Author Archives: Sheila

Send This To Your Republican Senator Or Representative

Stuart Stevens is one of the “Never Trump” Republicans who established Lincoln Square Media. In a recent Substack newsletter, he traced the decline of the GOP into its current cult form, and described what he called “the great betrayal”–the squandering and shaming of the legacy left by former Republican defenders of freedom and liberty. Stevens bemoaned what he sees as MAGA’s dishonoring of the sacrifices made by the “greatest generation”–the soldiers who fought and died to defeat fascism in the second World War, of whom his father was one.

What struck me about this particular diatribe, however, wasn’t the understandable despair by a former partisan over the party’s abandonment of long-held principles. It was the following message, aimed directly at the spineless Republicans currently “serving” in the U.S. House and Senate.

As I read these four brief paragraphs, I became absolutely convinced that they hold a message that thousands of us should reproduce and send to the cowardly Republican Senators and Representatives who are refusing to do their jobs.

 We should never lose sight that Republicans can end the evil that is creeping over America at any time. No one is asking them to take a beach or charge a machine gun. No one is forcing them to support a president who Russia helped elect and now is delivering for Russia in ways that not even the most vodka-drenched FSB colonel dared hope. They can do what Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, Adam Kinzinger, and a handful of others have done. They stood up for what they knew was right, and lo and behold, they still walk the earth. They are not superhuman or Gods, just decent human beings. You could be the same.

Winston Churchill said of the Battle of Britain pilots, “Never was so much owed to so few.” To these cowardly Republicans, we can only say, “Never was so few to blame for so much.” The murdered innocents in Ukraine are your legacy. An America that votes in the U.N. with Russia and North Korea is your legacy. You go to bed and wake up, hoping that shame is an endangered species headed to extinction.

But you know you have failed the moral test of our time. You know the face you see in the mirror is a coward. You will be remembered without respect. You have allowed evil to sit at America’s table and feast on what is good and right about our country.

May God have mercy upon your souls. History will have none.

Read those paragraphs again. They distill the contempt so many of us feel for the political posturing and excuses that are offered by elected officials who are too timid to protect even their own legal and governing perquisites. Stevens isn’t taking aim at the Red State “true believers”–the racists, the White Christian Nationalists, the conspiracy theory buffoons. He isn’t expecting thoughtful  and considered action from the Marjorie Taylor Green/Jim Banks contingent, aka the “crazies.” He is describing the many Republicans who actually know that we have three branches of government, and that the Constitution has vested specific governmental powers to each of them.

He is reminding them that they have the legal and constitutional authority to stop the madness and destruction. All they have to do is use the powers that are constitutionally theirs. Congress could revoke the insane tariffs tomorrow. Congress could refuse to allow the Russian asset in the Oval Office to shame us, and continue to support Ukraine. Congress could begin investigations of the multiple corruptions that this lawless President doesn’t even try to hide (his solicitation of bribes via “sales” of his meme coins, to take just one example.)   

I don’t know whether Senator Jim Banks is a MAGA ideologue or simply corrupt in the Trump mold, but Indiana Senator Todd Young obviously understands how fraught America’s situation is. His discomfort with Trumpism, however, routinely dissipates when it’s time to cast a ballot–his vote to confirm the disastrous Pete Hegseth is only the most recent example.

Last week, some 300 Hoosiers rallied outside Young’s Indianapolis office. My sister participated. She has back problems and used a walker; the sign on that walker echoed Stuart Stevens’ message. It said “My spine isn’t perfect–but I have one.”

America could emerge from its precipitous national decline almost immediately-if Republicans in Congress regrew their spines. And it wouldn’t take all of them– a principled handful would be sufficient to put the brakes on Trump’s coup.

Stevens is right: God may or may not have mercy upon their souls, but history–and the rest of us– most definitely will not.

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Shades Of Scopes

Christian Nationalists have tried to discredit science ever since Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859. Most Americans know about the Scopes litigation–probably thanks to the movie, Inherit the Wind–but fewer know that Scopes (and science) lost at that Tennessee trial.

It’s comforting, albeit misleading, to think that respect for science, the scientific method and empirical evidence eventually won out.

It’s misleading because the forces antagonistic to scientific research and verifiable knowledge haven’t yielded to logic or evidence. Those forces are alive and well in the Trump administration, and they are rapidly eradicating America’s longstanding global dominance in the creation of human knowledge.

The New York Tmes recently took a “deep dive” into the Trump administration’s war on scientific inquiry. Noting the resignation of the head of the National Science Foundation–a man Trump appointed during his first term–after Trump cut more than 400 research awards from the NSF budget, the report noted the administration has also slashed budgets for the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and NASA, and has defunded thousands of researchers.

The explanations offered for this wholesale attack are typical Trump hogwash. “Cost-cutting,” “government efficiency,” and my favorite: “defending women from gender ideology extremism.” It appears that numerous grants were eliminated simply because their descriptions referenced aspects of reality rejected by MAGA morons– climate, diversity, disability, trans or women.

Economists tell us that every dollar spent on research has returned at least $5 to the economy.

Nevertheless, Trump’s administration has defunded studies on AIDS, pediatric cancer and solar physics. It has laid off meteorologists at the National Weather Service; pandemic-preparedness experts at the C.D.C.; and black-lung researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The Times reports that a next-generation space observatory, already built with $3.5 billion over a decade, awaits a launch that now may never happen.

Predictably, American scientists are evaluating their options. France and Canada are among several other countries courting American researchers. A recent poll found that more than 1,200 American scientists are considering working abroad.

What is even more frightening is the administration’s effort to count as “science” only “findings” that accord with the administration’s beliefs–and the National Science Foundation will no longer fund “research with the goal of combating ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation.’ Why? The administration says that efforts to correct lies and disseminate accurate data “could be used to infringe on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens.” And a Justice Department official accused prominent medical journals of political bias for not airing “competing viewpoints.”

I am not making this up.

The Atlantic has responded to this insanity with an article titled “This is Not How We Do Science. Ever.”

Since its first days, the new Trump administration has clearly shown where it thinks scientific attention should not be focused: It has attempted to censor federal scientific data, cut billions in government spending on research, and compromised care for some of the world’s most at-risk populations. Now, as the nation’s leaders have begun to encourage inquiry into specific areas, they are signaling that they’re willing not just to slash and burn research that challenges their political ideology but to replace it with shoddy studies designed to support their goals, under the guise of scientific legitimacy.

The article reports on several administration directives clearly intended to confirm Trump’s desired results.

This is consistent with everything Trump and his allies have revealed about their views on science since January: that it is not a means to better understand objective reality, but a political weapon that they must guard against, or deploy themselves. In recent months, Kennedy has accused the expert committee that counsels the CDC on its nationwide vaccine recommendations of being in the pocket of vaccine manufacturers; the administration has also fired from HHS several scientists who were prominent leaders in the COVID-19 response, including a few closely affiliated with Anthony Fauci, whom Trump has ridiculed as a “disaster” and an idiot and Desai derided as one of many “demonstrably fallible ‘experts.’” Last week, administration officials also redirected two federal websites, once used to share information on COVID-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines, to a page promoting the idea that the coronavirus pandemic began as a lab leak, rather than Fauci’s “preferred narrative that COVID-19 originated in nature.”

MAGA’s revolt against science is an important part of the GOP’s continuing rejection of the “reality-based” community.

A psychiatrist friend defines denial of reality as insanity. (See yesterday’s post…)

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There’s No Method To His Madness

The New Republic recently ran an essay titled “There is No Method to his Madness. He’s Simply Insane.” I couldn’t agree more.

The article began by noting that past heads of state have sometimes pretended irrationality in order to confuse opponents, but noted–confirming what any rational observer has already concluded–Trump is not among them. For one thing, he clearly lacks the intellectual capacity to devise such a strategy. Or any strategy.

It’s not just Trump’s unpredictable tariff policy that appears insane. His entire administration is defined by madness—in both senses. On Friday, he went on another incoherent rant on social media, claiming once that the 2020 election was stolen from him and rewriting history to blame all of our current problems, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on Joe Biden. In other Truth Social posts, he’s boasted about being a king and claimed that the “European Union was formed for the sole purpose of taking advantage of the United States.”

If these acts were merely confined to deranged posts, perhaps one could argue there’s “method in his madness.” After his rant on Friday, Trump gave a speech at the Justice Department wherein he kvetched about various imaginary enemies of the United States (which, coincidentally, are his personal enemies) and made clear that he expects the department to serve as an extension of his personal wrath. Similar delusions have led to the dismantling of USAID, a wasteful visit to Fort Knox to check if the gold had been stolen, and continual talk about annexing other countries.

The article goes on to detail further evidence that our would-be King has no (mental) clothes, despite his courtiers’ efforts to find method in the madness.

What makes the insanity so dangerous, however, isn’t simply Trump’s ignorance of governance and economics, but the venom that characterizes his approach to others, and the festering resentments that impel his actions. Trump is a limited intellect and damaged ego occupying a human body;  fears and jealousies and grievances–not strategies or principles–prompt his eruptions, and explain both his grandiose fantasies (comparing himself to Winston Churchill, annexing Canada) and his tacky decorating fetishes (gold toilets).

While it would be inaccurate to describe them as principles, there are a few long-standing grievances that predictably motivate Trump’s constant stream of illegal (and often ridiculous) Executive Orders. Our mad king thinks he is in a position to take revenge, not just over the legal system which (finally) was holding him to account, but over all those people who sneered at him over the years–those “elitists” with their intellectual and cultural bona fides, the businesspeople who made their fortunes without ripping off suppliers or hiding in bankruptcy court, the women who found his “charms” unpersuasive.

Politics gave Trump the adulation he wanted, but from people he clearly despises.

Those long-standing resentments explain so much: Trump’s war on a legal community defending rules he regularly broke–and his special animus for the lawyers who had the nerve to represent people antagonistic to him. His refusal to allow disclosure of his own GPA undoubtedly sheds some light on his efforts to destroy intellectual inquiry on the nation’s campuses. Both his own resentments and the need to pander to his MAGA cult help explain his efforts to turn academia into a mechanism for Right-wing propaganda.

As for the roots of his White Nationalism–his definition of “DEI” as discrimination against White men and his ferocious efforts to return women and minorities to subservience–I can only assume that he agrees with MAGA that his White skin is a sign that he is superior and that any effort to ensure fair treatment for women and minorities is an attack on that superiority. (Unfortunately, his entire administration demonstrates the folly of believing Whiteness denotes even minimal competence…)

Bottom line: the United States has a president who is ignorant, petulant and demonstrably insane. He is also, in all probability, a Russian asset. Our constitutional system of checks and balances is currently not working, because members of the GOP majorities in the House and Senate fear the mad king and are not living up to their oaths of office, and the Supreme Court’s majority is ethically compromised.

The remedy must come from We the People. And it begins by acknowledging the truth of that last paragraph.

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Poison Gas

I have repeatedly cited the observation by a noted civil libertarian to the effect that poison gas is a great weapon–until the wind shifts.

In case the clear meaning of that observation eludes anyone, it is a recognition that ignoring the rule of law in order to punish people you dislike is a very dangerous tactic, because when those disliked folks gain power–as they inevitably will– they can turn those same illegal tactics against you.

It is abundantly clear that Trump and his MAGA minions don’t understand the operation of due process guarantees. (Granted, Trump is embarrassingly ignorant of all civil liberties, and indeed, ignorant of how the world works.) That ignorance is shown by the increasing hysteria with which the administration keeps asserting that Abrego Garcia is “a bad dude,” and that bad dudes aren’t entitled to due process.

There is substantial evidence to rebut the administration’s accusations about Garcia, but their probity is totally irrelevant. Giving an accused individual due process requires that the government prove its allegations in a court of law. If Garcia is really a gang member or otherwise unfit to live among us, the state should be able to demonstrate that fact. A grant of due process doesn’t keep authorities from expelling bad guys–but it does require government to provide the evidence upon which they are painting an individual as someone who should be expelled from our shores.

If a mere accusation is poison gas sufficient to justify deportation, none of us is safe. The accusatory finger can be pointed at anyone, for any reason. That’s why Talking Points Memo–among many others–has  editorialized about the extreme importance of this case.

As best we can tell, Abrego Garcia was on the third deportation flight from Texas to El Salvador on March 15. The other two flights contained people deported under the Alien Enemies Act without any judicial review. The AEA deportations were the first to be challenged in court, which led to the big blow up in U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s court about whether the Trump administration had willfully violated his order blocking them.

It was in the midst of that legal battle that the case of Abrego Garcia’s mistaken deportation emerged, an error the Trump administration admitted, serving as the perfect signifier for why due process is so essential. If Abrego Garcia could be deported in error – and in violation of an existing order by an immigration judge – isn’t that precisely why the law offers procedural protections that all of the deportees that day were entitled to at some level?

TPM noted that the administration’s positions inside the courtroom have been at odds with its public statements. It  has gone from admitting the deportation was in error to the launch of “a full-scale propaganda campaign from the White House on down, sowing misinformation, inventing facts, smearing Abrego Garcia with falsehoods, and furiously trying to muddy the waters to obscure its own malfeasance.”

The editorial quoted Timothy Snyder, a noted scholar of tyranny:

The president defied a Supreme Court ruling to return a man who was mistakenly sent to a gulag in another country, celebrated the suffering of this innocent person, and spoke of sending Americans to foreign concentration camps.

This is the beginning of an American policy of state terror, and it has to be identified as such to be stopped.

Americans who have been following the news are aware that Garcia is only the most prominent example of extra-legal apprehensions and deportations, which have been accelerating under this lawless regime. This reality–among other Trump acts in defiance of the rule of law–has brought us to the current constitutional crisis, as the administration stonewalls and evades, and refuses to submit to court orders.

The Republicans in the House and Senate could end this crisis. Even if they failed to impeach the mad king, they could assert their powers under the Constitution and take back the authority that Trump has usurped–authority that is rightfully theirs. Their failure to do so–the cowardice preventing them from even publicly protesting Trump’s blatantly illegal, unconstitutional and immoral behaviors–is a betrayal of immense proportions. Assuming we emerge from the current abyss, these Republicans will go down in history as weaklings and traitors whose failure to honor their oaths is a repudiation of the values upon which this country was founded.

It will also be seen as an invitation to turn the poison gas in their direction when Democrats gain control. Of course, if that happens, we really will have lost the Founders’ America.

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NO NO NO

The Trump Administration may be the pre-eminent example of lunacy in government, but the current super-majority in Indiana’s legislature–aided and abetted by our MAGA Governor and his merry band of White Christian Nationalists–are no less impervious to logic, evidence and sound policy. 

A report from Indiana Public Media focuses on one example. It begins:

A measure meant to better align education in Indiana to the state’s workforce needs is headed to the governor’s desk. It received wide support from Senate lawmakers despite lingering concerns about its effect on colleges, universities and employers.

SB 448 requires the Commission for Higher Education to approve all degrees and programs offered by public colleges and universities every 10 years. It also says those schools must assess and consider their staffing needs when reviewing tenured professors.

Sen. Greg Taylor (D-Indianapolis) said he is concerned programs could be cut if they aren’t considered valuable to the state’s employment needs. Additionally, he expressed concern that requiring faculty tenure reviews to take specific staffing needs for approved degrees or programs into account could be detrimental to other areas of study.

“It can get really dangerous for us to start providing this type of, I don’t know, nose under the tent ideology,” he said.

Taylor has identified the two major flaws in this state over-reach. I’ve repeatedly posted about the first– lawmakers’ refusal to understand what education is, and why it is not job training. Our public schools and universities have two vitally important tasks:  giving the nation’s children and youth the intellectual tools and skills they will need, not just to negotiate the economic world they will inhabit, but the tools to lead richer, more fulfilled and considered lives; and equipping them with what I have termed “civic literacy”–enabling them to discharge the responsibilities of citizenship.

Education includes things like art, music, literature and philosophy. Presumably, those studies are unnecessary “frills” when the job of the schools is simply to produce worker bees. 

But SB 448 not only confuses education with job training, it mimics Trump’s efforts to dictate what can and cannot be taught in the nation’s universities, to control and micro-manage institutions of higher education and to “purge” those institutions of ideas with which our overlords disagree.

The American Association of Colleges and Universities has issued a response to these efforts. It began:

As leaders of America’s colleges, universities, and scholarly societies, we speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education. We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight. However, we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses.

The statement notes that the nation’s colleges and universities are diverse. There are “research universities and community colleges; comprehensive universities and liberal arts colleges; public institutions and private ones; freestanding and multi-site campuses.”  Different schools are designed for different students. In order for these institutions to function properly, they must have the

freedom to determine, on academic grounds, whom to admit and what is taught, how, and by whom. Our colleges and universities share a commitment to serve as centers of open inquiry where, in their pursuit of truth, faculty, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation.

I encourage you to click through and read the entire statement, which was signed by dozens of university presidents. I doubt it will move the culture warriors in Washington or the Indiana Statehouse, who shrink from “open inquiry” and want to turn our educational institutions into factories spitting out those obedient worker bees. These are limited individuals who view genuine intellectual engagement and inquiry with fear and disdain. 

During this session, Indiana’s terrible legislature has doubled down on its war on education. It has stolen even more critical funding from our public schools in order to increase a voucher program that all evidence shows does not improve educational outcomes, and is in reality a First Amendment “work-around” allowing public money to flow to religious schools. In a prior session, it passed a highly intrusive bill misleadingly described as an effort to protect “intellectual diversity” on state campuses–in reality, an effort to purge those campuses of perspectives of which our radical legislators disapprove.

Ironically, those Blue states governed by legislators who understand the difference between job training and education–and who support, rather than undermine, their universities’ missions–also have more robust economies.

Too bad Indiana’s “leaders” can’t connect those dots….

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