Tag Archives: Todd Young

When Cowards Are The Guardrails

I know it can be dangerous to draw large-scale conclusions from personal, anecdotal experiences, but I think it can also be misleading to ignore what those experiences may signal.

As readers of this blog know, I spent some 35 of my adult years as a Republican, and–as the saying goes–I didn’t leave the party, the party left me. (These days, I wonder whether my political allegiance “back then” was based on a flawed understanding of what that political party really stood for, or whether, as Stuart Stevens has written, it was all a lie. In any event, that party no longer exists.)

There are, of course, the high-level “Never Trumpers” who–like Stevens– have shared their horror at the current MAGA fascism of the once “Grand Old Party.” As he recently wrote, “as someone who worked in five presidential elections and helped Republican governors and Senators in over half the country, my conclusion is that what we [Republicans] called values turned out to be mere marketing slogans.”

After a diatribe about the embarrassing recent “summit” with Putin, Stevens took out after the cowardice of Congressional Republicans.

Like every turning point in the ongoing Trump humiliation of Republican leaders, no Republican has stood up to defend American dignity and Decency. In February 2025, the Republican Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Roger Wicker, said on CNN: “Putin is a war criminal who should be in jail for the rest of his life, if not executed.” He’s right, of course, but what has Roger Wicker said publicly since the president he campaigned for invited the mass murderer to American soil? Not a word.

The devastation being wreaked by an ignorant and corrupt madman simply would not be possible without either the profoundly unAmerican acquiescence or the despicable cowardice of elected Republicans, as the Never-Trump former Republicans are right to remind us.

But it isn’t just high-level dissidents who have come to that recognition.

Closer to home, I’ve been incredibly impressed by my own sister’s activism–an activism I would not have anticipated “back in the day” when we were both young housewives and occasional precinct workers. (An artist, she’d help the local GOP when elections rolled around, and she always voted, but otherwise she was politically inactive.) These days, she and my brother-in-law (formerly considered the family’s most politically conservative member) have attended multiple protests, written and called elected officials, and otherwise made their displeasure with MAGA very visible.

My sister has been especially critical of Indiana Senator Todd Young, who has replied to her messages with unresponsive form letters and absented himself when she and other constituents visited his office. Her most recent missive to Young  was succinct and entirely appropriate. She wrote:

I just wanted to let you know that I will always hold you personally responsible for all the deaths and suffering caused by the ignorant, incompetent, venal candidates you confirmed for vital positions in this administration. You knew better, but you were too cowardly to stand up for your constituents and your country. Please don’t insult me by responding to this message with one of your canned replies.

To which I say: Bravo!

It’s one thing when Stuart Stevens and other high-profile Republicans reject what the party has become. When the GOP loses people like my sister and brother-in-law–informed citizens who are anything but rabid leftists, citizens who simply care deeply about this country and are unwilling to stay silent, unwilling to “go along to get along”–I believe it’s a sign that the tide is turning.

Perhaps even in Indiana…

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More Insanity In The “Big Beautiful Bill”

When a piece of legislation is over 900 pages long, it shouldn’t surprise us to discover all kinds of “hidden” provisions that went unread and undiscovered even by the people elected to read and understand what they’re passing. (That includes Trump, of course–a man who evidently can’t read and quite clearly doesn’t understand anything beyond his own childish needs and impulses. Media sources have reported on his meeting with Republican legislators, during which he advised them not to touch Medicaid– totally unaware of what was in his “Beautiful” bill…)

Media outlets have varied widely in the adequacy of their coverage. Most have focused on the major elements of this abysmal legislation: the three trillion dollars plus it will add to the nation’s deficit, the largesse to plutocrats “paid for” by robbing millions of low and middle-income Americans of health care and food stamps, the gargantuan sums allocated to the creation of what can only be described as a Trump administration version of the Schutzstaffel, Hitler’s notorious SS.

Those elements are, admittedly, both the most prominent and most terrifying aspects of the bill, but the American Prospect recently highlighted ten lesser-known provisions that ranged from stupid to cruel.

File this one under “stupid.” The bill forces the states to shoulder more of the costs of the SNAP program. But when Lisa Murkowski negotiated a two-year exemption from cost-sharing for Alaska, the language of that provision exempted all states with an “erroneous payment rate” above 13.3 percent– language operating to exempt not just Alaska, but states with the ten highest error rates–and inadvertently incentivizing other states to increase waste and fraud in their programs.

The bill eliminates the $200 tax on gun silencers. Words fail.

Section 70309 allows municipalities to issue tax-exempt bonds to build spaceports. (I have no clue. Perhaps we’re closer to space travel that I thought?)

MAGA’s love of fossil fuels prompted a provision–inserted by Oklahoma’s Republican Senator Lankford– that eliminated taxes on oil drillers. The bill “includes an exemption for domestic oil and gas companies from the corporate alternative minimum tax, as long as they have intangible drilling and development costs.” Oil companies have lobbied consistently for this nice little loophole. (Climate change? Nah…just another scam like vaccinations…)

And speaking of the environment, the bill not only eviscerates President Biden’s climate program, it also provides vast subsidies to coal producers. As the article reports,

At least four million acres of federal land will be opened up to coal leasing, and the royalty rate will be cut from 12.5 percent to 8 percent. Incentivizing coal—the worst fossil fuel for the climate and also particulate pollution—in any way is bad, but Republicans are also literally subsidizing foreign steel companies in places like China, India, and Brazil, by making metallurgical coal eligible for “critical mineral” subsidies through 2030. This coal, which is used in blast furnaces to create steel, is mostly exported to poorer countries with fewer air pollution regulations. Sure enough, the coal doesn’t even have to be used domestically to get the subsidy.

Umn…how, exactly, does this make America great?

There’s much more: a $40 million appropriation to the National Endowment for the Humanities to build statues for a “Garden of Heroes” in Washington, D.C. (We don’t have money to feed children, but we do have money to build a “blood and soil” monument…); removal of limits on the ability of folks with pass-through income (think law partners or hedge fund managers), to take unlimited SALT deductions, giving rich people “yet another legal tax avoidance scheme, worth between $35 and $40 billion over the next decade.”

As policy analysts pore over the 900+ pages of this monstrosity, they will undoubtedly find more examples of pork for donors and lobbyists, funded by vicious cuts to programs for the needy. Meanwhile, the propaganda machine rolls on, with Republicans insisting that Medicaid recipients–the vast majority of whom are children, disabled and elderly–just need to get jobs. (As one FB response asked, “please send me a list of jobs that are available for Alzheimer patients.”) 92% of the rest already do have jobs.

Indiana’s two senators voted for this obscenity. Senator Jim Banks is a White Christian Nationalist and a fervent member of the MAGA cult; his vote was expected. Senator Todd Young, who might have been an effective lawmaker in a different party or time, and who clearly knows better, issued a statement that is gobsmacking in its dishonesty:

“The One Big Beautiful Bill Act will deliver the largest tax cut in history for working and middle-class Hoosiers, expand the child tax credit, spur new economic growth and job creation, and advance President Trump’s agenda.”

I don’t know how Senator Young sleeps at night….

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An Excellent Open Plea

My sister was one of those Hoosiers who once held out hope that Indiana’s Senator Todd Young would grow a spine. After all–unlike Senator Jim Banks–he appears to have a working brain and at least a dim understanding of the current constitutional crisis. But after several attempts to communicate with him, she concluded direct messaging was useless–that he is simply more concerned with retaining his seat in the Senate than in fulfilling his constitutional duties or protecting the common good. Frustrated, she has written an “open letter” to him, and sent it to local media outlets.
I don’t know whether those media outlets will print it, but today I am reproducing–and enthusiastically endorsing– it.
______________
Senator Young,
I am one of the many constituents who have written, phoned, and/or visited your office, and given the non-responsive form letters I’ve received in return, I seriously doubt if any of my concerns have been heard, so I am writing this open letter in hopes that someone will share it with you. (I have not made a similar effort to communicate with Senator Banks, who is clearly a lost cause, but due to previous actions and remarks on your part, I had hoped you might be more independent, more open to reason – thus your recent behavior has disappointed me greatly.)
You were a Marine. You are currently a member of Congress. In both of those capacities, you swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. You did not swear allegiance to a person or a party, but to our founding document – to a set of principles. You continue to violate that oath in multiple ways.
In spite of his obvious gross incompetence and lack of qualifications for the job, you voted to confirm Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, putting the lives of service members and the national security of our country at risk. You put your loyalty to a cult leader ahead of concern for the health of your constituents by confirming another grossly unqualified candidate – a conspiracy theorist without any scientific background – as head of the HHS. You ignored questions about the dependability of Tulsi Gabbard to guard sensitive information necessary to the safety of our country. These are just three of the many example of times you have shirked your duty.
The United States is in a crisis, one that could be somewhat mitigated if only a few Republicans would put country before party and the good of the people before their own self-interest – if they would remember their oath to uphold the Constitution and take back the power it grants them and which they have so cravenly ceded to a wannabe dictator.
You could help negate Trump’s executive orders, most of which are grossly illegal. You could help counter the horrific consequences of Elon Musk’s attempts to destroy government agencies that provide critical services to your constituents. (And whose actions have, coincidentally, put an end to several of those agencies’ investigations into his very questionable business dealings.) How does cutting off funding for cancer research or Alzheimer’s disease benefit the residents of Indiana? How will gutting Education and the Arts help citizens of this (already under-educated) state? Tell me how your own children will benefit from leaving them an environment with less breathable air, drinkable water, and safe food. How do you think women and other marginalized groups in Indiana feel about being returned to second class citizenship, and how do citizens on the edge of retirement—many of them Hoosiers who have struggled for years to put food on their tables– feel about the GOP’s vicious proposed cuts to Social Security and Medicaid?.
In my almost 78 years (several of which I spent as a member of a Republican Party that no longer exists), I have never seen an administration that is so brazenly corrupt. History will record that every member of Congress who failed to protest this corruption, who cravenly enabled our would-be autocrat, was complicit in that corruption.
It’s probably just as well that former principled Republicans such as William Ruckelshaus, Dick Lugar, and Bill Hudnut are not here to see the debacle you have made of a once Grand Old Party.
_________
Those of you who are so inclined might forward a copy of the letter to Young’s office, with a note suggesting your agreement with its message. Given the sentiments expressed at Young’s “empty chair” Town Hall, it’s clear my sister speaks for a significant number of angry Hoosiers…..
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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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We The People

Wednesday night I attended an “Empty Chair” Town Hall, and I was absolutely blown away–in a very good way–by the event.

I was one of three people who “kicked off” participant testimonies with brief descriptions of what we are currently facing. My assignment was to explain why DOGE and the majority of Trump’s Executive Orders are unconstitutional; the other two addressed assaults on Medicaid and Women’s rights.

Here’s what I said:

Under the Constitution, Congress has exclusive power to raise revenue and “pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States.”  The Appropriations Clause states that “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” DOGE has never been authorized as a government unit of any kind, and it is exercising financial decision-making that the Constitution vests exclusively in Congress.

Accordingly, every decision DOGE has made and is making is illegal and unconstitutional until and unless ratified—or more properly, authorized in advance– by Congress.

Most of Trump’s increasingly incoherent, petty and autocratic Executive Orders are similarly unconstitutional. Most of them violate the Separation of Powers—a structural element fundamental to America’s constitutional system. The most blatant example was his effort to use an Executive Order to overturn birthright citizenship, which was established by the 14th Amendment. A president cannot amend the Constitution via Executive Order.

An Executive Order is defined as a written directive signed by the president, that orders agencies of the federal government to take specific actions in pursuance of the Executive’s duty to ensure that the laws of the nation “be faithfully executed.” To the extent that such orders apply to matters not properly within the Executive’s authority, they are legally unenforceable.

Trump’s disdain for the Constitutional limits on his authority have plunged the nation into a full-blown Constitutional crisis.

Following those first, very brief presentations, some sixty people (out of the nearly 600 in attendance) lined up to address that empty chair. They were a cross-section of ordinary Americans (not a “coastal elitist” to be seen)– working class folks, a mixture of young and old people, retired folks– and they were amazing.

Don’t take my word for it: here is a link to the recorded livestream.

The citizens who turned out on a week-night (and presumably those watching via the livestream) wanted Todd Young to know that they are angry at his lack of a backbone, and his failure to live up to the oath of office that he took both as a Marine and as a Senator. They wanted him to understand how this rogue administration’s attacks on government are harming Hoosiers–the shutdowns of mental health services, the refusals to pay funds legally due to local nonprofits, the disregard of Free Speech and due process guarantees, and especially the persistent, vicious assaults on America’s diversity.

The people addressing that empty chair were passionate, but more significantly, their charges of malfeasance were accurate. They’d done their homework. The people who attended that Town Hall were the epitome of the “informed electorate” that sustains democratic regimes. When I left, I felt more positive than I have since the election.

The Town Hall’s organization by the Central Indiana Indivisible Chapter was flawless–there were volunteers directing traffic (which significantly overflowed the church’s large parking lot); and others inside directing attendees, managing microphones and herding the people waiting to testify. The crowd was more than just energized–attendees applauded speakers, booed references to Trump and Musk, and clearly demonstrated their intent to protect the America they value–an America where every person is (at least theoretically) valued.

The minister who welcomed the crowd emphasized that message, insisting that “Everyone is welcome here,–we don’t care what color you are, we don’t care who you pray to or whether you pray, we don’t care who you love. You are valued and welcome here.” Several of those who spoke made a similar point: America is a land of immigrants, a “melting pot” (or “tossed salad”) of diverse folks–and that is our strength. That is what makes America great. That is the beauty of We the People, and we will fight to retain it.

If Senator Young is too weak and intimidated to join the fight for America, the people in that Town Hall will find someone who isn’t weak and intimidated to replace him.

If you weren’t there, I really, really hope you will watch the recording. We the People are beautiful.

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