The world is holding its collective breath as the most powerful man on the planet prepares to meet with Donald Trump. President Xi Jinping of China will host the Trump-led U.S. delegation later this week.

While the tenuous ceasefire with Iran is on Trump-proclaimed “life support” and renewed military action seemingly imminent, Trump is nonetheless packing his bags and heading to Beijing.

For a president who has sent his son-in-law and a real estate buddy to negotiate all over the globe, any mediations with Team Trump have low potential and high risk. Look no further than the current stalemate with Tehran. Or Russia and Ukraine. He promised that war would end on his first day in office. That was 476 days ago.

Now he has another war to end — one of his own making — that has upended the economic world order and downgraded the U.S. economy. We have soaring gas prices and all the impending downstream consequences, like higher food costs.

This is the second shot at this summit — the first postponed by the Iran war back in March. Because he views himself as the ultimate dealmaker, Trump heads to China with more bravado than is justified. His unpredictability, which has reached new heights recently, and Xi’s political acuity portend a meeting that will have significant global impact.

It’s hard to imagine, but in this upside-down political reality Xi is painting China as the safe and stable alternative to a volatile United States. And many international trading partners are buying it. But Trump is more concerned with Iran right now. And it so happens that China is the biggest buyer of Iranian oil. Hopes are that Trump can exploit that fact by urging Xi to pressure Iran to agree to the U.S. peace agreement.

China might do that, for a horrific price: Taiwan. Currently, America’s position on Taiwan, as negotiated by President Richard Nixon, is purposely ambiguous. But China wants to make explicit that the U.S. does not support a free and independent Taiwan.

That position would have been unthinkable in previous American administrations, but Trump’s inability to stay on script, and the fact that a free Taiwan versus a Chinese-controlled Taiwan has no material effect on him, could result in Taiwanese independence becoming collateral damage of the war in Iran.

The U.S. has historically sent billions in military assistance to Taiwan, which China claims to own. Washington has long seen Taiwan as a regional democratic counterbalance to Communist China.

If and when Taiwan is discussed, much less settled, the two leaders will likely move on to the economic battle simmering between the superpowers. The U.S. has attempted to slow China’s rise on the world stage, as a technological innovator and economic powerhouse. China has been doing its own pushing. Both countries are using steep tariffs, sanctions, and technology restrictions as cudgels in an ever-growing trade war.

Trump needs a win in China, considering the mess he has created at home. He lashed out at Tehran’s counter offer to the most recent U.S. proposal to end the war. “I would call it the weakest right now after reading that piece of garbage they sent us. I didn’t even finish reading it,” said the president to reporters on Monday, describing what was supposed to be a ceasefire.

Iran’s counteroffer is a limited agreement that would open the Strait of Hormuz and lift the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports. This half-measure is an effort to get global oil reserves moving again, as negotiations between the U.S. and Iran slog on.

The Iranian foreign ministry called their proposal “generous” and “reasonable.” Trump called it “TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE” and suggested bombing could begin again soon. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told “60 Minutes” that the current Iranian government’s “days are numbered — but it could take a lot of days.”

Trump has talked about having “all the cards” in these negotiations. I don’t know what game he is playing, but it may as well be Go Fish. He has few cards because the Iranian regime’s tolerance for pain is so high. With no accountability to their people and a ruthless military, the Iranian theocracy is ready and willing to wait out a flailing Trump.

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Writing in The Atlantic, Robert Kagan calls the situation a checkmate for Iran:

“The risk calculus that forced Trump to back down a month ago still holds. Even if Trump were to carry out his threat to destroy Iran’s “civilization” through more bombing, Iran would still be able to launch many missiles and drones before its regime went down — assuming it did go down. Just a few successful strikes could cripple the region’s oil and gas infrastructure for years if not decades, throwing the world, and the United States, into a prolonged economic crisis.”

None of this is going to help rising global oil prices. U.S. gas prices remain high, up $1.50 since the war began. To alleviate sticker shock, Trump reversed course on Monday and said he would endorse a suspension of the federal gas tax. This idea gets batted around Congress every time prices rise significantly.

The federal tax on a gallon of gasoline is 18.4 cents and 24.4 cents on diesel. While a “gas tax holiday” sounds like a good way to relieve pressure at the pump, it comes with a lot of downsides. This is why the president and congressional Republicans have been reluctant to propose it.

First, consumers would get some relief, but it won’t come close to offsetting the massive increase that will likely grow as the war continues. Second, the gas tax funds the national Highway Trust Fund, which is used for federal road maintenance.

The trust fund spends more than twice what the gas tax brings in, and it is getting harder to fund as cars become more efficient and consumers buy electric vehicles. A five-month tax moratorium would reduce the trust fund by $17 billion, or 46%, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Though it amounts to little more than a stunt, with the summer driving season about to get started and the midterms less than six months away, odds have increased that Republicans in Congress will push for it.

Trump is essentially borrowing from Peter, not to pay Paul, but to keep from getting impeached by an increasingly probable Democratic Congress in 2027.

Meantime, America’s strategic position in a world that grows more dangerous by the day grows weaker.

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At the age of 62, Louis Armstrong dethroned the Beatles’ 14-week hold on the pop chart’s top spot with his vocal stylings and trumpeting prowess on “Hello, Dolly!” That was 62 years ago this weekend, and it is our reason to smile.

“Hello, Dolly!” written by Jerry Herman, is the titular song of the musical of the same name. The Broadway show won 10 Tony Awards, including Best Musical. While Armstrong’s recording topped Billboard’s Hot 100 Chart, it also earned Grammys for Song of the Year and Male Vocal Performance.

In 1963, the jazz great recorded a demo of the song to help promote the stage show. It was that recording that was released as a single and became Armstrong’s most successful of his long career.

The New Orleans native’s rich, gravelly voice is instantly recognizable from the first lyric. He went on to perform the song with Barbra Streisand in the 1969 “Hello, Dolly!” film, though I am partial to his original recording.

A fun fact about “Hello, Dolly!”: During his run for president in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson used the song on the campaign trail, though he renamed it “Hello, Lyndon!” At the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, I remember Carol Channing, the original Dolly on Broadway, singing the song to the nominee.

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Dan

Somebody is lying.

It’s about the only thing we can be sure of as far as the war in Iran is concerned.

Donald Trump and his circle of yes-men have suggested that the war has been won, that the ceasefire is holding, that peace talks are underway, that Iran has been decimated, that the U.S. Navy is escorting ships through the Strait of Hormuz.

Is any of that true? Maybe, but the administration has lied so often and has been so inconsistent and evasive for so long, you can’t trust any of it.

We are getting information about the war almost exclusively from late-night social media rants from Donald Trump and a few Pentagon press conferences filled with journalists hand-picked by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

Fortunately, there are still reporters with sources willing to shed light on a war that has entered its third month and caused gas prices to jump 26 cents in a week, reaching a national average of $4.56 a gallon.

On Thursday, the Washington Post reported on a confidential CIA assessment that says Iran can withstand between three to four more months of hostilities. The report, which has been given to the White House, states that Iran has retained more than 70% of its pre-war stockpiles of missiles and mobile launchers.

It goes on to say Iran has managed to gain access to its underground storage facilities, and that the Iranian military has been able to repair or finish fabricating new missiles. That’s a long way from what Trump & Co. have told Americans.

One administration source told the Post that with the February 28 assassination of Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, the regime has become even more radical and hardline. It is patient and determined to wait out the American president.

New Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei called for a “new regional and global order under the strategy of a strong Iran,” on social media. He pointed to “using the leverage of closing the strait” or Hormuz as one step to achieving that goal.

Choosing to ignore the CIA’s assessment, Trump seemingly made up his own. “Their missiles are mostly decimated, they have probably 18, 19 percent, but not a lot by comparison to what they had,” he said from the Oval Office on Wednesday.

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Not only have we been lied to, we’ve been kept in the dark about the real extent of damage done. The Post also reported the Pentagon asked private satellite companies not to make their satellite images of the region available for the public and press. But the Post has found out through other sources that despite the administration’s claims, Iranian air strikes have damaged or destroyed 228 U.S. and allied military structures since the war began.

And then there are the dueling blockades in the Strait of Hormuz, which mean practically no ships are getting through, holding hostage 20% of the world’s oil supplies as well as crucial commodities like natural gas, helium, and aluminium.

Both the U.S. and Iran are enforcing conflicting maritime restrictions. From its vantage point, Iran continues to block the strategic strait, with new rules for passage in the form of a 40-question application. Prior to Trump’s war, ships were free to travel through the Strait as they pleased. Now, reportedly, Iran is extorting millions of dollars to pass through, something they consider a spoil of war. Trump has handed war-ravaged Iran immense leverage and a much needed revenue stream.

“Having demonstrated it once, Iran can now credibly threaten to shut down the Strait of Hormuz in the future. Its military capabilities have been degraded but not destroyed. It would take little effort for Iran to deter shippers from resuming traffic,” Gregory Brew writes in Foreign Affairs.

On Sunday, Trump announced “Project Freedom,” which offered U.S. naval escorts of civilian vessels through the Strait. Though he paused the operation on Tuesday because of “great progress” in peace talks, he said the “Navy has been incredible. The job they did … It’s like a wall of steel.”

Now we learn the real reason he paused the operation was outrage from Saudi Arabia which only learned of the move from Trump’s social media account. The Saudis then suspended U.S. access to its airspace and air bases, according to NBC News.

Meanwhile, the White House awaits word from the Iranians about its proposed peace deal. Up to this point, Iran has not budged on any requests from the U.S., including abandoning its nuclear program, surrendering enriched uranium, or opening the Strait.

If you were hoping for some daylight from Hegseth’s Capitol Hill testimony last week, think again. His appearance before the House Armed Services Committee was long on hostility and short on information. While the Defense Secretary was accused of lying about the cost of the war, shifting justification for the war, and refusing to be transparent, he declined to answer almost any question put to him.

His testimony came just two days ahead of the 60-day deadline imposed by the 1973 War Powers Act. It requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying troops and mandates their withdrawal within 60 days without congressional authorization to continue. On Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that Operation Epic Fury had concluded because it had achieved its objectives. What was the objective, by the way?

Whether hostilities are over or not, significant damage has been done to global oil operations and to U.S. military bases in the Middle East. It will take months to restore oil exports to pre-war levels and an estimated 15 and 25 billion dollars to repair the bases.

None of this is helping the public relations disaster made by Trump. The war is deeply unpopular, with a new PBS/NPR/Marist poll showing that 60% of Americans disapprove. This mirrors Trump’s overall approval rating, which is one of the lowest in U.S. presidential history.

At this point, getting back to where we were before the start of the war would be considered a “win.” But as things now stand, Iran will be the one with bragging rights, while America and the rest of the world suffer for Trump’s foray into war.

Make no mistake, the war is not over. The truth has not been told about its cost, how much economic damage has been done, nor how much prestige and influence America has lost.

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When an American, any American, regardless of skin color, casts a ballot, it has to count. Not anymore. The Black vote in America has been diluted overnight by a Republican-packed Supreme Court.

Last week, the Court further silenced Black Americans by gutting the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The justices, in a 6-3 vote, eliminated legally mandated congressional districts that give people of color the ability to participate in American democracy.

The ruling in Louisiana v. Callais struck down the state’s congressional map that required two majority-Black districts out of six. A third of Louisiana’s population is Black.

The extent to which Southern, white, Republican governors have already used the ruling to maximize partisan advantage is stunning.

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Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry (R) immediately suspended the state’s May 16 primary to allow for the adoption of a new map, which would eliminate one of the two majority-Black districts. Early and absentee voting has already begun.

In Alabama and Tennessee, both Republican governors called special legislative sessions to redraw their congressional maps. Alabama, which has two minority-Black districts, would have one. Tennessee could end up with none.

On Monday, Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis (R) signed an aggressively gerrymandered electoral map into law, which could net four additional Republican seats in Congress. Florida’s new map was already in the works when the Callais decision came down. The ruling will make it harder to combat the new map in court.

Texas, Georgia, and Mississippi are also considering new gerrymandered maps.

The fight to improve civil rights, and therefore voting rights, was hard fought, and the road to equality was paved with the sweat and blood of many courageous Americans. I witnessed the struggle firsthand.

Soon after I was hired by CBS News in 1962, I became one of the first national reporters to cover the Civil Rights Movement. Though it began in 1954, there had been little coverage by national news organizations.

One of the first people I met was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Albany, Georgia. His bearing, his embrace of Mahatma Gandhi and nonviolent protest, his deep Christian faith, and understanding of philosophy set him apart as a leader.

I spent the next few months crisscrossing the South. I reported on Ku Klux Klan rallies. Seeing hate course through a crowd of hooded men as they rallied around a burning cross chilled my heart.

It is hard to explain to those who weren’t there, but more than 60 years later, I can still see the hope in the eyes of so many Black Americans who only wanted to be treated equally. The vitriol of those Southern whites filled with hostility and anger still boils my blood.

Seeing this up close changed me. But it did not change our country as much as one might hope. Simmering hatred still lives on in the hearts and minds of too many.

I then visited Jackson, Mississippi where I met Medgar Evers.

Evers, who was only in his 30s at the time, was already a veteran of the civil rights struggle. While King sought a broad mandate of social change, Evers was laser-focused on voting. He was an impressive man who looked you square in the eye when he spoke. And the right to vote is what he wanted to speak about.

In 1962, I accompanied Evers and a group of Black voters to the polls on Election Day. They were armed with documents proving they were registered to vote.

Evers approached the polling official who said, “What you doing here, boy?” Evers politely responded that they were there to vote. “You aren’t voting today, you aren’t voting any day.” The reply seethed with hatred and contempt.

The brazenness of a white election official tossing aside the constitutional right of enfranchisement, a right that was enshrined in the Constitution because of the Civil War, was shocking. The fact that I would report on his actions did not stop him, nor did he even seem to care. The actions of Evers that day are the very definition of patriotic courage.

Over the next several months we became better acquainted. I found that Evers did not hate white people, he hated the system and the elected officials who manipulated it.

Less than a year later, Evers was dead, assassinated in his driveway. He was shot in the back.

The right to vote is the principal tenet of a representative democracy. President Lyndon Johnson understood the importance of voting rights as an essential pillar of civil rights. Two years after Evers’ murder, Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which did away with many of the levers people used to disenfranchise Black voters.

Now the Supreme Court has all but killed it and the promise of equal citizenship, which they are sworn to uphold. Senator Raphael Warnock, Democrat of Georgia, said the ruling would have “a devastating impact” on our democracy.

“[S]tates that used to play old games, they’re playing new games. They’re 21st-century Jim Crow tactics in new clothes: moving voter polls, closing polls in Black and brown communities, purging people — people literally showing up and not knowing that their names have been purged from the rolls. And the data shows that this disproportionately impacts Black and brown citizens,” he told Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.”

Racism has been called cowardice. It is that, but it has also morphed into a cudgel used to oppress. Gerrymandering is institutionalized and sanctioned racism with the sole purpose of keeping the shrinking white majority in power, disenfranchised voters be damned.

North Carolina State Senator Michael Garrett wrote eloquently about where the country goes from here.

“November is when we answer. November is when ordinary Americans, neighbors, parents, teachers, veterans, kids casting their first ballot, pick up the work that six robed figures in Washington tried to set down. We do not need this Court’s permission to keep the covenant. We never did. We keep the covenant by showing up. At the doors. On the phones. At the polls. For each other.”

And for the men and women who died trying to further the ideal that we are all equal under the law and at the ballot box.

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Dan

This week, The New York Times released the results of its poll of 250 music insiders who they believe are the greatest living American songwriters. The final list of 30 solo artists and songwriting teams spans musical genres from pop to country to hip hop.

I am gratified that Reason to Smile has featured many on the list, including songwriting superstars like Dolly Parton, Stevie Wonder, Willie Nelson, and Bruce Springsteen.

This week we will go a little off-road and highlight an artist that you probably wouldn’t associate with me: Taylor Swift. No one would ever consider me a Swiftie, but those in the know have sold me on her talents, and especially her songwriting and her ability to make folks smile.

Some smart person at Sony Records saw great potential in 14-year-old Swift, when she was signed to her first contract, which was solely a songwriting contract. Since signing that contract in 2004, Swift has become the best-selling artist of all time. She has released 12 studio albums, writing every song on every album, alone or in collaboration.

She believes storytelling must be the heart of songwriting, which she uses as catharsis, a way to cope with personal challenges and hardships. This is why so many of her songs are autobiographical.

The Times calls her songs “a four-ish minute distillation of the biggest feelings imaginable, threaded through a melody that won’t leave you alone.” Her song “Shake It Off” certainly checks those boxes.

The sheer size of Swift’s body of work is remarkable for someone so young — she is only 36. She has been writing, publishing, and singing songs for more than two decades. Swift has given no indication she is going to rest on her impressive laurels.

Swift spoke with the Times about the mystery of song writing. “Even though I’ve been writing songs for so long, and I’ve started songs and finished songs so many different ways. They’ve gone through so many journeys. They’ve happened quickly, they’ve happened over time, they’ve been inspired by my life, by mythology, by fables, by books, by movies, by characters, by warnings, lessons — and they never quite happen exactly the same way, and I still don’t quite understand how it works.”

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For American families watching their spending power shrink by the hour, everything is becoming more difficult. And if they’re looking for sympathy or solutions from the party in charge, tough luck.

The president, who promised to slash gas prices to $2 a gallon, only to cause them to almost double, has some suggestions for his fellow Americans. We should “stay home, relax, enjoy some peace and quiet,” he wrote on social media.

Well, that’s all many families may be able to afford to do anyway.

It shouldn’t be a surprise. How can someone who was born rich and currently worth somewhere north of $5 billion possibly relate? He can’t. Or at least doesn’t.

This president is loath to take anyone’s advice that isn’t simply a reiteration of what he wants to do. And he certainly won’t listen to an admonishment from a Democratic strategist — even if it means losing control of Congress.

Trump would do well to heed James Carville’s notable quip, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Made famous during the 1992 presidential election, it was a reminder to Clinton campaign staffers that voters care about their personal finances first and foremost. That truism has only gained traction in the intervening 34 years. As a reminder — Bill Clinton beat George Bush in that election.

The reason Trump won’t listen to Carville is because he does not care. He considers a mother having to decide between buying medicine or food for her children “short term pain.” He often sounds and appears incapable of empathy and has never had to worry about affording anything.

Nor can anyone in Trump’s orbit help him understand the plight of a family struggling in our current economy. His Cabinet has the highest net worth in American history, coming in at more than $7.5 billion collectively. By comparison, Joe Biden’s Cabinet’s net worth was $110 million, and that is still a lot for any group of 23 people.

Trump isn’t simply ignoring the affordability crisis, most of which can be traced directly to his actions and policies. He is in full gaslighting mode, insisting such claims are “a hoax.” But, this is one mess he can’t lie his way out of, because real people are feeling real pain every time they buy gas or groceries.

Skyrocketing gas prices must be laid squarely at the president’s feet and his war of choice. On the day Trump started bombing Iran, the national average for a gallon of gas was $2.90. In 61 days, the cost has climbed by more than 48% to $4.30.

The only time in the past 10 years gas prices have crested $4 was during the pandemic. The price of gas affects just about everything we buy, because just about everything we buy has to get to where we buy it.

“The war is hitting the global economy in cumulative waves: first through higher energy prices, then higher food prices and finally, higher inflation, which will push up interest rates and make debt even more expensive,” Indermit Gill, chief economist of the World Bank, said.

The price of oil is being held hostage by Trump’s on-again, off-again (are they happening at all?) negotiations with Iran. If we actually have won the war, as the president contends, why would we have to negotiate anything? And by the way, we’re negotiating to the status quo before the war. For example, safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

The rising costs come at a time when the American wealth gap is widening and that rift is being amplified by Trump’s billionaire tax cuts, his easing of bank and cryptocurrency regulations, and the evisceration of the social safety net.

The sheer number of people who are suffering economically is growing. In 1990, the top 1% held 23% of the country’s wealth. Today, the 1% hold 32%, which is more than double the wealth held by the bottom 90%, according to the Federal Reserve.

Many of the very wealthy might never know that millions of Americans can barely afford milk. The stock market is up. Purchases for multimillion dollar mansions, private jets, and mega yachts are up too.

If you are poor, you are more likely to get poorer. The typical American family can’t afford to buy a median-priced home, which is just over $400,000. Car sales are down because people can’t afford the average $700 a month car payment. Food banks are reporting a significant increase in people skipping meals. To make ends meet, growing numbers of Americans are making costly withdrawals from retirement accounts.

Trump’s self-aggrandizing delusions — part of the Teflon he has erected to shield him from dealing with other people’s pain — is growing along with this ego. According to a Trump confidant who spoke with The Atlantic, “He’s been talking recently about how he is the most powerful person to ever live.”

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The Atlantic also reported that Trump has started comparing himself to Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Napoleon. Never mind that Alexander died at 32 leaving his empire in chaos, Caesar was a dictator assassinated by officials in his own government, and Napoleon became a tyrant who was exiled to a small island. Apparently, all Trump cares about is the perception of these men as powerful historical figures.

Lest anyone forget about Trump’s “greatness,” just ahead of the professional golf tournament being played at his course in Miami this week, Trump erected a larger-than-life gold statue of himself.

That statue is emblematic of all the things he is building to burnish his image and his legacy. But it isn’t playing well in Peoria or Portland.

“Every time I go to the grocery store, I’m filled with dread,” Jeremy Kregar, a man with a full-time job in Portland, Oregon, told NBC News. “Meanwhile, we’re going to build a White House ballroom? It feels like, as an American, a slap in the face.”

That’s because it is.

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We toss around terms like “American exceptionalism” far too easily. But there is little debate that, in areas of science and medicine, this country has long been the world leader. We have more top scientists, elite doctors, and preeminent researchers than anywhere else. Their work has meant people live longer, healthier lives.

It is also a cornerstone of American influence around the world.

Scientific and medical research requires significant funding. It has thrived because our elected officials have had the political will to provide a financial pipeline to the public and private sectors.

President Donald Trump is severing that lifeline.

As the mainstream media was renting tuxedos and getting manicures ahead of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Trump was busy pounding nails into the coffin of the American scientific research community.

Tucked away on Friday evening, in a terse, two-line email, the White House personnel office fired the entire National Science Board. “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I’m writing to inform you that your position as a member of the National Science Board is terminated, effective immediately,” the email read.

No reason was given in the email, and the White House has had no additional comment on the firings.

The independent, 24-person board is made up of top scientists and engineers who serve staggered, six-year terms, to ensure overlap between presidential administrations. They are chosen “solely on the basis of established records of distinguished service.”

The board advises the National Science Foundation (NSF), which supports a wide range of research, from Antarctic exploration to quantum computing. NSF-funded research helped develop the MRI machine, LASIK eye surgery, and Wi-Fi, among many other innovations. It distributes $9 billion in research grants annually.

“[I]t is not enough simply to keep abreast of the rest of the world in scientific matters. We must maintain our leadership,” President Harry Truman said in 1950, when he established the board.

Keivan Stassun, a physicist and astronomer at Vanderbilt University who was appointed to the board in 2022, called the Trump purge “a wholesale evisceration of American leadership in science and technology globally,” to the Los Angeles Times.

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Although the president is often reluctant to explain why he does imprudent and detrimental things, if one looks hard enough, a reason can usually be found. In this case, there may be two.

Reason one: to save face. The board was set to meet in early May to work on the release of a new report. The report outlines how the U.S., once the world leader in scientific research, is losing ground to China. If there is no board, the report can’t be released.

Reason two: money. In its 2026 budget, the Trump administration recommended a 55% cut to the NSF. After lobbying by the National Science Board, Congress rejected the White House’s proposal and funded the NSF at 2025 levels.

To avoid the same fate for this year’s budget, which again recommends slashing the foundation’s funding, Trump did away with the board before its members could convince members of Congress.

Friday’s firings are just the latest in Trump’s long list of objectionable actions to cast doubt on scientific findings and thwart research.

The United States has been on the cutting edge of scientific and medical research since the end of World War II. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been the world leader in funding biomedical research. A 2020 study found that NIH-funded research was associated with every new drug approved between 2010 and 2019.

But all of that is now changing. And Trump is to blame.

Science is “explicitly designed to counter human self-deception,” psychologist Steven Pinker told Chris Mooney in his book “The Republican War on Science.”

When deception is your modus operandi, you will naturally try to squash, discount, and demonize the truth. Being anti-science helps protect established special interests. Think climate change denialism and fossil fuel companies.

Trump called the climate crisis “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world” at last year’s United Nations General Assembly. He said this even as the globe is in the midst of the warmest 10-year span on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The NSF’s board is not the first the Trump administration has hamstrung. In June of last year Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, fired the 17-person vaccine advisory board and replaced many with vaccine skeptics. Trump himself replaced leading scientists with tech billionaires on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

The administration significantly cut funding to the National Cancer Institute, once the gold standard for rigorous, evidence-based research. It no longer funds mRNA research, a revolutionary technology that has the potential to radically improve cancer care.

It canceled 22 separate mRNA contracts, including one working on a vaccine for brain cancer in children. Kennedy is an mRNA skeptic, claiming the vaccines aren’t safe while providing no evidence.

Pancreatic cancer is an incurable disease with a dismal survival rate. Fortunately for pancreatic cancer patients, research into an mRNA vaccine was far enough along that the cuts didn’t affect the very promising treatment.

BioNTech, a German biomedical research company, partnered with Moderna, an American company, to develop pancreatic cancer vaccines using mRNA technology.

The technology, already in development when the pandemic hit, was used to create the Covid vaccine. The Lancet estimated that mRNA vaccines prevented 14.4 to 19.8 million deaths just in the first year of use.

MRNA vaccine technology was in the pipeline thanks to billions of dollars in federal grants over decades. This allowed researchers to get Covid vaccines to market incredibly quickly. This technology is now helping people with pancreatic cancer live years longer than ever before.

Moderna is also using mRNA therapy in combination with other drugs to cut melanoma death rates by 49%. Applications for a variety of cancers are in the works.

Paul Darren Bieniasz, a British-American virologist, wrote in The Guardian, “If we continue the destructive course plotted by this administration, medicines that would otherwise have saved lives in future generations, will not be invented. Technologies that would have ensured future employment and prosperity in the U.S. will not be devised. Solutions that allow the generation of power while causing less damage to the environment, will never be developed. Clearly, if we decline to nurture science, the lives of future Americans will be shorter, sicker and poorer.”

While Donald Trump won’t be around to see that, millions of Americans will. Trump doesn’t like inconvenient truths. Science is a kaleidoscope of inconvenient truths. Rather than deal with them like the world leader he should be, he gaslights, he rages, he denies all.

And as with so much else in this administration, we the people pay the price.

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Dan

Happy Earth Day!

Wednesday was the 56th annual celebration of Mother Earth. More than one billion people worldwide participated in community cleanups, workshops, tree plantings, marches, and voter registration drives.

Earth Day was founded by Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin following an oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara in 1969. The first official Earth Day, a year later, led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and a flurry of groundbreaking laws.

Joni Mitchell’s 1970 song “Big Yellow Taxi” became a seminal anthem for the burgeoning environmental movement and remains so to this day.

The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song was awarded to Mitchell in 2023. At a concert in her honor, some of music’s biggest names, including Annie Lennox, Cyndi Lauper, Brandi Carlisle, and Angélique Kidjo, gathered to perform the famous folk-pop song.

The song’s genius lies in the juxtaposition of the jaunty rhythm and joyful melody with the serious subject matter.

Mitchell wrote the song after her first trip to Hawaii in 1970. “I took a taxi to the hotel and when I woke up the next morning, I threw back the curtains and saw these beautiful green mountains in the distance. Then, I looked down and there was a parking lot as far as the eye could see, and it broke my heart,” she said.

The song’s popularity, and its connection to environmental awareness, is as strong as ever. According to Mitchell’s website, the song has been officially covered 456 times, keeping its message of ecological preservation alive, something sorely needed today.

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The encore Donald Trump administration is packed with some of the least qualified actors ever to step foot onto the Washington stage. What they lack in experience, they more than make up for in indefatigable loyalty, Trump’s chief employment requirement.

Trump will be remembered for his promise to only hire “the best people.” That wasn’t true when he first said it a decade ago, and it’s an especially hollow pledge in his second term as he begins to jettison the sycophants who have become public embarrassments.

The gone-but-not-forgotten list begins with Kristi Noem, the former Secretary of Homeland Security. She was fired in March after the immigration fiasco in Minneapolis, where two Americans were killed on the street by federal agents. The final straw was too much self-promotion, including a $200 million ad campaign featuring Noem on horseback. Noem came to the job woefully underprepared and left under a cloud of controversy.

Then Pam Bondi was relieved of her duties at the Department of Justice after bungling the Epstein files and failing to get meaningful indictments against the president’s perceived enemies. While Bondi had prosecutorial experience, that was not her mandate. Trump just wanted a personal attorney, and she didn’t deliver. When Trump fired her, he said the former attorney general would be “transitioning to a much-needed and important new job in the private sector.”

This week, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned amidst allegations she had an inappropriate relationship with a staffer. In an official complaint, she is also accused of drinking on the job. There are allegations of sexual misconduct against her husband, who was barred from the Labor Department building, and her father, who allegedly sent inappropriate texts to staff members. Chavez-DeRemer served as the mayor of a small town in Oregon before winning one term in Congress.

Now the chatter in Washington is about who will be next to go. There are plenty of candidates within the Cabinet, but odds are increasing that it may be FBI Director Kash Patel. Since Patel took over at the FBI, the country’s premier law enforcement agency has become an organization myopically dedicated to taking down the president’s political enemies.

Patel, a former public defender with scant law enforcement experience, was a highly unusual choice to run the FBI, but one that makes sense if you want to change the FBI’s mission from protecting Americans to pursuing vengeance.

Patel is a conspiracy theorist who believes FBI agents were involved in planning the January 6 attack. He has been described as erratic, lazy, paranoid, and impulsive.

The Atlantic recently reported on his excessive drinking and frequent absences from FBI headquarters. Patel is suing the magazine for defamation, though the piece was deeply sourced.

The New York Times documented his use of government jets for vacations and his insistence that FBI SWAT teams provide round-the-clock security for his girlfriend, an unprecedented move. He didn’t like that story either and, according to the Times, ordered agents to investigate the reporter to determine if she broke federal stalking laws. The investigation was dropped.

And who can forget the video of Patel chugging beers and partying with the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team after winning the gold medal in Milan? Apparently not the president. CNN reported that Trump was privately furious about the video.

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The FBI is tasked with protecting the country from threats at home and abroad. “Follow the facts without fear or favor” has become a guiding principle of the FBI, to signal objectivity amidst intense political scrutiny. The agency has been trying to rebuild its reputation since the Watergate scandal, when President Richard Nixon weaponized the FBI. But Nixon’s actions with the FBI pale in comparison with those of the current president.

After Watergate, Congress stepped in to restore the agency’s credibility, but much of that has been lost since Trump took office again. On Wednesday, the Times published an investigation of the agency that found Patel’s leadership is undermining the FBI and making the country less safe. The reporters spoke with 45 current and former FBi employees.

“We found an agency that was really straining under political pressure, where the leadership was transformed into something much more partisan than anyone at the FBI had seen before, and where agents were finding themselves doing work that felt to them like it was different and at odds with their own sense of mission and purpose,” Times reporter Emily Bazelon said.

And if those inside the FBI are talking, it must be bad. The agency has long been known for its arms-length approach to the press. It’s a buttoned up bunch that used to play by the rules.

In an effort to curry favor with his boss, Patel reassigned agents who were investigating corruption, crime, drug trafficking, and terrorism to focus on the Trump retribution campaign and to assist with immigration enforcement, something the FBI has had no role in previously.

In addition, Patel has purged the agency of hundreds of agents, many of whom worked on investigations of Trump. Hundreds more have left because their ethics no longer align with those of the agency. The thousands of years of expertise that walked out the FBI’s front door during recent years can not be recovered quickly or easily — if indeed ever.

“Certain threats just aren’t getting addressed, because there’s no one there to work them. And it just makes me question, what are we missing? What threats are we not seeing?” former FBI analyst Jill Fields told the Times.

All good and frightening questions. We can add another: What threat does Patel himself pose? His personal behavior, especially his alleged public intoxication, makes him a potential target of exploitation by our enemies.

Trump chose Patel because of, not in spite of, his cocky bluster. “I want [Trump] to subpoena every government gangster that has ever called him out bogusly. We’re going to subpoena Garland, Wray. We’re going to put all of them in the hot seat,” Patel boasted.

He seems to like the term government gangster. It is also the name of his 2023 book, which includes a hit list of government officials he claims are part of the “deep state” working against Trump.

Thus far, Trump has overlooked Patel’s antics — his drinking, his repeated absences from work, his jumping to conclusions in the middle of sensitive investigations — because of the director’s dogged determination to turn the FBI into the president’s personal vendetta machine. But cracks are showing. Patel has every reason to be paranoid.

The rest of us have every reason to worry that another institution vital to the America we know is being irreparably damaged. Rebuilding these institutions will take years, if indeed they can be saved at all.

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As the chaos in Washington continues to swirl, we cannot forget we are a country at war and must remember those put in harm’s way by a president sitting in his clubhouse on the other side of the world. President Donald Trump does not appear to have a carefully thought-out strategy for Iran – no exit plan, no way to close Pandora’s box.

We are now eight weeks into what he called a “little excursion into Iran,” waiting for resolution to the war Trump promised would be quick.

Within days of the start of the war, we learned that persons unknown profited greatly from potentially positive war news, with flurries of trading activity just before prices spiked. While they got rich, the rest of us got soaked.

Those someones — we will likely never know who because the Justice Department is no longer in the business of finding out — appear to have had prior knowledge of events that dramatically affected the price of oil and related commodities.

It seems all too fitting that everything with this White House, war included, begins and ends with cold, hard cash.

Presidents in my lifetime only go back to Herbert Hoover, but of those I’ve studied and covered as a journalist, it’s safe to say Trump is the greediest in American history, as well as the least ethical. That toxic combination has allowed him to use his power to line his own pockets in spectacular fashion. But the billions he has already made since reassuming office apparently aren’t enough.

The president is seeking another $10 billion more. But this time it’s your money.

In January, his lawyers quietly filed suit against the Internal Revenue Service, which is part of the executive branch that Trump oversees. No sitting president has attempted to sue the U.S. government over which he presides. (Richard Nixon sued, but not while in office.)

As you try to understand his grift, follow along as we attempt to untie this ignoble Gordian knot.

Lawyers from the Justice Department represent the Internal Revenue Service when it gets sued. So, attorneys Trump appointed and who work for him are representing the entity he is suing. Those attorneys would be the ones to approve a massive payout to their boss.

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The suit alleges that in 2019, during the first Trump administration, the IRS and the Treasury Department did not do enough to prevent a contractor, Charles Littlejohn, from downloading Trump’s tax records and giving them to The New York Times and ProPublica.

The filings show that Trump paid little or nothing in federal income tax for years, a fact the self-proclaimed billionaire wanted to keep from the public. Not since Nixon, another pillar of morality, has a president failed to release his tax returns.

The suit claims Trump, his family, and his company suffered “reputational and financial harm” as well as “public embarrassment” because of the disclosure. Since the leak of the tax returns, the Trump family fortunes have flourished and their net worth has ballooned by billions.

Littlejohn pleaded guilty to disclosing tax return information without authorization. Though the sentencing guidelines recommended ten months, he was made an example of and sentenced to five years in prison.

Not only is Trump suing the IRS for something that happened on his watch, the inspector general of the Treasury warned him that there were vulnerabilities in the IRS’s internal computers.

You would think his lawyers would keep this information to themselves, instead they are using it to defend the suit.

“Every year from 2010 through 2020, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has warned the IRS about security deficiencies related to the protection of taxpayers’ confidential tax return information… Many of these deficiencies went uncorrected and … allowed Littlejohn to misappropriate the information, upload it to a private website, and then disclose it,” the suit states.

On Friday, Trump’s lawyers asked the court for a 90-day extension “while the parties engage in discussions designed to resolve this matter and to avoid protracted litigation.” In other words, Trump’s personal lawyers and Trump’s Department of Justice lawyers are working on a financial settlement — before the case goes to trial.

The president says he will give any windfall from the suit to charity. If you believe that, you will believe that the moon is made of paper. Back in 2016, The Washington Post tried and failed to find evidence of the $8.5 million Trump claimed he gave to charity over 15 years.

The Trump Foundation behaved no better. A court order dissolved the foundation in 2018 over a “shocking pattern of illegality” and required a repayment of $2 million to several charities.

Trump also says he will give away some of the $230 million he is seeking in damages from the federal government to reimburse his legal costs to fight two investigations against him: the Russia probe and classified documents case.

The claims in these cases, filed in 2023 and 2024 respectively, remain in limbo. But when asked about them, Trump said, “They probably owe me a lot of money.” By “they” he meant the American taxpayer.

In November, Sen. Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, introduced the “No Torts for Trump Act,” a bill to block sitting presidents from getting taxpayer-funded payouts.

In response to Trump’s IRS suit, on April 15 — no coincidence it was Tax Day — congressional Democrats introduced the “Ban Presidential Plunder of Taxpayer Fund Act,” an expansion of Schiff’s bill. It aims to prohibit sitting presidents, vice presidents, and their families from receiving lawsuit settlements from the U.S. government.

As Americans struggle to deal with the financial fallout of Trump’s war of choice, the billionaire president can’t get enough for himself.

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By my estimation, Willie Nelson is always a reason to smile, but this week especially so as we celebrate the 48th anniversary of his masterpiece, “Stardust.”

The album was released on April 17, 1978 at the height of his outlaw cowboy days. Record executives at Columbia were skeptical of Willie’s desire to record an album of standards from the Great American Songbook, produced by R&B legend Booker T. Jones, and recorded in Emmylou Harris’s living room. But Willie was determined. And he was right.

The quintuple-platinum “Stardust” became his best-selling album ever, showcasing his ability to transcend musical genres.

Joining the eponymous “Stardust” are such classics as “Georgia on My Mind,” “Unchained Melody,” and “All of Me.” It was hard to choose just one song to showcase, but we picked “On the Sunny Side of the Street,” which Willie recorded with Tony Bennett a few years later.

Texas Monthly called “Stardust” “a perfect record,” and an “undeniably beautiful collection of songs and performances, quiet and contemplative and marked by Willie’s unmistakable affection for the music and his band.”

Willie, who turns 93 years young later this month, is still touring. Catch him if you can. And happy birthday, my friend.

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Despite the promise of ceasefires and negotiations, the war in Iran is still being waged. Donald Trump is good at making promises, both abroad and at home. He’s also good at not keeping them. So while we keep a hopeful eye on developments in the Middle East, we also need to hold the president accountable on the home front.

In the daily fire hose of distractions from the White House, it’s easy to forget the many promises made by this president that have gone from touted to torched.

For as long as we are able, we aim to remind our Steady community, and anyone else who will listen, of the damage being done to our country by a masterful confidence man and those who enable him.

Donald Trump’s business career is full of chicanery, from Trump University to business bankruptcies and thousands of lawsuits in between. But politics offered bigger opportunities, a bigger stage, and bigger cons.

After he was a businessman and a reality television host, Trump brought his con man ethos to his runs for president. He was busy selling the electorate his disingenuous populist prattle, with no intention — it is now clear — of making good on most of his promises.

That is not to say he hasn’t fulfilled a number of pledges, just not the ones that actually help people.

He did upend decades of environmental regulations that kept the air we breathe and water we drink safe. He did withdraw from the Paris Agreement, a global accord aiming to mitigate climate change. He did make the expiring 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy permanent. He did pardon or commute the sentence of every convicted Jan. 6 insurrectionist and those awaiting trial.

Not content to quietly renege, Trump chooses instead to continue the con. In January, he told the Detroit Economic Club, “I’ve kept all my promises, and much more.”

A broken campaign promise from earlier this month had us thinking about Trump’s myriad betrayals littering the South Lawn. To add insult to injury, many of the president’s policies have actually made delivering on many of his promises impossible.

Campaign Promise: to make child care more affordable
Lawmakers took Trump at his word and have been working on bipartisan legislation to fund programs and expand tax credits for working families to offset ballooning child care costs.

Then, at a White House luncheon on April 1 that was not meant to be broadcast, Trump said, “We can’t take care of day care. We’re a big country, we have 50 states. We have all these other people, we’re fighting wars… We have to take care of one thing: military protection.”

“The facts haven’t changed. Americans are still being priced out of parenthood. The only thing that’s changed is the president’s love of foreign wars.” Reshma Saujani, the founder of a nonprofit advocating for child care, told the Washington Post.

What was going to pay for child care? Tariffs, now ruled illegal by the Supreme Court.

It is an interesting policy choice coming from a White House seemingly worried about declining birth rates. This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the latest data that showed the United States hit an historic low on birth rates in 2025, which was a 1% drop from the previous historic low in 2024 of 1.6 births per woman.

One of the main reasons cited for the drop — a 23% decline since the peak in 2007 — is economic pressure. The lack of affordable child care is chief among them. Many families simply can’t afford children. The president is backing off the promise of affordable child care because he has to pay for the military. About that…

Campaign Promise: to end “endless” or “forever wars,” and be the first president in decades to start no new wars.
Just this week, Trump repeated his claim of ending eight wars since taking office 16 months ago. That claim is an exaggeration at best, an invention at worst. And the war he promised to end on Day One, the Ukraine-Russia war, is now in its fourth year. The second part of that promise is simply false. Not only did he start the war with Iran, he chose to do so with no immediate provocation.

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Campaign Promise: to cut the federal budget every year
It is hard to cut a budget when you are spending as much as a billion dollars a day fighting a war of choice.

But even back at the start of Trump 2.0, with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) slashing its way through the federal government looking for waste, fraud and abuse, the budget grew. Trump’s 2027 budget request includes a massive increase in military spending, and doesn’t include paying for the war with Iran. The federal budget is surging, not shrinking.

Campaign Promise: to make America more affordable
Trump said he would “end inflation” and “lower the price of everything.” Specifically, he said, “I will cut gas prices, and energy prices in half.” These days, a trip to the gas station or grocery store is just a reminder of Trump, and not in a good way.

Let’s start with inflation, the rate of price increases for goods and services across an economy. In 2025, the cost of goods increased by 2.7%. So far in 2026, the inflation rate has jumped to 3.3%.

The promise to end inflation is a hollow one. It is almost impossible to achieve, and it is not sound monetary policy. It can lead to higher unemployment, lower GDP, and a heightened risk of recession. But it is a classic con. It sounds like a great idea. However, Trump had no plan to achieve it and once in office he hasn’t even tried.

Between Trump’s tariff policy and his hugely expensive war, just about everything costs more. Gas prices are up 30% since the start of the war. Grocery staples like bread, orange juice, and ground beef are all up. Energy, health care, and housing are also all more expensive.

How about home mortgage rates? Trump promised to lower them to 3%. They’re currently more than double that. The president also guaranteed a manufacturing boom. Instead, it’s a bust with more than 100,000 jobs lost.

Campaign Promise: to cut taxes
One way to make things more affordable is to cut taxes. As mentioned, Trump made the 2017 tax cuts permanent. But those cuts affect the wealthiest Americans. For working-class Americans, he promised no taxes on tips, overtime, and Social Security. While Trump included all of those things in last summer’s tax bill, each has significant restrictions and an end date.

Workers can only apply the no tax on tips exemption to $25,000 of income. Eligible workers may only deduct $12,500 of overtime pay from their federal income taxes. Americans 65 and older, who make less than $75,000, can deduct $6,000 in Social Security income from their taxes. All three exemptions expire in 2028.

Trump has been touting big tax refunds as a way to boost Republicans’ chances in the midterm elections. In January, a White House press release predicted the refunds would be more than $1,000 per person. In reality, the average refund is $350, which will get gobbled up quickly by higher prices. Worse for the administration, the American people aren’t buying Trump’s narrative. The Bipartisan Policy Center found that most people don’t believe the changes to the tax code help them.

One Republican lawmaker told Politico, “It’s all we have to run on.” A GOP strategist was even less optimistic. “Everything is made more difficult by the nonsense coming out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” they said.

When we don’t know what is true, false, or a con, we can’t believe anything. It goes back to the old maxim: “if it looks too good to be true…it probably is.” Nonsense from a confidence man could mean the end of the MAGA stranglehold on the U.S. government. That, of course, depends on enough voters getting to the polls in November.

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One might think an American pope would be good for an American president. After all, Catholicism is having a moment here, with conversions on the rise, especially among young people. More than half of American Catholics voted for Donald Trump in the last election. The vice president is Catholic, as is the secretary of state, and the first lady.

But forget all that. Nothing matters if Trump feels slighted. And right now, he is acting like a toddler in timeout.

These two men could not be more different. Pope Leo XIV is a measured, soft-spoken man of God whose holy mission is peace and unity. Trump is a bombastic narcissist, who is convinced peace can best be achieved through bombing — and is a constant divider, not a unifier.

Leo, who had stayed above the political fray since becoming pope last May, began to shift his stance with an impassioned speech following the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January. “A diplomacy that promotes dialogue and seeks consensus among all parties is being replaced by a diplomacy based on force,” he told ambassadors to the Vatican. U.S. officials took it as a direct challenge to the Trump administration.

Soon after, Pentagon officials demanded a meeting with Vatican representatives, telling them the U.S. has the military might to do whatever it wants and that the Catholic Church had better get on its side, according to The Free Press.

The Catholic Church did not heed that threat. Instead, Leo issued appeals for peace, but as the war with Iran escalated, so did his criticism. On April 7, he took the rare step of calling out a political leader after Trump’s social media threat to wipe out “a whole civilization,” calling the sentiment “truly unacceptable.”

On Friday, Leo posted a direct condemnation on social media. “Absurd and inhuman violence is spreading ferociously… God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”

During an evening prayer service at the Vatican on Saturday, the pope called out the “delusion of omnipotence that surrounds us and is becoming increasingly unpredictable and aggressive… Enough of the idolatry of self and money! Enough of the display of power! Enough of war! True strength is shown in serving life,” he said.

The subject of his pointed remarks wasted little time responding.

In a lengthy and scathing social media rant on Sunday, Trump retorted, “Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy…” Later telling reporters, “I’m not a big fan.”

Because everything in his world revolves around Trump, he suggested that the only reason Leo was even elected pope is “because he was an American, and [the Vatican] thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump.”

Trump followed his diatribe by posting an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus Christ healing the sick. It has since been taken down.

In a hastily arranged photo op at the White House, the president admitted he posted the photo but said it had no messianic meaning. With a straight face, he said it depicted him as a doctor.

Democrats have long decried the president’s mental status, and now Republicans are joining in, some even suggesting he needs to be removed from office. After his genocidal “whole civilization” post, The New York Times wrote, “… never in modern times has the stability of a president been so publicly and forensically debated — and with such profound consequences.”

On Monday, during the first leg of a 10-day trip to locations in Africa that have been hard hit by the loss of U.S. aid, Pope Leo told reporters, “I have no fear of the Trump administration, nor of speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel. And that’s what I believe I am called here to do.”

When asked specifically about Trump’s Truth Social post, he said, “It’s ironic — the name of the site itself. Say no more.”

“The message of the Gospel is very clear: ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’... Too many people are suffering today, too many innocent people have been killed, and I believe someone must stand up and say that there is a better way,” he added.

Quite the irony — Trump, who for years actively campaigned for the Nobel Peace Prize, is now attacking the pope for advocating peace.

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Trump has picked a fight with one of the holiest and most popular men in the world, who represents 1.4 billion Catholics, 53 million of whom are American. At the same time, he publicly embraced one of today’s longest-reigning authoritarians, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Trump and Orbán have been members of a mutual admiration society since the president’s first administration. The Hungarian leader lent Trump support and his playbook. Many of Orbán’s authoritarian tactics, including manipulating the media, stacking the judiciary, and attempting to control elections, have been embraced and employed by the president.

Trump dispatched the vice president to Hungary last week, a trip paid for by the American taxpayer, to prop up his old friend. At a campaign rally in Budapest, JD Vance said, without irony, that he was there, “Because what the United States and Hungary together represent under Viktor’s leadership and under President Trump’s is the defense of Western civilization.”

As if sending the Vice President of the United States to campaign for a foreign strongman wasn’t enough, Trump joined the rally via speakerphone, saying, “I love Hungary and I love Viktor!”

Vance’s attempt at help fell flat. On Sunday, after 16 years of autocratic rule, the Hungarian people said enough. Orbán was trounced in a landslide by Péter Magyar. The victory was so decisive, Orbán didn’t even try to contest the election and conceded just hours after the polls closed.

Although sometimes flawed, moral authority has been an essential component of American strength and leadership for 250 years. Time and again, Trump’s behavior and actions have severely damaged that claim at home and abroad. Now, with what he has done in the cases of Pope Leo and Viktor Orbán, he has deepened the damage.

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Janis Joplin was a singular talent with a powerful voice and electric stage presence. Fifty-four years ago this week, her posthumous album, Pearl, topped the charts. The album contained her most enduring single, “Me and Bobby McGee.” It is our reason to smile.

The song was written and recorded by Kris Kristofferson in 1969. A slew of well-known artists made their own recordings in quick succession, including Roger Miller, Kenny Rogers, Gordon Lightfoot, and Jerry Lee Lewis.

It was Joplin’s version that stuck and vaulted to No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100. She recorded the song just days before her death in October 1970. It was released several months later and became Joplin’s only number one single.

It is a love song about two drifters who hitchhike through the American South before heading out West. Joplin’s raw yet ebullient emotion can be heard in every line.

Kristofferson didn’t know Joplin had recorded his song and didn’t hear her version until after she died. He called her rendition a “perfect matching of performer and material.”

Joplin attended the University of Texas, though she didn’t graduate. The school newspaper, the Daily Texan, saw something in the soon-to-be superstar. In “She Dares to be Different,” a 1962 profile of Joplin, a reporter wrote, “She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levi’s to class because they’re more comfortable, and carries her autoharp with her everywhere she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break into song, it will be handy. Her name is Janis Joplin.”

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Any reporter who has covered the Middle East will tell you ceasefires in that part of the world are often worth little, if anything. Such may be the fate of the current truce between Iran and Israel and the United States. For starters, the three sides have different understandings of what is in the agreement.

For instance, Iran says it remains in control of the vital Strait of Hormuz, it can continue to enrich uranium, and that the United States will need to pay war reparations to rebuild Iran. Did Donald Trump agree to any of that?

To do so would make any declaration that the United States “won” the conflict specious. In Tehran today, there were celebrations. The regime Trump called “evil” remains in charge. Withstanding a five-week bombardment by U.S. and Israeli air forces allows them to claim some measure of victory.

Add to the mix Israel, which doesn’t think Lebanon is part of the agreement. Today, the Israelis unleashed a massive bombardment in Beirut against Iran-backed Hezbollah. Early reports say more than 200 people were killed. Many women and children are said to be among the victims.

Further complicating the “ceasefire,” Iran has not stopped firing at its Persian Gulf neighbors. Saudi Arabia reports attacks on several energy facilities today.

It is no wonder this ceasefire is called shaky, at best.

And while Trump’s war has drawn our attention to another part of the world, much has been happening here at home, and not a lot of it could be called “winning.” This has been a week full of stunning financial requests and hard economic realities.

The cost of the war with Iran is alarming, and the accounting is not nearly complete. Besides the human toll on both sides, the financial cost of the war to the U.S. could reach $100 billion, according to the American Enterprise Institute. AEI estimates the U.S. military has spent between $22.3 and $31 billion in just five weeks. This estimate does not include all the costly equipment repairs. To name two, the USS Gerald Ford was damaged by a fire and a ballistic missile warning system in Qatar was destroyed by an Iranian drone.

Coupled with finding money to pay for what many believe to be his illegal and ill-conceived war, Trump submitted his annual budget request to Congress last week. It included $1.5 trillion for defense, which is among the biggest annual military budget increases ever.

To pay for this increase, the White House proposed $73 billion in cuts and the outright elimination of dozens of popular domestic programs that serve tens of millions of Americans. And remember, most of these cuts would come after budgets were slashed last year.

Proposed cuts:

• $1.4 billion to a program that provides fruits and vegetables for women and children in need

• $8.5 billion for public school funding

• $1.6 billion for weather forecasting by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

• $2.5 billion to safeguard clean drinking water

• $5 billion for disease prevention

• $1.3 billion for disaster preparedness grants

Proposed elimination:

• Program to help people struggling to pay their home heating bills

• Vocational and job training for at- risk youth, adults, and seniors

• Air pollution monitoring

• Affordable housing grants

Part of the calculation of next year’s budget has to be the state of the U.S. economy. Indicators about the economy are mixed, but many experts are predicting a downturn.

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is used to measure growth because it is a snapshot of the country’s economic activity. In early January, the government stated that GDP growth for the last quarter of 2025 was 2.8%, a significant deceleration from the third quarter. Today, it revised that number down to 0.5%, perhaps hoping no one would notice the 78% drop in economic growth from 2024.

This was before the administration started dropping bombs on Iran. In financial terms, the decline in GDP is akin to falling off a financial cliff. The price of gas doubling is only going to make things worse.

The oil industry, a stalwart friend of the president, is not happy with him right now. Politico is reporting that oil executives are talking to anyone in the administration who will listen. Citing international treaties and sanction laws, they are concerned that Iran’s continued control of the Strait of Hormuz is adding millions to their cost, which will have to be passed on to the consumer. Iran is charging $2 million per tanker, and insurance companies are tacking on another half million. And, as of this writing, the Strait remains closed, unless shippers pay the ransom demanded by Iran.

As you were watching gas prices move steadily skyward and your 401(k) drop, the Trump administration was making a heap of what will likely be unpopular choices.

One domestic expenditure Trump wants to increase is the budget for White House renovations. He has requested an 866% increase over last year, according to Politico. He is asking for $377 million, up from $39 million, to update parts of the residence. If he renovated every inch, that would amount to $18,850 per square foot. At that rate, the toilet paper would have to be made of gold leaf.

Remember former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and the 737 jet she acquired for 70 million taxpayer dollars? As a refresher, it boasts a queen-sized bed, a bar, a kitchen, and a full bathroom. With Noem no more, Trump decided the first lady will have use of that luxury jet, according to the Wall Street Journal. Like her husband, Melania Trump has seen her approval ratings plummet as of late, with her lowest approval rating ever. Will her shiny new jet endear her to the American people, so many of whom are struggling financially?

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Construction on Trump’s new White House ballroom has been halted by a federal judge. But that didn’t stop the president from announcing that it will be built — if it gets built — with foreign steel. Trump, a self-proclaimed champion of the American steel industry, said Thursday that European steel company, ArcelorMittal, is donating $37 million worth of steel for the building. In October, Trump hinted at the gift, but didn’t name the source. Several days later, Trump reduced tariffs that benefitted ArcelorMittal.

The triumphal arch Trump proposed, to be built between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial, is not fully funded, as the president has claimed. Modeled on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, Trump now says he will funnel 15 million taxpayer dollars from the National Endowment for the Humanities to pay for it, according to NOTUS.

The cemetery was established as a resting place for Union soldiers killed in the Civil War. Now it is a resting place for veterans of many wars. The present unobstructed sightline from the cemetery to the Lincoln Memorial was intentionally designed to symbolize national unity. Apparently, Trump couldn’t care less. In October, when asked who or what the arch is for, Trump pointed to himself and replied, “Me.”

Trump treats the U.S. Treasury as a personal ATM, while claiming his cuts to popular and beneficial domestic programs are because of waste, fraud, and abuse. Who can blame people for thinking that if he truly wants to find waste, fraud, and abuse, he should look in the mirror.

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Wars are chaotic. They’re unpredictable — hence the phrase “the fog of war.” That fog has descended on the war in the Middle East. There are some people who believe Trump’s war is going well. But the consensus of opinion right now is that the battle is going poorly for the United States and Israel.

You have to wonder if anyone is telling the president the truth. Because his version of what will happen if the war continues much longer differs wildly from that of experts in the region. If we think gas prices are high now, just wait.

It boils down to this: Donald Trump is trapped. As of this writing, there is no good option to end this conflict.

• The U.S. walks away — as Trump has threatened — and the Strait of Hormuz remains under Iranian control. No one in the region likes that scenario.

• The U.S. bombs Iranian infrastructure, including power plants, which is a war crime. Iran retaliates, likely targeting energy resources around the Middle East, while retaining a sizable portion of its missile stockpile.

• Trump launches a ground war, which could be long, bloody, and expensive.

Any of the above scenarios could lead to a worldwide recession, or worse.

By the tone of his tweets, Trump’s frustration with the options is boiling over.

The president’s Easter Sunday social media rant was, even by Trump standards, revolting. He checked multiple unseemly boxes. Threatening, check. Criminal, check. Immoral, check, Profanity-laden, check. Racist, check. As much as I don’t want to repeat what he wrote, it is vital to see it, and continue to see it, as we try to deal with this man’s increasingly unhinged state of mind.

Direct quote from the president of the United States: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F**kin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH. Praise be to Allah.”

Response to the post was swift. While the financial markets did not immediately balk, already high oil and gas prices shot up.

Once one of Thump’s most loyal defenders, former congressperson and MAGA cheerleader Marjorie Taylor Greene minced no words. “Everyone in his administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshipping the President and intervene in Trump’s madness… I know all of you and him and he has gone insane, and all of you are complicit.”

Meanwhile the Iranians wasted no time taking advantage. A government official promised the Strait of Hormuz would remain closed until Iran is “fully compensated” for the damage inflicted by the Americans and Israelis. He dismissed Trump’s threats as a sign that the president has “resorted to obscenities and nonsense out of sheer desperation and anger.”

Unfortunately, the Iranian official appears to be correct. Trump gives every indication of being desperate and angry.

If things were going well and/or he had good options to end the war, he wouldn’t resort to such an expletive-filled tantrum. And he wouldn’t be reiterating the threats and ultimatums at a White House press conference on Monday afternoon. “The entire country (Iran) could be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night.”

If things were going well, he wouldn’t keep moving the aforementioned deadline for his demanded reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and a peace deal. Initially, it was March 23. He has pushed it back six times since. It currently stands at Tuesday at 8:00 p.m. EST.

If things were going well, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wouldn’t have fired three high-level generals in the middle of the war, including the Army chief of staff. A U.S. military official questioned the firings to Axios. “Here is a four-star general who is actively working to get equipment and people into theater — to protect U.S. forces — and you fire him? In the middle of a war?”

If things were going well, Trump wouldn’t be floating the idea of cutting Medicare and Medicaid to pay for this billion-dollars-a-day war in an election year. He has given up any pretense of a domestic agenda. In a video of a private event that the White House accidentally posted online, Trump said, “The United States can’t take care of day care … we’re fighting wars … We have to take care of one thing: military protection.”

If things were going well, actual peace talks would be happening rather than back-channel note-passing with little to no progress. The administration is reportedly working toward a 45-day ceasefire agreement. The Iranians deny it.

If things were going well, regional powerhouses like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar — all financial partners of the Trump family — wouldn’t be raising concerns “about being left with a wounded, embittered and emboldened Iran on their doorstep,” according to Suzanne Maloney, director of the Brookings Institution’s foreign policy program.

Things aren’t going well for a host of reasons. Trump believes what he wants to believe and jettisons anyone who tells him hard truths. So, when he launched this war, no one warned him Iran might not fold quickly, without much of a fight. When it didn’t, he had no Plan B.

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Trump doesn’t like consequences. Since they tend to be inconvenient and obstructive to his amorphous goals, he basically ignores them when making decisions. Sometimes that works out for him; more often it doesn’t.

It is no surprise that Trump’s decision to attack Iran has unleashed what may be the largest oil crisis in history. The global oil market will be hampered for the foreseeable future. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, doesn’t think we will return to pre-war oil and gas prices anytime soon. “Certainly won’t be this year, won’t even be next year. Might not be ever,” he told Politico.

So far the price hikes are the markets hedging against what they think will happen: an oil shortage. It hasn’t actually happened yet. If and when it does, items on the grocery store shelves, along with just about everything else, may get much, much more expensive.

Because of the war, Iran now controls the Strait of Hormuz, the most strategically important waterway to the global oil industry. Everyone — at least everyone outside of Trump’s inner circle — knew this was likely to happen. Iran controls it and is using it as a tollway, raking in millions to rebuild a decimated economy and buy more weapons.

Because the Iranians are in the midst of an existential crisis of Trump’s making, they believe that their best strategy is to be patient and hang tough. They are playing a high-stakes game of chicken, and if not winning, they hold some strong cards. Who will blink first? You get one guess.

“It now appears as though [Iran] may, in fact, achieve those aims of being stronger at the end of this war — even if the economy has been battered, even if they’ve lost thousands of their own people. That they believe that their ability to endure the worst that two technologically superior, economically superior adversaries have given them and come out on top, I think, will be tremendously emboldening for a regime that has been very dangerous, even at its weaker moment,” Maloney told Ezra Klein of The New York Times.

Trump has boxed himself — and us, our country — into a corner, and his response is to kick and scream and threaten. It is precisely who he is, but it’s not who we are. It matters for the country not to lose sight of that distinction.

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Early spring is one of my favorite times of the year. The weather can be fickle and the rain epic, but it is a season of hope, of rebirth and renewal, and especially of wildflowers here in central Texas. All those showers bring to mind one of the all-time great movie musicals, “Singin’ in the Rain.”

The film premiered 74 years ago this month. Its all-star cast of Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O’Connor, along with their seminal song and dance numbers, made the film a classic. At its debut, The New York Times said the movie was “guaranteed to lift the dolors of winter and put you in a buttercup mood.”

Who can forget Kelly splashing around lamp posts, Reynolds collapsing on couches, and O’Connor dodging two-by-fours? The movie’s most iconic dance moments were memorialized in a 2022 homage by professional dancers and choreographers Derek and Julianne Hough. Their “Singin’ in the Rain” reimagining is this week’s reason to smile.

The siblings and “Dancing with the Stars” alums reinterpreted the movie’s dance numbers through a modern lens, while their adroit performances drew inspiration from the originals.

In a social media post of the video Derek Hough wrote, “Remember, when the storm clouds roll in, just keep singing and dancing in the rain, there’s always sunshine on the other side!”

Happy Easter and Happy Passover to all who celebrate.

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It’s one of the most disgraceful developments of the Trump presidency: The Department of Justice has become the president’s personal law firm with seemingly one job, to prosecute a never-ending string of vendettas against his political enemies. Apparently Attorney General Pam Bondi wasn’t vengeful enough. Trump fired her on Thursday. She’s been replaced, temporarily, by Todd Blanche, a former Trump personal attorney.

Bondi failed to successfully prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. But those failures were hardly her fault. Trump insisted on both prosecutions even though the charges were specious. A federal judge tossed them.

More importantly, perhaps, Bondi bungled the release of the Epstein files. In the spring of 2025 she said Epstein’s client list was on her desk ready for review. Upon further reflection — and perhaps a conversation with the president — she claimed there was no list. Her testimony before Congress was often combative, obstructive, and snarky. She became fodder for late-night comics and “Saturday Night Live.”

Still, the timing seems odd. Why fire Bondi now?

It could be another distraction from a war that isn’t going well, as demonstrated by last night’s attempt to explain why we’re fighting Iran.

When the White House requests time from the television networks for a presidential address, especially during primetime, it is supposed to be for something important, something newsworthy. Wednesday night’s presidential address did not come close to meeting the criteria.

Donald Trump’s listless speech was short on news and long on disinformation. He may be able to fool his base, but the financial world isn’t buying it. As the speech ended, international money markets fell, while oil futures and gas prices rose immediately.

When the president doesn’t have a timeline, he often uses “two weeks” to kick the can down the road. You may remember the health care plan he was introducing in “two weeks.” Six years later, there is still no health care plan.

There he was again last night, saying the U.S. would continue to hit Iran hard for “two or three weeks.” By then the military objectives would be achieved, he promised. If the speech was meant to persuade the American people that soon all would be well, it hit way wide of that mark.

It was a live version of his rambling, lie-strewn social media posts. Because the speech was seen by millions beyond his social media followers, it is important to correct the worst of his distortions.

• While he has flip-flopped on whether he wants regime change, Trump now claims, “The new group [of leaders] is less radical and much more reasonable.” Alan Eyre, a former U.S. diplomat and Iran expert, says the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is “even worse” and more hardline than his father, who was killed at the start of the war.

• Trump claimed the U.S. military has “decimated” Iran. There is no question much of Iran’s military capability has been destroyed, but if Iran were truly decimated, the Strait of Hormuz would be open to all traffic. It is not.

• Speaking of the Strait, the president said it will “open up naturally.” Not sure what that means exactly, but the Strait was open, naturally, before bombs started falling five weeks ago. Iran is adamant they will keep out “enemy-linked” ships.

• Trump asserted that “We’re now totally independent of the Middle East, and yet we are there to help. We don’t have to be there. We don’t need their oil.” Actually, we do. We import 40% of our crude oil, and 8% comes from the Persian Gulf. More importantly, oil is a publicly traded commodity, which means the price is set by global markets. So a disturbance, especially one of this magnitude, adversely affects oil prices everywhere.

• “We were a dead and crippled country after the last administration and made it the hottest country anywhere in the world by far, with no inflation,” Trump professed. Not so. During the last year of the Biden administration, GDP growth was 2.8%, better than any wealthy economy except Spain. In comparison, under Trump GDP growth has decelerated to 2.1%.

• At one point, Trump claimed that under his leadership the U.S. has received $18 trillion in foreign investment. The official White House website puts that number at $10.5 trillion, but even that is questionable. The United Arab Emirates and Qatar have allegedly committed $1 trillion each. However, the UAE’s gross domestic product last year was just over $550 billion, while Qatar’s was $220 billion — neither large enough to support such an expenditure.

When not outright lying, Trump continued to contort reality. He said we had completed our objectives in Iran, but he never clearly outlined what they were before the war started. Since then he has trotted out at least a half dozen goals, as though he is trying them on for size.

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As for the length of the war, to no one’s surprise, it’s a moving target. We are now at the end of week five of a “four to five” week war, with no end in sight. He also gave no details about an exit strategy or a ground invasion, though 50,000 U.S. ground troops are in the Middle East awaiting orders.

Everyone has their eye on the end of the war, whenever that may be. A real concern is that we and the rest of the world will be worse off after the war than when it started.

Trump’s comments about the Strait of Hormuz suggest that he is willing to end the war without reopening that strategically important waterway. Iran is currently charging every ship it chooses to allow through as much as $2 million for the privilege. Iran says that the new toll will likely continue even after hostilities end.

According to The New York Times, the United Nations projects that 4 million people in the Middle East could be pushed into poverty and the region’s economic output reduced by 6% once the war is over.

The war has all but ruined an already frayed relationship with our NATO allies. Spain and Italy refused to let the U.S. military use its bases or airspace. The British said that U.S. planes from its bases could be used “to conduct only operations that protect British and allied interests across the Middle East.”

Historian Robert Kagan of the Brookings Institution believes this war will leave “the United States weaker and more isolated than at any time since the 1930s.”

“Whenever and however America’s war with Iran ends, it has both exposed and exacerbated the dangers of our new, fractured, multipolar reality — driving deeper wedges between the United States and former friends and allies; strengthening the hands of the expansionist great powers, Russia and China; accelerating global political and economic chaos,” he wrote in The Atlantic.

Trump’s presidential legacy will be littered with political failures, broken guardrails, and the normalization of lying with impunity to the American people. We can repair much of this, but the loss of our allies and the empowerment of our adversaries will be harder to fix.

And it didn’t have to be. Was the war just another distraction from the Epstein files? Or the tariff fiasco? Or the economy as a whole? Or Minneapolis? Was the Bondi firing a hoped-for distraction from the unpopular war? We have come full circle with diversion after diversion, as a deeply flawed president continues his efforts to redirect the narrative away from his latest failures.

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Dan

Saturday saw many Americans — 8 million strong — gathering to protest what they believe is a would-be king and to acknowledge a shared animosity toward what Donald Trump is doing to America.

Why is the “No Kings” movement growing? Because the instances of illegality and autocratic rule by the Trump regime are expanding exponentially. The president’s White House delegates and other Republicans labeled the movement as “hate America” rallies. Whether you agree with those in the movement or not, the contrary is true.

Those who marched Saturday love this country deeply and are angry, even mortified, at what we’ve lost.

The peaceful protests were motivated by what the participants describe as unbridled frustration with the dangerous and draconian policies of Donald Trump. But their feelings are tempered by what the protesters see as an enormous community of like-minded Americans who have simply had enough.

On the heels of so many Americans exercising their First Amendment rights, it is a good time to remember that this is not just about the price of gasoline or unaccountable immigration police.

What follows is a brief compilation and reminder of what is motivating the widespread movement: the havoc wrought as democratic institutions and norms are destroyed by the president and his enablers in the Republican Party.

An Unwanted, Poorly Planned, and Increasingly Unpopular War
As the Iran war heads into its fifth week, the Pentagon is providing only scant information about what the American military is doing. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s reaction to reporting he doesn’t like is to cancel all press conferences.

But reporters are managing to report. The Washington Post writes that the Pentagon is preparing for weeks of U.S. combat operations on the ground in Iran. More than 50,000 American troops are now in the Middle East. Iran has an army of more than half a million soldiers.

Axios is reporting that congressional Republicans are considering cuts to health care to pay for the war, which costs more than a billion dollars a day. That move coupled with surging gasoline prices — the national average is almost $4 a gallon — doesn’t help to endear beleaguered Republicans to their constituents.

Turning His Back on Those Who Elected Him
The president and his administration don’t seem to grasp the mounting anger and alarm among millions of American voters, many of whom delivered Trump back to the White House. For this erroneously labeled “populist,” policy after policy has hurt rather than helped the middle class, while enriching the growing billionaire class.

Trump’s big summer spending bill cut taxes for those billionaires while raising taxes for a good portion of everyday Americans. It added trillions to the deficit and ballooned the national debt.

Those billionaire tax cuts were supposed to be offset by money collected by Trump’s sweeping tariffs. However, the tariffs were never going to be enough to balance the projected $4.7 trillion increase to the deficit over 10 years. And the Supreme Court determined the tariffs were illegal. Trump is now refusing to refund the $175 billion collected by the Treasury Department.

Trump allowed the enhanced Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) subsidies to expire at the end of 2025, causing premiums to skyrocket and pushing more than 2 million people off of the health insurance rolls, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

When Trump was running for office, he promised to deport dangerous immigrants, “the worst of the worst,” and many Americans supported that policy promise. But that is not what is happening.

Masked federal agents killed two Americans and have snatched hundreds of thousands of immigrants, both documented and undocumented, off the street and from their homes, without due process. According to the federal government’s own statistics, only about 25% of detainees have criminal convictions, yet many have been shipped to inhumane detention centers in the U.S. and notorious prisons in foreign countries. Trump’s ICE agents have separated thousands of infants and children from their parents.

Ending Protections Americans Expect
The unabashed pro-corporation president has eviscerated decades-old environmental protections, rolling back climate change regulations, weakening clear air and drinking water standards, and expanding oil and natural gas drilling.

As measles outbreaks continue to rise around the country, he has allowed his secretary of health and human services to dismantle long-standing, science-backed vaccine policies. This includes reducing the number of recommended shots for infants and children from 17 to 11.

The U.S., once considered the leader in biomedical research, has been sidelined. Billions of dollars in funding for research for everything from childhood cancer to dementia to HIV was slashed.

Trump has eliminated or weakened investigative offices throughout the federal government, which has allowed the president and members of his government to act with impunity. Not even the fox is guarding the henhouse.

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Within the first week of his second term, Trump removed 17 inspectors general from federal agencies, leaving many vacancies and filling others with sycophants. He also purged the investigative offices at the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Self-Aggrandizement and Personal Enrichment
Trump treats the presidency like a vanity project. He is putting his name and/or face on everything from Soviet-esque banners draping government buildings in Washington to gold coins and newly minted bills. This change breaks a 165-year tradition of only the treasury secretary’s and U.S. treasurer’s signatures on paper currency.

Without congressional approval he added his name to the Kennedy Center and U.S. Institute of Peace. He is building a monstrosity of a ballroom, which he has said he will name after himself, tearing down part of the White House to make room for it.

He has brazenly enriched himself and his family with his crypto-currency schemes, including private dinners at the White House for the biggest investors. Many of those investors are reportedly foreign nationals looking to curry regulatory and financial favor.

He accepted a $400-million jet from the Qatari government as the Trump Organization entered into a deal to build a luxury resort in Qatar. He started what he has dubbed an alternative to the United Nations, called the Board of Peace. He populated it with leaders from countries with some of the world’s worst human rights records, all while charging them $1 billion each to join. No one knows exactly where that money has gone.

He is abusing his pardon power left and right. Numerous media outlets have reported a pay-to-play scheme in which people looking for pardons “donate” to Trump. He has pardoned some of the worst criminals. These include the former president of Honduras, who was convicted of conspiracy to import cocaine into the U.S. and having ties with powerful Mexican drug cartels. This on top of pardoning every January 6 rioter charged or convicted.

Last Monday, just before markets opened, Trump posted on social media that peace talks with Iran were going well. It turns out those talks were a fabrication. According to the Financial Times, 6,000 oil-trading contracts, worth more than $500 million, changed hands just before that post, making a number of unknown investors a lot of money.

Because he has defanged the Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigative arm, we will likely never know who made those trades and if they were tipped off ahead of time.

Beating Up The Constitution
The Trump administration has waged a holistic assault on the Constitution. The First Amendment — freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly — has been routinely trampled. The Fourth, which protects from unreasonable search and seizure, and the Fifth, which guarantees due process and the equal protections of the 14th, are being disregarded.

The emoluments clause, which bars government officials from accepting payments and gifts from foreign governments, is clearly unenforced. Trump completely ignores the separation of powers provisions, which are supposed to limit what the executive branch can do. He has expanded his role, encroaching on Congress, funding things he wants and killing funding for things he doesn’t.

Before Trump took office even a single example from this list could have (and has) toppled a president. It strikes many people as astounding that, after all this, he still occupies the White House. Since beginning his second term, his approval ratings have gone in one direction: down. And he is finally getting a little pushback from some members of his party, though clearly not enough to stop his worst whims and inclinations.

This is no doubt an incomplete list. But it is plenty long enough to get millions of Americans to spend their Saturday letting what they see as a thin-skinned, wannabe king know just how reviled he is.

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During World War II, entertainers did their best to lift war-weary Americans’ spirits. We thought we’d dust off one of that era’s great pick-me-ups to eke out some smiles today.

“Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” by Harold Arlen, with lyrics by crooner Johnny Mercer, was written as a morale-boosting pep talk during some of the darkest days of the war. Yes, that’s Mercer’s spelling of the title.

Mercer’s inspiration was “a sermon and the subject was ‘you got to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative’. And I said ‘Wow, that’s a colorful phrase!’” The original 1944 recording by Mercer included a preamble in the style of a sermon.

Mercer’s and a Bing Crosby/Andrew Sisters rendition of “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” spent multiple, simultaneous weeks on the pop charts in early 1945. The song was also nominated for an Academy Award, and Mercer’s version was inducted into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry for its “cultural, artistic and/or historical significance to American society and the nation’s audio legacy.”

We have chosen to share a Crosby/Bette Midler duet of the song from 1977. It certainly gave me a much-needed reason to smile.

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