The Weekly Sift

So I’m back. Did anything happen in the last three weeks?

Well, we’ve got a new pope, an American who represents a continuation of Francis’ vision rather than a reversion to Benedict’s harsher culture-war positions.

In US politics, the conflict between Trump and the courts continues to escalate, pushing towards the crisis that has been coming since he took office: The Supreme Court makes a very precise order for Trump to stop doing something he really wants to do, an order he will have to either obey or defy. Then we’ll see if we still have the rule of law in this country. (I know what commenters are preparing to type: They already did that with the order to “facilitate” Albrego Garcia’s release from the concentration camp in El Salvador, an order that Trump defied. But that’s not exactly what happened. They gave an order they assumed the administration would interpret in good faith and instead it was interpreted in egregiously bad faith. The crisis we’re steaming towards is one where the Court stops assuming good faith and instead is very explicit.)

I spent my two weeks off driving from Massachusetts to Illinois and back, stopping to see a number of friends and relatives along the way (if Nashville counts as “along the way”). I wound up in my hometown, Quincy Illinois, to give a sermon about grief — something I’ve seen close-up these last six months — at the local Unitarian church. I’ve posted the text.

Something striking I noticed: Just about all my friends are more pessimistic and depressed about the political situation than I am. I’ll try to explain in the featured post, which should be out by 10 EST or so. The gist: The crisis we’re approaching has been inevitable since Trump was elected, and we’re in better shape to get through it than I had expected.

The weekly summary will cover the new pope, the recent court decisions, prospects for the FY 2026 budget, and a few other things. I’ll try to get it out by noon.

The tariff fiasco continued this week. After swearing that he’d never back down from last week’s tariffs, Trump did indeed back down — and then claimed he’d meant to do that all along.

This week’s featured post focuses on not getting trapped in whatever position is the opposite of Trump’s. In this case, that means being careful in how you oppose Trump’s nonsensical tariff policy. These particular tariffs are crazy, but that shouldn’t push us to critique them from a neo-liberal free-trade stance. Globalization has had its victims, particularly among the non-college White men who make up the core of Trump’s coalition. They’re not wrong to want change.

So tariffs and industrial policy have a role to play in the Democratic worldview. But not this role. It’s a more nuanced and harder-to-communicate position than free trade, but otherwise we’ll get trapped into defending the very flawed pre-Trump status quo.

That post should go out around 10 EST. The weekly summary will cover the approaching clash between Trump and the Supreme Court, some very wrong-headed executive orders concerning the environment, abuse of the Social Security database, and one more thing I may spin off into its own featured post: As we approach the 250th anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord, anti-Trump and anti-King-George rhetoric is starting to merge.

That should post in the vicinity of noon.

OK, you’ve already heard about the Signal chat where a journalist was admitted to a Principals meeting discussing highly classified information. It’s been has been widely discussed all over the media. So ordinarily, I’d just find a good link summarizing the whole thing and post it with minimal comment.

But I feel like this event deserves some special care, and I also believe I have some personal insight. (I used to have a Top Secret clearance, so I’ve listened to many briefings about how secrets are supposed to be safeguarded.) It’s a complicated multi-layer screw-up that is easy to mischaracterize and deflect. So this week’s featured post is “How Bad Was the Signal Fiasco?” It should be out shortly.

The weekly summary will cover tomorrow’s special elections, RFK Jr.’s ongoing war against vaccination, the administration’s continuing threats against Greenland, the most recent tariffs, and the latest on the legal battle to restrain the Trump administration’s illegal actions. It should be out around noon.

To me, two stories stand out above all others this week: Senate Democrats deciding not to shut down the government, and the arrest of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil. I’ll cover the first in the weekly summary and the second in a featured post.

The Khalil case raises two fundamental issues: (1) Is freedom of speech a human right that our government should respect for all people under its jurisdiction? Or is freedom of speech a privilege of citizenship that even legal permanent residents don’t have? (2) Do we still respect the famous quote attributed to Voltaire, that we will defend someone’s freedom to say something we disagree with?

The featured post will discuss those issues, and should appear maybe 10 or so EDT.

Chuck Schumer’s acquiescence with the Republican continuing resolution to keep the government open is partly an issue of strategy (Would Trump give up anything to reopen the government, or would he actually welcome keeping it closed?), but also a question of planning: Even if Schumer didn’t expect House Republicans to hang together enough to pass their continuing resolution, he should have had a plan covering that possibility. As it was, Democrats looked weak and discombobulated.

The week also saw a number of developments in the fight against Trump in the courts. And several writers posted discussions of the secondary effects of Trump trashing America’s image overseas. The summary should be out sometime between noon and 1.

I have errands to run this morning, so the timing of posts will be a little iffy. And there won’t be a Sift next week, but for a good reason rather than a bad one: Friends in Hawaii have invited me to visit.

The featured post this week will examine where we are in the struggle to avoid autocracy. In general, I’ve noticed this last month that I’ve been calmer about the Trump administration than most of my friends, and this post is an attempt to explain why. There are three very different reasons, only one of which relates to optimism.

First, dealing with a personal disaster — my wife’s unexpected death in December — has put the more abstract problem of national autocracy in perspective. I realize this is a very self-centered, maybe even selfish, perspective. But there it is.

Second, I had my political depression after the election. If you took Project 2025 seriously during the campaign (which I did), nothing that has happened these last five weeks has been all that surprising. Of course there was going to be a shock-and-awe campaign to claim power unauthorized by the Constitution. Of course the guardrails of American democracy were going to face a severe test.

But third, we really don’t know yet how that test is going to come out, so defeatism is unwarranted. The scenario for getting through this is still intact. (My definition of “getting through this” is that we have meaningful elections in 2026 and 2028, and restore people to power who believe in the Constitution.) Here’s how it goes: Public opinion shifts against Trump, making his support in Congress waver enough that the slim Republican majorities in the House and Senate can’t stay together well enough to rubber-stamp his actions. Courts rule against his most illegal actions, and the Supreme Court refuses to overrule them. Trump feels the pressure of unpopularity and Republican defections enough that he doesn’t defy those rulings. Republicans get clobbered in the 2025 Virginia elections in November, sending shockwaves through the party. Democrats retake at least one house of Congress in 2026.

That scenario is still possible, but fragile. The Supreme Court might decide democracy has run its course. Trump might defy court orders and rely on a full call-out-the-troops response to put down mass public demonstrations. And the military chain of command might hold, so that American troops slaughter their countrymen and herd them into prison camps. That’s still possible too.

We’re going to find out a lot in the next month or two, as the American people realize that Trump’s “temporary” actions aren’t that temporary and aren’t solving the problems Trump campaigned on; Congress deals with the budget; and cases work their way up to the Supreme Court. Everything could still go south, but it also might not.

As I said, I don’t know when either that or the weekly summary will post.