Once again, the war in Iran dominates the news, and yet we know so little about it. Why did we attack? What are our goals? How will the tactics we are using achieve those goals? There’s not enough there for a featured post, but it seems silly to focus on something else.
So instead of being news-focused, the featured post will cover some general sociological and psychological analyses of the administration that have come out recently. Why are they the way they are? I’ll try to get that out between 10 and 11 EDT.
So the actual news will all be in the weekly summary: the war, the ongoing persecution of trans people, the administration’s continuing legal problems, the WaPo’s sudden change into the voice of the billionaire agenda, and a few other things. Expect to see that around noon.
So we’re still at war and we still don’t know why. I’ll cover that in the weekly summary, but it’s hard to write at length about all the things I don’t know.
Instead, I want to look at an interesting question raised by James Talerico’s senate candidacy in Texas: After years of Trump’s blatant immorality and policies directly opposed by the Sermon on the Mount, can Democrats start competing for the explicitly Christian vote? And if so, should they? I’m not sure how long that article will take, but I hope to get it posted by 10 EDT.
That leaves the weekly summary to cover the war, last week’s primary elections, Kristi Noem’s departure, and a variety of other things. I’ll try to get that around noon.
Friday night, it seemed like I had a newsy week to cover: the State of the Union address; further developments in the Epstein case, including testimony from the Clintons and questions about why Trump isn’t testifying; still more instances of ICE’s excessive violence; the midterm primary season kicking off in Texas tomorrow with consequential Senate races in both parties; the War Defense Department showdown with a major AI firm about killer robots; and the usual collection of lesser stories.
And then Trump attacked Iran, killing its leader and at least 175 schoolgirls, getting at least three American servicepeople killed in the process.
That move shoved everything else into the background. But the problem it presents to me and other commenters is that we don’t have a lot of facts to pass along. We don’t know what’s happening on the ground in Iran. We don’t have any clear explanation from the Trump regime about why they’re doing this, what the ultimate goal is, or even what the short-term plan is.
But I remember something my high school journalism teacher said: “If you can’t write about the is-ness of something, you can write about the not-ness of it.” (Thanks, Mr. Connelly.) So that’s the focus of this featured post: Why don’t we know?
Usually, when you hear references to George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, it’s a cautionary tale: Don’t be like that. But in one sense, George W. Bush did much better then than Trump is doing now. Bush’s people may have pushed all sorts of lies about their prospective invasion, but at least they respected the American people and the Congress enough to spend months trying to convince us. Trump seems not to care.
So the featured post “Why?” should be out shortly. All the other stuff I thought I was going to talk about will be in the weekly summary, which I’ll try to get out by noon EST.
I’m running a bit behind schedule today as I watch the blizzard outside my window. Expect delays.
The big thing that happened this week was the Supreme Court’s decision striking down Trump’s liberation-day tariffs. This is Trump’s biggest legal defeat to date. It’s amply justified by the underlying law, but runs counter to the usual partisanship of this court. The featured post will explain what happened and what I think it means. That should be out sometime between 10 and 11 EST.
It’s kind of amazing what stories that has pushed into the background, like Prince Andrew’s arrest on Epstein file charges, Jesse Jackson’s death, a looming attack on Iran, the ongoing blockade of Cuba, and maybe some other stuff that has slipped my mind. In the pre-Trump years, any of those might have been the biggest thing that happened. But times have changed.
Anyway, expect the weekly summary to get out by 1.
The featured posts this week are two notes that started out in the weekly summary and grew beyond those bounds. The first is a look at the massive layoffs at the Washington Post and what they mean. That should be out a little after 9 EST. The second focuses on a blog a bit more radical than mine, The Reframe, and its strong position on non-cooperation with the Trump regime. That should appear around 10.
The weekly summary collects several views of Trump’s threats against he midterm elections from people more knowledgeable than I am. It also looks at how little has changed in Minneapolis since Trump appeared to announce a new policy, or at least new tactics. I’ll also discuss closing the Kennedy Center and a few other things. I’ll aim to get that out by noon.
Once again, I’m going to be focusing primarily on ICE and the protest movement to get that rogue agency back under the rule of law. Early in the week, you might have imagined that reason was prevailing: Greg Bovino was out, Trump was softening his rhetoric, and Democrats in Congress were digging in their heels. The anti-ICE movement was clearly winning the battle for public opinion, and the regime was retrenching rather than doubling down.
But it remains to be seen what, if anything, is going to change. For a while, it seems, DHS rhetoric will tone down. But will ICE begin obeying the laws and constitution of the United States?
On the positive side, protests continued this weekend without ICE murdering anyone else. But that’s a pretty low bar. More than two weeks passed between the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, but that didn’t mean that the regime’s agents had learned their lesson. On the negative side, video from Portland, Oregon looks like it was filmed in Baghdad or Kandahar. Canisters emitting various colors of smoke rain down on protesters as a formation of heavily armed troops retreats into the shelter of a federal building. What exactly they are retreating from is totally unclear.
So this week’s featured post asks “Did We Win?”, and concludes “not yet”. I’ll try to get it out by 10 EST. The weekly summary will look deeper into what Congress is doing with DHS funding, the arrest of Don Lemon, why the FBI seized Georgia’s 2020 election ballots, and a few other things. It should be out a little after noon.
You already know what I’m writing about today: Minneapolis and the second video-taped murder by federal agents. I’ve had to wrestle with how to discuss this. It would be easy to vanish into rage or fear or hopelessness. But I’ve decided not to do that.
I know we’ve all been disappointed in the past when something seemed to be a turning point and then turned out not to be. But this is a new opportunity for the nation to recognize what is happening and change course. There have been a number of hopeful signs in the last few days: the impressive non-violence of the Minneapolis resistance, a shift in mainstream media coverage, new resolve on the part of Senate Democrats coupled with wavering on the part of elected Republicans, the continuing decline in Trump’s poll numbers, and so on. The fact that these are all happening at the same time is encouraging.
I am reminded of a line from a Paul Simon song: “I would not give you false hope on this strange and mournful day.” It would be a mistake to jump to the conclusion that it’s all going to be OK now. And yet, something is happening. It may all eventually come to nothing, but right now it’s still something.
This week’s featured post “Turning Point or Tipping Point?” tries to balance the precariousness of this moment with its hopefulness. It’s a tricky piece to write, so I’m uncertain when it will come out — probably sometime between 10 and 11 EST.
The weekly summary will not have a lot else in it, because Minneapolis has been eating my attention. It should appear sometime around noon.
It’s been another week where there’s too much news. In the wake of ICE’s murder of Rene Good, the regime has increased its pressure on Minneapolis, cracking down on protesters who disapprove of government agents shooting people in the streets. Is Trump about to invoke the Insurrection Act or not? Simultaneously, we are about to enter a trade war with our NATO allies over Trump’s effort to coerce Denmark into selling Greenland. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court seems likely to rule soon on the legality of Trump’s tariffs. And it’s tempting to ignore stories of equal outrage but less consequence, like Trump strong-arming María Corina Machado into giving him her Nobel Prize medal.
And oh, by the way, happy MLK Day! I might have liked to do a calm reflection on Dr. King’s place in history — that’s what a holiday like this is for, after all. But history is moving forward too fast. Who can afford the time to look back?
So anyway, the featured post will examine the Greenland situation, and I’ll leave the other topics for the weekly summary. The Greenland post should be out before 10 EST, and I’ll try to get the summary done by noon.
Normally, I’m pretty well armored against the news. I watch bad things happen week after week and do my best to summarize them without letting them ruin my mood. This week was tougher. I had been softened up a little last week by the attack on Venezuela and the Trump administration’s complete disregard for Congress and its laws. And then on Wednesday, an ICE agent murdered a woman who had the audacity not to obey his commands. Our government’s instant response, without waiting for evidence to emerge, was to smear the victim as a “domestic terrorist” who bore full responsibility for her own death.
The right-wing media machine played its assigned role perfectly, repeating Noem, Trump, and Vance’s baseless claims that this video or that one backed up their self-justifying narrative. (They didn’t.) Better angles that showed what really happened were ignored.
And here’s the crushing fact: For some significant portion of the population, it worked. They’re out there repeating the regime’s narrative as if it were established fact.
So anyway, other people have covered the basic facts of the shooting reasonably well. But I feel like I have to comment on our nation’s epistemological crisis: The regime can deny things that are clearly shown on video, and make its sheep see what they are told to see. I find that deeply disturbing.
That’s the gist of the featured post: “Renee Good and Our Epistemological Crisis” should be out shortly.
That still leaves a lot for the weekly summary: Venezuela, Iran, the exaggerated “scandal” of Minnesota fraud, Grok, and a few other things. That may take me until 1 or so EST.
Observe how quickly the Peace President becomes the War President. Saturday morning US forces raided Caracas and seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who will face drug charges later today in New York. In the wake of that move, confusion reigns. Secretary of State Marco Rubio paints the attack as a simple law enforcement operation, while President Trump frames it as a successful conquest, saying repeatedly that we will “fix” and “run” Venezuela now.
Certainly I’m in no position to resolve the uncertainty about what’s happening or is about to happen in Venezuela. But instead I want to focus on what this episode means for America: Trump has once again sidelined Congress and ignored its constitutional powers. If checks and balances were working the way the Founders intended, Congress would defend its role by launching an impeachment. Obviously, that’s not happening.
Today’s featured post is going to flesh all that out. I haven’t titled it yet, but I’ll predict that it posts between 10 and 11 EST.
That leaves quite a bit for the weekly summary: reviewing all the year-end looking-ahead/looking-back articles, Jack Smith’s testimony to Congress, and the growing fault lines in the MAGA movement. Additionally, I want to raise the question of what the Democratic Party’s message to small-town and rural voters should be. I’ll try to get that out by 1.
The Weekly Sift 