The Reasonable Majority Is No Longer Silent

I will always believe that in both 2016 and 2024 many voters who cast ballots for the Felon were attracted by his granting a license to be overtly racist and to a lesser extent a desire to "own the libs", if you will. Yes, in both elections concerns a false narrative about economic security were grasp by much of the main stream media as the principal reason for votes cast for the Felon, but one cannot underestimate the racial animus and grievance towards those deemed "other" that motivated many voters to discard morality and decency and cast their vote for the Felon.  Now, that these voters - and those who were too lazy to vote - are seeming the fruits of their ill cast votes/laziness and are not liking what they are seeing.  Inflation and consumer prices are high and increasing while the Felon - someone who has likely never grocery shopped or paid his own utility bills during his lifetime - claims "affordability" is a Democrat hoax. Meanwhile, the brutality and deliberate cruelty by masked ICE thugs on daily display (and the fact that citizens are being threatened and/or abused) has generated revulsion among all but perhaps the most racist of the MAGA base.  Moreover, the obscene grifting and corruption of the Felon and his minions combined with the travesties done by ICE and Felon/GOP jihad against government programs that benefit millions is causing many who have heretofore remained silent to speak out in condemnation of what is happening. Indeed, I have been surprised by friends and acquaintances who I perceived as "conservative" that approvingly read this blog and/or have begun to speak out themselves.  A column in the New York Times looks at the so-called reasonable majority that is signaling that is increasingly unhappy with the Felon and his regime. Here are excerpts:

Believing in democracy does not require faith that majorities are always right. It does mean having confidence that most of your fellow citizens will, over time, approach public questions with a basic reasonableness. Abraham Lincoln, tradition has it, said it more pithily: “You cannot fool all the people all the time.”

A corollary to Lincoln, that you can’t fool all the people who voted for you all the time, explains the sharp decline in President Trump’s approval ratings.

A significant share of the voters who backed Mr. Trump have decided that he has largely ignored the primary issue that pushed them his way, the cost of living. A billionaire regularly mocking concern about affordability only makes matters worse. They see him as distracted by personal obsessions and guilty of overreach . . . . Many of his former supporters see him breaking promises he made, notably on not messing with their access to health care.

Some abuses are too blatant to be ignored. A recent The Economist/You Gov poll found that 56 percent of Americans said Mr. Trump was using his office for personal gain; only 32 percent didn’t. A similar 56 percent saw Mr. Trump as directing the Justice Department to go after people he saw as his political enemies; just 24 percent didn’t. . . . . They may not be glued to every chaotic twist of this presidency, but they do pay attention and have concluded, reasonably, that this is not what they voted for.

How many? Let’s take Mr. Trump’s 49.8 percent of the 2024 popular vote as a base line and compare it with his approval ratings. . . . This suggests that 15 to 25 percent of his voters have changed their minds.

All this is obviously good news for Democrats, who extended their 2025 hot streak by winning the mayoralty in Miami on Tuesday. But it’s more than that. It dispels myths about Mr. Trump’s having magical powers to distract and deceive. It shows that for all the legitimate concerns about the breakdown of our media and information systems, reality can still get through.

The decay of Mr. Trump’s standing is a rebuke to widespread claims a year ago that his victory represented a fundamental realignment in American politics, akin to those led by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s or Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

The case for a Trump realignment was built in large part on Republican wishcasting and Democratic despondency, married to a few facts, including substantial Trump gains among Latinos and young men. True, the Republicans secured majorities in the Senate and the House. But the G.O.P. won two fewer seats in the House in 2024 than it did two years earlier — far from the sweeping gains typically yielded by realigning elections.

But a nationwide trend in a single election is not the same as a realignment, and the president’s mercurial extremism squandered whatever opportunity the G.O.P. might have had to expand its map. My hunch is that Republicans will regret what they allowed him to throw away.

The Times again produced those fine county maps for the 2025 governor’s races in New Jersey and Virginia and the recent special House election in Tennessee. But this time, nearly all the arrows were blue, pointing toward the Democrats, and G.O.P. gains among Latinos and young men were largely wiped out. Genuine realignments don’t collapse so quickly.

Another response to 2024 was a backlash against Trump voters. Mr. Trump does better with voters who lack college degrees, and he once declared, “I love the poorly educated.” Some who were aghast at his victory blamed the outcome on the irrationality of low-information voters.

But to view some large share of the electorate as irrational is wrong and ought to be anathema to anyone who claims to hold a democratic worldview. Far more persuasive is the analysis that . . . . voters “actually do reason about parties, candidates and issues.” They draw on “information shortcuts” to “think about who and what political parties stand for” and “what government can and should do.” They engage in “low-information rationality.”

That so many swing voters used a Trump vote to express their dissatisfaction with the 2024 status quo has certainly had calamitous consequences. What should hearten friends of democracy is how many voters have weighed what Mr. Trump has done and found him acting, well, unreasonably.

Especially striking are the findings of a Public Religion Research Institute poll this fall that asked whether Mr. Trump had gone “too far” in a variety of his actions. Among respondents, 54 percent said he had gone too far on tariffs, as did 55 percent on cuts to grants to universities and 60 percent on cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. Mr. Trump and the G.O.P. are especially vulnerable on cuts to enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies: A KFF survey last month found that 74 percent of Americans said they should be extended, not eliminated.

Even on immigration, Mr. Trump’s signature issue, his radical approach was unpopular: In the Public Religion Research Institute poll, 65 percent of respondents opposed deporting undocumented immigrants to foreign prisons, 63 percent opposed arresting undocumented immigrants who have resided in the United States with no criminal records, and 58 percent said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers should not conceal their identities with masks or use unmarked vehicles.

Poll numbers are fickle. But in 2025, Trumpian flimflam hit its limits — even in the G.O.P. when a majority of Republicans in the Indiana State Senate defied the president’s demand for a midterm congressional redistricting. His power to intimidate is ebbing. A reasonable majority exists. It’s searching for alternatives to a leader and a movement it has found wanting.

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The Felon's Claim "Affordability" Is a Hoax Falls Flat

The Felon is a malignant narcissist who believes he is smarter and more talented than anyone else.  He was also born to wealth - ill begotten or otherwise - and likely has never grocery shopped for his family or even paid utility bills. In short, he is clueless about the financial struggles most Americans face and the every day stress of trying to pay bills.  During the 2024 election campaign, the Felon depicted the economy under Joe Biden as terrible - it actually wasn't, especially compared to 11 months into the Felon's second regime - and promised voters that he would lower prices "on day one,"   That, of course, has not happened and the Felon's tariffs have only made matters worse by driving up consumer prices and generating so much uncertainty that many businesses are holding off hiring or laying off workers.    A column in the New York Times looks at the reality of tariffs:

For President Trump, the affordability crisis is a “hoax” perpetuated by Democrats. For the customer checking out at Costco or Walmart, it’s a rising grocery bill threatening already fragile household finances. . . . . The reality is that Trump does not want the story properly told.

I originally set out to try to put a dollar figure on how much the median family has lost this year as a result of Trump’s tax and spending policies, his tariffs and immigration restrictions and their effects on growth, inflation, wages, taxes and wealth. . . . . when I put it all together for the median household, I came up with an estimated net loss of $2,250 in 2025 spending power.

The median household income after taxes was $72,330 in 2024, according to the census. The $2,250 amounts to a 3.1 percent loss in spending power, more than enough to persuade quite a few voters that the economy under Trump has gone sour, an assessment confirmed by poll after poll. This disenchantment has begun to spread to Trump’s own voters.

As I dug into the research, something far more important than the specific dollar estimate of an average family’s loss emerged: Trump’s economic policies have put the nation on a long-term path of decline, in terms of gross domestic product, employment, capital investment and wage growth. . . . . . The policy mix of the Trump administration feels similar to Brexit to me. It is likely slowing growth down and lowering living standards relative to what would have been achieved without this policy mix.

Despite this reality, the Felon recently gave himself a "A++++" on his handling of the economy even as more and more blame is being laid at the Felon's feet by voters in general and even a growing percentage of MAGA voters.  The Felon is trying to gaslight Americans to get them to disbelieve what they are in fact experiencing.  Hopefully, voters and consumers do not buy into the Felon's latest lies. At piece at Politico looks at new poll results that disprove the Felon's claims:

Americans are struggling with affordability pressures that are squeezing everything from their everyday necessities to their biggest-ticket expenses.

Nearly half of Americans said they find groceries, utility bills, health care, housing and transportation difficult to afford, according to The POLITICO Poll conducted last month by Public First. The results paint a grim portrait of spending constraints: More than a quarter, 27 percent, said they have skipped a medical check-up because of costs within the last two years, and 23 percent said they have skipped a prescription dose for the same reason.

While President Donald Trump gave himself an “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus” grade on the economy during an exclusive interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns, the poll results underscore that voters’ financial anxieties have become deeply intertwined with their politics, shaping how they evaluate the White House’s response to rising costs.

Trump insists that “prices are all coming down,” as he told Burns, but the results pose a challenge for Trump and the Republican Party ahead of the 2026 midterms, with even some of the president’s own voters showing signs that their patience with high costs is wearing thin.

POLITICO reporters covering a variety of beats have spent the past few weeks poring over the poll results. We asked some of them to unpack the data for us and tell us what stood out most. Here’s what they said:

TARIFFS

The big observation: Trump has struggled to persuade even parts of his base to accept the idea that tariffs will pay off over time. . . . . What really stood out: Staunch supporters of the president were roughly twice as likely as other Republicans to believe tariffs are a net positive already, although large shares of both groups still said they view them as harmful. . . . . it remains a delicate political issue when a lot of voters may be more concerned about their everyday expenses rather than a broader global calculus.

COLLEGE COSTS

The big observation: The tuition is too damn high. Only a quarter of Americans think college is worth the money, regardless of party, The POLITICO Poll found. Overall, 62 percent of Americans said college isn’t worth it because it either costs too much or doesn’t provide enough benefits — a belief supported most by 18- to 24-year-olds and those aged 65 and up.

The income gap between Americans with college degrees and those with high school degrees widened over the last two decades. And recent research from the U.S. Census Bureau found the median income of households headed by someone with a bachelor’s degree or higher last year was more than double the median income of those with householders with a high school degree but no college.

The Trump administration has pressed universities to control their costs — attempting to tie those efforts to the schools’ access to federal funds — but also shed the student loan forgiveness programs Biden championed.

FOOD PRICES

The big observation: Trump attributed his 2024 victory over Biden partly to his pledge to bring down the cost of everyday goods like eggs. But a year later, Americans are more worried about being able to afford groceries than the rising cost of housing or health care, according to The POLITICO Poll.

Half of those surveyed said they find it difficult to pay for food. And a majority, 55 percent, blame the Trump administration for the high prices — even as the White House emphasizes its focus on affordability and the economy ahead of the midterm.

What really stood out: As affordability increasingly becomes a political flashpoint, with Democrats eager to seize on GOP vulnerabilities, a meaningful share of Trump’s own voters — 22 percent — blame the president for the high grocery costs.

HOUSING

The big observation: Concerns about housing costs — which have represented a major share of inflation in recent years — eclipsed those for health care, utilities, commuting expenses and child care, The POLITICO Poll found.

Only grocery costs bested the issue across more than a dozen expenses when respondents were asked to identify the items they find “the most challenging” to afford. The high cost of housing is also coming through in other metrics: The median age of first-time homebuyers climbed to a record high of 40 this year, according to the National Association of Realtors.

What really stood out: The POLITICO Poll found that homebuying and rental costs were of particular concern for young and Hispanic adults, two constituencies whose support for Trump last year helped Republicans regain control of Washington.

Those surveyed spread the blame for high housing costs across the Trump and Biden administrations, state and local governments and private landlords. But it’s Republicans who have to protect their hold on Washington heading into the midterms while the president generally dismissed affordability this week as “a hoax that was started by Democrats.”

HEALTH CARE COSTS

The big observation: Nearly half of American adults find it difficult to afford health care, according to The POLITICO Poll. Health care ranked as the No. 3 cost concern for respondents.

Democrats are pushing to extend pandemic-era enhanced Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, which are set to expire at the end of the year. If they end, prices will skyrocket for many Americans who buy insurance through the Obamacare marketplace. Democrats, who have struggled since Trump’s victory to coalesce around a campaign message, are banking on health care costs and other affordability concerns being a winning issue for them in the midterms.

While poll respondents overall said they were more likely to trust Democrats to bring down health care costs, the overall split may not be concerning to Republicans running for reelection: 42 percent favored Democrats on the issue, compared with 33 percent favoring Republicans. The question becomes whether the non-MAGA Republicans can be persuaded to break ranks, or undecided voters are wooed.

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Trump 2.0: Mistaking Cruelty and Brutality for Strength

One of the hallmarks of the Felon's second regime is the zeal with which gratuitous cruelty is visited on those disliked by the Felon and/or his principal henchmen and henchwomen. Be it the horrible treatment of mostly brown-skinned undocumented immigrants, the use of the National Guard to intimidate citizens and immigrants alike, or most gruesomely the murder of those on alleged "drug boats" when no documented proof of guilt or actual drug running has yet to be provided.  Part of this cavalcade of cruelty may stem from the Felon's desire to be a strongman/dictator like Vladimir Putin and others while part seemingly stems from the racial hatred of the all too visible white supremacists within the regime. Yet more of this embrace of cruelty, in my view, arises from the Christofascists within the regime and the MAGA base who thrill at seeing their perceived enemies suffer harm like some of the brutality found in the Old Testament (these people are anything but true followers of Christ).  The problem for the Felon and his regime is that a majority of Americans have not walked away from basic morality and view the regime's cruelty and brutality with revulsion. Hence the Felon and his regime's resistance to releasing the unedited video of the second strike against two hapless men struggling in the water and clinging to wreckage after their boat was destroyed by a drone strike.  As a piece in The Atlantic lays out, this confusion of cruelty and brutality for strength has American allies ceasing intelligence sharing and much of the public even less supportive of the Felon's regime:

In the late 19th century, the British explorer Henry Morton Stanley set out on what he believed would be his greatest achievement: the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition. He imagined himself crossing Africa, rescuing an isolated provincial governor, and returning home to the applause of a grateful empire.

The expedition he led, however, was anything but noble. Stanley’s caravan pillaged some villages for food, burned others that resisted, and killed many Africans who resisted his advance. Disease and starvation claimed many of his own porters. What he saw as necessary resolve looked, even to some of his contemporaries, like something far more troubling.

When Stanley published In Darkest Africa, in 1890, he recounted these episodes with a confidence that now seems astonishing. He assumed the British public, which had initially welcomed him home to great acclaim, would admire his firmness. Instead, they recoiled at his brutality.

Those who had once celebrated imperial adventure now saw needless killing and a man who appeared unmoved by the suffering he caused. Stanley had mistaken brutality for strength, and the public recognition of his error marked the beginning of his fall from national hero to cautionary tale.

I thought about this history as new information emerged about the Trump administration’s campaign of boat strikes in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Under this program, small vessels suspected of carrying drugs were hit with military-grade munitions, often without any attempt to detain or even warn those aboard. In at least one case, the strikes didn’t end when the boat was destroyed. Survivors adrift on the wreckage in open water were killed in a second attack, a “double tap” designed to finish the job.

During my 18 years in the House and Senate, I sat through countless briefings on when and how lethal force could be used. Later, as ambassador to Turkey, I saw how closely the world watches when we choose to honor those limits—or choose not to do so. That perspective makes these boat strikes impossible to wave off as routine. They reflect choices that fall well outside the standards we have long claimed to uphold.

The administration has resisted releasing full video of these incidents, citing national security. But the more plausible concern is political and moral. It knows what the public reaction would be. Americans have strong feelings about drug trafficking, but few believe that killing people as they attempt to stay alive in the ocean fits within the bounds of justifiable force. Once confronted with the footage, most Americans would question not only the legality of the operation but the instinct behind it.

This is the thread that links President Donald Trump to Stanley. Both believed their missions were righteous enough to justify whatever means were employed. Both assumed that the public, deep down, would admire their toughness. But democracies have never fully embraced that logic. Citizens can support firm action while still holding on to their humanity. Death inflicted on the helpless is never an act of strength; it is what remains when strength forgets its purpose.

That recognition seems to exist even among some in the administration. The reluctance to release the footage suggests an awareness of the moral intuition that they fear the public will follow. Americans may disagree on many things, but they still distinguish between necessary force and needless killing.

Stanley misread the public of his time. He thought it would see heroism where it saw cruelty. The question now is whether our own leaders are making the same mistake.

The public deserves the chance to judge for itself. Release the video, Mr. President.

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Is the MAGA Coalition Beginning to Fray?

The elections last month and this past week's special election in Tennessee suggest that perhaps - if the nation is lucky - the MAGA coalition may be beginning to unravel.  The GOP losses in Virginia were steep in part because the Republican ticket had a horrible standard barer and the GOP wins four years early were, in my view, a fluke. Youngkin ran a slick and deeply deceptive campaign while his Democrat opponent made serious missteps and statements that were very damaging to Democrat prospects.  But the GOP losses across the rest country are not so easily explained away, by allegations of poor candidates merely a return to more normal voting patterns, particularly in red states and historically Republican districts and county legislative bodies. Indeed, while all races have their local issue components, the overarching issue was the Felon's regime and policies that have not improved so-called "affordability" - supposedly a major concern in 2024 by those voting for the Felon - and in many ways that are outright harming many working class and other voters in red states. As a piece in the New York Time notes, both voters and Republican office holders may be awakening to the reality that the Felon is toxic to their lives and finances or political viability as applicable.  One can only hope more Americans wake up to the need to be rid of the Felon.  Here are column highlights:

It hasn’t happened much in my life, but last Tuesday night a place I know very well was at the center of national attention. The bright red congressional district where I lived until this summer delivered a sharp warning to the Republican Party.

I’m speaking about the special election results in Tennessee’s Seventh Congressional District, a mostly suburban and rural district that includes parts of Nashville. The Republican candidate, Matt Van Epps, defeated his Democratic opponent, Aftyn Behn, by just under nine points.

In some places, a nine-point Republican margin is considered a resounding victory. But not in Tennessee 7. . . . This is not a swing district or one that Democrats expect to win this side of the apocalypse.

But for a few days in October, it seemed like the end was nigh. I’d been hearing rumors that Republicans were starting to worry about the race, and a poll taken between Nov. 22 and Nov. 24 showed Van Epps leading by only two points. . . . That it was close at all was stunning, not least because Behn is hardly an ideological match for one of the most conservative districts in Tennessee. She’s been labeled — and not as a gesture of love and respect — the “A.O.C. of Tennessee.”

So, no, this race was not what it looks like when Democrats strategically nominate someone who will appeal to Tennessee Republicans. This is what it looks like when your coalition is coming apart at the seams.

The end of the Trump era is coming into view, and too much attention is focused on what Republicans think of Trump and too little is focused on what Republicans think of one another.

Last Monday the Manhattan Institute released the results of a poll of nearly 3,000 voters that was designed to identify the ideology and beliefs of the American right. What it found was fascinating — and almost exactly mirrors my personal experience living in a deep-red district in a deep-red state. . . . “Roughly two-thirds of the coalition are what we call ‘Core Republicans’: longstanding G.O.P. voters who have pulled the Republican lever for years. They are consistently conservative on economics, foreign policy and social issues. They still prefer cutting spending to raising taxes, still see China as a threat, still support Israel, and remain firmly opposed to D.E.I. and gender ideology.”

And what about the rest? Roughly 30 percent are what the Manhattan Institute terms “New Entrant Republicans.” They are more diverse, younger and “more likely to have voted for Democratic candidates in the recent past.” . . . But there’s more to the New Entrant Republicans than diversity and ideological moderation. Again, here’s Arm: “Many of them have also absorbed the ugliest content sloshing around online. One-third of New Entrant Republicans believe in all or most of the six conspiracy theories we tested — including about vaccines, 9/11 and the moon landing — compared with just 11 percent of Core Republicans. Sixty-three percent of that highest-conspiracy group previously voted for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden.”

You can see the culture clash with your own eyes in the Seventh District. I lived in Williamson County, a prosperous suburban region just south of Nashville, and in the years since the pandemic, we made national news for multiple Republican intramural fights.

There was the time when a gang of far-right, anti-mask activists gathered around a small group of proponents of masking in public schools, shouting “We know who you are” and “We will find you.” Then, a local Moms for Liberty chapter tried to ban the book “Ruby Bridges Goes to School: My True Story,” among others, from the elementary school curriculum — claiming that the book violated Tennessee’s ban on teaching critical race theory.

Each of these disputes has created enmity between the different factions. And that enmity isn’t just rooted in ideological differences; it’s rooted in mutual resentment. Establishment Republicans resent the extremism and cruelty of the new right, and the new right is furious that the establishment — the Core Republicans — is not sufficiently radicalized.

In fact, the new right is often angrier at traditional conservatives than it is at the left. . . . The depth of these Republican divisions has been obscured by two things: shared affection for Trump and shared revulsion at the left. But Trump is no longer on the ballot, and there is increased alarm over the new right. Those two factors are working together to shrink the Republican tent, and in the Seventh District we watched the tent shrink right in the middle of the Republican heartland.

Core Republicans may like Trump, but they have much less affection for MAGA ideology or MAGA political figures not named Trump. As a result, they’re far more willing to take on figures like Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel. They’re certainly more willing to take on the likes of Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes.

MAGA took the ferocity and extremism and dialed it up. Now there are actual fans of Adolf Hitler in the new right universe, and explicit antisemitism and ethnonationalism is all over right-wing social media.

It’s a common human failing that it’s often hard to see extremism as a problem when extremists aim their fire outside the tent. But when the fire is aimed inside — at you — it becomes impossible to ignore.

If the internal Republican clashes are helping to push people out of the party, it’s still incumbent on Democrats to try to pull wavering Republicans and swing voters in. I don’t know if a more moderate Democrat could have won last week . . . . . but it’s worth noting that Behn’s 13-point blue swing has been the smallest among special elections and primaries thus far. Every other blue shift was between 16 and 28 points.

If a number close to 13 is the minimum swing for Democrats, then the consequences could be devastating for the Republican Party, and no amount of gerrymandering will save it. In fact, if present trends continue (and, of course, much can change between now and November 2026), it could backfire substantially.

In other words, if you’ve been doing nothing but shedding support since Trump was sworn in, and if the Democrats work to win over decent Republicans who are repulsed by what their party has become, then the gerrymandering party may be reminded of one of Solomon’s most memorable proverbs: “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

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The Impending Health Care Premium Crisis

The wrongly labeled "big beautiful bill" passed by the Republican controlled Congress and signed into law by the Felon provides massive tax cuts for the very wealthy, adds three trillion to the federal deficit, and slashes funding for programs that aid working Americans and the poor.  The funding slashes include reductions in funding for SNAP, cuts to Medicaid and ending subsidies for insurance premiums under the Affordable Care Act ("ACA") that will cause premiums to more than double for tens of millions of Americans.  These draconian cuts are part and parcel of the Republican Party's reverse Robin Hood agenda and goal of ushering in a new Gilded Age where the few have immense wealth while the rest of us struggle to survive, trying to pay down debts while faced with ever rising costs.  America remains the only advanced nation without some form of universal health care system and based on numerous studies, Americans pay more for health care than if we had a universal coverage system (even on Medicare, the husband and I together pay around $2,000/month, even as we continue to pay into the system  through payroll deductions). If nothing is done by Congress and the Felon, come January 1, 2026, many of those reliant on federal premium subsidies for ACA coverage will have to make the choice of losing coverage or having major damage done to their monthly budgets.  Sadly, most Republicans seemingly could care less.  A piece at The Atlantic looks at this looming nightmare which will hit residents of states like Florida particularly hard.  Here are excerpts:

Catalina Jaramillo is beginning to envision what her life in South Florida will look like without the financial help that allows her to afford health insurance, medication, and treatment for a series of ailments. Jaramillo has been insured through the Affordable Care Act since being diagnosed with acute kidney disease in 2022, when she was 39. Expanded subsidies help her afford the coverage—and they will expire at the end of the year unless Congress extends them. Jaramillo told me she has little doubt that her life would begin to unravel without them. Her monthly health-insurance premium would more than double, and the treatment she depends on to manage her vulnerable kidneys and other health issues would become prohibitively expensive. “I’m terrified. I’m kind of like a deer in the headlights,” she said.

The problem for Jaramillo—and for the 22 million other Americans who receive the ACA subsidies in question—is that policy makers in Congress and at the White House also can’t figure out what to do. They’ve been immobilized on the issue for months, consumed by indecision and infighting that led to a record-long government shutdown. There’s a growing feeling that not much of anything will happen before the year runs out, which would lead to massive premium hikes for most people on ACA plans.

A Senate committee convened on Wednesday to find solutions; Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, opened the hearing by asking his colleagues “not to yell at each other” and emphasized the importance of remaining focused on the fast-approaching deadline. . . . . His words had little effect. Senators traded accusations and insults just as freely as proposals with little to no chance of becoming law. Republicans spent two hours cycling through a list of gripes with the ACA, highlighting familiar critiques of its rising cost, alleged fraud, and burdensome regulations. . . . . The hearing came to a close with no consensus. Democrats continued to call for subsidies to be extended, and Republicans maintained that doing so would be wasting money on a flawed system.

Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, was one of the few lawmakers to break from his party, arguing for a sense of urgency as the deadline nears. “If Congress does not take action on this issue in the next few weeks, this will be a crisis for 24 million Americans,” he said, citing the total number of people on ACA plans. “We are looking at a massive crisis unless Congress acts, and acts soon.”

Democrats in the House and Senate have coalesced around a three-year extension of the subsidies that would put off massive premium hikes until after the 2028 presidential election. The proposal has little Republican support. . . . . “Republicans have one week to pick a side—join us and prevent premiums from skyrocketing, or block our bill and condemn the American people to financial disaster,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said yesterday.

But prospects of creating a bipartisan proposal that could clear a 60-vote majority in the Senate and win widespread support among House Republicans seem further away today than when the government shut down for 43 days. The shutdown was not successful in Democrats’ aim of getting Republicans to agree to extend the subsidies, but it served to publicize the implications of letting them expire.

The stakes are significant: Premiums for the 22 million affected Americans would increase by 114 percent on average, according to KFF, a nonprofit health-policy-research organization. As a result, the Congressional Budget Office projects, the population of uninsured people would rise by more than 2 million next year, and the number would increase to 3.7 million the following year. The fallout could extend beyond the people who lose insurance; costs may also increase for those who remain on ACA plans.

Trump, who earlier this week described Democrats’ focus on affordability as a “con job,” appears prepared to allow the subsidies to expire at the end of the year. . . . . Trump has instead focused on lowering prescription-drug costs and addressing what he believes is rampant waste, fraud, and abuse in the health-care industry.

Democrats say the White House’s disengagement on this issue will only help their party sharpen what has become a potent message about the cost of living—an issue the party believes helped propel it to victories in last month’s elections. “We’re going to have the health-care debate in full view of the American public, and they’re going to see who’s standing up for them on affordability and who’s not,” Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, a Democrat, told me.

Jaramillo, a Trump supporter who has spent most of her life voting Republican, said that her health-care predicament—and broader struggles with everyday expenses—has left her support for the party “wavering.” In a KFF poll released yesterday, 52 percent of ACA enrollees who are registered to vote said that if their health-care costs spike, it will have a “major impact” on which party they will support in next year’s midterm elections. Almost two-thirds of respondents enrolled under the ACA said they would blame Trump or Republicans in Congress for any large increases.

Florida, which Trump carried by 13 points in the 2024 election, is likely to be hit especially hard. No other state has more people participating in ACA exchanges, and enrollment there has more than doubled since 2020, to 4.7 million. The large majority of Floridians on the exchanges receive subsidies. Because of the state’s tourism-focused economy, many of the people who rely on the health-care exchanges are working full-time, Scott Darius, the executive director of the health-advocacy organization Florida Voices for Health, told me. He said that he began hearing from angry and fearful residents last month as they received notices of steep premium increases that are set to take hold in January.

[P]art of the reason the original subsidies were so limited is that the White House at the time wanted the law to be deficit-neutral. He pointed to the tax law that Republicans passed earlier this year, which is projected to add more than $3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. By contrast, extending the enhanced subsidies for 10 years would cost about $350 billion.

“For one-tenth of what Trump just spent on tax cuts to the rich, we can have 10 years of guaranteeing people affordable health insurance in America,” Gruber said. “Why shouldn’t we do that?” A disproportionate number of those people live in areas that voted heavily for Trump, and West Virginia, Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi have had some of the fastest-growing populations of ACA enrollees over the past five years. . . . “Congress really should avoid jerking people around with their finances,” he said. “I think that’s a very serious argument against simply letting them expire.”

But as the new year arrives, we may be about to find out what happens to America’s economy, politics, and psyche when millions of people suddenly lose a benefit they have come to rely on.

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The Felon Is Seeking to Destroy America's Soul

America has some very ugly episodes in its past ranging from the genocide of Native Americans, hundreds of years of slavery, the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarch and seizure of that island kingdom, the WWII internment camps - the list is lengthy.  Yet overall, I like to think most modern day Americans have empathy for others and reject cruelty to others for the sake of cruelty itself of performances to please the nastiest elements of the populace.  Yes, the election of the Felon, a man devoid of morality and with empathy towards no one, twice says very bad things about a plurality of Americans - the Felon has never won the votes of a majority of all voters -  but I like to believe the majority of Americans still oppose outright murder as in the "drug boat" strikes and/or the brutal treatment of undocumented immigrants.  As a column in the New York Times argues, the Felon is trying to change lingering decency and morality to numb Americans to cruelty towards other and/or intimidate them into silence much as the Gestapo did in Nazi Germany.  Even if democracy survives the Felon, there is, and will continue to be, a need to deal with the reality of the immorality and ugliness of the MAGA base and restore a public rejection of cruelty towards immigrants and murder of those who pose no true threat to America and Americans (the Coast Guard could easily address the alleged smugglers now being killed).  Here are column highlights and the Felon's efforts to destroy America's soul:

When Trump administration officials post snuff films of alleged drug boats blowing up, of a weeping migrant handcuffed by immigration officers or of themselves in front of inmates at a brutal El Salvadoran prison, I often think of a story St. Augustine told in his “Confessions.”

In the fourth century A.D., a young man named Alypius arrived in Rome to study law. He was a decent sort. He knew the people at the center of the empire delighted in cruel gladiatorial games, and he promised himself he would not go. Eventually, though, his fellow students dragged him to a match. At first, the crowd appalled Alypius. . . . . Riveted, “he imbibed madness.” Soon, Augustine said, he became “a fit companion for those who had brought him.”

There are many reasons to object to the policies that the Trump administration’s videos and memes showcase. Yet the images themselves also inflict wounds, of the kind that Alypius suffered when he raised his eyelids. The president inhabits a position of moral leadership. When the president and his officials sell their policies, they’re selling a version of what it means to be an American — what should evoke our love and our hate, our disgust and our delight. If all governments rest on opinion, as James Madison thought, then it is this moral shaping of the electorate that gives the president his freedom of action, and that we will still have to reckon with once he is gone.

Amid the swirl of horrors, scandals and accusations, then, it’s worth considering what [the Felon] President Trump and his administration are doing to the soul of the nation — what sort of “fit companions” they’d like to make us. Their behavior during the controversy around a Sept. 2 U.S. military strike on a boat off the coast of Trinidad offers some clarity.

The Washington Post reported last week that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued an order to kill everyone on that boat, which the administration says was ferrying drugs. When an initial missile disabled the vehicle but left two survivors clinging to it, the Special Operations commander overseeing the attack, Adm. Frank M. Bradley, ordered another strike that killed the helpless men. The chief Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, said, “This entire narrative was false,” then Mr. Trump said he “wouldn’t have wanted” a second strike but “Pete said that didn’t happen.” The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, confirmed that actually, yes, there was a second strike ordered by Admiral Bradley, but it was fine because the admiral was “well within his authority and the law directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated.”

A legal discussion ensued. Was the “double tap” strike a war crime? The Geneva Conventions say shipwrecked persons must be “respected and protected.” The Department of Defense Law of War Manual states that helpless, shipwrecked survivors are not lawful targets, while The Hague regulations forbid orders declaring that no quarter will be given.

Or was the strike simply a crime? Under the War Powers Resolution, the president must give Congress notice within 48 hours of U.S. forces entering hostilities, and hostilities that last more than 60 days are impermissible without congressional authorization. Since the president’s boat strike campaign has continued well past 60 days, the strikes support no war, and the entire campaign is unauthorized. Adil Haque, an executive editor at Just Security and an international law professor at Rutgers University, put it on X: “There is no armed conflict, so there are no legitimate targets. Not the people. Not the boats. Not the drugs.

This discussion misses the bigger effort the Trump administration seems to be engaged in. In lieu of careful analysis of the campaign’s legality, detailed rationales for the boat strikes and explanations of why they couldn’t be done with more traditional methods, we get Mr. Hegseth posting an image of himself with laser eyes and video after video of alleged drug traffickers being killed. The cartoon turtle is just one example in an avalanche of juvenile public messaging about those we kill. I suspect the question the administration cares about is not “is this legal,” “is this a war crime,” “is this murder” or even “is this good for America,” but rather, “isn’t this violence delightful?”

The [Felon's] president’s supporters seem to grasp this. Fox News’s Jesse Watters responded with utter incredulity that the United States would offer quarter to an enemy. “We’re blowing up terrorists in the Caribbean,” he said on Monday, “but we’re supposed to rescue them from drowning if they survive?” Others went further. . . . Megyn Kelly, the conservative podcaster, said . . . I’d really like to see them suffer. I would like Trump and Hegseth to make it last a long time so they lose a limb and bleed out.”

An Associated Press investigation suggests that the men Ms. Kelly would like to watch slowly die are often poor laborers: a fisherman, a motorcycle taxi driver, a bus driver, living in cinder-block homes with spotty water and power service, making at least $500 per trip ferrying cocaine, a crime Americans normally judge worthy of a prison sentence rather than a torturous death.

The Trump administration’s celebration of death brings us far from discussions of the law of armed conflict, the constitutionality of the strikes or even the Christian morality that would eventually push Augustine to formulate an early version of just-war theory. We’re in the Colosseum, one brought to us digitally so that we need not leave our homes to hear the cheers of the crowd, to watch the killing done for our entertainment . . . .

This wounding of the national soul is hard for me to watch. Twenty years ago, I joined the Marine Corps because I thought military service would be an honorable profession. Its honor derives from fighting prowess and adherence to a code of conduct. Military training is about character formation, with virtues taught alongside tactics. But barbaric behavior tarnishes all who wear, or once wore, the uniform, and lust for cruelty turns a noble vocation into mere thuggery. “The real evils in war,” Augustine said, “are love of violence, revengeful cruelty, fierce and implacable enmity, wild resistance, and the lust of power.”

In “The City of God,” Augustine distinguishes between a people bound by common loves and those ruled by a lust for domination. A president who wants to lead a nation bound by common loves might offer up something like Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address . . . For a nation devoted to the lust for domination, a president needs to foster a citizenry that thrills in displays of dominance and cruelty. Hence this administration’s braggadocio about death, its officials’ memes about suffering, their promises to inflict pain on America’s enemies followed by scant rationales for their own policies.

We are far from the Christian nation Lincoln thought he was addressing, and tried to shape, when he gave his Second Inaugural Address. But we must still ask ourselves a fundamental, private question that, at scale, has broad political implications: Given that we are all, every day, imbibing madness, how do we guard our souls?

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The Felon Should Pay a Political Price for His Racism

I have always believed that far too many Americas rallied to the Felon because of his outright racism - his history is littered with bigotry and racial discrimination - and the permission his has given to exhibit the worse aspects of America's long history of racism. His attacks on LGBT Americans and transgender Americans has appealed to many of the Felon's supporters in a similar manner. Thus, the false narrative of economic uncertainty drove voters to the Felon during the 2016 campaign seeks to hide this ugly reality.  The 2024 campaign saw similar motivations once again among much of the MAGA base, this time hidden behind the smoke screen of desires for lower prices - something the Felon has not delivered on and has instead exacerbated. The Felon's constant attacks on "immigrants" and efforts at mass deportations aimed at brown-skinned individuals are largely based on open racism and "immigrants" excludes those who are white such as the South Africans the Felon is welcoming with open arms.  The irony, of course, is that unless one is Native American, all of us are descended from immigrants (in my own case, principally those from Austria-Hungary, Scotland, England, France and Ireland, some arriving in what's now America in the 1600's and early 1700's), so the Felon's rants against immigrants is especially disingenuous until one looks at the thinly disguised racism that underlies it. A piece in The Atlantic looks at the ugliness of the Felon's racism and the sad reality that so far he has paid no real political price for this ugliness:

During a White House meeting on Tuesday, surrounded by his Cabinet, [the Felon] President Donald Trump referred to Somali immigrants as “garbage” and said, “We don’t want them in our country.” No one in Trump’s Cabinet stood up to this expression of gutter racism, although Vice President J. D. Vance enthusiastically banged on the table. The president’s remarks were ostensibly in response to real events—in Minnesota, dozens of members of the Somali diaspora have been implicated in fraud related to social services—but the community does not bear responsibility for the actions of those individuals.

Similarly, white Americans as a whole are not responsible for Trump largely dismantling the federal government’s capacity to fight white-collar crime and corruption, his doling out of pardons for people who donate money or commit crimes on his behalf, or his scandalous profiteering. I don’t believe that there is something inherent in white culture that causes Trump to act this way; he is simply a particularly reprehensible human being.

The next day, at an Oval Office event, Trump again disparaged Somalis, claiming that Somali immigrants have “destroyed our country” and that the Somali American congresswoman Ilhan Omar “should be thrown the hell out of our country.” None of the people around him had the courage to ask whom “our” referred to. Given the president’s plunging approval ratings, one wonders whether these slurs are yet another attempt to shore up his support through appeals to racism.

Watching Trump’s repeated attacks on Somalians—the latest group of Black immigrants to be targeted by the president—I can’t avoid the conclusion that the government of the United States of America is in the hands of people who believe that they can apply a genetic hierarchy to humanity, and that American laws and customs should recognize and serve that hierarchy.

This commitment is most visible in the Constitution-shredding program of mass deportation being carried out across the country by federal agents, who, in order to meet their quotas, are arresting and deporting immigrants who have been following the rules and showing up for their court dates, rather than those committing crimes. Gregory Bovino, a top Border Patrol commander, told a reporter outright that agents were arresting people based in part on “how they look.” This is racial profiling—a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection—and yet it has been condoned by the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court. In September, an emergency-docket decision effectively legalized racial profiling by lifting an order preventing it. Although “apparent ethnicity alone” isn’t enough to detain someone, it can be “a “relevant factor,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a lone concurring opinion, calling that only “common sense.”

Trump declared on Thanksgiving Day his intention to halt immigration from “Third World” countries, a neuron-thin euphemism for nonwhite immigrants. His remarks about Somalis being “garbage” are consistent with his referring to African nations and Haiti as “shithole” countries in his first term. Trump also announced an intention to strip U.S. citizenship from “migrants who undermine domestic tranquility,” and to “deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization”—arbitrary, subjective criteria that could serve as pretext for denaturalizing anyone for any reason.

The Trump adviser Stephen Miller, a fervent supporter of the racist and anti-Semitic immigration restrictions of the 1920s, declared on X that “migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions, and terrors, of their broken homelands.” Miller’s contention that one’s supposed inferiority to and incompatibility with Americans are inherited and unalterable is consistent with Trump’s past remarks about how immigrants with “bad genes” are “poisoning the blood” of the nation.

The logic of this racism is relatively simple—the individual bears the guilt of the whole, and the whole bears the imprint of some alleged crime that deserves collective punishment. Blaming the egregious behavior of men such as Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on their German or Norwegian backgrounds would sound comical to the same people who treat the president vomiting out similar generalizations about Somalis as sound observation.

That a crime by an Afghan former CIA recruit or Somali fraudsters can be laid at the feet of all “Third World” immigrants shows how arbitrarily such lines are drawn. What matters is not what individuals do, but who they are, and whether or not they fit Trump and Miller’s narrow, racially defined view of who Americans can be.

Among the original English settlers, of course, were not only religious refugees and indentured servants but criminals Britain did not want. Many German immigrants to the United States came after the failed liberal revolutions of 1848. Irish immigration was spurred by famine and British imperialism; Italian immigration was driven by the bloody post-unification chaos and, especially in the south and Sicily, by lawlessness, brigandage, and Piedmontese repression. Let us not forget the Eastern Europeans, among them Jewish families—including Miller’s own—who fled the autocratic regimes and ethnic violence of their homelands.

Most Americans of European descent are the children of such “broken” societies, by one standard or another, and America would not have become wealthy and powerful without them. No reason beyond bigotry exists to apply different standards to immigrants because they came from Nigeria or Mexico instead of Ireland.

There is a difference between inheritance and action. I cannot help who my ancestors are, but I can make my own choices. That so many Americans chose to place in power a man who holds people in contempt on the basis of race, religion, and national origin; that so much of the mainstream media conveys this bigotry through tired, obfuscating euphemisms; that there is so low a political price for the president’s racism that he and those around him see little risk in its expression—well, that does say something about America, and Americans. Immigration isn’t breaking our society. That’s a job Americans can do on their own.