There’s a reason “doom scrolling” has entered our vocabularies. Every day, the news is filled with incomprehensibly stupid and damaging activities of Trump and his collection of clowns, creeps, weirdos and incompetents; it’s easy to become fixated on all the chaos and destruction.
But there are encouraging signs that We the People are rapidly awakening from our civic slumber. Some examples, in no particular order:
A Grand Jury has refused to indict two Senators (including former astronaut Mark Kelly) and four Congresspersons who’d filmed a video in which they reminded members of the armed forces that they have a legal duty to refuse illegal orders. It’s an axiom in the legal community that prosecutors can get grand juries to indict a ham sandwich, but this recent–and entirely appropriate–result follows several others in which panels of ordinary American citizens have refused to go along with bogus charges lodged against people targeted by Trumpian pique.
Despite early incidents in which institutions of higher education have “bent the knee,” universities have begun pushing back. In Red Indiana, where the current President of Indiana University has cozied up to our MAGA governor and complied with the administration’s various assaults on academic freedom, the faculty has passed a resolution urging IU to remove the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, along with its Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies, from the university’s list of approved employers who are allowed to advertise jobs on the IU Events calendar.
The House of Representatives defied Trump for once, voting 217-214 against a rule that would have blocked members from voting on the president’s tariffs. The defeat means that members will be able to force up or down votes on the President’s insane, damaging global trade agenda. (The Senate had already voted against Trump’s tariffs with GOP senators siding with Democrats last year.)
ICE is leaving Minneapolis. Trump is steadily losing support on his signature issue of immigration. An NBC/SurveyMonkey poll found 49% of American adults strongly disapprove of the Trump administration’s handling of border security and immigration, compared with 34% who strongly disapproved in a similar poll last April.
An essay titled “Auspicious Omens and Excellent Insubordination” contains a lengthy list of other evidence that the resistance is making progress, and that an administration described as “weak, chaotic, and wildly unpopular” is continuing to do everything it can to make itself more so.
There are also the slow-moving but inexorable revelations from the Epstein files, which–in addition to a reported million mentions of Trump–have ensnared people like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and debunked Trump’s assertions that he hadn’t known about Epstein’s sexual crimes. As the essay suggests, the continuing dribble of releases, along with the obvious efforts to suppress information about “who is being protected (powerful men) and who is not (abused children)” keeps fanning the flames.
The unhinged and increasingly overt racism that led Trump to portray the Obamas as apes has generated a backlash even among Republicans. As the author notes, Trump fails to understand “that we live in a world where causes have effects.” In this case, one effect was that thousands of people praised the Obamas as gracious, dignified, and beautiful while accurately describing Trump as gross, demented and repulsive.
J.D. Vance continues to be booed–in Vermont, at the Olympics…Trump skipped the Super Bowl because his staff warned that he too would be booed. (And despite his dissing of Bad Bunny, the Super Bowl halftime show was the most widely watched in history.)
Republicans see a bloodbath coming in the midterms, which the Trumpists are already frantically trying delegitimize–a clear sign they don’t think they can win fairly. Democrats have overperformed in every special election held in 2025. Most recently, a Democrat who was outspent by twenty to one won a state senate election in Texas by 14 points–in a district Trump had won by 17 points–a 31-point shift. (A GOP operative was quoted saying, “We watered down red districts to steal blue ones, and now the electorate hates us and our turnout is collapsing.”)
High school students across the country are staging walkouts to protest ICE–and the audience at a wrestling match shouted “Fuck ICE” before the main event.
And authentic Christians have finally been showing up to oppose the psuedo-Christian nationalists. The Catholic church is speaking out for immigrants, and so are Episcopalians, Methodists, and the United Church of Christ– along with rabbis, imams, and Buddhist monks. Across the country, churches are becoming meeting places, training grounds, and organizing networks for immigrant solidarity work.
There’s much more. MAGA has lost more than Marjorie Taylor Greene. It’s lost We the (Real American) People.
Good to focus on what’s positive, Sheila. This is heartening and a welcome compilation of good news. Thank you
Thanks for this welcome news!
Despite all the facts showing his unpopularity, Trump and his coddled cranks lie obsessively every single day on social media. There are also lots of examples of MAGA splintering apart, which was an easy call. Egos and liars tend to collide in close proximity. LOL
The end result of all this good news is that Trump’s approval ratings are heading toward the teens and maybe single digits, yet the White House posted all false claims about their successes. As much as I’d like to say they are deluded, I am pretty sure they know the people want their necks. Did I mention MAGA was splintering? 😉
I need to break down Rubio’s speech because I heard he pissed off all of Europe this week. And, the best news of all, Shelia, which you failed to mention, Melania’s documentary was a massive flop across the country and overseas. It was more of a reality show of a brief segment of her life as a gold digger.
Now, as many of us have pointed out for a while now, how will these massive egos and narcissistic assholes deal with all these losses?
p.s. Sheila, do you really think Trump has ever felt the reality of cause and effect?
Here in Minnesota, I don’t think anyone is buying the story that the feds are leaving. They just cancelled millions in Public health grants for no reason but spite. I’d say a virtual war has been declared on our state.
I almost laughed this morning reading HCRs blog post today.
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Over all are the horrors of the Epstein files, in which Trump’s name appears so often observers have suggested it is the one place that could legitimately be rebranded with Trump’s name as the Trump-Epstein files.
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Great summary of rational, sane and energized people recovering from the shock of the “flood the zone with bullshit” directives from Steve Bannon, et. al. Even though he looks like the drunk uncle, he’s smart enough and aware enough to know that if the Republicans get defeated in Congress, he will probably go to jail … for any number of reasons. Trump is only peripherally aware, just enough to try to rig the election process.
Trump is a psychopath. His followers share aspects of that pathology too. At the judicial committee hearing last week she declared that Trump was the best president of all time. Maybe on Mars.
We shouldn’t, therefore, expect any reversals among the diseased acolytes that will follow MAGA and Trump down the sewer leading to oblivion, prison or worse. Maybe each of us on this blog should add one positive action per day since the media is also doom scrolling with the allusion that it sells air time and papers..
I must demur on one item in the happy list:
“IU to remove the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, along with its Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies, from the university’s list of approved employers who are allowed to advertise jobs on the IU Events calendar. ”
This is more ineffectual crap from the IU faculty. You don’t deny students access to organizations you don’t like. It’s a form of censorship that the faculty should oppose. How about denying General Mills on campus because they make sugary cereals? Those are the foolish acts which the ultra-right or left engage in and which a responsible faculty should not.
A good read, thanks.
But, as far as the GOP cheating, that seems to have become part of their DNA.
And, lying, of course, is part of Trump’s extra twisted DNA.
Hey Dan, what do you think about the Epstein Trump Ballroom?
I’d like to know “who” told Trump that the latest release of the Epstein Files “exonerated him” and “proved there was a conspiracy started about him by the Democrats?”
I think Sleepy Don has conversations with his imaginary friends he’s created in his mind. LOL