Stripping the Border of Agents Is Not the Way to Stop the Drug Trade: A Performance that Threatens the Reality

I was driving home listening to MSNOW. The Attorney General of Arizona, Kris Mayes, was talking with MSNOW newscaster Katy Tur about how DT’s policies were increasing the influx of fentanyl and human trafficking along our southern border. Even though I should be used to such disturbing information, I still get shocked by it.

 

Arizona is at the heart of the drug trade, said Mayes. Yet, DT has moved so many ICE and border patrol agents from the Sothern border to other parts of the nation to carry out cruel and possibly illegal raids and arrests that now border stations lie empty. One of the biggest fentanyl drug corridors into our nation runs on Arizona State Route 82, but it’s now unguarded. Yet, ICE raids in the north and elsewhere net many more carpenters, farm workers, even military veterans than criminals. Mayes said she asked AG Pam Bondi for 50 more agents for the southern border. Instead, Bondi took even more away. Meanwhile, the importation of fentanyl is up 10%. And who knows who’s gaining entry to our country.

 

Unless something is done, this situation will continue to get worse. Mayes commented that DT is apparently more interested in political theatre then in protecting us from fentanyl or other dangerous drugs, or dangerous criminals.

 

And while DT opens the southern border to drug traffickers, he pardons those who have already been tried and convicted in US courts. He gave a full pardon to “Cocaine Juan,”  the convicted former President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez. Hernandez, known for  bragging about stuffing “the drugs right up the noses of the gringos,” was convicted in 2024 of drug trafficking. He was responsible for helping import more than 400 tons of cocaine into the US, accepting bribes and protecting violent drug cartel leaders from prosecution. DT also commuted the sentence of Larry Hoover, the alleged founder of the Chicago-based Gangster Disciples street gang and Garnett Gibert Smith, a Baltimore drug kingpin. And the list goes on. This is incredible corruption and behavior way beyond irresponsible.

 

The same holds true with DT’s apparent race to war on Venezuela. He has not only destroyed small boats but ordered the blockade of the nation, seizing an oil tanker while claiming their oil is ours. Such a war might somehow serve DT’s personal interests but never serve the stated goal of stopping the drug trade or terrorist operations. Venezuela is only a minor player in the drug trade. According to a 2020 US DEA report, almost three quarters of the cocaine, for example, is trafficked through the Pacific and Mexico. Yet, DT says he’s stopping the drug trade by attacking boats in the Caribbean.

 

Nick Turse in The Intercept published a detailed article on this situation. 20 vessels in the Caribbean Sea were destroyed by Special Operations on DT’s orders. He’s responsible for the summary execution of about 90 people he deemed members of a Venezuelan narco-terrorist organization, yet no evidence has been presented, no legal processes engaged. This operation is a performance, an attempt to appear like he’s competently doing something when he’s actually undermining our nation’s standing and making the drug situation worse.

 

Turse’s article reveals DT has also verbally attacked political organizations and threatened members of Congress and the media with arrest or execution, for the sole crime of speaking out against him. DT called Democratic lawmakers seditious, traitors to be locked up or executed, for the offense of reminding members of the military they’re required by law to not obey illegal orders. DT tweeted, “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD!” In the past, he called for executions of the former chair of the joint Chiefs, Gen. Mark Miley, former Rep. Liz Cheney, and demonstrators protesting the killing of George Floyd….

 

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

Opening Doors in Time and Mind: The Bookstore Resistance

It was such a comforting moment. I was reading a book where the main character, a bookseller, was watching a customer reading the classic novel, The Count of Monte Cristo. The man was old and seated in a cushioned chair, at a table, sipping coffee. Books were scattered everywhere, not just on the wood shelves. There was mismatched artwork on the somewhat peeling walls. Lights hung from the ceiling creating areas of clarity amidst the soft darkness. Snow increasingly falling outside as the world turned dark. Yet inside, it was warm. A fire was going in the woodstove. Such a comforting moment.

 

The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown is part urban fantasy, part mystery and adventure, part romance⎼ and partly an examination of the psychological effects of pain and grief. Shortly after the book begins, the main character inherits a magical book that allows them to travel from any unlocked door to any other they can clearly imagine. There are all sorts of magic books in the story⎼ a book of shadows, for example, enabling the holder to disappear and become a mere shadow passing through any space. There’s a book of Illusions, one of luck, destruction, etc.

 

We never know what a book might reveal. They’re all around us or used to be. Like doors. Like places in the mind, or in our homes, schools, or workplace; memories, ignored bits of reality. Places we can step through to taste or digest; or to dwell fully and beautifully. Some with a hidden power.

 

When I was 18 or 19, I walked through an open door into the old Barnes & Noble Bookstore in the Village, on 8th Street & 6th Avenue, in downtown New York City. Back then, it was a smaller, more intimate store, not like the chain stores of today. I was just wandering the aisles, hoping to find a treasure, when I noticed a man and woman, maybe in their 70s, in the philosophy section in the back of the store. They were discussing the French activist and philosopher, J. P. Sartre and his concept of authenticity. They were both dressed in old but expensive clothing. The woman looked sort of regal, the man very professorial. They intrigued me but I respected their privacy and felt too embarrassed to get close enough to listen in on their conversation. So, I moved on.

 

I ran into them 2 more times. One time was at a lecture on Thoreau in an upper middle-class neighborhood on the West Side of Manhattan. Someone at the lecture told me they had escaped from the Nazis in Austria. I don’t know the truth of this, but supposedly she was from a noble family, and he was a professor, but I don’t remember in what field. And later, back downtown on 6th Avenue, I was surprised to see the woman alone on the street, begging for money, and aggressively berating those who pretended not to see her.

 

Another doorway, in a recent dream. I entered what at first appeared to be the home I grew up in, where my parents lived for almost 30 years after I moved out. But in the dream my parents had sold that house. The dream home was slightly different, and in bad shape. The bathroom was not working. I had to sleep on the couch in the living room, not my old bedroom.

 

And my parents were very old. Someone said my mom was near death. My dad was in only slightly better shape. All at once, several people I didn’t know, mostly younger, in their twenties or thirties, came out from the back of the house, talking loudly amongst themselves and crowding the living room. Outside, through a window, I saw someone park, get off a motorcycle, and walk away. One of the younger people claimed the bike had been stolen and now returned. My dad, who had never in his life been on a motorcycle let alone driven one, put on a leather jacket and helmet, climbed on the bike, and tore off. Maybe he had stepped through a doorway to a younger self, as he looked so much younger, with his back straighter than it had been in years…

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

 

Caring for the One and Only World We Inhabit: A Community of Hope and Action

When we’re attacked, or the material supports of our lives are threatened, we might turn inward. We might do this not to bring light to our inner life but to shield our whole being. To hide from the attacker. To distance us from fear and pain.

 

We all need to turn inward sometimes for this, for self-reflection, to be present, to find peace. And to put aside memories, hurts, and traumas. But a fear and threat festers when left for too long inside us. When the time is right, taking action to break that impulse to hide, and instead to reach out to others, to learn more and fight back feels vivifying. It enriches. It might also save our lives. When we act to right a wrong, act to diminish pain and suffering, this can strengthen us, change us.

 

Saturday, 10/18/25, was such an action. The NO KINGS RALLY was a day to remember. One of the largest single days of protest in American history. Not just because almost 7 million of us in 2,600 locations, cities, towns spoke out against this administration’s outright corruption, suppression of the law, brazen infliction of cruelty and inhumanity. But because we the people acted on this day in a manner in stark contrast to DT and his Congressional sycophants. We acted peacefully. We acted lawfully. We acted joyfully. We acted patriotically, to protect the nation from a would-be King, Dictator. We spoke the truth.

 

They lied and said we hated America. But the rally showed something very different: exorbitant love. For the constitution. For the laws that DT blatantly ignores and undermines. For many brown and black Americans and so many others that DT and his ICE agents are abusing, detaining, jailing, deporting. For this earth that makes our life possible. For each other. As reported, with a bit of irony, in the internet news source The Feed, nothing says we hate America more than defending the constitution and exercising first Amendment rights. “No Kings” is literally the founding principle of this nation.

 

My wife and I were a few minutes late. As we walked to the rally site there were so many people on the sidewalk with us, with signs, and going in the same direction as we were. A few were turning toward a main road to share their signs with motorists. When we arrived, we listened to speakers talk about abuses of power, military and para-military agents turned against their own fellow citizens⎼ acts many in the military say they did not sign up for and deplore.  We heard talks about the impacts of firing of thousands of government workers. Heard the facts about how DT’s tariffs, and destroying the lives of working immigrants are raising the costs of living for all of us.  Heard how his super awful legislation is undermining our health. Heard how money approved by Congress for MEDICAID, for medical and scientific research is now going to the super-rich.

 

The people around us were neighbors and friends. Coworkers. Former students. Shopkeepers. A carpenter who worked on our house. A doctor who treated us. People smiled at us. We enjoyed the clever creativity of the signs people held. We felt empathy for the hurt that so many here and elsewhere have experienced at the hands of DT’s administration of cruelty. This is our home.

 

DT inflicts fear on the nation, hate and vengeance against anyone who speaks against him.  He attempts to make us feel isolated and powerless, that we have no future but the nightmare he’s creating….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Ken Project.

If We don’t Exercise It, We Lose it: No Kings and Protecting Our Right to Speak Truthfully

Is there any end to DT ‘s malignant corruption? We have a government shutdown. It’s lasted almost three weeks. Instead of negotiating and talking with Democrats and Independents, he attacks. He tries to hold us, hold our nation hostage. He says, you won’t go along with my taking money from your healthcare, undermining Medicaid, Medicare, hospitals, health insurance for millions? Raising your cost of living? So, I’ll undermine your healthcare even more. I’ll fire government workers who look out for your (our) well-being.

 

For example, DT fired workers from the Health and Human Services and the Education Departments. He fired employees at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. He fired workers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who respond to infectious disease outbreaks, who help those with chronic diseases and pain, help those with awful injuries. He also fired workers from Homeland Security and Energy.

 

And he doesn’t hide his power-hungry intent. He says the lay-offs will be “Democrat-oriented,” meaning aimed at Democrats. This isn’t politics as usual, or politics as an occupation created to serve us, we the people. Instead, he’s attacking all of us, trying to manipulate the news so we blame Democrats. But it’s clear to see DT is the villain here. He’s even pressured the GOP Speaker, Mike Johnson, to refuse to bring the House of Representatives back to legislative session and work to end the shutdown. The House GOP aren’t even pretending to do their jobs.

 

When we can stand it, and we hear the latest news⎼ when we hear about this and other outrages, hear about a president invading American cities that elected Democrat mayors, hear about DT trying to punish us for opposing him by firing those who protect us from forest fires, help us recover from floods, research how to cure illnesses, and enforce the rule of law, or rule of the constitution. So many of us, millions, are fed up.

 

So, what can we do? Well, let’s start with the October 18 No Kings rally. March. Speak. Join others. Some think marches do nothing. But they get us energized for more targeted actions later. They connect us, help wipe out a sense of isolation. Get us ready to first protect and then work to get out the vote in 2026. Assert our commitment that there be No Kings in this nation! No dictators.

 

And this rally is scaring DT and his enablers in the GOP, because it gets right at the heart of what we the people are struggling for and he wants to stop⎼ our right to speak freely, our right to be heard and for our lives to be valued. Our right to speak the truth. Our right to mobilize the vote. DT is trying to criminalize dissent and the truth. This is clear in so many ways, like his pressuring networks to cancel Stephen Colbet and Jimmy Kimmel. And then there’s his investigations and indictments against the DOJ officials, former members of his cabinet, prosecutors, politicians, etc. who spoke out against or prosecuted him for his crimes:  Letisha James, Jack Smith, James Comey, John Bolton, Adam Schiff, Mayor Ras Baraka,  etc.

 

The Brennan Center for Justice said that DT “authorizes punishments for even tenuous connections to speech he doesn’t like….

 

*To read the whole article, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

Feeling Stuck in Someone Else’s Nightmare: The Dangers of a Would-Be Leader at War with Himself, and Us

Lately, I often feel like I’m stuck in DT’s mind and can’t find a way out. It’s horrifyingly unpleasant, a daytime nightmare. Then I step back and breathe, momentarily at peace again.

 

We all create a world in our mind. Our world. Each person’s perception is slightly different from anyone else’s⎼ the depth of color, what we focus on and ignore, what we listen to and hear, what we respond to or bury. What a scene calls to in our memory.

 

We all, to varying degrees, shape the physical and social world around us to fit our way of perceiving it. In a way, whatever we see is us. We perceive and experience what our senses and brain make possible for us to sense.  We never see or hear exactly what another person sees or hears; or what a dog or a bat sees and hears.

 

And the moment-by-moment play-by-play that most of us hear in our minds is unique to us yet shares so much with the experience of others. But we can learn to step away from the recording. We can enjoy and be fascinated by, maybe even love, what eludes our play-by-play; we can welcome what is bigger or other than what we’ve ever perceived before.

 

But not DT. He seems to be one of the very few who feel they must control, manipulate, fabricate everyone and everything until other people only walk, talk, and appear as they would dress them. Only a very few feel they can’t feel secure, maybe can’t breathe unless there’s no one or nothing but themselves in their world shaping it. They’re just too ignorant about controlling themselves they try to make up for it by controlling others.

 

For example, look at DT’s response to the killing of Charlie Kirk. In a way, this murder was both awful and a perfect opportunity for him and his sycophants. It provided a chance to fertilize the delusion, hate, and division they’ve been growing for years, for lying about and demonizing “the left,” which in their definition is anyone who opposes their lust to turn this nation into a racist dictatorship they control.

 

Charlie Kirk was an outspoken conservative activist. Oliver Willis, writing for Daily Kos, said it seems many have been forgotten that he was also “a bigot, misogynist, and a racist who regularly excused the very sort of gun violence that ended his life.” Kirk said, in 2023, “It’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment.” Did he mean to excuse 47,000 killed by guns in 2023 alone? How about 27 killed in 2012 in Sandy Hook Elementary School or 19 killed in Robb Elementary School in 2022? What about 47 school shootings so far this year?

 

Kirk’s killer, Tyler Robinson, comes from a Republican, Mormon, church-going family. He has no criminal record. He turned himself in to police after being encouraged to do so by his parents and a retired police officer who knew his family through their church. He even took responsibility for the vile murder on his social media platform, saying “im sorry for all of this.” He was dating his roommate, a transgender person, and the revelation of this relationship set up a tsunami of speculations, lies, and distortions led by DT himself.

 

Instead of using this awful event to bring people together in the face of violent death, DT used it to manipulate a violent reaction against Democrats, LGBTQ+, immigrants, and his opponents. “The radicals on the right are radical because they don’t want to see crime…” he said. This ignores the fact that for the last 40 years especially, most politically motivated violence came from the right. “The radicals on the left are the problem – they want men in in women’s sports, they want transgender for everyone, they want open borders…”

 

He said…

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

When We Turn Reality into Myth: Supposed Mythical Beings Now Walk the Streets and Stop to Stare Us in the Face

In the past, it seemed that the mythical meanings of events were more subtle and hidden, but no more. They walk the streets with us and often stop to stare us in the face. Myth can mean a traditional, sacred, or universal story, a story of heroes and heroines, creator beings and destroyers⎼ a story revealing a more intuitive way of viewing life, an invisible realm that parallels our usual one. And it can also mean an untruth or false belief.

 

And today, our president illustrates both meanings. He has taken lies, corruption, a lust for power and vindictiveness against opponents to such historic levels he has created for himself an image of a being larger than human. Many recognize his behavior as that of a wannabe deity, a destroyer being walking the halls of our capital. But for too many others who follow him blindly, he’s an angel of vengeance.

 

But instead of this mythical being living only in story and legend, he’s very human and all too real. And what we, the rest of us, are called to do can feel like something only a hero could accomplish. But usually we don’t feel heroic; we feel like ordinary beings facing a reality that is extraordinarily unbelievable, frightening, and despicable.

 

For example, the DT administration is planning to destroy or abandon satellites that collect information about pollution and carbon build up in the atmosphere, as well as terminate the collection of weather data that collects vital information on hurricanes.

 

And why such enmity for something as basic as weather information? Why terminate the satellites unless the goal is to end scientific research into⎼ and proof of⎼ human-caused climate change? He’s blocking the availability of information that can be used to protect the environment and sustain human life on this planet. And instead, he’s empowering private entities and corporations to abuse the environment our lives depend on.

 

Politico reports that DT has stopped information from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program from being distributed to users. This includes data on hurricanes that has been crucial in protecting people who live on the coast from dangerous weather conditions. Weather collection has greatly improved since Katrina, but DT’s actions can put that at risk, and put lives at risk. Will free weather reports and all regular weather satellites be destroyed next?

 

When I was teaching high school, students wanted me to not use the word ignorance. They disliked anything that sounded like bullying, abuse, being unfair; and calling someone ignorant can do just that. And I loved that concern by students. But ignorance can also serve a powerful descriptive purpose. The root ig means not, opposite of. And nore comes from the Latin gnarus, meaning aware or to know. Ignorance is not knowing, not-seeing what’s right there to see and know. It has a connotation of willful not-knowing.

 

In the past, ignorance was considered a detriment, even dangerous for a politician. Now, we have a president working to create a reign of ignorance, particularly about who he is. He’s pushing ignorance and greed over accurate knowledge and favoring the advancement of a few wealthy and politically powerful individuals over protecting the health and safety of all of us on this planet.

 

Unbelievably, instead of protecting our health, he’s directly undermining it….

 

*To read the whole piece, please go to The Good Men Project.

We’re All Both Teachers and Leaders: Self-Governance Means More Than Voting Biannually

I recently saw Robert Reich’s film, The Last Class, and was totally engaged throughout the 72 minutes I was in the theatre. Part of this was because the film talked about issues at the center of my life now and in the past, on education, retirement, and aging, on equality, democracy, and freedom. He asked questions that reached right inside my mind and heart. Less than a year ago we had an election where only 34% of voters thought democracy was the primary concern. And although many recognized DT as a threat to democracy, how many of us truly believed he would immediately act to strip our constitutional rights and protections from us?

 

Reich asked, what is democracy? We talk about democracy as self-governance. But what does it mean to govern ourselves? Is self-governance just that we as a people, not some other nation, choose the person who leads us?

 

He asked, “who are the teachers,” and “who are the leaders?” Or maybe who will be the teachers and leaders? Who will awaken generations to the necessity to stand up for others, for equality, for our environment, for our right to an honest and evocative public education? And who will the leaders be? Especially, who will lead us with courage, sincerity, and compassion? We assume leaders need to have the backing of formal institutions. But Reich pointed out that some of the most striking and powerful had no formal position. Think of Mahatma Gandhi, and Rev. Martin Luther King.

 

In a democracy, all of us play both roles. We’re teachers not just in the classroom and in the home, but in the streets, the workplace, the playground. We teach by the example of our actions and character. And we also lead by example, as well as through what and how we speak, what we do and how we do it.

 

To live in a democracy is a demanding endeavor. It requires that “we the people” take responsibility for what the government does in our name and supposedly in our interest. In 5th Century Athens, possibly the first democracy, all citizens (which only included free men) were legally required to participate in government decision-making and could be fined if they did not. But it has taken me a good part of my life and DT’s threats to the nation to realize just how demanding it should be. For many years, too many of us took democracy for granted. We were selfish and didn’t want to take time from our personal lives to give to the collective. When I was younger, many of us thought of the government as a foreign body we had to resist. We didn’t realize how much we could lose by non-participation.

 

Thomas Jefferson said, “A well informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny.” Democracy and self-government require we treat our life as citizens as a sort of continuing education or practice, and government as an extension of ourselves, not just a biannual obligation. Self-governance means governing our voices, our votes, our actions, our thoughts, to deeply and comprehensively understand our world. And doing this as a practice means we do it kindly, mindfully aware of how governing fits in the totality of our lives. This is too easily forgotten. And DT, in his own despicable way, is doing all he can to undermine any belief that government is us and exists to serve and protect us.

 

Maybe this is why some people voted for a president who said he’d be a ruler more than a leader; a dictator, who promised to take our voice, our formal power away from any of us who might speak out against him….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

When we Run Too Long from the Truth, We Become Imprisoned by Our Attempt to Escape: The War on Truth

How long can anyone actively ignore the truth before the truth comes back at them? Certainly, anyone who was or is being abused and traumatized carries an extremely difficult reality as a burden, and need compassion and support to face it. But for those who want revenge, who strike out to disappear not only a truth they didn’t like yet heard spoken, but the person who voiced it⎼ there’s something very wrong. Attacking someone because they say something that opposes their way of thinking is simply wrong. Eventually, the reality must break through. Like in a dream, if we run from a nightmare image it pursues us even more vehemently; running from the truth can imprisons us.

 

This is DT. I don’t know if he’s just emotionally incapable of acknowledging any reality other than one he’s fashioned; or if he’s so unstable, so on edge he gets vindictive if he’s challenged. Or maybe he just uses edginess as a strategy to frighten others into giving him what he wants. No matter what, his power and actions have been scary and dangerous for so many of us.

 

Even before first taking office in 2017, he showed a repugnance for speaking, perceiving, or even allowing the truth to be spoken in his presence. The number of distortions and lies he’s uttered is incredible. And he’s attacked, spread ridiculous lies and dangerous threats against those who oppose or speak against him, so much so that now no one in the GOP will reign him in. Many of those who follow him believe he’s the very voice of truth.

 

But if no one will challenge a would-be emperor, how will he know he’s naked? The case of the Epstein Files might be one step in the truth catching him. DT continuously fueled conspiracy theories about prominent people, mostly Democrats, using Jeffrey Epstein’s services to engage in sex crimes with minors. DT promised his supporters he would release the “Epstein client list.” He promised prosecutions, to name names and reveal evidence. He promised transparency. Instead, he had the DOJ redact his name from Epstein files.

 

And for his supporters, the issue of stopping child sexual abuse and sex trafficking is deeply important and emotional; they believed DT would champion their concerns and expose the crimes. Why they would expect a person convicted of sexual abuse with a long history of twisting the truth to honestly champion their call for honesty and transparency is beyond me; but this is what occurred.

 

What will happen when the reality of DT’s actions concerning Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s co-predator, hits more people? Maxwell is a convicted sex trafficker, who not only recruited young girls for commercial sex but participated in their abuse, and constantly lied about it. DT had Todd Blanche talk with her instead of her victims, and then ordered her moved to a low security, resort prison. What deals did he work out with her in terms of possible future testimony?

 

So now, DT is in trouble. His own supporters can’t believe him when he and his DOJ say there is no list, or the Democrats created the list, or the issue is not worth his time⎼ and those who waste his time pushing for release of the records he promised to reveal are “weaklings,” “idiots.”

 

DT is at war with truth and with reality itself. He’s at war with anyone who reveals facts or speaks truths or shares useful information.

 

He’s at war with any news media that reveals truths, reveals the reality that opposes his fiction….

 

*To read the whole piece, please click on this link to The Good Men Project.

Can We Utilize Fear Instead of Fearing It? – When It’s So Real It Feels Unreal

This time in history we’re going through is not only scary and disturbing, but so difficult to understand and accept as real. Part of that difficulty comes from the almost all-pervasive reach of the threat. Part of it comes from wanting so much to know what will happen⎼ want to know “we will be all right” ⎼ but we’re in a different universe from knowing that. Part of it comes from perceiving that so much we value, that we feel is crucial to our lives is being taken away step by step. And this is so real it feels unreal.

 

Just last week, DT threatened to withhold support for or attack lawmakers who go against his wish to wipe out the independent free press in this country, including defunding NPR and PBS. And then his sycophants in Congress defunded NPR and PBS.

 

He sued the Wall Street Journal for billions for publishing a letter purportedly from DT to Jeffrey Epstein that included a lewd drawing, and apparently providing evidence that DT and Epstein were not just casual acquaintances.

 

Stephen Colbert, who was often critical of the president in his monologues, saw his contract for his late-night show terminated by CBS. This looks suspiciously like CBS acting in fear of being attacked by DT. As Steven Harper, in Common Dreams asked, was Colbert’s termination part of an implicit or explicit deal to get Federal Communications Commission approval for a merger between Paramount (parent company of CBS) and Skydance Media?

 

And was the termination of Colbert’s contract a continuation of Paramounmt’s bowing down to DT that they started earlier in the year, when they agreed to pay the President $16 million to settle a suit that he had almost no chance of winning? The suit was not just frivolous but a direct attack by DT on CBS for daring to share, during the election, an interview with DT’s opponent, Kamala Harris.

 

And these are just a small sampling of his attacks on the press. He threatened legal action against CNN for reporting on an app that warns people when ICE agents are nearby. He threatened Disney, which owns ABC News, with a suit because George Stephanopoulos, a top news anchor, shared a description of the president’s assault on writer E. Jean Carroll⎼ and Disney capitulated, paid $16 million to DT, despite the fact DT was found guilty by a court, for this case of sexual abuse.

 

And on and on. DT is quickly moving to secure the power of a dictator. He’s trying to rip away our right to free speech and to eliminate all the vehicles we could use to exercise that right. Back in 2017, during his first administration, he received criticism for calling the media, the free press, the “enemy of the people.” Now, he’s straight out attacking any media or anyone that shares views other than his own. He’s doing anything he can to shut it, or us, up.

 

We don’t know what will come of this. We don’t know if enough people will protest, or enough politicians will say “we’ve had it with him.” And then there’s the Jeffrey Epstein rebellion against DT.

 

There’s a large segment of MAGA supporters who voted for DT because he promised to reveal a list complied by Jeffrey Epstein of prominent men who utilized Epstein’s connections to engage in child sexual predation. And now DT’s saying the opposite⎼ saying, there was no list. There is nothing there. And any of you that waste my time on this are weaklings, stupid people. Will the Jeffrey Epstein rebellion against DT’s refusal to come clean build in strength and undermine his power base?

 

DT has also been showing increasing signs of cognitive decline, although there have been warnings of him being reality-challenged for years….

 

*To read the whole article, please go to The Good Men Project.

DT Has One Great Ability, to Manipulate and Destroy: If He Had Set Out to Purposely Hurt Our Nation, His Actions Couldn’t Be More Destructive

In 1919, at the closing edge of the first world war, and when the waves of the flu pandemic were beginning to spread and kill millions, the poet William Butler Yeats wrote: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the land…” A time of political, social, and moral breakdown seemed at hand. The old values, old ways of thinking, were dying.

 

And today, we’re clearly facing our own time of pandemics, political, social, and moral breakdown, of old ways, maybe once reliable ways of understanding the world being ripped from us, plunging us into depths of unknowing.

 

Judd Legum wrote an article called “Making Measles Great Again.” In it he described how DT and his health secretary, Robert Kennedy, Jr, instead of making our nation great are making the measles threat great. They’re making us greatly more vulnerable to future pandemics.

 

Measles is extremely contagious. About 92% of unvaccinated people exposed to it get infected. But by the year 2000, the WHO declared the disease eradicated in the US, due to an extensive vaccination program. In 2000, there were 86 cases reported in the US. Halfway through 2025, there were already 1274 cases, 155 hospitalizations, and 3 deaths, marking the first time in a decade with a death from the illness.

 

And the cause? Increasing distrust of science itself, of reliable information. People like RFK, Jr. spreading misinformation. Despite the fact that almost all the spread of the illness is amongst the unvaccinated, RFK claimed that the vaccine caused the deaths, the illness.

 

RFK is doing the same with the deadly bird flu, saying we should let it run wild, while cancelling research into vaccines and other methods of ending its spread. The magazine Science published an article from virologists, veterinarians, and health safety experts on the inanity of this approach: “Essentially, the longer you allow a virus that has shown to be effective in infecting multiple hosts survive in an environment, the greater the chance you give it to spread, to mutate, and to try its luck at adaptation,”  said Erin Sorrell, a virologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “Worst case scenario, the virus adapts and expands its host range to become transmissible in humans … Now we have a pandemic.”

 

Undermining public health institutions is one deadly way to unravel the core of a nation and “loose the blood-dimmed tide,”  and “mere anarchy upon the world.” DT’s big beautiful/ugly bill passed just a week ago could undermine the core program that keeps our hospitals and healthcare system functioning. Although the worst effects of the bill were purposefully delayed until after the 2026 midterms, the bill could kick up to 16 million people off MEDICAID and health insurance. Yet DT and his GOP continue to lie about or try to distort how devastating these effects could be.

 

In Texas, at least 109 people have died, 173 remain missing due to the extreme floods. Concerns have arisen that cuts by DOGE in the Weather Service, and the GOP assault on climate science might have contributed to the disastrous situation there. According to Jake Johnson, writing for Common Dreams, “Though local National Weather Service (NWS) forecasters did issue warnings in the lead-up to Friday’s flooding—which killed at least 82 people, including dozens of children—key roles were reportedly vacant ahead of the downpour, prompting scrutiny of the Trump administration’s mass firings and budget cuts, in addition to years of neglect and failures by Republicans at the state level.”

 

It’s unclear how much staffing shortages at the NWS undermined the efficacy of the response, of warnings and preparations by officials in Texas. However, it’s certainly clear that climate warming is making such events more common and fearsome. What the DT administration and the GOP are doing will only assure that such tragedies continue to occur, even grow in frequency, by undermining research into climate science and by hiding information needed to mitigate the harmful effects of climate instability. The Big Ugly bill terminates many federal investments into alternative wind and solar energy thusly increasing the threat of carbon pollution and climate warming.

 

DT even plans to cut FEMA and turn disaster response to states or run the federal responses right out of the White House. Is this another way to enforce obedience to him, as he’s done in the past, by withholding aid to states that do not bend a knee to him?….

 

*To read the whole post, please go to The Good Men Project.