancer, to Mexico when they deported their undocumented parents.

In May 2023, then–presidential candidate Donald J. Trump released a video promising that on “Day One” of a new presidential term, he would issue an executive order that would end birthright citizenship. He claimed that the understanding that anyone born in the United States is automatically a citizen is “based on a historical myth, and a willful misinterpretation of the law by the open borders advocates.” He promises to make “clear to federal agencies that under the correct interpretation of the law, going forward, the future children of illegal aliens will not receive automatic US citizenship.”

Reelected in 2024, on his first day in office, Trump signed an Executive Order titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship.” It announced a new U.S. policy, saying that the government would not issue documents recognizing U.S. citizenship to persons whose “mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth, or…when that person’s mother’s presence in the United States was lawful but temporary, and the person’s father was not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person’s birth.”

The order specified that it would not take effect for 30 days. If it had been in effect when Trump’s rival for the White House, Vice President Kamala Harris, was born, she would have fallen under it.

But an executive order is simply a directive to federal employees. It cannot override the Constitution. Trump’s attack on the idea of birthright citizenship as a “historical myth” is a perversion of our history.

In the nineteenth century, the United States enshrined in its fundamental law the idea that there would not be different levels of rights in this country. Although not honored in practice, that idea, and its place in the law, gave those excluded from it the language and the tools to fight for equality. Over time, Americans have increasingly expanded those included in it.

The Republican Party organized in the 1850s to fight the idea that there should be different classes of Americans based on race. In that era, not only Black Americans, but also Irish, Chinese, Mexican, and Indigenous Americans faced discriminatory state laws. Republicans stated explicitly in their 1860 platform that they were “opposed to any change in our naturalization laws or any state legislation by which the rights of citizens hitherto accorded to immigrants from foreign lands shall be abridged or impaired; and in favor of giving a full and efficient protection to the rights of all classes of citizens, whether native or naturalized, both at home and abroad.”

After the Civil War, in 1866, as former Confederates denied their Black neighbors basic rights, the Republican Congress passed a civil rights bill establishing “[t]hat all persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians, not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States; and such citizens of every race and color…shall have the same right[s] in every State and Territory in the United States.”

But President Andrew Johnson vetoed the 1866 Civil Rights Bill. He objected that the proposed law “comprehends the Chinese of the Pacific States, Indians subject to taxation, the people called Gipsies, as well as the entire race designated as blacks,” as citizens, and noted that if “all persons who are native-born already are, by virtue of the Constitution, citizens of the United States, the passage of the pending bill cannot be necessary to make them such.” And if they weren’t already citizens, he wrote, Congress should not pass a law “to make our entire colored population and all other excepted classes citizens of the United States” when 11 southern states were not represented in Congress.

When Congress wrote the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, it took Johnson’s admonition to heart. It did not confer citizenship on the groups Johnson outlined; it simply acknowledged the Constitution had already established their citizenship. The first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

In the short term, Americans recognized that the Fourteenth Amendment overturned the 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that people of African descent "are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.” The Fourteenth Amendment established that Black men were citizens.

But the question of whether the amendment really did recognize the citizenship of the U.S.-born children of immigrants quickly became an issue in the American West, where prejudice against Chinese immigrants ran hot. In 1882, during a period of racist hysteria, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act declaring that Chinese immigrants could not become citizens. But what about their children who were born in the United States?

Wong Kim Ark was born around 1873, the child of Chinese parents who were merchants in San Francisco. In 1889 he traveled with his parents when they repatriated to China, where he married. He then returned to the U.S., leaving his wife behind, and was readmitted. After another trip to China in 1894, though, customs officials denied him reentry to the U.S. in 1895, claiming he was a Chinese subject because his parents were Chinese.

Wong sued, and his lawsuit was the first to climb all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, thanks to the government’s recognition that with the U.S. in the middle of an immigration boom, the question of birthright citizenship must be addressed. In the 1898 U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark decision, the court held by a vote of 6–2 that Wong was a citizen because he was born in the United States.

That decision has stood ever since, as a majority of Americans have recognized the principle behind the citizenship clause as the one central to the United States: “that all men are created equal” and that a nation based on that idea draws strength from all of its people.

On the last day of his presidency, in his last speech, President Ronald Reagan recalled what someone had once written to him: “You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.”

He continued: “We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people—our strength—from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation. While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we're a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.”

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Notes:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/04/26/us-citizen-children-deported-ice/

https://apnews.com/article/immigration-mothers-deported-d8c5c0353c18e9ee0c228ea15e02d759

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-the-meaning-and-value-of-american-citizenship/

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-trump/trump-administration-rolls-out-new-rule-to-limit-birth-tourism-idUSKBN1ZM2G1/

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2023-05-30/trump-renews-pledge-to-end-birthright-citizenship-for-children-of-immigrants

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-deport-child-cancer-us-citizen-1235325778/

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/chinese-exclusion-act

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-platform-1860

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/169/649

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/dred-scott-v-sandford

Edward McPherson, The Political History of the United States of America during the Period of Reconstruction (Washington: Solomons & Chapman, 1875), pp. 75, 78, at https://www.google.com/books/edition/The/_Political/_History/_of/_the/_United/_Stat/x7HmnHL1OvQC

Ronald Reagan, “Remarks at the Presentation Ceremony for the Presidential Medal of Freedom,” January 19, 1989, at

https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/remarks-presentation-ceremony-presidential-medal-freedom-5

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/us-citizen-child-recovering-brain-cancer-deported-mexico-undocumented-rcna196049

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From Letters from an American via this RSS feed

Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer

On SEC-filed paper, Google’s parent company Alphabet is in great shape. Every important part of its business is growing. It still owns the world’s main interface for the web. It’s the largest advertising company in the world, raking in tens of billions of dollars in profit in the first months of the year, raising dividends, and authorizing stock buybacks.

It’s also a company with, rather suddenly, a lot to worry about. The government is currently threatening to break it up, with a specific focus on cleaving off Chrome, the most popular browser in the world, and a source of enormous traffic to Google’s ad business (companies that have expressed interest in buying it recently include OpenAI and Yahoo, which called it “arguably the most important strategic player on the web.”) And while Google’s earnings suggest a healthy search business, the company is nonetheless in the process of overhauling it completely, spooked by the popularity of ChatGPT, worried about advertising competition from Amazon, and trying to get out in front of a web that’s suffering something akin to ecological collapse.

As Google tells it — along with virtually every major tech company in 2025 — the way forward is AI everywhere and in everything. Most obviously for Google, it means new search features, Gemini chatbots across its product range, and a rapid remaking of some of its core brands, from Docs to Gmail to Android, with LLMs. Less visibly, it means enterprise AI tools, new ad targeting tech, and selling AI features (or labor) through Google Cloud. For now, the relationship between AI and Alphabet’s actual business is hard to tease out. It’s spending a lot of money, of course, and it’s making some claims. Sundar Pichai emphasized that its Search Overviews, the AI-generated blurbs at the top of search pages, now have “1.5 billion users per month,” which is an awful lot of people. But also, how couldn’t they? Google turned them on by default for most users, and now they appear automatically. If Google had better AI news than this, it probably would have shared it.

What Google did share were a few other clues about what a post-Google Google might look like, or at least a Google in which web search isn’t the firm’s primary business, neither of which is primarily about AI. One is that YouTube, the size and revenue of which Google didn’t start disclosing until 2020, now accounts for nearly a tenth of Alphabet’s total revenue, and is still growing quickly. (For the last few years, it’s also outranked Netflix, which is typically portrayed as the standard-bearer for streaming, in terms of viewing time on actual televisions, which might sound either completely obvious or completely insane, depending on your age.) Companies like Netflix have a credible claim over the future of TV distribution, but YouTube brings with it a novel economy of TV production, too.

The other strange item in Google’s report was a line about paying customers. “Driven by YouTube and Google One, we surpassed 270 million paid subscriptions,” the company said. YouTube offers an ad-free tier, which is comparable in price to a streaming service, and YouTube TV, a fast-growing and more expensive cable alternative. There’s also YouTube Music, which is often bundled with YouTube Premium, a Spotify competitor. These are fairly straightforward subscription products, in the sense that people pay for them in order to get something new or different: Access to media, relief from ads, and additional features.

Google One, however, is something else, and likely accounts for a large portion of that 270 million. At the top tier, it’s a bundle that includes access to Google’s latest AI models. At the far more popular bottom tier, which costs $2 a month, it’s just a way to buy more storage when your Gmail account is full, or you want more space for photos taken with your Android phone. It’s Google’s version of iCloud+, which has also been a quietly massive source of revenue for Apple. These are a different sort of subscription product, less elective than necessary and less marketed than directly induced. (I’d wager most “subscribers” to Google One, who begrudgingly consented to a $2-a-month inbox toll, aren’t familiar with the official name of it.)

Even without the speculative narratives of AI, this suggests the possibility of a very different Google in the coming years. Google grew into a $2 trillion company primarily by giving away its products for free and charging advertisers for access to its users; now, some of its fastest-growing businesses with the most room to expand are things customers expect, or are expected, to pay for.

More Screen time

Is Elon Musk Sinking Tesla or Keeping It Afloat?What Does OpenAI Want With a Social Network?Meta Wants to Tilt Its AI to the Right

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From Intelligencer - Daily News, Politics, Business, and Tech via this RSS feed

Hi, all. I will be starting a Substack live session on the Substack App (for phone and tablet) at 9 am PDT / Noon EDT on Saturday, April 26.

Email questions to [email protected].

Talk to you soon!

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From Today's Edition Newsletter via this RSS feed

Get more from Robert B. Hubbell in the Substack appAvailable for iOS and AndroidGet the app

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From Today's Edition Newsletter via this RSS feed

Today’s Edition:

[Note: I will hold a Substack livestream on Saturday, April 26 at 9 am PDT/ Noon EDT. Everyone is welcome. I will post a recording of the livestream shortly after its conclusion. Watch on the Substack App on your phone or tablet.]

As Trump limps toward the worst 100-day mark of any US president, we are confronted with a new set of disturbing stories—the arrest of a county judge in Wisconsin and the deportation of three American citizens (all minors) without any due process.

Trump is using these tactics to frighten and distract us. We must not surrender to those impulses. Instead, we must push back with renewed fury and righteous anger that targets Trump's enablers in Congress—the quickest route to stopping his reign of chaos and revenge.

Trump spent much of last week retracting prior decisions while struggling to maintain the illusion of invincibility.

He is fooling no one.

Instead, he is becoming a global laughingstock and the dictionary definition of “loser.” He gave an interview with Time Magazine that strongly suggests he is living in an alternate reality or is being lied to by aides who are afraid to tell him the truth.

It may not feel like it, but we have him on the run. Let’s keep it up!

ICE deports three minor American citizens without due process

The Trump administration knows that its procedures for deporting immigrants violate the Constitution’s due process clause. There is no other rational explanation for efforts to remove immigrants under cover of night on a few hours’ notice.

Late Friday evening, we learned from the ACLU that in two separate incidents, ICE deported three American citizens—all minors—after their parents were held incommunicado for three days. See ACLU, ICE Deports 3 U.S. Citizen Children Held Incommunicado Prior to the Deportation.

A Trump-appointed federal judge expressed grave concern about the manner in which one of the minors was deported, saying that the deportation occurred with “no meaningful process.” See NYTimes, A 2-year-old U.S. citizen was deported ‘with no meaningful process,’ a judge suspects.

The judge presiding over the case of the two-year-old US citizen deported over the objections of her father stated, “It is illegal and unconstitutional to deport a U.S. citizen. Per the Times, the judge set a hearing for May 16 to explore his “strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”

The press release by the ACLU provides a chilling description of a police state that believes it operates outside the law, and I encourage you to read the release in its entirety. The most disturbing statement in the ACLU press release is this:

That family filed a habeas corpus petition and motion for a temporary restraining order, which was never ruled on because of their rapid early-morning deportation.

If true, and I believe the ACLU’s description of the facts, ICE is deliberately seeking to evade judicial review, including review by the centuries-old “writ of habeas corpus,” which permits courts to examine the legality of detention by the state.

The Trump administration knows the Supreme Court’s view on deportation of non-citizens without due process—i.e., it is unconstitutional. The standard is even higher—and likely insurmountable—for a US citizen. The late-night, hasty removals of US citizens were designed to neuter the federal courts, including the Supreme Court.

These disturbing cases present us with two questions:

What is the Supreme Court going to do to end the lawlessness of the Trump administration, and

What are we going to do about it?

The Supreme Court knows what to do; the only question is whether there are embers of integrity and courage smoldering in the blackened hearts of the reactionary majority. Regardless of the answer to that question, we must continue to protest and resist with growing ferocity and scale—until “We, the people” cannot be ignored.

FBI arrests county judge in Wisconsin on charges of obstructing ICE arrest of immigrant

On Friday, FBI Special Agent Lindsay Schloemer of the Milwaukee, WI, field office filed a criminal complaint against Hannah Dugan, a Milwaukee County judge. The Complaint alleges obstruction of an arrest by ICE and “concealing an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest.

The complaint was signed by Stephen C. Dries, United States Magistrate Judge. The matter was not brought before a grand jury. Accordingly, the defendant, Judge Dugan, is entitled to a preliminary hearing in 20 days to determine if there is sufficient probable cause to support the charges.

Before turning to the facts, let’s say the most important thing first: The arrest of Judge Dugan is a tactic by Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, and Trump to intimidate the judiciary. The questions raised by this disturbing incident are the same as above:

What is the Supreme Court going to do about it?

What are we going to do about it?

The complaint is here: US v. Dugan | Complaint. I urge you to read paragraphs 25 through 34 of the declaration of FBI Agent Lindsay Schloemer. Those paragraphs contain the factual allegations on which the complaint is based. You will hear and read hours of reporting based on those paragraphs. There is no substitute for reading the facts on your own.

Here is my brief summary:

Judge Dugan learned that ICE and FBI agents were outside her courtroom to arrest a party in a case on the judge’s morning calendar.

The judge engaged the agents, questioning their authority to make an arrest in the courthouse. The judge attempted to have the Chief Judge speak to the agents, without success.

The Judge returned to her courtroom, removed from her calendar the matter involving the immigrant sought by ICE and FBI.

The Judge then briefly asked the immigrant to sit in the jury box while she consulted with counsel in the matter.

The Judge then escorted the immigrant and his lawyer from the courtroom through a jury door, which led to a private hallway for jurors, which discharged into the public area where ICE and FBI agents were waiting for the immigrant.

ICE and FBI agents saw the immigrant in the public area outside the judge’s courtroom, but were apparently initially defeated in their attempts to arrest him because he used a different public elevator than they expected. They saw him again inside the courthouse, but again failed to arrest him. They followed him outside and arrested him after a brief foot chase.

Based on those facts, Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, and Special Agent Lindsay Schloemer believe Judge Dugan should be charged with two felonies (§§ 1505 and 1071) with maximum prison terms of five years each.

[Note to criminal practitioners: I do not understand why two felonies can be charged by information / complaint rather than by indictment. Can someone please weigh-in on this matter in the Comment section?]

Having practiced in federal courts for forty years, I can confidently tell readers that everything Judge Dugan did inside her courtroom was a routine exercise of judicial control over the parties and observers in her court. I have been instructed to sit in a jury box when the courtroom was overflowing with lawyers. I have been instructed to leave through the jury room when members of the public and press were gathered at the front doors to the courtroom. I have witnessed judges take matters off calendar on the spur of the moment for good reason and no reason.

The notion that Judge Dugan committed two felonies by attempting to avoid an arrest inside or immediately in front of her courtroom is preposterous. Judges across the nation must be able to assure litigants that courts are places of justice and due process, not traps for citizens who are appearing in court as commanded by notice or subpoena.

The grotesque abuse of process in charging Judge Dugan with two felonies was exacerbated by Attorney General Pam Bondi appearing on Fox News to do a “touchdown celebration” dance over the arrest, saying

They’re deranged is all I can think of. I cannot believe… Some of these judges think they’re above the law. They are not. We’re sending a very strong message today, if you are harboring a fugitive, if you’re helping hide one, if you’re giving a TdA member guns, anyone who is illegally in this country, we will come after you and prosecute you. We’ll find you.

See Real Clear Politics, Attorney General Pam Bondi: Why FBI Arrested Judge For Obstructing ICE Arrest, "Can't Make This Up". See embedded video at 1:18 for Bondi’s remarks.

No jury will convict Judge Dugan. A rational magistrate judge will dismiss the charges at the preliminary hearing. No FBI agent should have sworn an affidavit to initiate the complaint. But here we are. We must raise our voices so that they are heard inside the magistrate’s courtroom, inside the halls of the FBI, and inside the jury room.

Trump, Patel, Bondi, and Agent Schloemer decided to make a point by arresting Judge Dugan. We should turn the tactic around on Trump and make him wish he had never heard Judge Dugan’s name.

Trump wanders into the land of fairy tales and delusion in Time Magazine interview.

Trump sat for an interview with Time Magazine. See Time Magazine, Read Trump’s ‘100 Days’ Interview Transcript.

The interview is, generally speaking, garbage and lies that should have never been printed by Time. But one passage stands out. Time asked when Trump would negotiate tariff deals with the 200 nations on which he imposed tariffs. The transcript proceeds as follows:

Trump*: I've made all the deals.*

Time: Not one has been announced yet. When are you going to announce them?

Trump*: I’ve made 200 deals.*

Time: You’ve made 200 deals?

Trump: 100%.

Time: Can you share with whom?

Trump*: Because the deal is a deal that I choose. View it differently: We are a department store, and we set the price. I meet with the companies, and then I set a fair price, what I consider to be a fair price, and they can pay it, or they don't have to pay it. Blah. Blah. Blah.* [I have omitted the remainder of Trump’s answer to protect your sanity on Saturday morning. But if would like a glimpse into Trump's disordered mind, click HERE to read the entire answer.]

Here's the point: NO ONE believes that Trump has successfully negotiated a single tariff deal. If he had, there would have been a Rose Garden ceremony and lavish dinner at Mar-a-Lago to celebrate. Trump is making **** up as he goes along, and everyone knows it.

In one particularly embarrassing example, Trump said that he has been holding trade negotiations with China’s President Xi. China says no discussions have taken place. See The Hill, China says no tariff negotiations underway, contradicting Trump.

What should we do when the President of the United States appears to be living in an alternate reality where he has negotiated 200 trade deals in two weeks? And what should we do when the president thinks about those trade deals as a “department store” where he can set prices and customers can pay or not pay as they see fit? That level of thinking is appropriate for five-year-olds “playing store” in their backyard playhouse, not how the leader of the world’s largest economy should be thinking about tariffs.

Answer: Invoke the 25th Amendment. Remove Trump from office based on mental incapacity.

Ah, well! A person can dream, right?

Hegseth continues as a threat to national security.

On Thursday, we learned that Pete Hegseth installed an unsecure internet line in secure areas of the Pentagon where his personal cell phone would not work. Of course, introducing an unsecure WiFi network inside the Pentagon is the equivalent of putting up a sign on your home that says, “Please rob me! All doors are unlocked and the money is stashed under the bed!”

The idiocy of installing an unsecure internet line in the Pentagon’s most sensitive areas was compounded by discovery of the fact that Hegseth continue to use his personal cell phone for two months (at least) after he was nominated as Secretary of Defense.

Why does personal cell phone use matter?

Because Hegseth’s personal cell phone number is widely available on the internet, meaning that hackers can easily transmit viruses to Hegseth’s cell phone that can track every keystroke, including (for example), keystrokes in allegedly secure apps like Signal.

Per the Daily Beast, Hegseth’s phone number was available on the internet as follows:

The embattled defense secretary’s phone number could be found in such diverse places as WhatsApp, Facebook, Airbnb, a fantasy sports site and reviews left for a plumber and a dentist . . . .

Pete Hegseth is a menace to national security. Every minute he spends in office as Secretary of Defense is another minute that his amateurish approach to the job risks the lives and safety of the military and civilian populations.

A few quick takes

Trump abruptly reversed position on canceling student visas. See NPR, Government says - for now - it will restore international students' status. The cancellation process was haphazard, resulting in chaos, unfairness, and hundreds of lawsuits. Per NPR:

International students whose SEVIS records were cancelled have filed nearly a hundred federal lawsuits across the country, a government lawyer said in a court hearing Friday.

At the start of that hearing before a federal judge in Washington, D.C., the lawyer read a statement announcing that students' terminated SEVIS records would be restored, at least temporarily, while the government adopts a formal policy for revoking records in the database.

Trump claims he isn’t kidding about making Canada the 51st state.

See The Hill, Donald Trump: 'I'm really not trolling' with talk of Canada as 51st state. Trump ensured that he would forever be Canada’s least favorite person with the following remarks:

We’re taking care of their military. We’re taking care of every aspect of their lives, and we don’t need them to make cars for us. In fact, we don’t want them to make cars for us. We want to make our own cars. We don’t need their lumber. We don’t need their energy. We don’t need anything from Canada. And I say the only way this thing really works is for Canada to become a state

What Trump doesn’t understand is that insulting and attempting to humiliate someone you are trying to woo is a bad way to proceed. At this rate, Canadians would likely prefer becoming part of Russia to becoming part of the US. And if there is to be a merger with the US, it should result in the US becoming Canada’s eleventh province!

As with the claim that he negotiated 200 trade deals, Trump's obsession with Canada makes him look foolish and mentally disconnected from reality.

If Joe Biden or Barack Obama blathered incoherently about taking over NATO allies, Republicans would have set fire to the White House. But Trump's crazy talk is ignored by Republicans, as it damages America’s standing around the world.

The #TeslaTakeDown strikes are working!

See Patrick George in The Atlantic, Tesla’s Remarkably Bad Quarter Is Even Worse Than It Looks

One bad quarter won’t doom Tesla, but it’s unclear how, exactly, the company can move forward from here. Arguably, its biggest and most immediate problem is that electric-vehicle fans in America, who tend to lean left politically, do not want to buy Musk’s cars anymore.

The so-called Tesla Takedown protests have given people who feel helpless and angry about President Donald Trump’s policies a tangible place to direct their anger. Because Musk was also the Trump campaign’s biggest financier, those protesters saw a Tesla boycott as one of the best ways to hit back.

The fact that these demonstrations were the first thing Musk brought up on the earnings call speaks volumes about how rattled he must be; Tesla purchases have been down considerably this year in the U.S., even as EV sales keep rising. [¶]

Law Students and Bar Associations sign on to amicus briefs in support of Susman Godfrey’s motion for summary judgment.

Attention law students: You can sign onto an amicus brief in support of Susman Godfrey’s motion for summary judgment challenging Trump's order targeting the law firm.

Sign the Law Student Amicus Brief In Support of Susman Godfrey's Motion for Summary Judgment

Law Students Amicus Brief in support of Susman Godfrey Motion for Summary Judgment

Bar Associations: The New York City Bar Association has organized dozens of other bar associations to sign onto this brief: Amicus Brief by Bar Associations | Susman Godfrey v. Exec. Office of President

Organized by the New York City Bar Association, the brief is also signed by multiple other bar associations, including the Boston Bar Association, Chicago Bar Association, Colorado Bar Association, Denver Bar Association, King County Bar Association (Seattle), Los Angeles County Bar Association, New York County Lawyers Association, Philadelphia Bar Association, San Diego County Bar Association, and Bar Association of San Francisco.

Protest at Burbank Airport in Los Angeles

I received this last-minute note from Donna Jaffee of SwingLeft San Gabriel Valley. (Jill and I will attend this protest after I finish my Saturday morning livestream.)

There is a protest Saturday morning (9:00 to 11:00 am PDT) at Burbank Airport to oppose the decision by Avelo Airlines to assist in deporting/disappearing people into military detention camps here in the US and to prisons abroad.

Avelo Airlines has agreed to use its planes to transport ‘prisoners through a contract with ICE, stating that the revenue potential is too valuable to pass up! See more information here. This is the first time a retail airline has agreed to participate in these unconstitutional and inhumane activities.

We need to let them know what we think about this!! Here is the Mobilize link for the protest.

Concluding Thoughts and Daily Dose of Perspective

The most difficult part of writing the newsletter is coming up with a snappy title that will interest readers while summarizing the newsletter's theme. The title is usually the last thing I write, often when I am weary from staying up past the deadline set by my managing editor. In yesterday’s newsletter, I typed the title about ten seconds before I hit “send”—and misspelled one of the five words in the title. Over 150,000 of you had the grace and good manners not to point out the mistake. Thank you!!!

I also managed to get the date wrong for my Saturday livestream (at 9 am PDT / Noon EDT). I said it was April 25; in fact, the livestream is on Saturday April 26—a date I should have remembered because it is my birthday.

There are reports that Trump has deputized JD Vance to vandalize US museums by divesting them of important artifacts of American history. See BlackPressUSA, The Smithsonian PURGE: Trump Team Removes Artifacts of Black Resistance.

Per the BlackPress article,

Rep. Alma Adams, respond[ed] to efforts to physically remove the Greensboro, North Carolina, Woolworth’s lunch counter exhibit from the National Museum of African American History and Culture—affectionately known as the “Blacksonian.”

Jill and I visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture recently and were moved by the exhibit of Greensboro Woolworth’s lunch counter boycott. I took the photo below of one of the seats at the Woolworth’s counter. It reminded me that we cannot know which small act of resistance will be the spark that sets aflame the hearts and minds of millions of Americans.

Trump and Vance cannot be allowed to desecrate American history by removing the Greensboro Woolworths counter exhibit. I will continue to follow this story. I invite readers to comment on similar efforts in their local museums, art venues, libraries, and theaters. The Comment section is open to all.

Talk to you tomorrow!

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From Today's Edition Newsletter via this RSS feed

Today’s major stories must be seen in the context of President Donald Trump’s dramatic losses in court and his plummeting poll numbers.

Yesterday, Trump told the Department of Justice to investigate ActBlue, the platform that handles the fundraising for almost all Democratic candidates and the issues Democrats support. This targeting of Democratic infrastructure would hobble the Democrats. It also plays to Trump’s base, which insists—without evidence—that ActBlue accepts straw and foreign donations, an accusation Trump repeated in his order about the investigation.

This morning, FBI director Kash Patel posted on social media, “Just NOW, the FBI arrested Judge Hannah Dugan out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin on charges of obstruction—after evidence of Judge Dugan obstructing an immigration arrest operation last week.” Patel quickly deleted the post, but the story had already gotten attention.

FBI agents arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan at the courthouse this morning in what, as Josh Kovensky of Talking Points Memo notes, appeared to be an attempt to draw attention and to illustrate that judges “must cooperate with the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign or else face overbearing actions from federal law enforcement.”

The story appears to be that on April 18, while Dugan was about to hear a pre-trial conference in the case of an undocumented immigrant charged with misdemeanor battery, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrived to arrest the person. They had an administrative warrant rather than a judicial warrant and Judge Dugan asked them to produce a judicial warrant. When courtroom discussions about the man’s case ended, Judge Dugan invited the man and his lawyer to leave by way of the jury door rather than the public exit, although both exits led back to the public hallway where ICE agents waited. The man appeared in the public hallway but got to an elevator before the agents did, enabling him to run down the street before the agents caught up and arrested him.

Federal prosecutors have charged Dugan with “[o]bstructing or impeding a proceeding before a department or agency of the United States” and “[c]oncealing an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest.”

Tellingly, Attorney General Pam Bondi immediately went on the Fox News Channel to talk about the arrest, attacking the judge. “What has happened to our judiciary is beyond me,” she said. "The [judges] are deranged is all I can think of. I think some of these judges think that they are beyond and above the law. They are not, and we are sending a very strong message today...if you are harboring a fugitive…we will come after you and we will prosecute you. We will find you.”

Later today, news broke that the administration appears to have deported a U.S. citizen. Chris Geidner of Lawdork reports that the administration deported a two-year-old born in the United States and thus a U.S. citizen, along with her mother and her sister, to Honduras, her mother’s country of origin, even as the child’s father tried frantically to keep her in the U.S. Judge Terry A. Doughty of the Federal District Court in the Western District of Louisiana, a Trump appointee, said that “it is illegal and unconstitutional to deport” a U.S. citizen, and set a hearing for May 16 because he has a “strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”

These actions to seize power and to hammer into place extremist MAGA immigration policies are dramatic demonstrations of the Trump administration’s attempt to destroy democracy. Indeed, the attempt to attack the judges could well be a reaction to the major losses the administration took from the courts this week.

As Jacob Knutson of Democracy Docket wrote, Trump suffered at least 11 legal setbacks this week as judges blocked Trump from gutting the Voice of America media outlet, blocked the administration from removing people in Colorado and New York under the Alien Enemies Act, ordered the administration to comply with discovery requests from Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, told the Department of Education not to implement anti-DEI measures, blocked Trump’s executive order about elections, stopped the administration from impounding money from cities that don’t comply with its mass deportation orders, and blocked the administration from ending collective bargaining rights for federal workers.

The dramatic actions against ActBlue and immigrants are also signs of weakness as administration officials attempt to distract supporters not only from the disastrous tariffs, but also from the growing evidence that Trump is not functioning as a president should.

As legal analyst Anna Bower noted about Bondi’s Fox News Channel performance: “If you’re a prosecutor who is serious about obtaining a conviction, you don’t go on Fox and talk about the (alleged) facts of the case like this.”

It seems likely these extreme actions are an attempt to throw some red meat to those base voters whose support for the president is wavering, and to grab power while it is still possible.

In an interview with Time magazine, published today, Trump did not seem at the top of his mental game. He reiterated that the country is about to become richer than ever and that the problems in his administration can all be blamed on his predecessor, President Joe Biden. He claimed that he has already made 200 trade deals, which could be possible if he is cutting private deals with corporations but not if he is talking to countries: there are only 195 countries in the world. He claimed China’s president Xi Jinping has called him to make a deal, although Chinese officials deny this.

In the interview, Trump repeatedly deferred to his lawyers to answer questions about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man the administration says it sent to an infamous terrorist prison in El Salvador because of “administrative error.” He said that he did not personally approve payments to El Salvador to hold the men his administration sent there.

He said when he vowed to end Russia’s war against Ukraine on day one he was only speaking “figuratively, and I said that as an exaggeration, because to make a point, and you know, it gets, of course, by the fake news [unintelligible]. Obviously, people know that when I said that, it was said in jest, but it was also said that it will be ended.”’

Finally, the Time interviewer asked him: “Mr. President, you were showing us the new paintings you have behind us. You put all these new portraits. One of them includes John Adams. John Adams said we’re a government ruled by laws, not by men. Do you agree with that?”

Trump replied: “John Adams said that? Where was the painting?”

When the interviewer pointed out the portrait, Trump said: “We’re a government ruled by laws, not by men? Well, I think we're a government ruled by law, but you know, somebody has to administer the law. So therefore men, certainly, men and women, certainly play a role in it. I wouldn't agree with it 100%. We are a government where men are involved in the process of law, and ideally, you're going to have honest men like me.”

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Notes:

https://meidasnews.com/news/fbi-arrests-judge-for-allegedly-helping-migrant-evade-deportation

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25919655-1034-001-1-1/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-investigates-unlawful-straw-donor-and-foreign-contributions-in-american-elections/

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/24/us/politics/trump-actblue-democrats.html

Law DorkThe Trump administration deported a 2-year-old U.S. citizen on FridayOver the course of the past three days, the Trump administration took a two-year-old U.S. citizen into custody, along with her mother and sister, and deported the child to Honduras with little to no individualized process, prompting sharp concern from a conservative federal judge on Friday…Read more8 hours ago · 93 likes · 10 comments · Chris Geidner

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/25/us-citizen-deportation-donald-trump-00311631

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/us/politics/us-citizen-deported.html

https://www.axios.com/2025/04/25/hannah-dugan-trump-bondi-fbi-arrest

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/fbi-stages-courthouse-arrest-of-wisconsin-judge

https://time.com/7280114/donald-trump-2025-interview-transcript/

https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/president-trump-federal-court-losses-rulings/

Bluesky:

annabower.bsky.social/post/3lnotvblz3222

judgeluttig.bsky.social/post/3lnnxqudeyc2w

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From Letters from an American via this RSS feed

The plague of fantasy orders signed by Trump in his first 100 days in office has collided with reality. Reality is winning—big time. On Thursday, Trump's executive orders were overwhelmed by a rising tide of judicial decisions.

Trump's executive orders should be viewed as a mixture of propaganda and photo opportunities. Although we should treat the orders as serious statements of Trump's intent, we must also recognize that they violate the Constitution and laws of the US at every level.

Executive orders CANNOT

-Amend, suspend, or ignore the Constitution;

-Supersede statutes enacted by Congress;

-Cancel or impound congressional appropriations;

-Shutter agencies created by statute;

-Use mass layoffs to incapacitate agencies established by Congress; or

-Overrule judicial decisions.

Because every executive order signed by Trump violates (at least) one of the above prohibitions, federal judges have enjoined the implementation of Trump’s orders at a scalding pace. Bewildered Trump supporters complain that no president has ever encountered such widespread judicial constraint. Trump's supporters ignore the obvious explanation—that no other president has acted in such a lawless manner.

One hundred days into Trump's second term, the courts have emerged as an essential bulwark in the defense of democracy. It is, of course, their duty to do so, but it could have been otherwise. Even the Supreme Court has dipped its toe into the emerging tide of opposition to Trump. We can only hope that the justices will read the winds and tides to help navigate our nation back to the safe harbor of the rule of law.

Let’s take a look at some of the judicial decisions issued on Thursday that are slowing or reversing Trump's efforts to overturn the Constitution and circumvent the rule of law.

Multiple court decisions halt the implementation of Trump's executive orders.

Republicans are attempting to push the SAVE Act through the Senate. The SAVE Act would require proof of citizenship for newly registering or re-registering voters. Trump understands that the SAVE Act will be blocked in the Senate by the filibuster rule, so he issued an executive order attempting to implement the SAVE Act by presidential fiat.

On Thursday, a federal judge told Trump that the president has no role in federal elections. See Democracy Docket, Judge Halts Trump’s Anti-Voting Executive Order.

The case was brought by the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) against the Trump administration. The Complaint is here: LULAC v. Executive Office of President.

On Wednesday, the US district judge overseeing the case, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, issued an order blocking implementation of Trump's executive order. In her ruling, Judge Kollar-Kotelly noted that the president has no constitutional or statutory role in the administration of elections:

Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States—not the President—with the authority to regulate federal elections. Consistent with that allocation of power, Congress is currently debating legislation that would effect many of the changes the President purports to order. See SAVE Act, H.R. 22, 119th Cong. (2025). And no statutory delegation of authority to the Executive Branch permits the President to short-circuit Congress’s deliberative process by executive order.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s order is here: Memorandum Opinion | LULAC v. EOP | 4/24/25.

The 119-page opinion rests on a simple but powerful point: The Constitution grants power to regulate to the states and to Congress. Trump's bloviating executive orders are propaganda, nothing more.

To a similar effect, a trio of decisions held that Trump's executive order prohibiting public schools from teaching or using “DEI” is unconstitutional. A “Dear Colleague” letter sent to schools across the nation threatened to cut off federal funding to schools that taught or utilized “DEI” in their curricula or operations. See CNN Politics, Department of Education policy targeting DEI and other race-related school programs is likely unconstitutional, judge rules.

Three US District Court judges, two of whom were appointed by Trump, wrote in three separate cases that the “Dear Colleagues” letter sent by the Department of Education to schools across the nation (a) constituted “viewpoint discrimination” under the First Amendment, (b) violated the Fifth Amendment due process guarantee, or (c) violated the Administrative Procedures Act.

The three orders are set forth below:

Order | NEA v. Department of Education (D. N.H.)

Oral Ruling | NAACP v. Department of Education (D. D.C.)

Memorandum Opinion | American Federation of Teachers v Department of Education | (D. MD).

The judges relied on three different judicial approaches in enjoining the implementation of the threats in the Dear Colleague letter. The various judicial approaches are explained by the legal theories asserted and remedies sought by the plaintiffs.

The fact that three jurists arrived at the same conclusion via three legal pathways underscores the breathtaking substantive illegality and procedural impropriety of the administration’s ham-fisted tactics. Trump's executive orders are performative in nature, unmoored from presidential authority and constraints set forth in the Constitution.

In another loss for Trump, a federal judge in the Northern District of California ruled that Trump's executive order that attempted to defund “sanctuary cities” is unconstitutional. See Order Granting Injunction | San Francisco v. Trump (N.D. Cal.).

US District Judge William H. Orrick issued an emergency order preventing implementation of an executive order that withheld federal funds from so-called “sanctuary jurisdictions.” Judge Orrick issued an identical injunction against a similar order issued by Trump in 2017. Judge Orrick noted that his ruling in the 2017 case was upheld by the Ninth Circuit.

There were other legal developments (all bad for Trump), but losing five cases in a day is likely a record for any president in US history. You have to work hard to be so wrong that you lose cases at their inception, when the burden of proof is stacked against the plaintiffs.

Pressure mounts for law firms to resist Trump's hostile takeover attempt

There were several significant developments in the efforts to oppose Trump's assault on the independence and integrity of the legal profession. First, Lawyers Defending American Democracy (LDAD), published a statement calling on lawyers at top law firms to end their silence in the face of Trump's hostile takeover attempt. See LDAD, Elite Lawyers Must End Their Silence and Unite to Protect the Justice System.

Although 21 major firms have chosen to take a public stand against the administration’s assault on the legal profession, 170 of the 200 largest firms have remained silent. LDAD has called upon those 170 law firms to speak out and declare their fealty to the rule of law.

LDAD published an open letter to those 170 firms, warning them of the consequences of capitulating to Trump.

LDAD writes,

Your firm will forever be redefined. Your rival firms will point to you as a portrait of cowardice and ask how any client could trust you after succumbing to powerful interests without a fight.

You will forever be joined with a small group of the most privileged firms in this country who betrayed the principles that lawyers and clients must be free to choose one another; that all people appearing in our courts are entitled to the best advocacy their counsel can offer; and that the rule of law requires lawyers and their firms to stand up for it, even when it is not in their own personal or financial interest.

Reputations take decades to build and only one fateful decision to destroy.

A coalition of law students has joined the effort to stiffen the backbones of leaders at elite law firms. The leaders of the effort are asking current law students to refrain from working for law firms that have capitulated to Trump. See Law Student Firm Pledge.

The Law Student Firm Pledge reads, in part,

Our democracy is under attack, and it is time for lawyers to choose sides. As the future of the legal profession, who have committed to defending the rule of law, we cannot stand for capitulation to tyranny. [¶]

The response from too many firms has been either silence or collaboration, with some of the most powerful law firms in the world committing to the elimination of diversity programs and openly agreeing to set amounts of money in pro bono work to support Trump's lawless agenda.

We, the undersigned, refuse to work for any firm that gives in to Trump administration demands regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion or the types of cases handled by the firm.

In another courageous action, a law firm in Tennessee has served public notice of its withdrawal from the Tennessee Bar Association (TBA) because of the TBA’s silence in the face of Trump's lawlessness. See Memphis Flyer, Memphis Law Firm Leaves Tennessee Bar Association for Its Silence on Trump.

The law firm, Donati Law, announced its resignation from the TBA in a letter that stated, in part, as follows:

It is with great sadness that we feel obligated to leave the TBA due to its refusal to take a stand consistent with the ideals of the Rule of Law and an independent judiciary in the face of extreme threats from the executive branch.

Kudos to Donati Law for serving as examples for other law firms.

Finally, fourteen Democratic representatives in the US House have sent letters to the Capitulating Law Firms asking for voluntary responses to pointed questions. See 4/24/25 Letters to Brad Karp (Paul Weiss) et al.

The letters make the point that the agreements may have violated multiple federal and state anti-bribery statutes as well as ethics rules of the New York and D.C. bar associations. Ouch, double ouch, and triple ouch!

Each of the firms that received the above letter must have notified its malpractice carrier of a potential claim, loss, or alleged illegal act. And insurers for large law firms are busily drafting exclusions from insurance coverage for future “deals” with the Trump administration.

It is truly breathtaking that a handful of the largest, most sophisticated firms in the nation have placed themselves in such jeopardy to protect marginal profitability. What were they thinking?

Trump's corruption on full display—and Republicans shrug their shoulders.

Republicans pursued the “Hunter Biden laptop” with unrelenting zeal because they believed that it might somehow show that Joe Biden attempted to profit from holding the office of the Vice President.

Donald Trump is openly auctioning off dinners with the President and VIP tours of the White House, and Republicans are nowhere to be found. To be clear, Trump is not selling access to the president for his campaign coffers or those of other Republicans. Trump is funneling the money into his personal bank account.

Here’s the scam: Trump has started a cryptocurrency. He owns the initial “coin” of the currency. Subsequent purchasers of the cryptocurrency are purchasing the coin directly from Trump. Trump is offering White House dinners and tours to those who make the largest purchases of Trump's cryptocurrency. See Mother Jones, Trump Crypto Coin Buyers Offered VIP Tour of White House.

At the very moment that Trump is selling access to the Office of the Presidency to the highest bidder, he has directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to begin an investigation of ActBlue, the major Democratic fundraising arm. See Democracy Docket, Trump Orders Probe Against Democratic Fundraising Platform ActBlue.

Trump falsely claims that ActBlue has illegally accepted contributions from foreign donors. But as explained in Democracy Docket, ActBlue discovered attempted contributions by foreign donors and blocked them:

The president left out the fact that ActBlue took actions in response to those detections. It caught and rejected fraudulent donations . . . [and] banned contributions made from foreign IP addresses using domestic prepaid cards, according to House Republicans.

As noted above, Trump's executive orders are a mixture of propaganda and photo opportunities. The investigation ordered by Trump in Thursday’s executive order is duplicative of existing congressional investigations into fundraising by ActBlue—investigations that have yet to discover any illegal conduct by ActBlue.

Opportunities for Reader Engagement

I received this request from Indivisible to amplify calls for Senator Schumer to step down from his leadership position in the Democratic caucus in the Senate. I endorse Indivisible’s call and hope you will consider joining in this action to inject new leadership, passion, and vision into the Democratic caucus in the Senate:

Make Calls on Tuesday, April 29, calling for Senator Schumer to step down from leadership.

Dear fellow activists and concerned Democrats,

Some weeks ago, Ezra Levin, co-founder of Indivisible, took a vote with leaders from Indivisible groups across the country, and 94% responded in favor of calling for Senator Schumer to step down from his leadership position. Since then, there has been very little activity on this front.

If you agree that this issue is incredibly important for the short and long term effectiveness of Democrats in Congress, we hope you’ll join us and take action on this coming Tuesday (4/29), by calling both your Senators and letting them know it’s time for a change.

Use this list (U.S. Senator Phone List) to find your US Senators. (Click on the 5-digit “phone number” and your computer or tablet will dial the number for you). Be sure to identify yourself as a constituent!

Concluding Thoughts

I will hold a Substack livestream on Saturday, April 25 at 9 am PDT / Noon EDT. The livestream is open to everyone with the Substack App on their phone or tablet. Download instructions here.

I will celebrate my 69th birthday on Sunday. My wife and partner in all things, Jill Bickett, has posted a short interview with me in which I reflect on the events of the last five years. See Every Day with Jill, Happy Birthday Mr. Hubbell!

There are many more important stories to cover but I feel an obligation not to overwhelm readers. I will try to circle back tomorrow to the ongoing national security threat from Pete Hegseth, the reckless and offensive statements by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. regarding autism, and an assault within the DOJ on the Civil Rights Division.

A reader sent an email this morning attaching a description of one of Trump's executive orders. The description was provided by a leading grassroots organization, which more or less accurately described the text of the executive order (in which Trump effectively declared himself king). So far, so good.

Then, the well-meaning organization transitioned into a description of the carnage that the executive order would cause in America. What was missing from the description was an honest assessment of the illegality and unconstitutionality of the order and its dim prospects for being implemented.

Why did the well-meaning organization omit any acknowledgement that the executive order would never be implemented? I don’t know, but I suspect it was an effort to increase membership, engagement, or donations.

Such tactics are unfortunate and unnecessary. Trump is causing plenty of real damage without the need for us to fan the flames of imagined fears that will never come to pass. Yes, we must take Trump seriously whenever he signs an executive order, but that does not mean we set aside our “B.S. detectors.” Instead, we should turn the sensitivity dial “all the way up to 11.”

For example, if Trump signs an executive order saying he will initiate a tax audit of every American who fails to purchase one of his crypto-currency coins, we should oppose the executive order with appropriate seriousness. But such an order is a sham and will never be implemented, assuming it encounters even a modicum of resistance.

So, let’s keep our wits about us. Let’s separate the urgent and real threats from the performative and hypothetical distractions. Most importantly, if you are a leader of an organization, do not resort to scare tactics to motivate people. Such tactics play into the hands of Trump, who wants to create the illusion that he is all powerful when he is weak and ineffectual.

That’s it for now! Talk to you tomorrow!

Daily Dose of Perspective

The marine layer of clouds is once again covering the LA basin and the San Fernando Valley. So, I offer an image that captures the Flame Nebula, the Horsehead Nebula, and Zeta Ori.

Enjoy!

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From Today's Edition Newsletter via this RSS feed

Friends,

Some Democrats fear they’re playing into Trump’s hands by fighting his mass deportations rather than focusing on his failures on bread-and-butter issues like the cost of living.

But it’s not either-or. The theme that unites Trump’s inept handling of deportations, his trampling on human and civil rights, his rejection of the rule of law, his dictatorial centralization of power, and his utterly inept handling of the economy is the ineptness itself.

In his first term, not only did his advisers and Cabinet officials put guardrails around his crazier tendencies, but they also provided his first administration a degree of stability and focus. Now, it’s mayhem.

A sampling from recent weeks:

1. The Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth disaster. Hegseth didn’t just mistakenly share the military’s plans with the editor of The Atlantic; we now know he shared them with a second Signal group, including his wife, brother, and personal lawyer.

He’s a walking disaster. John Ullyot, who resigned last week as Pentagon spokesman, penned an op-ed in Politico that began: “It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon.” Last Friday, Hegseth fired three of his senior staffers. His chief of staff is leaving. As Ullyot wrote, it’s “very likely” that “even bigger bombshell stories” will come soon. The Defense Department “is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership.”

It’s not just the Defense Department. The entire federal government is in disarray.

2. The Harvard debacle. Trump is now claiming that the demand letter sent to Harvard University on April 11 was “unauthorized.” Hello? What does this even mean?

As Harvard pointed out, the letter “was signed by three federal officials, placed on official letterhead, was sent from the email inbox of a senior federal official and was sent on April 11 as promised. Recipients of such correspondence from the U.S. government—even when it contains sweeping demands that are astonishing in their overreach—do not question its authenticity or seriousness.”

Even though it was “unauthorized,” the Trump regime is standing by the letter, which has now prompted Harvard to sue.

3. The tariff travesty. No sooner had Trump imposed “retaliatory” tariffs on almost all of our trading partners — based on a formula that has made no sense to anyone — than the U.S. stock and bond markets began crashing.

To stop the selloff, Trump declared a 90-day pause on the retaliatory tariffs but raised his tariffs on China to 145 percent — causing markets to plummet once again.

To stem the impending economic crisis, he declared an exemption to the China tariffs for smartphones and computer equipment. By doing so, Trump essentially admitted what he had before denied: that importers and consumers bear the cost of tariffs.

Now, Trump is saying that even his China tariffs aren’t really real. Following warnings from Walmart, Target, and Home Depot that the tariffs would spike prices, Trump termed the tariffs he imposed on China “very high” and promised they “will come down substantially. But it won’t be zero. It used to be zero.” Markets soared on the news.

4. The attack on the Fed chair fiasco. When Trump renewed his attacks on Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve — calling him “a major loser” and demanding that the Fed cut interest rates — Trump unnerved already-anxious investors who understand the importance of the Fed’s independence and feared that a politicized Fed wouldn’t be able to credibly fight inflation.

Then, in another about-face, Trump said Wednesday he had “no intention” of firing Powell, which also helped lift markets.

Bottom line: An economy needs predictability. Investors won’t invest, consumers won’t buy, and producers won’t produce if everything continues to change. But Trump doesn’t think ahead. He responds only to immediate threats and problems.

Who’s profiting on all this tumult? Anyone with inside knowledge of what Trump is about to do: most likely, Trump and his family.

5. The Kilmar Abrego Garcia calamity. After the Trump regime admitted an “administrative error” in sending Abrego Garcia to a brutal Salvadoran torture prison, in violation of a federal court order, Trump then virtually ignored a 9-0 Supreme Court order to facilitate his return.

To the contrary, with cameras rolling in the Oval Office, Trump embraced Nayib Bukele — who governs El Salvador in a permanent state of emergency and has himself imprisoned 83,000 people in brutal dungeons with no due process. Trump then speculated about using Bukele’s prisons for “homegrown” (i.e., American-born) criminals or dissidents.

Meanwhile, after the Trump regime deported another group of migrants to the Salvadoran prison under a rarely invoked 18th-century wartime law, the Supreme Court blocked it from deporting any more migrants.

6. ICE’s blunderbuss. Further illustrating the chaos of the Trump regime, ICE has been arresting American citizens. One American was detained by ICE in Arizona for 10 days until his relatives produced papers proving his citizenship, because ICE didn’t believe he was American. Meanwhile, ICE handcuffed and deported a group of German teenagers vacationing in Hawaii because they turned up without a hotel pre-booked, which ICE found “suspicious.”

Bottom line: Freedom depends on the rule of law. The rule of law depends on predictability. Just like Trump’s wildly inconsistent economic policies, his policies on immigrants are threatening everyone.

7. Musk’s DOGE disaster. Where to begin on his? Musk’s claims of government savings have been shown to be ludicrously exaggerated. Remember the claim that $50 million taxpayer dollars funded condoms in Gaza? This was supposed to be the first big “gotcha” from DOGE, but as we know now, it was a lie. The U.S. government buys condoms for about 5 cents apiece, which means $50 million would buy a billion condoms or roughly 467 for every resident of Gaza. Besides, according to a federal 2024 report, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) didn’t provide or fund anycondoms in the entire Middle Eastin the 2021, 2022, or 2023 fiscal years.

Then there have been the frantic callbacks of fired federal workers, such as up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration who work on sensitive jobs such as reassembling warheads. Four days after DOGE fired them, the agency’s acting director rescinded the firings and asked them back. A similar callback has ensued at the Social Security Administration, after fired workers left the agency so denuded that telephone calls weren’t being answered and its website malfunctioned.

Bottom line: Trump and Musk are threatening the safety and security of Americans — for almost no real savings.

8. Measles mayhem. As measles breaks out across the country, sickening hundreds and killing at least two children so far, Trump’s secretary for health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., continues to claim that the measles vaccine “causes deaths every year … and all the illnesses that measles itself causes, encephalitis and blindness, et cetera.”

In fact, the measles vaccine is safe, and its risks are lower than the risks of complications from measles. Most people who get the measles vaccine have no serious problems from it, the CDC says. There have been no documented deaths from the vaccine in healthy, non-immunocompromised people, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Kennedy Jr. also says, “We’re always going to have measles, no matter what happens, as the [measles] vaccine wanes very quickly.” In fact, the measles vaccine is highly protective and lasts a lifetime for most people. Two doses of the vaccine are 97% effective against the virus, according to the CDC and medical experts worldwide. Before the vaccine was introduced in 1963, the U.S. saw some 3 million to 4 million cases per year. Now, it’s usually fewer than 200 in a normal year.

9. Student debt snafu. After a five-year pause on penalizing borrowers for not making student loan payments, the Trump regime is now requiring households to resume payments. This has caused the credit scores of millions of borrowers to plunge and a record number to risk defaulting on their loans.

Many of the households required to resume paying on their student loans are also struggling with credit card debt at near-record interest rates and high-rate mortgages they thought they would be able to refinance into a lower rate but haven’t. Instead of increasing Education Department staffing to handle a work surge and clarifying the often-shifting rules of its myriad repayment programs, the Trump regime has done the opposite and cut staff.

10. Who’s in charge? In the span of a single week, the IRS has had three different leaders. Three days after Gary Shapley was named acting commissioner, it was announced that Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender would replace Shapley. That was the same day, not incidentally, that the IRS ended DOGE access to the agency.

What happened? Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent complained to Trump that Musk did an end run around him to install Shapley (who had been lauded by conservatives after publicly arguing that the Justice Department had slow-walked its investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes).

Meanwhile, the Trump regime is cutting the IRS in half — starting with 6,700 layoffs and gutting the division that audits people with excessive wealth. These are acts of sabotage against the very agency meant to keep billionaires accountable.

At the same time, trade adviser Peter Navarro has entered into a public spat with Musk, accusing him of not being a “car manufacturer” but a “car assembler” because Tesla relies on parts from around the world. This prompted Musk to call Navarro a “moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks” in a post on X, later posting that he wanted to “apologize to bricks” and referring to Navarro as “Peter Retarrdo.”

The State Department has been torn apart by Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s firing of Peter Marocco, the official who was dismantling USAID. Career officials charged that Marocco, a MAGA loyalist, was destroying the agency; Trump’s MAGA followers view Marocco’s firing as a sign that Rubio is part of the establishment they want to destroy.

Worse yet, Trump has fired more than a half-dozen national security officials on the advice of the far-right agitator Laura Loomer, who was granted access to the Oval Office and gave Trump a list of officials she deemed disloyal.

Bottom line: No one is in charge. Trump is holding court but has the attention span of a fruit fly. This is causing chaos across the federal government, as rival sycophants compete for his limited attention.

**

All this ineptitude in just the last few weeks reveals that the Trump regime is coming apart. Incompetence is everywhere. The regime can’t keep military secrets. It can’t maintain financial stability. It can’t protect children from measles. It cannot protect America.

While we need to continue to resist Trump’s authoritarianism, we also need to highlight his utter inability to govern America.

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From Robert Reich via this RSS feed

Hi, all, and happy Friday.

Also, happy George Santos sentencing day. Seven years in prison! It appears that not every Republican is above the law. Nice to see a modicum of justice delivered—even if it’s not yet to the people who most deserve it.

This isn’t the only good news we’ve gotten in the last 24 hours—in fact there’s been quite a lot of it. Most of you read Robert Hubbell (and if you don’t, you should) so I won’t repeat the litany of court cases Trump just lost—you can find them in Hubbell’s latest column. Suffice it to say there were many, and they were all significant.

Trump’s polling, moreover, is free falling. He’s even losing ground on immigration. In fact, a new polling memo published today by Research Collaborative and ASO Communications shows a majority of likely voters now support impeaching him. Good!

On trade, Trump looks to be caving in a big way. Josh Marshall from Talking Points Memo thinks the U.S. is going to come out of the fight with China empty handed, and soon. It’s a huge comedown from the administration’s bluster of a few weeks ago, and it’s more proof that Trump is a blowhard and bully who almost always backs down at the first challenge. Let’s make sure everyone knows it.

By retreating on tariffs, furthermore, Trump’s managing to fail multiple groups of supporters at once. Pro-tariff voters (to the extent that there are any left) will be angry he gave in; small business owners will feel bruised and exhausted by the back-and-forth and uncertain of their futures, everyone else will see only the massive, long-term damage Trump’s actions have caused to our economy, the U.S. dollar, and the stock market—with absolutely no upside. It’s a total debacle.

Heedless of his increasing unpopularity, however, Trump continues to plow ahead with more destructive, stupid, and often unconstitutional actions. Yesterday his team advertised a “Trump 2028” baseball cap (ignore it; it’s a distraction). Last night they released an executive order attacking Act Blue. Today we learned that Patel’s FBI arrested a Milwaukee judge who, they allege, helped an undocumented person escape ICE. (There’s a rally for her in Milwaukee at 3PM CT today. Please go if you can.)

In other words, the atrocious acts continue. Many will be reversed or thwarted. It’s nevertheless exhausting and alarming for all of us to live through.

But take heart. A sleeping giant is also stirring. We, of course, have been awake the whole time, but around us we’re seeing institutions, organizations, and individuals rouse themselves from their lethargy and join us in the fray. It’s a wonderful thing to behold, and it’s very definitely catching.

As law firms like Paul Weiss and Skadden Arps see talent flee, as universities band together against executive overreach (ahem, not long after we wrote to them), as civil rights groups form coalitions to resist Trump’s attacks, and as judges of all stripes add their voices to the chorus of pro-constitutional outrage, others are taking note. They are seeing the writing on the wall; soon they will be with us, too.

We’re still in the middle of the battle, in short, but reinforcements are finally coming in. Right now they’re a trickle; soon they’ll be a flood. They will continue to arrive, because Trump and his criminal cohort will continue their egregious attacks on our democracy. He is, then, through his actions, sowing the seeds of his own eventual downfall.

Our job in the meantime is to keep doing what we’re doing! If we do, we cannot lose.

So let’s get to work one more time.

Call Your Senators (find yours here) 📲

Hi, I'm a constituent calling from [zip]. My name is ______.

I’m calling for a few reasons today:

First, there are two bills that recently passed in the House that I want the Senator to oppose.

The first is H.R. 1526, the NORRA Act. This bill severely restricts federal judges' ability to issue nationwide injunctions—a crucial tool courts use to block illegal or unconstitutional executive actions.

The second is HR 22, the SAVE Act, a voter suppression bill that would disenfranchise tens of millions of Americans.

I want to say a couple more things: Donald Trump’s executive order assailing Act Blue is deeply alarming. This shouldn’t happen in a democracy. Trump is weaponizing the DOJ to attack the infrastructure of the opposing party—that’s an authoritarian act, and an abuse of power. Has the Senator spoken out against it?

Finally, I understand the FBI has arrested a Milwaukee judge and charged her with obstructing an immigration arrest because she allowed an undocumented person to leave her courtroom. What is happening in this country? The Trump administration is turning this into a police state. They’re going too far. I want the Senator to call for the charges against this judge to be dropped at once. Thanks.

Call Your House Rep (find yours here) 📲

Hi, I'm a constituent calling from [zip]. My name is _______.

Donald Trump’s executive order assailing Act Blue is deeply alarming. This shouldn’t happen in a democracy. Trump is weaponizing the DOJ to attack the infrastructure of the opposing party—that’s an authoritarian act, and an abuse of power. Has the Congressmember spoken out against it?

Second, I understand the FBI has arrested a Milwaukee judge and charged her with obstructing an immigration arrest because she allowed an undocumented person to leave her courtroom. What is happening in this country? The Trump administration is turning this into a police state. They’re going too far. I want the Congressmember to call for the charges against this judge to be dropped at once. Thanks.

Extra Credit ✅

I received an email from a parent member of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA ). They recently released an easy call to action in support of Medicaid protection for children with disabilities. She asked me to amplify it and I’m happy to.

Please personalize and sign the letter to your MOCs here.

Get Smart! 📚

Day in, day out, the cruelty, chaos, and corruption emanating from the Trump Administration shows no bounds.It can feel overwhelming, but that’s their point. Flooding the zone with all the outrages at once is designed to fracture our movement and divide our attention.

That’s why the awesome activism org Activate America is hosting a webinar on the path forward. It’s taking place on Tuesday, April 29th at 5:00 PM Pacific / 8:00 PM Eastern.

During the webinar, they’ll take a closer look at the districts we are most likely to win in the 2026 election and cover actions Activate America is currently taking to strengthen local organizing, create speed bumps to the Trump/Musk agenda, and hold swing-district Republicans accountable.

You can RSVP here.

Get in the Streets! 🪧

In D.C. this weekend? Join Leader Jeffries (D-NY) and Sen. Booker (D-NJ) on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, East Entrance, Sunday, April 27, beginning at sunrise (6:15 a.m.) for a vigil on budget reconciliation and the impact of proposed program cuts. Individuals that would be impacted by proposed cuts are encouraged to attend and share. Contact Tim Klipp-Lockhart, [email protected], if you are interested in speaking.

Grab Your Wallet! 💳

[H/T Alan Unell]

The Trump administration has paid $6 million dollars to El Salvador to house hundreds of people deported from the U.S. to that country’s high-security mega-prison. Last Monday, April 14, while sitting in the Oval Office, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele told reporters he would not return Kilmar Abrego Garcia from the El Salvadoran prison where the U.S. Justice Department mistakenly deported him; he called the idea “preposterous.”

It is preposterous that American companies manufacture in countries that do not respect due process or clear orders by the U.S. Supreme Court. So let’s take two actions:

Boycott all products made in El Salvador. Such products include clothing, mattresses, food and more, so check tags and packages and avoid buying those marked “Made in El Salvador.” Companies that manufacture in El Salvador include Hanes, Fruit of the Loom, Gildan, Diana, Capri, Indufoam, Bon Appetit, and many more.

Contact the heads of companies manufacturing in El Salvador, such as Hanes and Fruit of the Loom, to voice your dismay at their silence.

Hanes email: [email protected] 336-519-8080; brands include Maidenform, Bali, Playtex, Hanes, Bonds, and more

Fruit of the Loom contact form or 1-855-253-4534; brands include Spalding, Russell Athletic, Vanity Fair, Jerzees, Dudley, Fruit of the Loom, BVD, and American Athletic

Sample script (please personalize):

As a company that manufactures in El Salvador, you should be speaking out loudly and publicly against President Bukele’s refusal to send Kilmar Abrego Garcia home. Your company has influence to reinforce U.S. constitutional rights and democratic values. Until you have done all you can to pressure president Bukele to return Abrego Garcia, I will boycott your brands.

Ask Target Corporation (or Tesla) how boycotts are working out for them.

Thanks.

Name, City, State

Chop Wood, Save the Planet 🔥

The Green Gender Gap

You're invited to join the Environmental Voter Project on Wednesday, April 30th at 8pm ET / 5pm PT for an online presentation of their latest research on the growing power of women climate voters. Their brief data presentation will be followed by an in-depth panel discussion with Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Dominique Browning, and Camila Thorndike.

RSVP here to learn more about the panelists and get the zoom link.

Resistbot Letter (new to Resistbot? Go here! And then here.) 💻

[To: all 3 reps] [H/T Coleman Rogers] [Text SIGN PCAZFL to 50409, or to @Resistbot on Apple Messages, Messenger, Instagram, or Telegram]

The Trump administration's recent executive order to fast-track mining and clear-cutting on public lands under the guise of an "energy emergency" is a blatant disregard for environmental protection and sustainability. This unilateral action, devoid of scientific evidence or public input, prioritizes short-term profits over the long-term well-being of our natural resources and ecosystems.

Expediting environmentally destructive practices such as mining and deforestation will undoubtedly exacerbate climate change, habitat loss, and ecological degradation. The irreversible damage inflicted on pristine landscapes, fragile ecosystems, and vulnerable species will be felt for generations to come. This reckless executive overreach not only undermines existing environmental regulations but also sets a dangerous precedent for future administrations to circumvent the democratic process.

We demand that Congress take immediate action to denounce and overturn this illegal executive order. Our public lands are a national treasure, held in trust for the American people, and must be safeguarded from exploitation by corporate interests.

It is imperative that Congress reasserts its constitutional authority and upholds its responsibility to protect our natural heritage for current and future generations.

OK, you did it again! You’re helping to save democracy! You’re amazing.

Talk soon.

Jess

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From Chop Wood, Carry Water via this RSS feed

Friends,

Today, Heather and I take a look at the shi*tstorm of Trump’s first hundred days (which doesn’t officially conclude until Wednesday), and ask what happened, why it’s so horrible, and how we’re likely to look back on it. Along the way, we examine whether its major theme has been chaos or cruelty, what’s happened to the economy, and why Trump’s polls are taking a dive. In sharp contrast, we also discuss the legacy of Pope Francis.

Please pull up a chair, grab a cuppa, take our poll, and join in the discussion.

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From Robert Reich via this RSS feed

From BBC News via this RSS feed

Friends,

Last week, I mentioned conservative columnist David Brooks’s call for a “comprehensive national civic uprising” against Trump, which Brooks described as “one coordinated mass movement.”

I wondered what shape that mass movement could take and asked whether, for example, it might be a general strike.

One person who got back to me was my old friend Sam Brown.

Sam knows something about mass movements. He was one of the chief organizers of the Moratorium to End the Vietnam War, on October 15, 1969.

When Richard Nixon took office on January 20, 1969, about 34,000 Americans had already been killed fighting in Vietnam — and an untold number of Vietnamese. During Nixon’s first year in office, from January 1969 to January 1970, roughly 10,000 additional Americans were killed there.

Sam reminds me that the idea for the moratorium started out as a call for a general strike. Sam (who previously had worked on Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 presidential campaign) changed the concept from general strike to a “moratorium.”

The moratorium was a huge success. Millions participated throughout the world. (Bill Clinton and I, then graduate students at Oxford, joined in the demonstration in London — which later became an issue when Clinton ran for president.)

The moratorium was followed a month later, on November 15, 1969, by a large Moratorium March in Washington, D.C.

It was the first time the anti-Vietnam War movement reached the level of a full-fledged mass movement. Many credit it with hastening the end of that horrendous war. (Interestingly, research shows that nonviolent protests “have never failed to bring about change” when they involve at least 3.5 percent of the public.)

Why did Sam change it from a general strike to a moratorium? He says he wanted protests to take place in communities rather than on university campuses so that “the heartland folks felt it belonged to them.”

Sam also thought that the best way to pressure Nixon was to ensure the movement had a “respectable” face in order to win the support of the largest number of Americans, many of whom did not much like either the hippie counterculture or the New Left movement. At the time, Nixon’s opponents were easily dismissed as “nattering nabobs of negativism,” or, in Trump-speak, as “whiners and losers.”

Sam’s view is that those of us who oppose Trump will similarly be dismissed until clearly identifiable Trump voters join with us. And, as then, the people who agree with us but don’t express themselves or participate need an easy on-ramp to do so.

In Sam’s view, “strike” has an overtone of militancy, which isn’t an easy place for people in the middle to go. Furthermore, “strike” doesn’t resonate with a small business person or a farmer or most of rural America. (Sam’s favorite visual for the demonstration would be Lincoln and Des Moines immobilized by tractor-driving farmers.)

Sam thinks we need an action that can grow and morph with time into a national movement — and one with which people newly opposed to Trump can identify.

So what’s the best word to describe this? Sam doesn’t think “moratorium” is right this time around, but we still need a neutral, mainstream descriptor that can incite a huge demonstration involving millions of people, that leads to an even larger one.

Ideas, anyone?

What would be the overall strategy? Sam believes it should be locally based, with a range of entry points and a broad set of supporters. (Sam and the Vietnam Moratorium Committee sought the support of groups like the Civil Rights Movement, churches, university faculties, unions, business leaders, and politicians.)

He points out that modern means of communication makes something like this radically easier to organize. The additional good news is that Trump has pissed off nearly everyone, even those who won’t yet admit it.

But Sam believes we need to find a way to gain the support of conservative opinion leaders like David Brooks. This takes some time and a great deal of thoughtful networking.

What do you think?

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From Robert Reich via this RSS feed