Graft, corruption, and lining their own pockets. It just doesn’t stop, and Republicans just don’t seem to care.

From May 13, 2025 Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson:

While President Donald Trump’s billionaire sidekick Elon Musk has said he is pulling back from his work with the “Department of Government Efficiency,” he is with Trump today in Saudi Arabia, along with representatives from leaders from some of the biggest companies in the United States. The business executives are looking for Saudi investments.

Jason Karaian of the New York Times notes that the Saudis are looking to diversify their oil-dependent economy and are now the world’s largest investors in artificial intelligence, or AI...

From Heather Cox Richardson’s May 12 Letter from an American:

The biggest news over the weekend was silence: the silence of Republicans. They refused to disavow White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s statement that the administration is looking at suspending the writ of habeas corpus, that is, essentially declaring martial law. They have also stayed quiet after the administration announced it was planning to accept a gift of a $400 million luxury Boeing 747-8 plane from the Qatari royal family. President Donald J. Trump would use the plane as Air Force One during the rest of his presidency and take it with him when he leaves office.

This is in keeping with the refusal of 53 Republican senators to answer questions from Rolling Stone’s Ryan Bort after NBC’s Kristen Welke...

It’s no longer a case of “the threat is real.” It’s already happening. Courts are repeatedly ruling against the current regime. But with a failure to adhere to the rule of law, our society’s system of checks and balances is nonfunctional, and our democratic republic is gone. What we already have is the beginnings of a dictatorship, as history has seen many times before–in other countries. The current regime is clearly and openly targeting political enemies; this is a clear step nearing the end of our system.

In a more concise version, here is Robert Reich from his substack:

“Federal judges in more than 120 cases so far have sought to stop Trump — judges appointed by Republicans as well as Democrats, some appointed by Trump himself — but the regime is either ignoring or appealin...

Some recent events, as summarized by Heather Cox Richardson in yesterday’s Letters from an American:

“Early yesterday morning, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent three U.S. citizens aged 2, 4, and 7 from Louisiana, including one with Stage 4 cancer, to Honduras when they deported their mothers. The three are children of two different mothers who were arrested while checking in with the government as part of their routine process for immigration proceedings. The women and their children were not permitted to speak to family or lawyers before being flown to Honduras. The cancer patient was sent out of the country without medication or consultation with doctors although, according to Charisma Madarang and Lorena O’Neil of Rolling Stone, ICE agents were told of the child’s med...

David Brooks may have gotten some bold talk into the open, and it’s being amplified in many places. I see his article from yesterday quoted in many places on social media (including my own FB), and below in Robert Reich’s substack of today:

“Friends,

If the Trump regime can dictate what the universities of America teach or research or publish, or what students can learn or say, no university is safe.

Not even the truth is safe.

If the Trump regime can revoke student visas because students exercise their freedom of speech on a university campus, freedom of speech is not secure for any of us.

If the Trump regime can abduct a permanent resident of the United States and send him to a torture prison in El Salvador, without any criminal charges, no American is safe.

What do w...

David Brooks, of all people, has it right–it’s time for a mass uprising in this country.

Just an excerpt here:

Slowly, many of us are realizing that we need to band together. But even these efforts are insular and fragmented. Several members of the Big Ten conference are working on forming an alliance to defend academic freedom. Good. But that would be 18 schools out of roughly 4,000 degree-granting American colleges and universities.

So far, the only real hint of something larger — a mass countermovement — has been the rallies led by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But this too is an ineffective way to respond to Trump; those partisan rallies make this fight seem like a normal contest between Democrats and Republicans.

What is happening now is not normal poli...

From Robert Reich today, making clear what couldn’t be any clearer already:

Trump’s playbook is Viktor Orbán’s

Friends,

A few days ago I had breakfast with my old friend John Shattuck, who, as president of Central European University in Budapest, saw firsthand how Viktor Orbán took over Hungary’s democracy and turned it into an authoritarian state.

When Trump was elected in 2016, Trump endorsed Orbán, and Orbán started attacking universities — forcing the Central European University out of Hungary.

John believes Trump is emulating Orbán’s playbook. (Steve Bannon once declared that “Orbán was Trump before there was Trump.”)

Orbân’s playbook has 10 parts, according to John:

One: Take over your party and enforce internal party discipline by using polit...

Authoritarianism is here.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/authoritarianism

Now threatening to deport U.S. citizens.

This is a time that will, indeed, go down in history. But who will write the history that our children and grandchildren read?

Another day, another struggle with despair over what we are living in and how “U.S.A.” becomes something despicable. Robert Reich offers some words of encouragement on his substack:

“Friends,

It’s been another grueling week.

Several of you have asked me how to live in a nation whose leader has embraced cruelty as public policy. How do we inhabit Trump’s America without becoming complicit in this cruelty?

Molly watched Trump sign the executive order initiating criminal investigations of Miles Taylor (who wrote an anonymous 2018 New York Times op-ed describing internal resistance to Trump in his first term) and Christopher Krebs (who played a major role in undercutting Trump’s false claims about 2020 election fraud).

Molly asks: Is this America?

No, Molly, it is not...