Misfit was here!

Tina Turner

Say her name:

Happy Birthday America 🎂

250 years. Two hundred and fifty years of the most powerful, most resourced, most theoretically capable nation in the history of human civilization and here is what we have to show for it.

Forty million people on food stamps, thirty million without health insurance, the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world, the highest incarceration rate on earth, an opioid crisis that has killed over half a million people and counting, a housing market so broken that working people cannot afford to live in the cities they work in, an education system that buries young people in debt before they earn their first dollar, infrastructure that is literally collapsing, a life expectancy that is going backwards, a political system so thoroughly purchased by concentrated wealth that the laws it produces bear almost no relationship to what the public actually wants or needs, a working class that has not seen meaningful real wage growth in thirty years, a mental health crisis so severe we normalized it, a gun violence epidemic so routine we don’t even act when preschoolers are slaughtered, and a climate hurtling toward catastrophe while the people paid to address it collect checks from the industry causing it.

Two hundred and fifty years of that. And to celebrate, we built a wrestling arena on the White House lawn.

Not a hospital, or a school, or a housing development. Not a single thing that addresses a single goddamn item on the list above. A wrestling arena. With cranes and pyrotechnics and a steel arch that probably cost more than the annual budget of three rural counties combined, erected in front of the building where Lincoln and Roosevelt and every president who ever tried to make any of this mean something once lived and worked and in some cases died trying.

Truthfully, this is not a departure from American values. This is the fullest possible expression of them. Because this is what we chose. Every single time the choice was presented.

We built a culture where a football coach makes forty times what a physics professor makes and then express genuine bewilderment at the outcomes. Where a reality television star becomes president and a school district cuts its art program in the same fiscal year. Where children know every statistic of every player on their favorite sport team and cannot locate their own country on a map. Where scientific consensus on vaccines, climate, evolution, and basic nutrition gets weighed against a Facebook post and the Facebook post wins at the dinner table. Where the school that wins the state championship gets a parade and the school that produces a Nobel laureate gets a budget cut.

We chose the bomber over the teacher. The tank over the clinic. The aircraft carrier over the water treatment plant. We spend more on military than the next ten countries combined, including our allies, while veterans sleep on the streets of the cities they came back to. We built the most expensive killing apparatus in human history and then told the nurse she made too much money. We sent young men to die in wars that made defense contractors rich and called it freedom and put a yellow ribbon magnet on the back of the car and called that support. We made the soldier and the police officer into sacred untouchable symbols of national identity and then cut their benefits, denied their PTSD claims, let them die waiting for VA appointments, and sent them back for third and fourth tours because it was cheaper than taking care of them when they came home. We worshipped the uniform and neglected the human inside it because the uniform is a symbol and symbols are cheaper than healthcare and housing and the therapy that would actually help. We built bases in a hundred and fifty countries and could not build enough affordable housing in fifty states. We funded a military budget that could have ended homelessness and medical debt and student debt several times over and we did it with bipartisan enthusiasm and called the people who questioned it unserious.

We chose entertainment over education so many times and for so long and at every available level of society that we forgot there was a distinction worth making. Spectacle over substance, performance over policy, the aesthetics of greatness in place of the actual thing, and the feeling of winning instead of asking what was being won and who was paying for it and what it would cost the people who came next.

Rome had bread and circuses. We Americans have food stamps and a wrestling ring outside the Oval Office.

250 years. This is what we built. This is what we chose. This is what we are celebrating. And the most perfectly, catastrophically, irreducibly American thing about all of it is that anyone pointing at this image and asking what it means will be called unpatriotic by people watching it on a television they bought on credit they cannot afford to pay back, rooting for a sport they cannot explain, in a country they cannot describe, celebrating a birthday they cannot contextualize, for a nation that has spent two and a half centuries confusing the noise it makes with the work it never did, all while claiming to be the greatest country on Earth.

Happy Birthday America! You have never looked more like yourself!

This is a brutal assessment. Of course we have done many wonderful things for the world and for our country. Unfortunately, everything mentioned in this essay is accurate. Where do we go from here?

Make America Great Finally?

Make America Great It’s About Time?

Sometimes I provide you with information that I hope you’ll find helpful in making arguments with others. I don’t expect that what I share with you will change the minds of committed Trumpers, but the facts and the evidence may have some sway with Republicans and independents who are wavering about whom to support in the midterms. 

One of the main reasons Trump was elected was his pledge to keep the United States out of wars, especially the kind of “endless” wars America has fought in Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Afghanistan.

Obviously, he broke that pledge. We’re now well into the fourth month of a war he said would be four or five weeks at most. 

In addition, the war he initiated in Iran was a war of choice — Iran did not attack the United States, and most specialists in foreign policy say Iran was not close to devising a nuclear weapon at that time. (It’s likely to be closer now, or at least more committed to making one.)

Yet in a lengthy interview with Kristen Welker, the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” which aired Sunday, Trump was once again trying to rewrite his own history, He claimed:

“I didn’t guarantee no war. So when you say I promised, I didn’t promise anything. I don’t like these endless wars. This is not an endless war. We’ve been doing this for three months.”

In fact, Trump repeatedly and unequivocally promised during the 2024 election campaign that the U.S. would not have any wars during his second presidency. 

Herewith, some examples.

In a June 2024 social media post, Trump described the election as “a choice between STRENGTH or WEAKNESS, COMPETENCE or INCOMPETENCE, peace and prosperity or war and no war.” 

In one of the highest-profile speeches of his campaign — his July 2024 address to the Republican National Convention — he said, “With our victory in November, the years of war, weakness, and chaos will be over. I don’t have wars.”

He made the promise again and even more directly during an August 2024 rally in the swing state of Pennsylvania, saying: “Under Trump, we will have no more wars, no more disruptions, and we will have prosperity and peace for all.”

Trump reprised the same pledge in an August 2024 interview with Adin Ross, an online personality. After saying there were no wars during his first administration, he promised, “And we won’t have wars again.” 

At another rally that month in the hotly contested state of North Carolina, Trump approvingly cited Viktor Orbán, then the prime minister of Hungary, as supposedly having said, “Make sure that Trump gets reelected president, and you’re not going to have any more wars.” Trump reiterated moments later, “No more wars. No more disruptions. We will have prosperity, and we will have peace.”

Trump told versions of the Orbán story at numerous other events. For example, in the swing state of Wisconsin in October 2024, he said, “Viktor Orbán said, ‘If Trump comes back, you won’t have any wars. You won’t have any wars.’ And he’s about as tough as they get, and he said it loud and clear and he said why. But you won’t have any wars.”

Finally, in his victory address in November 2024, Trump made a clear promise that he would not start a war — even when he no longer had to persuade voters to elect him. He said in that high-profile speech: “Four years, we had no wars, except we defeated ISIS. … They said, ‘He will start a war.’ I’m not going to start a war, I’m going to stop wars.”

In reality, of course, Trump has been one of the most bellicose presidents in modern American history. 

Have a Far-Out ‘MonKeeCule Monday’ my Friends

The trustees of the Social Security fund said Tuesday that the fund will be depleted by late 2032, a year earlier than the trustees’ projection last year of 2033. If nothing is done, benefits will automatically be cut six years from now.

The common understanding is that Social Security’s shortfall is due to the huge postwar baby boom, now retiring, and to America’s increasing life expectancy. The usual recommended fix is to reduce Social Security benefits or raise the age of eligibility. As Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, warned Monday, “entitlement programs” like Social Security “have to be adjusted and fixed.” He said Republicans will introduce a plan to do that. Brace yourselves. 

I used to be a Social Security trustee, and I call bullsh*t.

The baby boom can’t be blamed for Social Security’s shortfall. The Greenspan Commission, which in 1983 recommended the reforms that Congress then made — raising Social Security payroll taxes and also raising the eligibility age for collecting Social Security benefits — knew all about the baby boom and figured it into its calculations. (Early boomers like me can now start collecting full benefits at age 66; late boomers born after 1960 have to wait until they’re 67 to collect full benefits.)

Americans’ increasing life expectancy isn’t at fault, either. While wealthier Americans are living longer, that’s not the case for lower-income Americans. The Urban Institute estimates that life expectancy in the top 20 percent of income-earners is 91 years for people born in the 1990s, four years more than people born in the 1950s. Yet the life expectancy in the lowest 20 percent of income-earners is fewer than 80 years. 

So what’s the real cause of the Social Security shortfall? What did Greenspan’s commission fail to predict? Widening inequality.

Remember, the Social Security payroll tax applies only to earnings up to a certain cap. This year, that cap is $184,500. Earnings at or below this amount are taxed at 12.4 percent. The cap rises every year according to a formula roughly matching inflation.

Back in 1983, the cap was set so the Social Security payroll tax would hit 90 percent of total income in America. That 90 percent figure was built into the Greenspan Commission’s fixes. The Greenspan commission assumed that, as the cap rose with inflation, the Social Security payroll tax would continue to hit 90 percent of total income.

Today, though, the Social Security payroll tax hits only about 83 percent of total income in America. It went from 90 percent to 83 percent because a steadily larger portion of the nation’s total income has gone to the top.

In 1983, the richest 1 percent of Americans got 11.6 percent of total income. Today, the top 1 percent takes in more than 20 percent.

This year, someone earning $1 million in wages stopped paying any Social Security payroll tax at the beginning of March. Jeff Bezos probably stopped a few minutes past midnight on January 1. Elon Musk, a few seconds after midnight on January 1. (In point of fact, Bezos, Musk, and other robber barons of this Second Gilded Age get all the cash they need by borrowing against their fortunes, rather than bother with pesky wages, so they probably pay a pittance in Social Security taxes.)

Logically, then, to get back to 90 percent, the ceiling on income subject to the Social Security payroll tax has to be raised. 

If all income in excess of $400,000 were subject to the Social Security payroll tax, Social Security’s solvency would be guaranteed forever. We could also expand Social Security benefits. 

So there’s no reason even to consider reducing Social Security benefits or raising the age of eligibility. The logical and necessary response is simply to raise the cap, Mike Johnson and other Republican shills for the oligarchs to the contrary notwithstanding. 

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Additional background:

Social Security is America’s most effective anti-poverty program. Last year, it lifted 23.5 million Americans out of poverty, including 16.5 million seniors. Before its creation, about half of our nation’s seniors were living in poverty. Today their poverty rate is just 10.3 percent. Without Social Security, nearly 4 in 10 seniors would have had incomes below the official poverty line.

Hollowing out of private pensions makes Social Security all the more important. One in 5 Americans 50 and older have zero retirement savings. Meanwhile, the average Social Security benefit at the start of last year was $1,975 a month ($23,700 annually).

Social Security is also the federal government’s biggest children’s benefit program through its disability and survivors’ benefits. In 2024, 1.7 million children received Social Security benefits, and the vast majority are eligible to receive survivors’ benefits if a parent were to pass away. Additionally, millions more children are part of a household where all or part of the household income comes from Social Security. Social Security is estimated to lift close to 1 million children out of poverty each year.

Other fixes that have been introduced in Congress:

1. The Social Security Expansion Act

Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have introduced this plan for several Congresses. (It is cosponsored by Budget Committee Members Merkley, Whitehouse, Van Hollen, and Padilla.) 

The bill imposes Social Security taxes on wages above $250,000 and applies the same 12.4 percent rate to capital gains and business income. That would boost benefits for almost all retirees by $200 per month, using a more generous measure of inflation to calculate the cost-of-living increase, and setting a minimum benefit at 125 percent of poverty. When estimated in 2023, it achieved 75-year Social Security solvency solely by increasing taxes on incomes above $250,000.

2. Medicare and Social Security Fair Share Act

I received the following from Richard Gephardt, who represented Missouri in the United States House and Senate from 1977 to 2005 and served as House Democratic Leader from 1989 to 2003, and Tim Wirth, who served in the U.S. House and Senate from Colorado from 1975 to 2003 and as the first U.S. Secretary of State for Global Affairs.

I have worked with both and know them quite well. Neither is an alarmist, but they did want me to help spread this alarm. Hence, I’m sharing with you what they wrote to me. (Research is from Keep Our Republic, a nonpartisan NGO focused on fair elections.)

***

Between us we have served for seven decades, mostly in elected federal office, through Watergate, the post-Vietnam anti-war demonstrations, years of civil rights marches, Iran-Contra, debates over voting rights, the post-9/11 surveillance debates, two impeachments. We are writing today because we are watching something different from any of these, and because most Americans, including most of our friends in both parties, do not see the big picture. 

Many may recognize and be concerned about individual actions or decisions taken by the administration but few have taken a step back and connect the dots. The “rolling coup” is much more than one development, one decision or a single day.

On September 25, 2025, President [Trump] signed a directive called a National Presidential Security Memorandum known as NPSM-7 (titled ‘Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence’). 

Its language designates as targets of federal counterterrorism authorities Americans whose sponsors are labeled “anti-American”, “ anti-capitalist”, “ anti-Christian” or “hostile to traditional American views on family, religion and morality.” 

No statute authorizes the federal government to treat protected political speech as terrorism; NPSM-7 does it anyway. It tasked the FBI, the IRS and the Treasury Department with tracking the funding sources and supporters of organizations suspected of directly or indirectly facilitating political unrest, with no reference to the First Amendment.

Soon thereafter, the FBI organized a Joint Mission Center, drawing hundreds of personnel from ten federal agencies to identify and prosecute the targets of NPSM-7. The Director of the FBI, Kash Patel, subsequently testified [that there was] a 300 percent increase in domestic terrorism investigations. Former Attorney General Pam Bondi testified that thousands of U.S. citizens and non-governmental organizations are now on a secret watch list tied to the Joint Mission Center.

Concurrently the Justice Department has opened grand-jury investigations and indictments aimed at officials of previous administrations including former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey. 

The President’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, has publicly described political opposition as a “fifth column,” and Trump himself amplified this by declaring “Arrest them all. Prosecute them all. Incarcerate them all… But first, Barack Obama.”

On May 6, 2026, the administration’s Senior Director for Counterterrorism, Sebastian Gorka, released a new National Counterterrorism Strategy that names “violent left-wing extremists,” “anti-fascists,” and certain religious minorities as principal threats to the United States. 

Bondi provided a Department of Justice operational order that included a five year plan for retroactive mining of data files and plea interrogations along with the requirement that financial donors be named. The Joint Mission Center uses its $12.5 billion dollar budget to do the targeting. The President’s lead lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel have preauthorized the use of domestic force. 

Meanwhile the administration has appropriated $45 billion for construction of new ICE detention facilities, a 265 percent increase over previous years and more than four times the entire budget of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. 

Tom Homan, the President’s “border czar” has overseen the proposal for the acquisition of over 100,000 detention beds above the current capacity of 70,000, with contracts for permanent mega-centers whose scale far exceeds anything an immigration processing operation would require. These are undoubtedly prisons for political prisoners, even as 1974 federal law prohibit the detention of American citizens without an act of Congress.

In the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, U.S. forces have killed more than 200 people across nearly sixty strikes on small boats designated as “narcoterrorists” without indictment, trial or judicial review. The commander of U.S. Northern Command has said publicly he would “definitely” execute lawful orders to apply this same authority on American soil. 

The White House has declined to rule out using lethal force against U.S. citizens designated as members of domestic terrorist organizations, while Trump has fired most of the Department of Defense officials responsible for overseeing the legality of military operations. 

Trump is seeking yet more funding for what appears to be his private army of ICE and Border Patrol agents, to be deployed in numerous target states, at airports and at urban polling places in the states he lost in the 2024 election, where he has now begun to seize voter roles and ballots. 

[The U.S. Senate recently passed a $70 billion supplemental funding bill for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. The legislation is on track for an upcoming U.S. House vote. The funds aim to finance these agencies through 2029.]

[Another piece of the puzzle: Over the last year, the Justice Department has sought voter roll data from most states; sued those that have declined to comply; opened a criminal investigation into 2020 election results in Fulton County, Ga., a state Trump narrowly lost that year; and demanded ballots from the 2024 race from Wayne County, Mich.]

Political prisons, a domestic army, control of the military’s legal apparatus, the seizure of voter roles, and much more presage the potential declaration of a national crisis and the implementation of various of the President’s Emergency Action Documents. These are among the many individual actions and plans of the “rolling coup” which is currently underway. 

Unlike what might be recognized as a coup with tanks in the streets, this is not the seizure of power on a single day but the methodical construction of an apparatus designed to identify, arrest, prosecute and if necessary forcibly suppress Americans whose only offense is opposition to this administration, by an executive who has openly declared that opposition itself is the enemy.

Why aren’t more Americans seeing this? Because each step has been incremental. Each has been framed in the legitimate-sounding language of national security or law enforcement. Each was paired with a reassuring denial — we are not deploying the military domestically, we are not declaring an emergency over elections, we are not coming for citizens.

Congress, paralyzed and outnumbered, has not mounted a serious institutional response. Some press has reported stories about the pieces but not on the whole dangerous picture.

The first job of any coup is to make the recognition of it seem premature. That is the trap. By the time recognition is no longer premature, the moment to resist has already passed.

So what is to be done? 

Congress must reassert its Article I authority over emergency powers, military deployment on U.S. soil, and the Office of Legal Council’s power to rewrite statute by memo. 

Governors and state attorneys general must adopt the protective measures that civil liberties lawyers have already drafted to shield citizens, non-profits and election workers from NPSM-7. 

Newsrooms must report the rolling coup architecture as a single big picture story, because that is what it is. 

And each of us — in pulpits, in classrooms, in podcasts, in union halls, at work and around kitchen tables — must call this by its name out loud, while there is still time and there is still room.

***

Unless we begin to act with resolve, fortitude and clear-eyed commitment to our democracy, a future election will be lost and our democracy will likely be destroyed by a Presidential declaration of a national emergency and the subsequent implementation of the emergency measures, not authorized by law but drafted and implemented without any Congressional oversight.

We took the same oath of office that every member of the military and every federal officer takes — to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. The obligation in that oath does not end when one leaves office. We believe that an awake America can stop what a drowsy one will not, but time is short and the challenge is urgent.