Friends, Last Wednesday, Fred Wertheimer received the Paul H. Douglas Award for Ethics in Government for 2025. Ever since I met him in the 1970s, when he worked as legal counsel for Common Cause, the nonpartisan citizens’ lobby, Fred has been trying to make American democracy work better. Fred led ...

Friends, Some people would like to believe that Elon Musk is no longer a danger to democracy because his polls are in the basement and he’s apparently on his way out of Trump’s White House. They’re wrong. Musk still has Trump’s ear, and even after he leaves he’ll be back in the White House at least...

Friends, Today, the Federal Reserve decided to leave interest rates where they are, at 4.25 percent to 4.5 percent. Although the Fed acknowledged that the labor market was still “solid,” it also noted that “risks of higher unemployment and higher inflation have risen.” Recall that last November, th...

Friends, With Mother’s Day this Sunday, I wanted to raise a real problem — but one that’s being grotesquely distorted by Trump and his lackeys. Births in the United States increased by just 1 percent in 2024, according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s nearl...

Friends, Several of you have asked me how I manage to produce this Substack every day, seven days a week (often two or three times a day). Is there just one of you? you ask. Do you get any sleep? Do you have a life? There’s just one of me (except on Saturdays, when Heather Lofthouse joins me for th...

Friends, Sorry to intrude on you again today but I need to add this week’s winner of the Neville Chamberlain Award, given to the most cowardly effort to appease a tyrant. (This week’s original winners were Shari Redstone and Paramount, for intruding on the editorial independence of “60 Minutes” in ...

Friends, Part of taking stock of Trump’s first hundred days requires an honest assessment of how we’re coping with this monstrosity. What would an honest assessment entail? The responses I’ve been getting from many of you and from others across the country tend to fall into three categories. I’ll b...

Friends, May Day has two meanings, both of which are directly applicable to today. It commemorates the solidarity of the labor movement (139 years ago today, workers gathered in the streets of Chicago to demand an eight-hour day). “Mayday!” is also a distress signal used by pilots to indicate immin...

Friends, A federal judge today ruled that Trump doesn’t have authority to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelan migrants without a hearing. It’s a major blow to the regime’s deportation blitz, which has so far summarily removed 130 immigrants residing in the United States to a brut...

Friends, Yesterday’s May Day demonstrations across America showed that the opposition to Trump continues to grow. Hundreds of thousands of people swelled in resistance to his dictatorial agenda. Not just in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., but also in small communities tha...

Friends, Today Heather and I examine the outlook for Trump, the Trump White House, Congress, and the economy. Now that we’ve finished the first hundred days, where does America go from here? Is there room for hope? I’m more optimistic than Heather because I believe opposition to Trump is growing. A...

Friends, If you’re anything like me, it’s not just Trump’s policies that anger and depress you. It’s also the man himself. Ronald Reagan’s policies were terrible, but he tried to present himself as a decent man. Trump is a despicable human being. His odiousness affects many of us because presidents...