Former contributor.
We already know all there really is to know about Donald Trump. He has no bottom. A few of us knew that in 2016. There is truly no excuse for naivete after what we heard from him in the primary and general elections of 2016 and the nearly four years since. So when Jeffrey Goldberg’s…
From the very beginning of the Covid pandemic, Donald Trump did everything wrong. He ignored the warnings in his intel briefings. Then he denied it was here. After that, he claimed the pandemic was a hoax invented by the “Democrat Party” because even a pandemic was really all about him. He did nothing until it…
This week we were reminded of everything we stand to lose if Trump finds a way to steal the presidency again. Yeah, I know he “won” the Electoral College vote and with it the presidency. But as the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence committee acknowledged in its report this week, that “win” was engineered with a lot…
It was a week of contrasts between the democracy we have and the tyranny Donald Trump is trying to build on the ash heap of what use to be America. Enter Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, representing the America we are, where people seek a more perfect Union. All people regardless of skin color, citizenship,…
The law was not kind to corrupt people this week. The DC Circuit sided with congressional oversight when it said the House could sue Don McGahn if he didn’t comply with a subpoena. We learned that Deutsche Bank gave up Donald Trump’s financials to Manhattan prosecutor Cyrus Vance, and the crown jewel came with New…
During this past week many of us mourned the loss of John Lewis and the kind of greatness he had. The iconic civil rights leader was a man who refused to give up or give in after being beaten within an inch of his life. Those who knew him described him as someone you just…
With his support in free fall, Donald Trump decided the best way to win over “suburban house wives” was to scare them with images of his gestapo gassing the wall of moms, assaulting vets and disappearing peaceful protestors. Seriously, who knows if Trump did it to get film for a video ad, send federal agents…
During the past few days I heard a lot about the N word. Unsurprisingly, Mary Trump acknowledged that was a word her uncle, the sitting president, used over the years. Earlier on the day when Rachel Maddow interviewed Ms. Trump, I had the honor of conversing with Rodney Hurst, who, at age sixteen, organized a…
This term’s Supreme Court rulings prove that America’s democracy is destined to survive the incompetent dictator-wannabe currently occupying the White House. Without question, the rule of law and democracy won. The unanimous finding among Supreme Court Justices across the ideological spectrum used various methods of legal analysis to find that the president is not above…
During this past week, there was yet another debate over Trump’s sanity, which to be honest, is beside the point. Crazy or not, Trump is a danger to Americans, to our troops and to the democratic political system. But a crazy Trump is preferable to the very real possibility that the president and commander-in-chief betrayed…
Americans in the nation’s capital live with no representation. Not only do we have taxation, but we pay more taxes than 22 of the 50 states and we pay the highest per capita tax rate in the country. Our books are balanced. Yes, most of DC is liberal by default and most of the people…
In the latest series of articles about Mary Jordan’s upcoming book, we learn more about Melania’s effort to be seen as more than arm candy for the most narcissistic president ever. As she pontificated over her disdain for people who need attention (no shortage of irony there), the woman who married Donald Trump wants the…
In 2016, we were introduced to a carefully-crafted image of Donald Trump’s third wife, Melania, as a private, family-oriented wife and mother. We read about her self-consciousness over her ability to speak English. So many people felt sorry for her, as a reserved former model married to the bombastic Trump, who is 20 years older….
There was a thug in the George Floyd case. He was sitting in the White House tweeting toxins as usual. They were so poisonous that, for the first time in Twitter history, Donald Trump was docked for violating Twitter’s Terms of Service. Lesser mortals like you and me would have lost our Twitter accounts over…
Anyone who endures the Trump presidency understands why there’s a minimum age qualification to be president. Trump proved, however, that chronological age doesn’t necessarily reflect the maturity that one needs to make rational decisions as the president of the United States. Trump’s outbursts are more like that of a two-year-old having a tantrum than of…
Donald Trump is learning he can’t escape the ominous death toll resulting from decisions he made in handling Covid-19. So this week brought on more attacks on the rule of law and a shocking level of callousness in Donald Trump. There was that moment when he admitted that he doesn’t like testing because it gives…
Despite Trump’s best efforts to assume privilege from laws and icky peasant illnesses like COVID-19, the pesky features of democracy penetrate his walls. In two days, three people within Trump’s inner circle tested positive for COVID-19. News broke late Friday night that his daughter Ivanka’s personal assistant tested positive. Also testing positive is Trump’s valet,…
On Friday, Joe Biden went on Morning Joe to answer questions posed by co-host Mika Brzezinski. I didn’t watch the interview because the very fact there was one demonstrated that nothing has changed since 2016. Before we go any further, I’m not about to pronounce guilt or innocence of Trump, Biden or anyone else. This…
On Friday, states and manufacturers of Clorox and Lysol were issuing public service announcements to ignore Donald Trump’s proposed prescription of injecting or drinking those products to cure COVID-19. To be clear, he thought it would “be interesting” to test the effects of bleach on killing the novel corona virus in the human body since…
By making items of privilege out of hand sanitizer, toilet paper, and access to testing for a deadly disease, Trump’s mishandling of COVID-19 dragged the skeletons out of our national closet. It’s the nation’s worst kept secret. The racism, sexism and nativism are so pervasive that they define you, the opportunities you will have, the…
For some people, opinion is a point of view about an issue, while analysis interprets the significance of events or the quality of a policy. Ideally, opinion should be as fact-based as analysis. That’s especially important when the levers of power rely on lies, illusion and propaganda to survive. So it is with the Covid-19…
During a week when we became number one for coronavirus cases in the world and when we saw the death toll multiplying at dizzy rates, Trump stuck to happy talk. The current number of 1600-plus deaths is likely to be much larger by the time this column is published. (You can see how much here…
When buying food is like going to the jungle and dinner becomes the thing you managed to grab before anyone else does, you know that things have changed. When you go from store to store desperately seeking toilet paper, you know this isn’t “normal” and no, it is not fine. Trump’s happy talk doesn’t match…
The world is shutting down as the novel corona virus continues to wreak havoc. While we cannot blame Trump for the panic, illness and death surrounding the virus, we can blame him for making an already bad situation far worse. Trump’s incompetence means some people will die who did not have to. In some cases…
International Women’s Day is on Sunday. It will remind us that women who lead get things done. This is true even if at the moment in America, election to the presidency remains an unbreakable glass ceiling. This past week, we saw two great women, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, suspend their presidential campaigns. This means…
Super Tuesday might tell us which of the four remaining candidates is likely to become Donald Trump’s opponent. I’m not counting Tulsi Gabbard, given that she has yet to register a single percentage point in popular support. Call me crazy, but the last time I looked, having zero support precludes you from beating Donald Trump….
The only people who were more excited about Bernie Sanders’s win in Nevada than Sanders and his supporters were Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Trump wants a second term so that he can stay out of jail and kill American democracy once and for all. Putin wants a weakened America so that his Russia can…
A small and intimidating group of self-described Bernie supporters are a stark reminder of the core reason Donald Trump has to go. Democracy and Bullying don’t mix. Most of the time, authoritarianism is about leveraging and abusing power against the populace for a tyrant’s personal gain. Trump did it with the Ukraine. He did it…
The deeper we fall into the hell of Donald Trump’s presidency, the harder it is to keep hope alive. I’ve been trying to channel my mother for answers – and I don’t believe in channeling. So it comes as no surprise to me at all that a Quinnipac poll shows Joe Biden lost 22% of…
It was a busy day for Chief Justice Roberts as he presided over wonderland-quality injustice in two bodies. He spent the morning allowing , for now, to implement the Cucinelli wealth test for green card applicants until the legal issues are dealt with by the courts. Then Chief Roberts presided over the McConnell-controlled Senate’s impeachment…
If Donald Trump cared about any American citizen being corrupt, he would have gone to our law enforcement agencies and the State Department to have them look into it. He would not have gone to the newly-elected president of Ukraine, a young, inexperienced former reality show star who campaigned on solving the corruption problems that…
Working hand in glove with Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell is producing a Soviet-style sham trial reminiscent of a Kafka novel. It’s got the long arduous hours, giving equal validity to evidence laid out by the Democrats and to the slop Trump’s lawyers threw together because they have nothing else to counter the facts. Contrary to…
With Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate looming, even his go-to of sticking it to immigrants when he’s having a bad day proves elusive. Next to trying to benefit his personal fortune and bullying foreign governments into helping him win election, Trump’s biggest obsession is with finding as many ways as possible to abuse immigrants…
The fact that Donald Trump ordered Soleimani’s killing seven months ago takes us into criminal territory that also ought to be impeachable. There’s nothing new about Trump breaking the law, or committing crimes when we consider every time he obstructed justice and tried to intimidate witnesses. This, however, is the first time we’re aware of…
Thankfully, Trump’s foolhardiness with Iran did not result in loss of life among our troops. When even Senator Mike Lee (R) Utah called the Trump administration’s intel briefing on the Soleimani assassination the worst he’d ever seen before Fox cut him off, you know that criticism of Trump’s conduct is about national security, not partisanship….
Trump escalated a conflict with Iran because the president needed something to brag about and the Secretary of State was feeling morose because he couldn’t get an assassination the last time he asked the president for one. We are living in chilling times as we continue the descent into the dystopian hell that Trump promised…
Days after Speaker Pelosi led the House to impeach Donald Trump, the president and Republican leaders continue to feel the same sting a child feels when punished. The fact that impeachment happened before Congress and the President went to their holiday destinations means Donald Trump got the Christmas present he deserved. For once, the return…
No matter what happens now, Trump will always be the third president in American history to be impeached – a constitutional criminal.
It’s imperative that the motion on impeachment be tabled. Otherwise, that power will be delegitimized by the McConnell/Graham rigged circus.
The way we answer the call for Donald Trump’s impeachment will reveal whether we want America to continue as an exceptional democracy or to become an ordinary dictatorship. The House Judiciary Committee is debating two articles of impeachment, namely obstruction of Congress and abuse of power. If, as expected, the articles of impeachment pass the…
There is no substitute for the powerful words of Katie Hill in her weekend article in the New York Times about surviving revenge porn. In taking on this cause, she’s showing that it can be done. She is also disempowering the very weapon used against her. You may recall, Katie Hill was one of the…
Donald Trump had a devastating day during Wednesday’s impeachment hearings. Even his own constitutional expert, Jonathan Turley, conceded that swapping military aid for labelling a political opponent a criminal is an impeachable offense. This followed quibbling about procedure and a supposed need for more evidence. If the professor’s performance at Wednesday’s impeachment hearing was any…
If you’re an immigrant, you have known blistering rhetoric and tweets for three years. You’ve lived with anti-immigrant policies that are so cruel and extreme that if anything in this world was made for a string of expletives, it’s the Miller-Trump anti-immigrant program. If you’re the Whistleblower whose complaint opened up the Ukraine investigation, Donald…
I had my green card renewed this past Monday, without incident. The entire process took 15 minutes. That’s privilege at work. I’m a college-educated white woman and I was processed in Virginia by a staff who did more to promote the greatness of America during those fifteen minutes than the entire Trump administration has done…
If you’re enjoying a Thanksgiving dinner with family and friends, that in itself is something to be thankful for. There are many people who won’t be spending the day that way. Some of them will be working, providing service to people getting the forgotten “must-haves” for their Thanksgiving dinner. There are children who will be…
We continue on the journey of asking ourselves what kind of country we want to be, as impeachment hearings continue to build the strongest case imaginable against Donald Trump, and his administration continues to do horrible things to the extensive list of people it considers “other.” For the longest time, Trump’s draconian treatment of immigrants…
It was clear that the only interest of Acting Ambassador William Taylor and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent was to state the facts of what they knew and saw.
If you’re a child and an immigrant, this was the week you were told that your rights matter less than the rights of suspected terrorists at Gitmo. On the plus side, the Senate unanimously passed a House bill making cruelty to animals a felony. This is a good thing. It’s great to see that the…
Donald Trump spends more time pushing boundaries than attending to affairs of state. That ranges from sublime efforts to erase what passes for etiquette on social media to the more consequential, such as badgering the white men who almost exclusively comprise Trump’s GOP in Congress and the Cabinet. They cower shamelessly as their lord and…
You wouldn’t know if it you heard Joe Scarborough’s rant about the reception Donald Trump got at Game Five of the World Series, but there are worse things than chanting “lock him up” at a baseball game. In fact, we saw worse things that day. To wit, shortly after we awoke on Sunday morning, Donald…
Donald Trump’s DC hotel decided it doesn’t want the money that comes from Christians showing solidarity with the Kurds. According to the Washington Post, the Trump International Hotel “abruptly” canceled the event that Frontier Alliance International said was intended to honor and pray for the Kurdish people. Dalton Thomas, the aid group’s founder, described the…
After days of anticipation, Ambassador Bill Taylor gave testimony that decimated Donald Trump’s claim that there was no quid pro quo when he shook down the president of Ukraine. Taylor, a career civil servant, served America for fifty years in multiple posts Stateside and abroad. He came back from retirement to serve as ambassador to…
When the House of Representatives and Europe issue a joint statement condemning Donald Trump and the world’s dark forces, you know something is terribly wrong in America.
We woke up to the tragic news that Elijah Cummings died. He was a great warrior for justice, for civil rights, for fairness. What can you say about a great man who dedicated his life to making things better for the people of Baltimore, of Maryland and of America? He may be resting in power…
Three years of Donald Trump and his crazy reality show showed us how messaging destroyed the democracy show. You may have seen the video portraying Donald Trump as a mass killer going after his long list of “enemies” that included a past president, current possible opponents and people Trump and his crowd just don’t like…
Donald Trump showed us why whistleblowers need protection. He all but ordered a hit on the whistleblower who exposed his shakedown of the Ukraine and more when it became all too clear that his presidency is cooked. His defenders will continue to insist that Trump ust does things differently. But here’s the reality: every president’s…
The story of Ukraine proves that process is more powerful than a magic wand. Indeed in the days since the first reporting about Donald Trump’s alleged attempt to extort dirt on Joe Biden from Ukraine in exchange for previously promised military aid, the momentum for impeachment has built unlike at any time during the Trump…
Children cannot give consent to so many things under the law. Whether it’s when someone rapes children, when children get medical treatment, or when children escape violence, their stories are framed as if they can give consent. We see this with the Jeffrey Epstein case, with medical deferments of deportation, and with asylum cases. This…
We can do better than sending sick people to certain death, forcing them to literally beg Emperor Trump for their lives. We can do better than taking issued student visas away because the student’s friends may have said something we don’t like. I realize there are so many other catastrophic things, like the hurricane that…
During the G7 summit, we saw Trump figuratively screaming at shadows while the responsible countries decided on a plan to save the Amazon rain forest. The world laughs at America as the madman occupying the White House continues to spout insane conspiracy theories and obsesses over getting Putin readmitted to the G7. It’s ironic that…
For all the bellyaching about undocumented immigrants, we can solve the problem if we perp walk Donald Trump and other CEO’s who benefit the most from their labor. Donald Trump doesn’t like it when he’s called a racist. We’ve seen him deny it – even trying to argue with a straight face that he’s the…
[Where indicated, this article includes opinion by Tobias J. Grant, legal analyst at PoliticusUSA] If a president incites one group of Americans to hate another group of Americans, it ought to be an impeachable offense. No matter what your views on the size of government may be, surely we can agree that a President must…
Trump leaves nothing to the imagination, including our race problem . Back in 2016, I suggested that Trump is capable of ethnic cleansing to make America “great again” and people laughed. No one is laughing now and my only regret is being right. Nothing about our race problem is left to the imagination. As I…
Democrats are hoping that Mueller’s testimony on Wednesday will show us all the ways you can say there was “collusion” and there was obstruction. In reality, there was evidence to show that Donald Trump’s campaign conspired with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election. Since then, Donald Trump has done everything imaginable and beyond that…
The most patriotic thing an American can do is reject Donald Trump’s sh*t hole “vision” for America. It’s not because Donald Trump proposed it. It’s because his “vision” consistently brought war and political instability every time it was tried by ordinary countries in history who were trying to achieve the exceptionalism that America already has….
Donald Trump truly believes in privilege and it’s very possible that the intent of his Inalienable Rights Commission is to replace human rights with a hierarchy of privileges. The higher you are on Trump’s organization chart of human beings, the more privileges you get. Even if that isn’t his objective, Donald Trump is the last…
The Trump administration is treating children worse than animals and that is a crime against humanity.
Donald Trump’s extra-judicial facilities at the southern border are concentration camps. You can’t make them less ugly by changing their name. A year ago, America learned Donald Trump’s ICE was separating children from parents – in our name. The Trump administration put babies and children in cages. The Secretary of Homeland Security tried to deny…
A new poll shows that among Democrats, the drumbeat for impeachment proceedings is getting louder and more intense. At 27%, overall support for impeachment is up 10% from last month. Another 24% of those polled support continuing the investigation. The effect of these numbers, in isolation of any other consideration, is bad news for Donald…
On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 (Justices Ginsburg and Gorsuch dissenting) to uphold the “dual sovereignty” doctrine. That means that state law is separate and independent from federal law in relation to “double jeopardy,” that is, being putting on trial twice for the same act. Which means in turn that Trump loyalists charged and…
Within the first few minutes of his opening statement, John Dean showed us he was ready and able to wipe out the Republican Kiddie Caucus.
During his stay in London, Donald Trump proved to be as much a misfit among British Royalty as he was with leaders of our other D-Day allies. On this day, seventy-five years ago, Allied Troops invaded Normandy to eventually defeat the Nazis. Every year since then, the leaders of the free world gather to commemorate…
My point then and today is we have to believe that we will prevail over Trump. Otherwise, we may as well start eating borscht and chanting “MAGA”.
All of this, I mean all of it, is about defeating our minds and our spirits. The moment we give up on America, we give in to Donald Trump.
Anyone who thinks Donald Trump hasn’t changed America is not paying attention. Trump is consolidating power before our eyes. Only the House of Representatives and the courts, for the most part, bear a resemblance to institutions that continue to fight for the American democracy we knew. The daily press briefing became a propaganda session under…
Of the Democratic women competing to be the 46th president of the United States, Amy Klobuchar is a woman who knows first-hand what it’s like campaigning as a Democrat and winning in a purple or red state. Klobuchar is also considered, relative to people like Kamila Harris and Elizabeth Warren, a “moderate” or “conservative” Democrat….
This article is one of several profiles of women running for the democratic presidential nomination. Throughout her career, Elizabeth Warren blended a life of experiences that many of us can relate to with the benefits of an education most people can only dream about. That is what makes her the people’s wonk. As 23 people…
Roy Arpaio openly bragged about his concentration camps for immigrants. When Donald Trump pardoned him, it made a mockery not only of the pardon power, but also legal norms within and beyond the United States. By Trump’s logic, torture is okay even when the offending state is North Korea and the victim is an American…
Kamala Harris broke barriers at every stage of her career. Now she’s going for the one between women and the White House. Everything about Kamala Harris is so much more than merely not being Trump. Though I will concede she is as much the opposite of Trump as one would want to be. I’m not…
I seldom pay attention to stories about the trending hashtags on Twitter. Yet, #Brokeahontus caught my eye. Not because it was trending, but because of a tweet by Walter Schaub, the former director of the Office of Government Ethics. Mr. Shaub responded to a story about the hashtag unfavorably for reasons he, and I, thought…
The bullies of America know that Donald Trump has their backs. The bully can even be a race horse, for whom Trump will tweet a defense. Politically correct “MAGA” talk show hosts, people who are known to bully and harass on social media, can count on Trump to cry “censorship” when they are acted against….
I know about the walking wounded, because that was my mother. She was a brilliant scientist who was nominated for the Nobel Prize. It was one of those times when yeah, it’s a big deal just to be nominated. That’s because my mother was an immigrant, a Holocaust survivor and a woman.
As Donald Trump continues his war with the rule of law that he used to say he believes in, there are signs that Republican support for him may be softening. Certainly, one can look at the increase in support for Trump and his Putin-first agenda and conclude the opposite. Smaller numbers with increased conformity to…
This was going to be a column on what looks to me like softening Republican support for Donald Trump. Instead it’s going to be about an aspect of one of the reasons Trump should be impeached. I will write that other column, but not today. Trump stokes hatred toward most Americans. He has transformed hate…
The pre-Easter weekend news dump of the Mueller report failed. We all heard AG Barr’s pre-emptive strike – a highly unusual presser where he actually trotted out the idea that being frustrated is a defense when one is suspected of conspiring with a hostile foreign power to cheat his way to victory in an election….
Last Friday, the president of the United States waged war on the First Amendment unlike anything I’ve witnessed. It gets more twisted because Trump’s weapon of choice was an abuse of the First Amendment. It’s the sort of thing we saw happen in the Balkans during the 1990’s and read about happening in the Soviet…
Women and enlightened men know misogyny is baked into the media’s coverage of presidential elections. While Trump’s 2016 win was the result of a combination of forces, one of those forces was media bias. That isn’t merely the opinion of this writer; there is data proving Trump got preferential treatment, be it from the volume…
In Donald Trump’s world, immigrants provide two essential services: as free or nearly free labor and as a political piñata. Of the long list of people and groups of people Trump hates, immigrants have had the most exposure to Trump’s authoritarian aspirations. By his own admission, Trump’s immigration “policy” is about deterring asylum-seekers in particular because…
For the past couple of years, we endured Donald Trump’s paranoid claims about fellow Republican, Robert Mueller. Throughout it all, Trump lied when he called Mueller an angry Democrat on a witch hunt. Trump held his fire on the Mueller report until after his Roy Cohn aka William Barr scrubbed and spun it into a…
When I started writing this piece, it was going to be in defense of Nancy Pelosi’s argument against a premature rush to impeachment. Her reasoning still stands. I was going to point to the fact that she wants a real investigation (vs. what the Republicans did ) and bi-partisan support – since the Republicans do…
Last week, Democrats won the House back with a caucus that looks more like America than at any other time. Over 100 women will be in the House. Thanks to the women who ran, who worked to elect Democrats and the people who voted for them, Donald Trump will face oversight for the first time…
It’s a week after the midterm elections and we still don’t know the full extent of the blue wave. Here’s what we do know. Even though vote suppression was at its ugliest, Americans navigated the obstacles in record numbers to renounce Donald Trump’s version of nationalism. We were reminded that race continues to affect our…
Melania Trump has a Romanov complex. There were signs of it with the casual way she throws tax payer money away, beginning with her decision to stay in New York for several months following her husband’s inauguration. Yes, she cited Barron’s schooling as the reason and perhaps she was truly concerned about that. But, the…
Coming to a Senate hearing room near you, Act II in the transition of the Supreme Court to merely a bit player in the Trump Reality Show. Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination reflects a broken confirmation process where the bulk of his background is effectively under seal, and the emphasis was on p.r. instead of his character…
Anyone old enough to remember Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearing, remembers that Anita Hill came forward at the last minute. She testified and, true to any situation when a woman accuses a man of inappropriate sexual behavior ranging from harassment to rape, she was vilified.
If confirmed, Neil Kavanaugh will overturn Roe v. Wade. That’s despite the rhetorical pat on the head he gave Senator Susan Collins while telling her not to worry her pretty little head about it. Without question, Kavanaugh will attack civil rights with a gusto that only white supremacists and neo-Nazis could love. Yet, as much…
John McCain was the last Republican who understood that good politics is about compromise, and without it, you’re left with tyranny. It takes two wings for a bird or an airplane to fly and ultimately it takes two wings for a policy to be sustained. We’re seeing what the absence of compromise in politics looks…
Led by Nancy Pelosi, Democrats are very likely to take back the House in November and just like in 2016, the prospect of a strong, capable woman being in a position of power scares the Kremlin and the Republican Party. In 2016, ageism and sexism worked on conservatives, but it also worked on progressives. So,…
Ben Ferencz, the last surviving prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials, called Donald Trump’s family separation policy a crime against humanity. A crime against humanity is defined as a “deliberate act, typically as part of a systematic campaign, that causes human suffering or death on a large scale.”
The Democratic Party is the only big tent left in America. It’s also the only viable political party that defends American interests and American values. It’s crucial we hold on to these characteristics, as Trump tries to take us further into the abyss of totalitarianism.
Donald Trump is abusing presidential power again. This time he threatened, via Sarah Sanders, to strip several people of their national security clearances. In short, he tried to weaponize security clearances. If you meet the standards for a clearance but are a critic of Trump, he wants to silence you by taking your security clearance.