“Republicans made a calculated bet that by indulging Donald Trump’s ill-conceived and cruel schemes (e.g., unleashing ICE on cities, tariffs, wars with Venezuela and Iran, slashing healthcare to pay for tax cuts for the rich), the country would somehow stumble through. They figured congressional Republicans would share in any successes but somehow avoid any blame when things (inevitably) went haywire. Politics rarely works out that way.” (03/25/26)
“The hateful logic of the Nazis is find your villain and assign all blame to them, then the complexity of the world collapses into a satisfying and murderous solution. Nazis logic did not die with the Third Reich. Paul Ehrlich passed away earlier this month, at 93, and his passing is an occasion to examine another expression of the same underlying habit of mind. Ehrlich was not an antisemite. His villain was humanity itself. … What makes Ehrlich’s life so instructive is not that he was wrong — he was wrong in ways almost beyond reckoning — but that his wrongness was so elaborately rewarded.” (03/25/26)
“In the wake of Washington’s January 3 military attack and then problematic détente with Caracas, corporate media suggest a meaningful shift in Venezuela policy, implying relief for a country long subjected to economic coercion. However, far from dismantling the sanctions regime, the US has merely adjusted its application through licensing mechanisms, leaving the core structure of coercive measures fully intact. Reuters reported, ‘US lifts some Venezuela sanctions,’ followed by news of sanctions being further ‘eased.’ … Not a Single Sanction Has Been Rescinded.” (03/25/26)
“The moral argument for not making laws about many — especially victimless — activities is that people have a right to live their own lives so long as they don’t hurt anybody else. That’s a convincing case for those of us who naturally gravitate to a live-and-let-live take on life. But it’s unpersuasive to the growing ranks of those inclined to control freakery in these illiberal times, and who believe the state should step in to control bad things. The strongest rebuttal to the authoritarian case is that people so vigorously disagree as to what constitutes ‘bad’ that efforts to regulate a whole host of activities invite noncompliance. Recent polling provides evidence that Americans disagree on many issues.” (03/25/26)
“‘We’ve won. Let me tell you, we’ve won. You know, you never like to say too early you won. We won. We won the – in the first hour it was over. We won,’ President Donald Trump declared, claiming ‘we won’ five times in just thirteen seconds at a Kentucky rally on March 11. We’ve seen such misbegotten braggadocio before. Six weeks into the elective invasion of Iraq, President George W. Bush starred in a campaign stunt when he landed on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier wearing a flight suit. He stood under a ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner ordered up and paid for by White House spinmeisters. It was the ‘end of major combat operations,’ Bush said. Only it wasn’t.” (03/25/26)
“We are now in a global fossil fuel crisis. With oil and liquefied natural gas from the Persian Gulf unable to reach international markets due to Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, hydrocarbon prices have been soaring around the world and widespread shortages are emerging. Anyone who thought that the U.S. would be insulated from this dire picture thanks to its large domestic oil production has had a rude awakening: the average retail price of gasoline has risen more than $1 per gallon over the past month, while the price of diesel is up $1.60. But the Trump administration hasn’t allowed these short-run distractions to divert it from its long-run goals: It remains deeply committed to killing renewable energy, especially wind power, and increasing America’s reliance on fossil fuels.” (03/25/26)
“‘I’ve never been more pleased by ‘losing’ in my life,’ tweeted Jay Bhattacharya. What makes the Director of the National Institutes of Health a ‘loser?’ Well, the doctor (who also serves as current Acting Director of the Centers for Disease Control) has not always served in the federal government. In his days between Trump administrations he’d run afoul of censors on social media. Now he’s jubilant that a major case against censorship has come to a freedom-of-speech conclusion.” (03/25/26)
“The idea that there are huge swaths of the United States populace who want and need the right wing’s unreality — their alternative reality — is a farce: a gaudy, festering artifice constructed and maintained by a million people who need it to be real for financial, political, and cultural purposes. And it was on full horrifying display during Super Bowl LX in Santa Clara, where Bad Bunny sang his catchy Spanish-language pop tunes at halftime, intermingled with some nonoffensive and rather hopeful political messaging. This was preemptively framed by the American right as an assault on the country itself: a Spanish-speaking Latino man doing Latin music during the nation’s biggest sporting event. During a time of revanchist white supremacy, this would simply not do. … So they fled, as they always do, to an alternative venue: an all-American halftime show hosted by Turning Point USA.” (03/25/26)
“America is more fragmented and polarized than since the Civil War. More and more Americans are seeking refuge in the arms of movements seeking to upend the status quo. The center of the political world is losing more and more as the extremes offer alternatives and possible solutions to economic and cultural issues. Lest we think this is unique, history has a way of reminding us that something has already happened. The more our polarization grows, the more it seems that we are living in the Weimarization of America. This is not to say that America is becoming Germany, but instead that there is a dissatisfaction with the system that is similar to Germany on the cusp of the rise of Hitler.” (03/25/26)
“New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s recent plea for wealthy residents to return to the Empire State reveals more than she likely intended. When a state’s chief executive effectively says, ‘We need your money,’ it’s not a sign of strength, it’s an admission that the model is broken. Her plea to well-to-do former residents comes across as a comedy skit: New York is already overtaxed and overregulated, but please come back as we are in the process of enacting higher taxes and imposing more anti-growth regulations. For years, New York has operated under the illusion that ever-higher taxes and ever-expanding government services can coexist with economic dynamism. That illusion is now colliding with reality.” (03/25/26)
