A rising wave

Margaret Sullivan, former in-house critic for the New York Times and the Washington Post back when these media outlets dared to focus resources on improving journalism, wrote yesterday: 

Big protests — but not big news -- Throngs of anti-Trump and anti-Musk protesters gathered in every state. Why was some media coverage so quiet — or almost non-existent?

Apparently much of the remaining print news media pretty much ignored some million(s?) of people in venues across the country speaking up and writing inventive protest signs. Sullivan has some guesses as to why this reporting omission; I have mine. These pubs are timid when bullied, economically precarious, and adrift in the threatening news environment created by the Trump regime's radical drive for dictatorial powers. 

But I'm not at all sure that this partial erasure of millions mattered. 

These days, we don't get our impressions of widespread action by citizens from newspapers or even TV.  We get it from millions of impressions on various social media. Sure, our experiences there are siloed, limited by the platforms to "friends," but that may even enhance the impact of seeing Susie in Peoria out there with her sign. If we turn to "mainstream" sources for information at all on a thing like this, it's for overview. We've already seen the content.

Having lived through a previous period in which "mainstream" media was hesitant to acknowledge a rising tide of citizen protest anger, I'm having deja vu. Been here, lived that. 

When I was an uppity college student in the early 1960s, there was a media pattern. In those days, newspapers had night and morning editions. (How quaint.) The junior reporter tasked to quickly describe some student protest would file from the field and the night edition would seem to us relatively accurate and even sympathetic to the participants. We'd gather around a copy and applaud. Then we'd see the morning edition and our story would have been rewritten to minimize and obscure our message. Happened every time -- early, direct coverage was not terrible; later interpretation comforted the powerful (that would have been Governor Reagan who was no saint to us.) 

This worked to minimize the rising tide of outrage about civil rights, Vietnam, and more -- until it didn't and our demand for change engulfed a decade and beyond. 

Our current rulers want to turn back the clock. 

Public protest witnesses to a rising wave that will have none of it. We won't go back. This is a movement building popular pressure that is still looking to find its footing and its opportunities. (Do note the Tesla takedown.) Most Americans don't want to live in conformity, ignorance and fear. We will be heard. We will find a way or make one.

What might the Hands Off! protests mean?

 

G. Elliot Morris decodes statistical information. After working as a data journalist for The Economist from 2018 to 2023, he took over the election information site FiveThirtyEight during the moment when it was an appendage of ABC News. Perhaps as part of ABC paying off Trump for protection, the network dumped his site. He now writes a Substack called Strength in Numbers.

 

Today Morris unpacked what he learned from the breadth and passion of the nation-spanning Hands Off! demonstrations on Saturday. His observations are thoughtful:

It’s this intersection between political discontent and the physical world that may matter most for modern politics. In an era where much of politics is mediated through screens, the mass mobilization of people serves as a kind of anchoring point: proof that opposition isn’t just statistical, but structural, social, and spatial. Protests against the unpopular policies of an imperial presidency underscore the validity of polling data that can be used to reign leaders in.

 

As the 2026 midterm campaign cycle kicks off over the next six months, and begins in earnest with elections for governor in New Jersey and Virginia this November, it’s the mental image of protests around the country that will transform abstract dissatisfaction into something more concrete — especially for voters who may not follow politics closely but are swayed by momentum, emotion, and community. It is one thing for the Democrats to be campaigning with public opinion on their side. It’s another for them to be doing it with the public literally and visibly on their side, too.

And time may yet exacerbate the incumbent party’s troubles, not soften them. If Trump continues to pursue a punishing and nonsensical trade policy, consequences from a further sinking stock market to economic recession are possible, perhaps even probable. And with a battle over the federal budget on the horizon, concerns about cutting funding for health care and Social Security as well as Elon Musk’s controversial role in “efficiency” would likely become more salient, not less.

Hands Off! put the wind at the back of our opposition to the Trump-Musk-Vaught destruction of the American project. Let's keep it up -- on screens, but also in person wherever possible.

The lunacy of King Donald

I like charts. I learn well from informative visualizations of data. And therefore, I appreciate the work of Washington Post journalist Philip Bump.

Bump knows what he thinks about Donald Trump's tariffs:

This will almost certainly prove to be bad for the economy, but it has been pretty good for data visualization. For example:

We've gone back to the late 1800s.

 

 

Add a tariff on washing machines, raise the price. Remove the tax and price falls.

 ... tariffs will instead mean surges in the prices Americans pay.

 

How uncertain is the country’s economic future? As the Financial Times’ John Burn-Murdoch put it, it is “equivalent to a global pandemic” uncertain.

At least we get some nice charts out of the deal.

Unfortunately the Canadian cartoon with which I led this post gives an incomplete picture. Presumably King Donald intends to get plenty out of his tariffs, knowing he can shakedown particular businesses and whole favored sectors of the economy for a personal payoff after which he'll make an exemption from his taxes.

If we want this set of impositions to blow back on King Donald, we the people will have to make it so. Along with Canadians, we're the fan.

HANDS OFF! – Vineyard Haven, Mass.

 

It was good to be part of an enthusiast crowd today at Five Corners.

 

Despite threatening skies and cold temps, the veterans came.

Not all were ready to retire.

 

The friends I was with nominated this for the best sign. 

They thought perhaps 500 people -- a lot for a seasonal population of 20,000 on the Island. I noted the wide age distribution. A good day and the rain held off until the very end.

Friday cat blogging

I wonder if this Greenland cat scared off JD Vance? Don't think I'd want to invade its space.

Dumb and dumber

I remember kind of enjoying the 1994 movie. Those dumb boys were sort of funny, in a stupid way.

Donald Trump's dopey tariffs aren't so funny. Even though he revealed himself to be trying to tariff penguins. Any number of economists -- left, right, and center -- agree he's thrown us into a trade war in which ordinary Americans only lose. Their estimates vary between $3000 and $5000 per household in increased costs as a consequence of Trump's trade idiocy.

So why this madness? There seem to be two elements that Trump thinks serve his interests:

1) The tariffs give Trump the legal ability to exempt particular sectors and countries. How many millions or even billions will he be demanding from companies to enjoy these exemptions? We've never seen such straightforward opportunities for presidential corruption. And the moral rot of such a system spreads. Will every individual who holds a tiny smidgen of power over others expect to be personally paid off in the Trumpy future US economy? That's how it works in much of the world.

2) Domestic importers will pay the tariffs if they continue to engage in trade in our deeply interlinked world. They'll try, and mostly succeed, in defending their bottom line by passing their increased costs on the US consumers. Trump will claim he's found a magic source of cash that will replace any need to try to tax our oligarchs. After all, there's all this cash coming in from the tariffs. Let's cut taxes some more for millionaires and billionaires! 

It's all sick and sad.

Let's fight back, starting with the Hands Off rallies tomorrow. Find an event near you here.

A Canadian envisions world domination

The morning after our idiot President did his best to murder the international and domestic economy, it would be easy to rave. But I think sometimes it is better to laugh.

When not trying, in a very different world, to ape late 19th century economic foolishness, Trump also claims to want to repeat President William McKinley's experiment in American imperialism (think the Philippines, Cuba) by demanding that Canada be made the 51st state. Canadians aren't having it.

John Manley was Deputy Canadian Prime Minister and Minister of Finance in Prime Minister Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government in 2002-3. He's written a letter to Donald Trump which I reproduce here in full:

• • •

Dear Donald Trump,

My mentor and former boss, prime minister Jean Chrétien, has dismissed your suggestion that Canada and the U.S. merge.

Do not despair. My point of view differs somewhat from his (sorry, Boss). I think we may be able to make this work if Canadians fully understand your proposal. 

Imagine what the “United States of Canada” could be. We would marry American ingenuity and entrepreneurship to Canada’s natural resources, underdog toughness and culture of self-effacing politeness to create a powerful, world-dominating country.

Pointers for starters...

☆ We would be the largest land mass in the world.
☆ We would be self-reliant in every respect (food, energy, minerals, water).
☆ We would attract the world’s most talented people.
☆ We would truly be “the best country in the world,” to use Mr. Chrétien’s words.
☆ We would dominate international hockey competitions.

Your idea is truly brilliant.

As you know from your corporate experience, for any successful merger, the devil is in the details, but I have some suggestions.

(1). Canada could never simply be the 51st state. You see Canada consists of 10 states (we call them “provinces”) and three territories.

Each of our provinces exists for historical reasons and citizens feel a deep loyalty to their province. So we would need to be the 51st to 60th states. With two senators for each state, of course. 

Therefore, our 20 senators will no doubt bring fresh ideas to the institution that will help make the United States of Canada truly great!

(2). Some issues that cause division and frustration in your country are considered settled by political parties of all stripes in Canada, so I suggest adopting Canadian consensus in the interest of making this deal work.

☆ For example, there is no argument in Canada over women’s reproductive rights. There! That hot-button issue is resolved for you! (You can thank me later.)

☆ All Canadian politicians support our single-payer health care system because no one is refused treatment for their inability to pay and no one goes broke because they suffer a catastrophic illness. In effect, all of our citizens have lifetime critical illness insurance provided by the government. And while it’s expensive, our system costs considerably less than yours, with 100 per cent of the population covered! Your citizens will love it, I promise.

☆ I would also observe that Canadians have long preferred to live with many fewer firearms than are tolerated in the United States. The result is a drastically lower rate of deaths and injuries caused by gun violence in Canada. Our gun laws would make the country safer than it is, and safer is definitely greater!

☆ We have some other innovations that you may wish to consider. Our Canada Pension Plan, equivalent to your Social Security, is fully funded and actuarially sound. This requires higher contributions but it pays off with solvency. I believe your Social Security runs out of money in the near future. (That’s not great, is it?)

☆ Lower personal income taxes paid in the U.S. are a great attraction.

☆ But our programs to support both seniors and young families to reduce the worst cases of poverty among them help make society more cohesive and fair. That’s one of the reasons our taxes have been higher.

☆ Oh, and we must consider how we fund government expenses. We’re struggling to bring our deficit back down, but it wasn’t that long ago (2015) that our budget was effectively balanced. In fact, for more than a decade prior to the global financial crisis, Canada ran surplus budgets. In addition to spending discipline, our national value-added tax, the GST, was key. You definitely want to adopt that! In fact, you will love it! (Canadians don’t love it, but their governments do. And it beats borrowing money from the Chinese.) There are many smaller details that I am sure we can work out.

☆ You will enjoy the simplicity of the metric system for weights and measures, for example. Oh, but we’re not crazy, you can keep yards for football! And you will love that sport even more when you play it on a bigger field with only three downs.

I am so excited about this, Mr. Trump. You are truly a visionary leader to have come up with this idea.

I can already see the 60 little maple leaves on the flag with 13 stripes!

I am ready to throw myself into this great project of making the United States of Canada great again! (Oh, that’s too long. Let’s just call our new country “Canada.”)

Respectfully, as I dislodge my tongue from my cheek,

John Manley

Once again, what's wrong with these people?

This morning we begin to get reports of the shitshow MAGA and RFK Jr are making of the American health complex. It's bad. It will be a few days before the newsmedia suss out the full catastrophe.

But this morning we get The Bulwark's new healthcare writer Jonathan Cohn taking up what those of us who live in the reality-based universe frequently find ourselves reverting to these day: why are these lunatics tearing down the country we have known? What motivates them? I found this summary helpful:

THE WRECKAGE FROM TUESDAY’S CUTS ONCE MORE raised the question of why, instead of undertaking a more carefully calibrated set of staff reductions, the Trump administration cut so crudely and destructively.

Most likely, multiple motives are at work, coming from different parts of the Trump coalition. For ideologues like Russ Vought, the Project 2025 participant who now leads the Office of Management and Budget, this is a chance to cut the federal government down to their preferred size—and to wipe out all the supposedly left-wing activists they believe have burrowed into the bureaucracy.

For Elon Musk and the DOGE team, quite possibly, there’s an element of techno-arrogance at work. And for Trump himself, the cuts would seem to fit in neatly with his agenda of attacking the “deep state” he believes thwarted him during his first term.

That leaves Kennedy, the secretary, who if so inclined could have pushed back on these reductions or at least demanded they proceed in a more deliberate way. There are no signs that happened. Instead, the one hallmark of Kennedy’s tenure so far has been a disregard—some would say disdain—for the department’s veterans and the way they do things.

You can see it in the expertise that the Trump administration cavalierly dispatched on Tuesday. You can see it, also, in how RFK Jr. is dealing with real-world challenges the department currently faces.

Right now the United States is confronting two serious threats that fall under HHS jurisdiction: the measles outbreak that started in Texas and has now spread to three other states, and the strands of avian flu decimating poultry flocks. ...

Photo from 2009. Will these Unitarian Universalists have to come back to the fray?

Jonathan Cohn is long time student of our health care morass who was one of my go-tos during the Obamacare passage wars.  Definitely someone worth following as MAGA tries to unravel decades of health accomplishments.

No capitulation to MAGA here

So I'm stuck in the Harvey Milk Terminal of the San Francisco airport for a long day (boring story of weather near destination colliding with airline schedules) so I got a chance to try to get in my walking miles in the corridors. You'll be glad to know that SFO is paying no attention to Trump's commands to erase women, POC Americans, queers and history. 

 

Northern California was a center of WWII war production, so there is a lot to display.

 

Women had a job to do to defeat fascism. War mobilization broke a lot of barriers. Even knowing what we know now of the underbelly of US empire, it's possible to admire their spunk.

 

 

They weren't all eager pink-cheeked white girls either. 

The Harvey Milk terminal at SFO is a monument to all MAGA hates. Nice place to involuntarily spend a day.

Trans Day of Visibility 2025

As I walked up to the Teslatakedown protest on Saturday, I was greeted by this guy.

The Trans Day of Visibility weekend had begun. 

This is not an observance I know much about, so I looked up what the media advocacy outfit GLADD had to share about it.

International TDOV was created in 2010 by trans advocate Rachel Crandall. Crandall, the head of Transgender Michigan, created TDOV in response to the overwhelming majority of media stories about transgender people being focused on violence. She hoped to create a day where people could celebrate the lives of transgender people, while simultaneously acknowledging that due to discrimination, not every trans person can or wants to be visible.

Given that only a minority of Americans say they personally know someone who’s transgender, the vast majority of the public learns about trans people from the media, including TV, film, and news. This is a problem because, as shown in the Netflix documentary Disclosure, the media has misrepresented, mischaracterized, and stereotyped trans people since the invention of film. These false depictions have indisputably shaped the cultural understanding of who trans people are and have modeled, often for the worse, how the average person should react to and treat trans people in their own lives.

Evident in 2025 is intensifying vitriol and attacks against trans people led by a vocal but loud minority. ... That’s why it’s still necessary for trans people to be seen through authentic, diverse, and accurate stories which reflect the actual lived experiences of trans people; both for themselves and for the people who believe they’ve never met a trans person.

Trans people care about the coup against our country as much as anyone. Maybe more, in fact, being involuntary targets on the front lines...

• • •

For the Trans Day of Visibility, Aaron Scott, Episcopal Church Staff Officer for Gender Justice, preached a sermon at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. I'm including short excerpts here which I hope retain its power for a broad audience; there's much more. Read it in full here.

... We are, in the end, a small community, very much under the boot of repression. And yet we continue to lead.

We speak for ourselves.

We set forth our own vision for what justice means for our people—trans and nonbinary people. 

... It’s a beautiful day to be alive.

It’s a beautiful day to exist, in flagrant defiance of executive orders. January 20th came and went and I still haven’t been whisked away to Oz—like the rapture, but for trans people only. I briefly wondered, “Am I not transgendering hard enough, if two whole months have gone by and I’m still stuck here in America?!”

And then I remembered myself, and I remembered: this is a sham. Because we have always been here and we are not going anywhere, ever.

We determine what justice means for us in our bodies, in our families, in our neighborhoods, in our churches, in our workplaces, in our country. And while we need everyone here to join with us in that struggle, we are the ones responsible for setting the vision. We are the experts on when we are free. Only we get to say when we are truly safe, truly honored, truly afforded our God-given dignity and rights. So thank you to every trans and nonbinary person here for the visions you put forward into the world. Thank you for standing in your power and your leadership.

... We will only get what we are organized to take. No powers and principalities are going to hand trans people our joy and our thriving ... out of their benevolence. That’s not how change happens. Change comes because we demand it, and we labor for it. So today we celebrate our joy—and tomorrow we get back to work organizing to defend our joy. Organizing to defend our young people. Organizing to defend our dignity. Organizing to draw in more and more people to stand with us, move with us.

And we can’t do all that on an empty tank, so today: We sing. We shout. We strut. We swagger. We rejoice in our trans-ness so that the memory of this joy can continue to carry us forward even in the hard times.

... Trans joy is not about marketing a false, palatable version of ourselves. It is about enjoying being alive and not dead.

... We do not exist to be respectable. We exist to be respected.

... The more that trans people stand in our joy and our full messy humanity without apology, the more powerful we become. That is why this day is important. The less afraid we are to live—even when there is so much to fear—the stronger we get.

#Teslatakedown – San Francisco – Saturday, March 29

The crowd outside the dealership on Van Ness Avenue just gets larger each week.

Perhaps 500 people yesterday? Each Saturday there are more protesting Elon's car company while he works to destroy American democracy. Next week this crew will take a week off to join the Hands Off protest at Civic Center -- but the following week (April 12) they'll be back.

That seems a good idea.

 

A simple and patriotic message here.

This does seem on the right track for a nice spring day.

 

 In our various ways, The Defiance needs to show staying power.

See no evil: the toll of the Trump team's Signal chat lapse(s?)

Wouldn't they have loved to get the intel on D-Day?

The people whose lives might be at risk as a result of the Trump team's frat boy approach to national security are not amused.

Signal Chat Leak Angers U.S. Military Pilots
Men and women who have taken to the air on behalf of the United States expressed bewilderment after the leak of attack plans. “You’re going to kill somebody,” one pilot said.

Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth, who lost both legs and use of her right arm when the combat helicopter she piloted in the Iraq war was shot down, had a very direct response

Duckworth: ‘Pete Hegseth is a ‘f‑‑‑ing liar’ “...This is so clearly classified info he recklessly leaked that could’ve gotten our pilots killed. He needs to resign in disgrace immediately,” Duckworth said in a statement. 

The Washington Post's judicious columnist Philip Bump unpacks what accountability for the security breach might look like and why we won't get it from the Trump clown show.

The point of accountability is to reinforce that bad things are bad. ...

... Trump — and by extension his party — have proved increasingly likely to rise to the defense of anyone seen as under fire from any perceived opponent. (“Deny, deny, deny,” Trump once reportedly advised an ally.) In any previous administration, Hegseth wouldn’t be the secretary of defense in the first place. Deeply unqualified (beyond his closeness to Trump) and mired in multiple scandals, he was nonetheless confirmed by a Republican-led Senate unwilling to face the ire of Trump. Since the Signal scandal broke, Hill Republicans — a group ostensibly empowered to enforce accountability from the executive branch — have not indicated any newfound appetite for challenging the White House. No one thinks the Justice Department, helmed by some of the more energetic Trump sycophants in America, will launch any serious investigation.

Without accountability, the damage here would not simply be that the U.S. government will continue to be led by people who don’t know or don’t care why communications about military operations occur over secure channels. It is also that there will be no public signal that the actions of these officials were bad. No signal to others in government. No signal to Trump’s base of support. No signal to America’s overseas allies that this government holds such mistakes to account.

This is precisely what (the deeply insecure) Trump wants to avoid, of course. He will happily malign people who used to serve under his direction — but always as he introduces some imaginary distance from them. It would be very hard for him to do so with Hegseth in particular: He picked and advocated Hegseth despite concerns about his readiness; if the criticisms of Hegseth were accurate, then so were the criticisms of Trump.

What results is a weird (and for the right, ironic) moral relativism, one centered on the whims and actions of Donald Trump. We know that religious conservatives revamped their moral boundaries once Trump became the Republican presidential nominee in 2016. What we’ve seen since is an entire party willing to shift black-and-white moral and ethical issues into a muddy, gray area in which Trump alone remains untainted.

Republican politicians have replaced both common sense and elementary ethical calculation with "Anything for Mr Trump." They've become servile as well as ignorant.