Today I’m going to ask you to make a difficult decision: name the worst elected official in America today, other than Trump.
The point of this exercise is not for you to become any more discouraged with American politics but to highlight that Trump is hardly the only horrendously awful elected official in America. A second purpose is to name (and shame) elected officials who deserve to be better known for the horrible things they’ve said and done. Finally, it’s to stimulate a candid discussion about why voters have chosen these loathsome people (and why eligible voters who wouldn’t have chosen them don’t vote).
It’s been difficult to pare the list down. I’ve had to eliminate Ted Cruz because two other finalists are from Texas, and I didn’t want to make this solely about the Lone Star State. I’ve also eliminated members of the House Freedom Caucus because there’s no meaningful way to differentiate their bigotry and fanaticism from one another. I’ve included Marjorie Taylor Greene, who’s technically no longer a public official — she resigned from Congress on January 5 — because her influence continues, and she’s now talking about forming a third party.
So here are the finalists for the worst elected official in America today, other than Trump:
I’ve been an enthusiastic proponent of young progressives who are now taking on establishment Democrats — and winning. But lest there be any doubt about where I stand on the candidacy of Maine’s Graham Platner, I want to make it clear. He should exit the race, and exit now. The evidence against him appears credible — and it’s appalling. The people of Maine deserve to be represented by someone whose character is exemplary. I hope that the Democratic Party of Maine moves quickly to find a replacement.
Make no mistake. I’m rooting for the U.S. as we take on Belgium today in Seattle for a place in the World Cup quarterfinals.
But the game isn’t what it was — before Trump got FIFA president Gianni Infantino to lift the suspension of America’s top scorer, striker Folarin Balogun, who got a red card in a match against Bosnia and Herzegovina and would otherwise have been suspended from tonight’s match.
“Thank you to FIFA for doing what was right, and reversing a great injustice!” Trump clucked on social media Sunday afternoon.
When my two boys were young and just learning to play games, they were very competitive — as children often are. When one of them was losing, he often asked me to intervene. “Dad! Adam cheated!” “Dad! Sam cheated!”
Unless the so-called “cheating” was obvious, I gently explained that I wouldn’t weigh in. I wanted them to understand that one of the purposes of learning to play games is to accept losses, even if the result may seem unfair.
Later, when they became teenagers and played soccer or Little League baseball, there were times when they didn’t agree with a referee’s call. On a few of these occasions, they came to me in tears of outrage and self-righteousness, wanting me to say something to the referee.
I did not. “We have to rely on referees,” I remember saying. “That’s part of the game.”
The purpose of the game wasn’t just to win. The purpose of any game is to have fun, to enjoy the sport. It’s also to appreciate the contestants on both sides — their skill and excellence. And to follow the rules.
Yet now Trump is showing the world once again that America doesn’t play by the rules. We don’t accept losses, and we don’t accept referees’ calls.
I don’t know about you, but Trump’s intervention in the World Cup has ruined the game for me.
How can anyone ever again trust that the United States has won a game fair and square? How can the fine athletes representing us rejoice in a victory when the president of the United States has used his political power to change a referee’s call?
We try to teach our children morality. We explain to them the difference between winning and playing honorably and well. We try to inculcate in them a sense of fairness.
We want them to trust that in the game of life they may be rewarded for their skill and their tenacity, but they may not always be. We also want them to play the game of life with honesty and compassion.
We don’t want them to bully their way to success, as Trump has done his whole life.
Bullies who abuse their power by altering the rules of a game to favor themselves end up spoiling the game for everyone.
They destroy the trust on which any system — be it a World Cup competition, or a political race, or a market economy — ultimately depends.
Now we have a World Cup in which an American president has put his thumb on the scale. As a result, he has forever tarnished the integrity of the game.
Like his big lies about the 2020 election and the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Trump has also tarnished the integrity of America.
The cover of “Is This Tomorrow,” an anti-communist comic book published in 1947, suggests the chaos and ruin that would follow a communist takeover of the United States. The publications reflected a fevered politics that prevailed after World War II and through the 1950s. (Image via Wikimedia Commons)
Friends,
Trump has run out of cards to play in the midterm elections, which is why he’s now talking about the “communist menace.”
He can’t talk about the economy, because prices continue to rise faster than wages, which means most Americans are getting poorer. He can’t talk about foreign policy, because his war in Iran has been a debacle, his tariffs are an utter failure, and he obviously hasn’t settled the war in Ukraine on “Day 1.” He can’t talk about immigration, because his raids and mass deportations have become so unpopular.
So, facing the midterm elections, what’s left?
He’s resorting to the oldest of right-wing tropes — accusing Democrats (especially a rising generation of new, young, vigorous Democratic politicians) of being commies.
He kicked off America’s 250th anniversary celebrations on Friday with a speech at Mount Rushmore extolling American culture and warning of a resurgence of the “communist menace.” With the granite faces of four of his predecessors behind him, Trump took aim at what he called “radicals” and “extremists.”
“There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed to our way of life and our great success. You can be a communist, or you can be a patriot. You cannot be both.”
Oh, please.
For years, Trump has been trying to scare Americans about progressive Dems who advocate Medicare for All, universal childcare, free public higher education, and higher taxes on the super-wealthy to pay for them (all of which the rising young Democrats are advocating).
But he hasn’t gotten anywhere because these initiatives are supported by most Americans.
So now he’s throwing the commie label at the wall and seeing if it sticks.
Communism was the scare word used by right-wingers after World Wars I and II to crack the whip on the left. It provoked witch hunts and ruined careers.
It made former Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy a one-man bomb squad in the early 1950s, when he ridiculed the “pitiful squealing” of “those egg-sucking phony liberals” who “would hold sacrosanct those Communists and queers,” and forced American citizens to “name names.”
McCarthyism was a by-product of the Republican Party’s postwar effort to eradicate the New Deal. The GOP had portrayed the midterm election of 1946 as a “battle between Republicanism and communism,” and the Republican National Committee chairman claimed that the federal bureaucracy was filled with “pink puppets.”
Southern segregationist Democrats joined in the red-baiting. Mississippi senator Theodore Bilbo, a Klansman who filibustered to block anti-lynching legislation, described multiracial labor unions’ advocacy for civil rights as the work of “northern communists.” Representative John Elliott Rankin, a racist and antisemitic Mississippi Democrat who helped establish the House Committee on Un-American Activities, called labor unions’ Southern organizing campaign “a communist plot,” fearing it would result in more Black people voting. “We’re asleep at the switch,” he warned. “They’re taking over this country; we’ve got to stop them if we want this country.”
The red-baiting was temporarily successful. In the 1946 midterms, Democrats lost control of both chambers of Congress. Wisconsin sent Joe McCarthy to the Senate. California sent to the House a young Republican lawyer who had already figured out how to use red-baiting as a political tool: Richard Nixon. Four years later it sent Nixon to the Senate.
It’s likely that Trump’s earliest political memories are of Joe McCarthy’s red scare. Trump and I are the same age, and those are among my earliest memories.
On June 9, 1954, I sat at my father’s side on our living room couch watching the Army-McCarthy hearings. McCarthy had accused the U.S. Army of having poor security at a top-secret facility, hinting at communist subversion. He charged that one of the young attorneys on the staff of Joseph Welch, who was representing the Army, was a communist. The charge could destroy the young man’s career.
“Son-of-a-bitch!” my father shouted at McCarthy on television. I hid my head.
As McCarthy continued his attack on the young attorney, Welch broke in: “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.”
I was only 8 years old, but I was spellbound.
McCarthy didn’t stop attacking the young attorney.
“Son-of-a-bitch!” my father shouted, even louder.
At this point, Welch demanded that McCarthy listen to him. “Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator,” he said. “You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”
Almost overnight, McCarthy imploded. Welch had aroused the decency of the American people. McCarthy’s national popularity evaporated. Three years later, censured by his Senate colleagues, ostracized by his party, and ignored by the press, McCarthy drank himself to death, a broken man at the age of 48.
During those hearings, McCarthy’s chief counsel was Roy Cohn, who had gained prominence as the Department of Justice attorney who successfully prosecuted Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage, leading to their executions in 1953.
After McCarthy’s downfall, Cohn reinvented himself as a power broker in New York who survived scandals, indictments, and accusations of tax evasion, bribery, and theft — eventually to become Trump’s mentor.
So of course Trump would reach for the communist scare card when he has no other cards left to play.
The problem for Trump is that the new stars of the Democratic Party whom Trump wants to defile have nothing whatsoever to do with communism. They barely have anything to do with socialism.
New York’s Zohran Mamdani, AOC, Seattle’s Katie Wilson, Colorado’s Melat Kiros, and dozens of others — including many who have won recent primaries — are popular because they’re taking on corporate America, attacking political corruption by big money, and dealing with the real problems of ordinary Americans.
Labels are becoming irrelevant, anyway. In an Axios-Generation Lab poll of young Americans, 67 percent say they have a positive or neutral association with the word “socialism” compared with 40 percent who are positive or neutral toward “capitalism.” A new national survey from the Cato Institute finds Zoomers more supportive of socialism (53 percent) than capitalism (45 percent).
I can understand Gen Z’s growing disillusionment with capitalism. They can’t afford a home of their own. They struggle to afford health insurance. The job market is horrendous. They can’t afford to start a family. In many ways, capitalism — or whatever you want to call our current system — has failed them. And they’re the future of America.
So I doubt Trump’s resurgent red-baiting is going to help Republicans in the midterms.
To the extent Americans are thinking about the American system as a whole, they seem more concerned about Trump’s self-dealing than about socialism or communism. That same new Cato poll finds 56 percent of Americans worried that the U.S. could stop being a free country within the next 50 years because of corruption and abuses of power at the highest reaches of government.
Trump himself has no ideology, of course. He doesn’t give a fig about capitalism, and he’s not worried about communism or socialism. He’s a fanatical practitioner of narcissism, of the especially malignant variety.
As you likely know, I’m a big fan of W. Kamau Bell, the stand-up comedian, director, all-around insightful thought leader, and television host who sometimes visits us on The Coffee Klatch. His news commentary is ruthless and irreverent, and important.
He invited me to be on the latest episode of his new podcast WHO’S WITH ME? which came out today.
If you aren’t already following Kamau here on Substack, I recommend you sign up for “Who’s With Me?” here.
Okay, we’ve now gone through the bitter-sweet 250th anniversary. Now let’s get to work.
Every day brings more news of Trump’s greed, incompetence, cruelty, and criminality. Raking in $2.2 billion in his first year in office, much of it siphoned off from taxpayers and gullible followers. His Iran debacle. His malignant narcissism, putting his face and name everywhere. His cruel mass deportations. His use of the Justice Department to prosecute anyone he feels has wronged him. And so on.
As journalist Tom Edsall writes, “The damage President Trump has inflicted on the United States and the world is so enormous and wide-ranging that it is hard to grasp.”
I think it important to separate the loathsomeness of Trump as a person from the horrendous things he’s doing. Trump won’t change, but we can begin seeking changes in our system to prevent such awfulness in the future — especially if/when we boot out the Republican cowards and sycophants from Congress.
What basic reforms are necessary to begin cleaning up the mess? I’m not talking about specific policies such as reducing the size of the military, saving the planet from climate change, providing Medicare for All, or dealing with AI — as important as they are. I’m focusing on basic meat-and-potatoes reforms of how our government functions — reforms that will be necessary to get anything done.
I’ve tried to boil it down to 10 bare essentials. Herewith:
1. Subject Supreme Court justices to term limits. Limit the terms of justices to 18 years, after which time they must move to courts of appeals or district courts. Justices already on the high court can remain only until they’ve been there for 18 years. Those who are beyond this limit must immediately move to other courts. (Another reform is to expand the number of justices, but FDR tried this and it proved so politically unpopular that he had to abandon it.)
2. Prevent conflicts of interest. End the exemption of the president and vice president from conflicts of interest laws. Require all federally elected officials to put their investments into blind trusts. Prohibit all trading of specific shares of stock.
3. Stop a president from using the Justice Department. Prohibit a president from having any involvement in decisions about whom to prosecute. Require congressional review of any pardons or commutations.
4. End gerrymanders. Require states to create independent commissions to draw congressional district lines.
5. Revive voting rights. Reenact Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (which barred voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or ethnicity) and Section 5 (which required jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination in voting to obtain federal approval before changing any voting laws or procedures).
6. Protect press freedom and independence. Amend the Sherman and Clayton antitrust acts to bar large corporations, or any person already owning major media, from purchasing major media networks or platforms.
7. Protect the freedom of inquiry. Bar the executive branch from conditioning research or other educational grants to universities on any ideological litmus test. Researchers should be free to pursue truth.
8. Get big money out of politics. Establish public matching funds for small-dollar donations for all federal elected offices. Encourage states to grant corporate charters only on condition that corporations refrain from political activity (as Hawaii has done and Montana is considering, and hopefully California will do). Pursue a constitutional amendment to reverse Citizens United and establish Congress’s authority to limit big money in politics.
9. Tax large aggregations of personal wealth. Enact a wealth tax. Eliminate the “stepped-up basis at death” rule that allows large fortunes to be transferred from one generation to the next without paying taxes on capital gains.
10. Eliminate the Electoral College. Pursue a constitutional amendment to eliminate the Electoral College and base the selection of president and vice president on whichever ticket wins the overall popular vote. In the meantime, seek a compact among states (and the District of Columbia) to award all their electoral votes to whichever presidential ticket wins the overall popular vote.
You may have different priorities, in which case please add them in your comments below (but indicate which of the above you’d knock off so we can keep the list manageable).
The point is that we need to begin talking about major structural reforms of how our government functions — and pushing candidates for every level of government to support them. Trump has revealed how easily the system can be abused. When we have the power, we must act to end such abuses.
Today marks 250 years since we declared our independence from a vile, arbitrary, impulsive, capricious, greedy, selfish, narcissistic authoritarian. Oh, wait. Sorry, we’re not yet independent of Trump. But George III was pretty awful, too.
Today Heather and I examine where America has come — with a Supreme Court that thinks Trump and any successor president needs more power, a president who is making billions off his office, and an utter dud of Trump-glorification activities on the National Mall.
Please pull up a chair, grab a cuppa, and join in our 250th July 4th conversation.
On this July 4 — the 250th anniversary of the start of this country — many people, including the current occupant of the Oval Office, believe that celebrating America means waving the flag or standing for the national anthem or shouting, “America First.”
That’s not what real patriotism is.
Real patriotism means sacrificing to keep America going.
It means paying taxes proportional to your wealth. I’m talking to you, Donald Trump, and you, Jeff Bezos, and you, Elon Musk.
It means paying your workers a living wage so they can thrive. I’m talking to you, John Furner, CEO of Walmart, and you, Chris Kempczinski, CEO of McDonald’s.
It means fully reckoning with how racial oppression and white supremacy have shaped this nation, not whitewashing our history and ignoring racism’s continuing legacy. I’m talking to you, Ron DeSantis, and other lawmakers trying to prevent students from learning the roles slavery and genocide have played in our history.
Real patriotism means protecting American democracy and our form of government, not trying to overturn an election that was upheld by 60 federal courts and the Supreme Court, or lying about election fraud when it barely exists, or seeking to suppress the voting rights of people of color.
I’m talking to you, Trump, along with traitorous members of Congress who refused to certify the 2020 election, and you, state legislators who have advanced nearly 400 voter suppression bills, and you, Supreme Court justices who have gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Real patriotism means not flooding our politics with big money, so the voices of the people can be heard. I’m talking to you again, Elon, as well as Charles Koch, Timothy Mellon, Miriam Adelson, and Michael Bloomberg.
And it means putting the interests of our country over partisanship. Do you hear me, Mike Johnson and John Thune?
Finally, real patriotism means using your position of power in the media to inform and educate the public rather than weaponize lies and promote extremism to get more clicks. I’m talking to you, Mark Zuckerberg, and you, David Ellison, and you, Rupert Murdoch, and, once again, you, Elon.
On this July 4, the 250th anniversary of America, we must recommit ourselves to real patriotism — the hard work necessary to make American democracy survive.
Sorry to invade your inbox again today, but New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani just gave an address about America on this eve of our 250th anniversary, which is the opposite of the speech Trump is expected to give tomorrow. A naturalized citizen born in Uganda to parents of Indian origin, Mamdani sat behind a desk used by George Washington, with naturalized immigrants standing around him holding American flags.
I want to share parts of Mayor Mamdani’s address with you. The full address can be viewed here.
“For generation after generation, we have been told that when the world has sent its people to our shores, it has not sent its best.
It sent Puritans and Sikhs and Quakers and Muslims and Jewish people who were banished for praying the wrong way, worshipping the wrong Gods, angering the wrong people. It sent peasants and serfs from slums and shtetls who were treated as less because they hardly owned clothes, let alone land. It sent immigrants for whom power was something someone else had. We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else. The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here, nothing is fixed into place. The frontier may be closed, we may have walked on the moon, but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence — that work endures, my friends, and it belongs to us all….
You each hold a special power. The power to determine what America means.
The powerful have always known their answer. America, in their view, is an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal. America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes. America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit.
How small they are, how weak, how unoriginal. At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another. Division is the oldest trick in politics, and the cheapest. But time and again — including 250 years ago — those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress. As Thomas Paine once wrote, “this new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty ... hither have they fled.”
And yet today, too many of our leaders do not believe in a vision of this nation as an asylum for the persecuted — but rather as one that persecutes those seeking asylum.
As we mark 250 years, what do we see?
We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world — one where children go to sleep hungry while the world’s first trillionaire hungers for more.
We see monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs who buy elections.
We see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans.
We see a nation whose immense wealth has been built by those with calloused, dirt-streaked hands — those who toil on factory floors and chisel into stone — and we see a nation that has allowed so much of that wealth to be held instead in the soft hands of a precious few.
Yes, we see America in a health insurance industry that exploits the sick, but that is not all I see when we look for America. We see it too in the nurse who works a double shift and then stops on her way home to check on an ailing neighbor.
Yes, we see America in corporate landlords for whom negligence is a business model.
We see it too in the father who tucks his children into bed beneath a ceiling stained with leaks, who wakes before dawn to go to work, and still believes his country can do better by his family.
Yes, we see America when we spend our tax dollars on bombs and bailouts, when we sell our elections to the highest bidder.
Yet we see it just as clearly in every American who still believes this country belongs to we, the people. We see America each time neighbors link arms with neighbors — without asking how long they have lived here, or what papers they have — as ICE invades our neighborhoods. We see America each time those young and old stand in the beating rain or the stifling heat to cast their ballots. We see America each time working people demand more — not just for themselves, but for their fellow Americans. There are some who respond to those who ask for more from America with a simple refrain: Love it or leave it, they say.
But patriotism has never been about pretending our nation is without flaws. Patriotism is every act of righteous dissent, it is every march led under the heavy sun, it is every protest held a decade before its time.
It is precisely because we love this nation that we will not leave it. After all, who loves America more than those who have sacrificed so much to make it free? …
Those ideals upon which our nation was built — they are strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them.”
I came across this Public Service Announcement produced by the U.S. government in 1945. It seems apt today, on the eve of the nation’s 250th anniversary, when bigotry and hate are being stoked by a neofascist president. Please take a look:
This is a clip from the original, which runs 23 minutes. It was called “Don’t Be a Sucker.”
Some 163 million people in the U.S. live in areas that experienced dangerous heat on Thursday, according to the National Weather Service — sending “heat risk” forecasts in major cities (including New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Atlanta) into the most extreme risk category through Saturday.
Part of the reason is the planet is warming dangerously, but Trump calls climate change a “hoax” and is encouraging more use of fossil fuels.
Especially endangered are workers toiling under the hot sun, or in stifling warehouses, or in delivery trucks with no AC.
Yet Trump’s pick to run the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, David Keeling,is weakening the agency’s own heat standards by removing specific inspection goals. OSHA’s Heat National Emphasis Program expired on April 8. Its proposed heat standard has been stalled.
For many workers, heat standards are literally a matter of life and death. Every year, workers collapse, suffer permanent injuries, and die while doing their jobs in extreme heat.
Years ago, when I ran the Labor Department, we had the toughest Occupational Health and Safety Administration in history, run by a truly committed worker advocate named Joe Dear. We made workplaces safer — reducing worker deaths and injuries.
Since its inception in 1971, OSHA has reduced workplace-related fatalities by almost 63 percent. It has slashed the rate of serious workplace injuries and illnesses by 75 percent.
But OSHA under Keeling is retreating from worker safety.
Before Trump picked him to head OSHA, Keeling was Amazon’s top safety executive.
During Keeling’s tenure at Amazon, a Senate report found that Amazon warehouses were twice as dangerous as those of its competitors.
This year, we’ve already seen reports of Amazon workers dying on the job on a near monthly basis, including incidents in Oregon and North Carolina. Why would we trust Amazon’s safety head with the country’s workers?
Before he was at Amazon, Keeling was in charge of safety at UPS. How did he do there? OSHA repeatedly cited UPS for exposing drivers to excessive heat. Federal investigators found at least 100 drivers were hospitalized for heat-related injuries between 2015 and 2018. UPS delivery trucks had no air conditioning until 2024, when it was won in a landmark collective bargaining agreement with the Teamsters.
Now Keeling is head of OSHA,and OSHA is weakening its heat protection standards.
Workers are already paying the price. Reports of worker deaths during extreme heat continue to emerge across the country. Heat exposure can trigger heat stroke, organ failure, and chronic kidney disease. These are among the most predictable workplace hazards, which means they can often be prevented with strong safety standards and rigorous enforcement.
But instead of strengthening those protections, OSHA under Keeling has weakened them. At a time when record-breaking temperatures are becoming more frequent, retreating from enforcement sends a dangerous message that worker fatalities are a cost of doing business.
When he was in charge of safety at Amazon, Amazon became notorious for dangerous warehouse conditions. When in charge of safety at UPS, UPS resisted providing air conditioning for delivery vehicles. Now, when the agency responsible for protecting millions of workers should be leading the fight against preventable heat deaths — it’s backing away from its most basic responsibility to protect people over profits.
For this week’s video, my young colleagues dressed me up in 18th century garb to read portions of the Declaration of Independence that are often overlooked — but shouldn’t be, because they’re directly relevant to what Trump is doing to America.
Job growth slowed considerably last month. Employers added a less-than-expected 57,000 jobs in June, according to Labor Department data out today.
That’s far below the 129,000 jobs added in May and comes amid high anxiety about the state of the American economy.
According to today’s report, average hourly earnings increased by 3.5 percent. But prices are increasing at an annual rate of 4.2 percent.
What do you get when prices are increasing faster than wages? You get people who are becoming poorer. And what do you get when people become poorer? Angry voters.
Trump is constantly talking about the strength of the stock market. This morning he even shared a link to an article called “S&P 500 closes with strongest quarter since 2020.” Yesterday, when asked about the huge profits he’s made off his stock trades, he countered, “Well, you know why I’m profiting? Cause the stock market’s going up. Everybody’s profiting.”
Trump frequently points to 401(k) accounts as evidence of Americans benefiting from the strong stock market. But only around a third of working-age individuals have any savings at all in 401(k) accounts. About 40 percent of all Americans have no retirement savings whatsoever.
Bottom line: It’s a lousy economy. Anyone who voted for Trump in 2024 should have buyer’s remorse.
As we prepare to mark the nation’s 250th birthday, I hope you’ll forgive me if I fill part of your inbox today with some thoughts about what’s worth celebrating — the American common good.
In financial disclosures released Tuesday, Trump reported earning more than $1.4 billion last year from his several cryptocurrency ventures.
All told — including other parts of his vast holdings, such as his real estate assets —Trump pulled in at least $2.2 billion last year. That compares to the roughly $622 million his enterprises raked in for all of 2024, before he returned to the presidency.
In other words, it’s a fair guess that last year he made more than $1 billion off his presidency.
We’re talking big money and big looting.
Trump has conflicts of interest up the wazoo.
For example, as a candidate in 2024, Trump embraced crypto. Then he and his family invested like mad in it — through CIC Digital — a Trump Organization affiliate that is behind his memecoin, $TRUMP. And through another Trump family-backed crypto company, World Liberty Financial, co-founded by Trump, his sons, and the family of special envoy Steve Witkoff in the middle of the 2024 presidential campaign. World Liberty is now behind several prominent crypto tokens.
The problem here is more than potential conflicts of interest, more than the mere appearance of conflicts of interest. The conflicts are real, blatant, outrageous.
Since taking office, Trump has installed friendly regulators to oversee digital assets, and he’s pushed for landmark crypto legislation that would further free crypto from being treated as a security (in which case all sorts of disclosures would have to be made about it).
It goes way beyond crypto. His investment accounts made more than 20,000 trades last year — and many appear to be timed to take maximum advantage of his public announcements that moved markets.
Just one day before he announced a 90-day pause on his sweeping tariffs, for example, his investment accounts made 327 individual stock purchases, each valued as much as $250,000. It was one of the largest single-day buys disclosed in Tuesday’s financial disclosures. The following day, when Trump announced the pause, the S&P soared nearly 10 percent —one ofthe biggest single-day gains in the index’s history.
He’s made a bundle from real estate deals that foreign governments have been eager to strike with him and his family, presumably because he’s given them — or will give them — something in return. Entities from the Persian Gulf paid around $300 million to Trump’s businesses last year, more than any other foreign region identifiable in his financial disclosures.
On Wednesday, he traveled to North Dakota on the maiden flight of the new Air Force One, a $400 million jet gifted to him by the Qatari royal family whose ownership will transfer to Trump when he leaves office (technically, it will go to Trump’s own presidential library foundation, but there’s nothing stopping him from using it for private purposes).
This is called corruption, folks. And it’s on a massive scale.
A White House spokesperson says neither Trump nor his family “has ever engaged — or will ever engage — in conflicts of interest.”
Oh please. Next we’ll be told Trump never tells a lie, either.
Conflicts of interest like these make it impossible for the public to judge whether Trump is working for America or for himself when he advocates for or implements a particular policy, such as his crypto policy or his moves in the Middle East.
We don’t even know for sure that Trump has disclosed all his investments. The financial disclosure made Tuesday was voluntary. Can anyone be certain Trump has come clean about all his conflicts of interest?
But perhaps the most troubling thing about all this is Trump doesn’t give a shite.
In his first term, when asked about conflicts of interest, he said, “the president can’t have a conflict of interest … because everything a president does in some ways is like a conflict of interest.”
He’s also said Americans “don’t care at all” about his unreleased tax returns or his personal finances.
In his second term, he’s even less inhibited about raking in money. “I found out that nobody cared,” Trump toldThe New York Times in January.
Now, he has nothing to lose by making as much money as possible off his presidency.
He probably figures he’s survived two impeachments so far and won’t be impeached for pesky conflicts of interest. He won’t be running for the presidency again, so he doesn’t have to worry that his conflicts of interest will be used against him in a future campaign. Why not rake in as much as he can?
As to his historic legacy, Trump isn’t worried about that either. He likely believes he can create his own history. That’s what he’s tried to do for the 2020 election and the subsequent attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. That’s what his “Presidential Walk of Fame” in the White House is all about — framed portraits of all U.S. presidents accompanied by Trump’s own partisan, gold-lettered plaques, many written by Trump himself.
In other words, we’re dealing with a malignant narcissist who thinks only about his own wealth and power and about vengeance against those who have tried to stop him from acquiring more.
How can we possibly expect that he’s working for the people of the United States rather than for himself?
Trump doesn’t have any conflicts of interest. That’s because he really has only one interest: Trump.
I’m so pleased to tell you that we’re doing one last free watchalong of The Last Class,the documentary about my final semester of teaching. It will be next Wednesday, July 8 at 5:30 p.m. PT / 8:30 p.m. ET and all zones between.
I’ll be there live, as will Heather Lofthouse, who produced the film, and Elliot Kirschner, its director. I’ll introduce the film, we’ll watch it together, then take your questions and respond to your comments. \
Please join us!
Sign up here, and you’ll receive a viewing link by email on July 8, the day of the event:
Last December, I loved seeing thousands of you join us for a live watchalong of the film — asking questions in the comments and adding to the post-screening conversation.
It was such a success that the team decided to do one last free watchalong. We’ll also show you all an exclusive sneak peek of Inequality Media’s new film, which is coming out in September.
Remember: Next Wednesday, July 8, at 5:30 pm PT/ 8:30 pm ET. We’ll all watch together in real time, share some behind-the-scenes stories and commentary, and stay afterward for a live Q&A, followed by an exclusive preview of Elliot and Heather’s new film.
Sign up for the screening and you’ll receive a viewing link by email on July 8, the day of the event:
The watchalong is free. But if you’re able to make a donation to support our work, I hope you’ll consider doing so. Your support helps us continue sharing The Last Class with audiences around the country and helps power the work we’re doing.
One caveat: This really is a live event, and when it ends, the link expires. In other words, this is a one-time showing.
Hope to see you! July 8, 5:30 p.m. PT / 8:30 p.m. ET, and all zones between.
In one of the most notable upsets of the Democratic primaries so far, democratic socialist Melat Kiros, 29, yesterday won the nomination over incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette to represent Colorado’s hotly contested 1st Congressional District.
I expect to see more stories about how the Democratic Socialists of America are taking over the Democratic Party. In New York last week, nine of 10 candidates endorsed by the DSA won primaries for the state Legislature and Congress. All three democratic socialist insurgents Mayor Zohran Mamdani backed for Congress prevailed. Two of them defeated incumbents.
Democratic socialist elected officials now include U.S. representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib (both elected in 2018), New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani and Seattle mayor Katie Wilson (both elected in 2025). Democratic socialist Janeese Lewis George is set to follow as mayor of Washington, D.C.
In 2025, over 250 DSA members held elected public office across 40 states, with 90 percent of them elected after 2019.
Pundits eager to declare a new movement or sound the alarm about socialism are having a field day.
But they’re wrong.
I don’t mean to minimize the role of the DSA or the significance of democratic socialism. But that fact is, voters who have supported these candidates haven’t done so because they’ve been particularly attracted to the idea of democratic socialism. Most don’t even know what democratic socialism is.
In reality, voters have been attracted to vigorous young people who are committed to getting stuff done. Voters have had it with incumbents who have been in their jobs for decades. At a time of record inequalities of income, wealth, and opportunity — when billionaires are behind much of what our government is doing — voters want fighters who will get big corporate money out of our politics and go to the mat for average working people.
Colorado’s DeGette has held her seat for nearly 30 years. Kiros was born the same year DeGette was first elected to Congress.
Kiros is poised to become the first Gen Z woman elected to Congress. Her win in the solidly blue district that makes up most of Denver means Kiros is likely headed to Washington next year.
Kiros is a fighter who understands what’s worth fighting for and expresses it clearly. “The thing is, fighting Trump is just one piece of the problem. Trump is not the cause,” Kiros said during a debate earlier this month. “He’s a symptom of a system that is broken and has been broken for a really long time because our party has failed to understand the role that they need to take in getting money out of our politics.”
A former lawyer and Ph.D. candidate, Kiros easily presents herself as a politician for the working class. Her family immigrated to Denver from Ethiopia when she was a baby.
Kiros has never before run for elected office, but she won support from a range of voters with a message of fundamental reform of the American system.
Or consider Manny Rutinel, 31, a progressive Colorado state representative who on Tuesday defeated a moderate Democrat to win the primary election in Colorado’s most competitive swing district.
A Dominican American activist and lawyer with a significant social media following and a knack for fundraising, Rutinel isn’t a democratic socialist. He appealed to voters with his youth, energy, and multicultural biography in a suburban area north of Denver that’s nearly 40 percent Latino. He prevailed over Shannon Bird, a white moderate Democrat who had argued that she had broader appeal in the general election.
The district is one of Colorado’s ranching and agricultural hubs. It narrowly voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and for President Trump in 2024. It is one of just a handful of battleground House districts with a substantial Latino population.
Besides their youth and multicultural backgrounds, these young Democratic politicians are committed to making people’s lives better. New York’s Mamdani focused his mayoral campaign on what New Yorkers needed — affordable housing, childcare, and basic services like clearing sidewalks after a snowstorm.
Seattle’s Wilson, a self-described democratic socialist who won election without the endorsement of the DSA, rose to prominence for advocating affordable housing, increased taxes on large corporations, and workers’ rights.
In Washington, D.C., Lewis George, a city council member, ran on a platform of expanding childcare, education, and housing and revoking the district’s cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
“From the start of this campaign, we championed the principle that D.C. residents deserve a government that works,” she said in her victory speech. “Over time, failing public services eroded people’s faith in government as a force of good in their lives. As mayor, I will be relentlessly focused on delivering reliable public services to every D.C. neighborhood. These are not trivial issues. They are core government functions, and we need them to work.”
These new young Democrats have also won because they inspired armies of young activists to knock on doors and work the phones for them. They didn’t rely on big money; they relied on big excitement.
Two final things about them. Most are the children of immigrants, and they’re disproportionately female. They’re living illustrations of the diversity, equity, and inclusion America can foster, at its best. They’re the opposite of the white, male, Christian, nationalism that has overtaken the Republican Party.
At a time when Trump and his regime have cast a dark pall over America, a new generation of Democratic politicians is shining a bright light. The source of the energy and excitement they’re generating isn’t democratic socialism. It’s the emergence of the next America.
Today, the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s Day 1 executive order canceling the right to birthright citizenship. Good. That executive order declared that children born in the U.S. would not be considered citizens if their parents were living in the country illegally or were visiting the country on temporary visas.
The executive order never took effect. It was quickly blocked by multiple lower courts because it appeared to directly conflict with the 14th Amendment, which states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
The Trump regime appealed the lower-court rulings, contending that the 14th Amendment’s citizenship provision had been misunderstood for more than a century. The administration argued that the drafters of the amendment were focused on guaranteeing citizenship for the children of formerly enslaved people — and that the amendment was never intended to extend citizenship to the children of people who weren’t living in the country legally.
Trump and his solicitor general, who argued this case before the court, also said that narrowing birthright citizenship was necessary to prevent “birth tourism”— the practice of immigrants coming to the U.S. to give birth here and obtain citizenship for their child.
Trump has been vowing to try to change the law since entering politics in 2015, arguing the 14th Amendment was written specifically to enshrine the rights of freed slaves. His critics have countered that it was always designed to apply to the children of immigrants, too. An 1898 Supreme Court decision confirmed that U.S.-born children of immigrant parents are entitled to American citizenship.
Today, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that the deeply rooted understanding that virtually everyone born on American soil is automatically a U.S. citizen was enshrined in the Constitution with the passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868: “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community,” Roberts wrote. “The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to every free-born person in this land. We keep that promise today.”
In another era, this would have been a no-brainer. No constitutional lawyer I know thought the court would decide otherwise. The lower federal courts had consistently and unanimously ruled against Trump.
Had Trump won, it would have probably caused panic among recent immigrants and their families. Although Trump has insisted his policy would apply only to future births, it was far from clear that the logic of any win for Trump wouldn’t apply retroactively if a future president (JD Vance? perish the thought) wanted to go there.
What I find troubling is that the decision was 5 to 4 rather than unanimous or nearly so, as it should have been.
Only five of the nine justices ruled against Trump on constitutional grounds. Brett Kavanaugh dissented on statutory grounds; while agreeing that Trump’s executive order was unlawful, he argued that the court should have resolved the case under federal immigration law rather than the Constitution.
The court’s three most conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Samuel Alito — dissented. Thomas wrote for the group: “The Court adds to the sad history of the Fourteenth Amendment, which was designed and understood to secure equal rights for the freed blacks but has instead been repurposed for political projects that the Reconstruction Congress did not support.”
Pure and utter claptrap.
Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito are so far to the right of America that their views on this case and other matters should be presumed bonkers. Yet what’s particularly sobering is that Trump is only one justice away from having a Supreme Court majority that would have gone his way on this absurd reading of the 14th Amendment.
Clearly, the Supreme Court must be changed — either by expanding the number of justices or by invoking term limits on Supreme Court justices. The Constitution would permit both remedies.
Perhaps the best thing about today’s majority decision is that it’s a direct repudiation of Trump, who has long taken a personal interest in the issue. During his 2024 campaign, he made curtailing birthright citizenship a key element of his immigration platform.
When the high court heard arguments on the case in April, Trump took the unprecedented step of showing up in person for the hearing, making him the first sitting president ever to attend a Supreme Court argument.
For the court to so directly reject Trump’s position today is surely a humiliation for him. But then again, humiliation requires a capacity to feel shame, and he has repeatedly shown he has no shame.
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