#95: Elected Leaders Need to Follow the People

“It might be helpful for you to know that you are not alone. And that in the long, twilight struggle which lies ahead of us, there is the possibility of hope.”

“The Long Twilight Struggle.” Babylon 5, created and written by J. Michael Straczynski, Season 2, Episode 20, 1995.

Here’s what I’ve found interesting:

• Why I’ve moved this newsletter to a new platform;
• A hopeful national day of protests;
• Cory Booker’s magnificent speech;
• Holding every Republican responsible for the Trump tariff fiasco;
• Abortion bans kill women;
• Kristi Noem’s harmful cosplaying;
• An oral history of Bear Stearns’ 2008 collapse; and
• Let’s not allow Trump to rewrite the history of the January 6, 2021, insurrection he instigated.

Here we go. I’m glad you’re here.

#1

Moving to Ghost

You may have noticed that I sent this newsletter using a different service. I migrated from Substack to Ghost for several reasons.

Hopefully, you won’t notice much difference in the delivery of this newsletter, whether you are a free or paying subscriber.

I appreciate those of you who voluntarily pay for this newsletter to help me buy coffee and subscribe to newsletters to share. Both companies use the same payment processor, so the details for those of you with annual or monthly subscriptions should still work the same. Please let me know if you have any problems by emailing craig@thelongtwilightstruggle.com.

I made the move because I’ve been increasingly uncomfortable with Substack’s decision to share profits with white supremacists, Nazis, and transphobes. Some of these authors have been able to use their Substacks to re-enter more mainstream conversations.

I still subscribe to Substack newsletters, both paid and free. I don’t blame people who haven’t moved. Risks are involved, especially if the newsletter is one’s primary income. I was not an early mover. But I have been increasingly uncomfortable with Substack’s policies. Ghost fits my comfort level better.

I also like that Ghost is a non-profit organization. While I am using Ghost’s hosting service, I could move this newsletter to my own server. I don’t have to worry about venture capitalists deciding they want the data. It is also easier to have a custom domain for the website archive (https://thelongtwilightstruggle.com/), and it could be easier for people to find it through search engines.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments. Now, let’s move on to clearing my tabs.

#2

• 'Not just anger and not just hope, but anger and hope' (Jason Sattler, The Last Billionaires, Link to Article)
• Millions Stood Up: April 5 Hands Off Day of Action (Rebecca Solnit, Meditations in an Emergency, Link to Article)
• The '3.5% rule': How a small minority can change the world (David Robson, BBC, Link to Article)

I was so pleased to see all of the photos from the April 5 Hands Off protests on BlueSky last night. The crowds. The signs. The message was angry and serious—but with a hearty inclusion of fun and hope.

Jason Sattler quotes an observation from Erica Chenoweth, who you may know as the researcher who developed the 3.5% rule about what level of public mobilization has led to government changes.

“I'll also say there's some research on the emotions of protest, and in it, there's a kind of understanding that the emotions that mobilize people are anger and hope. Um, those two together, not just anger and not just hope, but anger and hope are what make people ready to engage in collective action.”

So, yes, despite some online tsk-tsking last night, it is important for people to have fun even while doing hard work. It is okay to sing, dance, and celebrate in other ways. Those dynamics help raise morale and keep the fight going. As Taylor Swift once said during a BBC Radio 1 interview:

“The worst kind of person is someone who makes someone feel bad, dumb, or stupid for being excited about something.”

Yes. Even during a protest.

Rebecca Solnit was the closing speaker at the San Francisco Hands Off rally, and I encourage you to read her comments. She also included an important observation from protest movement historian L.A. Kauffman about why the nationwide protests were so important:

The journalist L.A. Kauffman, who's written excellent histories of protest movements and nonviolent activism, commented on BlueSky “A massive decentralized movement like this – everywhere all at once, with everybody pitching in – is extremely difficult for any regime, even the most autocratic, to derail. There are too many leaders, coordinating in too many different ways, for a movement like this to be easily neutralized. And while you usually can't tell the true effect of a protest until long after it's over, today’s actions have already made a major impact where we most needed it right now: on people’s morale. That in itself is a win.”

The first months of the second Trump regime have been emotionally difficult for people who aren’t members of MAGA. Democratic elected officials, with a few notable exceptions, have not met the urgency of this moment.

I hope Democrats looked at the rallies and saw that there are people who will have their backs if they are willing to robustly oppose the Trump-Musk Regime. May these protests become a virtuous cycle in defense of our democracy.

#3

• Decency Will Win (Julie Roginsky, The Banter, Link to Article)
• Five Things Cory Booker Taught Me This Week (Dahlia Lithwick, Slate, Link to Article)
• Schiff Will Place Hold On Ed Martin Nom Citing ‘Demolished’ Firewalls Between WH And DOJ (Khaya Himmelman, Talking Points Memo, Link to Article)
• A Democratic senator is putting holds on VA nominees to protest Trump’s plans to cut its workforce (Stephen Groves, Associated Press, Link to Article)

Oh, how I needed this.

Senator Cory Booker broke the record for the longest Senate speech when he spoke for 25 hours and 5 minutes against the Trump-Musk Regime. Booker surpassed racist Senator Strom Thurmond’s filibuster against the 1957 Civil Rights Act.

I’m quite pleased that Booker’s speech—and not Thurmond’s—will be the one mentioned going forward when there is a filibuster in the Senate.

However, Booker didn’t just demonstrate impressive stamina. He gave a tour de force presentation—and not just the typical time-wasting exercise. As Julie Roginsky explains:

Unlike Thurmond, Booker did not spend his time on the senate floor reading the election laws of each state or quoting from the speeches of George Washington and Alexis de Tocqueville. Instead, he focused on what Democrats should have been speaking about every single minute of every single day since January 20th: the horrors that this president is inflicting on every single American, irrespective of party affiliation. He spoke about the threat to our democracy, about the dangers to regular Americans who relied on Medicaid and Social Security to survive, about the failures of his own party to rise to the challenge of defending the country against Trumpism. “I confess that I’ve been inadequate. That the Democrats have been responsible for allowing the rise of this demagogue,” he added.

All of it needed to be said, and it will continue to need to be said—over and over again.

Plus, people like me who oppose what the Trump-Musk Regime is doing to federal government agencies, immigrants, trans people, and the economy needed to see our Democratic elected officials do something oppositional after they failed to stop the continuing budget resolution. As Dahlia Lithwick wrote:

What matters is that for anyone who has toggled between the “profoundly broken” and “exceedingly numb” poles of the emotional register in recent weeks, Booker blew the doors off and reminded us of a whole lot of things we knew already but which have been hard to retain top-of-mind amid the devastation that Donald Trump’s authoritarian forces have been wreaking on American democracy.

Yes, it may have been performative. But that is a big part of successful politics, a lesson far too many Democrats have refused to learn. Some Democrats who see a future president in the mirror each morning may notice the outpouring of support Booker received and decide they’d like to get their share of it.

Good! One of my rules of politics is that enlightened self-interest can be one of the most powerful forces in the universe. Politicians desire support. It is great if they can get it by doing the right things.

In the wake of Booker’s record-breaking speech, we witnessed the potential rise of Democratic opposition. Senator Adam Schiff (D-California) announced he was placing a hold on the nomination of Ed Martin as the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. Martin has been acting like a personal attorney for President Trump and is manifestly unfit for the office.

Senator Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona) announced that he will block the confirmation of Department of Veterans Affairs nominees to force a restoration of the DOGE-backed cuts to veterans’ benefits.

That was awesome! But it wasn’t awesome to see the Democrats agree to a unanimous consent request to speed up a confirmation vote even before Booker could leave the floor to deal with “some of the biological urgencies” he was feeling. It was awful to see Democrats pull their punches by saying that tariffs can be a useful tool as they gently criticized Trump’s tariff announcement. As Jamison Foser noted on BlueSky:

Indeed.

Democratic Senators have tools they can use to throw sand in the gears of the Trump-Musk Regime. Time is a non-renewable resource. Democrats can force Republicans to burn time by objecting to the unanimous consent requests that allow the Senate to function. They can demand the presence of a quorum when the Senate is conducting business.

Make life difficult for Republicans. Force them to get President Trump to back off his anti-Constitutional actions. Every wasted minute helps keep Trump from filling the judiciary with more Federalist Society members.

There are many benefits for the Democrats to act like a real opposition party while there is still time.

#4

• The Trump Tariffs Are How Everything Works Now (Brian Barrett, Wired, Link to Article)
• Launching the Economic Version of the Iraq War (James Fallows, Breaking the News, Link to Article)
• Trump’s Tariff Madness Can Be Stopped. Here’s How. (Greg Sargent interview with Norman Ornstein, The Daily Blast from the New Republic, Link to Transcript)

He told us he was going to do this. One of the few talking points Donald Trump consistently makes in his public speeches is his love for tariffs. As Brian Barrett writes:

This is the takeaway of the manifold tariffs announced by President Donald Trump on Wednesday afternoon. In addition to the penguin-occupied Heard and McDonald Islands, the tariffs target the British Indian Ocean Territory, whose sole occupants live on a joint US-UK military base on Diego Garcia island. Yes, the United States is levying reciprocal tariffs against its own troops.

And then there are the tariffs against countries that have actual goods and services on which US consumers depend. China: 54 percent. Vietnam: 46 percent. Cambodia: 49 percent. South Korea: 25 percent. No corner of the US consumer economy will go untouched. Prices will rise. The stock market is spiraling. A recession looms. The tech industry will be turned upside down. Mark Cuban, noted billionaire, is encouraging people to stockpile consumables before it’s too late.

It’s reckless, it’s absurd, and it’s also everything Donald Trump said plainly he would do on the campaign trail. True, he didn’t telegraph how misguided the methodology would be—you can read about it more here, but suffice to say it’s thoroughly detached from the realities of international trade—but he loudly, repeatedly promised to tariff his way to glory.

Wall Street and corporate leaders thought he was joking. They thought they were buying more tax cuts and deregulation with their campaign contributions and other gratuities to the Trump Regime. It was a mistake to take Trump’s rantings literally. It was a performance.

Given the impact the present economic crash will have on ordinary people, one can take little comfort in the fact that these billionaires and millionaires have lost far more net worth since Trump’s tariff announcement than they hoped to gain with tax cuts.

I think James Fallows is correct to compare the Trump tariff announcement to another transformative Republican policy failure: the second Iraq War.

I think this is a historically reckless moment in US economic policy. And even by Trump-era standards it’s a historically shameful moment for the Republican Party. Its leaders know that their alpha-figure is launching a dollars-and-Euros version of the Iraq war. And they stand by, grinning and clapping.

<snip>

This all boils down to:

-Tariffs are weapons.
-Sane people use weapons with care.
-Now we have a deranged person with a weapon firing blindly. With no one in his own party to stop him.

Which leaves the Canadians, Mexicans, and Europeans to say, No.
And the Chinese and Russians to cackle at the smash-up.

And that is why Democrats must make all Republicans—and not just Trump—own the disaster that is underway.

Because Republicans can stop this tomorrow. They can join Democrats to pass legislation to rescind the national emergency power Trump is misusing to impose tariffs. They can also join Democrats to override the inevitable presidential veto.

As Greg Sargent and Norm Ornstein discuss, Republicans are not likely to join in those votes. But there is great value in Democrats acting like it is possible.

Sargent: I agree. And I’m going to say something really crazy. Given the cult-like qualities that you’re talking about in the Republican Party today, I think the chances of getting two-thirds of each chamber are not just slim to none; they are none to none. But I think Democrats should proceed as if it’s possible to get them. Push really hard, bludgeon the hell out of Republicans day in and day out in every conceivable forum, say over and over, Republicans are helping Trump cut taxes for the ultrawealthy and corporations because the “revenues” from tariffs will be paid by working-class and middle-class consumers, and that is what will be used to offset those tax cuts for the very rich. Say it over and over, Republicans and Trump are making your prices higher, much higher, to fund more tax cuts for the super rich. Act like Republicans can be pushed, and do it.

Ornstein: And I would go beyond that, Greg. I think we need to see even more town halls in Republican districts, with Democrats doing their own hearings in some of these areas, and field hearings outside plants that are being closed. We had the parent company of Dodge and Chrysler announced today they were laying off 900 workers and shuttering one of their plants. We’re going to see more of that. We’re going to see a lot of prices go up as a consequence of these tariffs, including domestic prices.

All of this, please, Democrats. Republicans must be held accountable for allowing Trump to enact plans to destroy the United States economy. Republicans think the highest political price they can face is by disagreeing with Trump. But we have already seen some Republicans and business leaders waver.

Democrats need to jump at the opportunity. It’s the right political move—and it may even prevent the worst of this coming trade war from happening.

#5

• US doctors describe three patient deaths that could have been prevented with abortion access in new study (Stephanie Kirchgaessner, The Guardian, Link to Article)

Doctors who practice medicine in states with abortion bans have described in a new study how three of their pregnant patients died, but probably could have been saved had they been able to receive abortion care.

The doctors, who treat lung, respiratory and other critical illnesses, never raised abortion, including the option of traveling out of state for the procedure, out of fear of legal repercussions, according to interviews with the doctors in the study, which was published in Chest, a medical journal. No other information about the patients who died was published.

The stories of these women are absolutely horrifying—but not surprising. Forced-birth Republicans have been repeatedly warned that their abortion bans will lead to mothers’ deaths.

Time is of the essence when there are medical complications. The exceptions in abortion bans, when they even exist, are so vague that physicians and hospital lawyers are unwilling to take on the potential legal liability created by providing reproductive health care to their patients.

Forced-birth advocates must own these, and other, deaths. These health care decisions should be made by pregnant people in consultation with their medical teams.

Not hypocritical religious zealot politicians.

#6

• One Photo From Abu Ghraib Lost the Iraq War. Kristi Noem Continues the Tradition (Michael Embrich, Rolling Stone, Link to Article)

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has been living out her cosplaying dreams. She’s conducted interviews in ICE uniforms, border patrol outfits, cowboy hats, and bulletproof vests.

But the photo op she did at the maximum security El Salvadorian prison to which the Trump Regime human trafficked Venezuelan immigrants without due process represented a rejection of ideals dating back to General George Washington. As Michael Embrich explains:

That photo — Private Lynndie England holding a leash attached to a naked, hooded Iraqi man nicknamed “Gus” by soldiers — became a defining image of the war. It shattered any illusion that we were there as liberators. It put every service member in greater danger and undermined the very values we claimed to defend. That single image embodied everything America is not supposed to be. And then came Kristi Noem.

Noem, Donald Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary, added her own flair to what might be the worst photo-op ever taken by a Cabinet secretary. Sporting a hat with a badge (thankfully not the Paw Patrol kind), she posed in front of shirtless, caged men held at El Salvador’s infamous gulag — and threatened to send more immigrants to America there. I felt that familiar gut-punch. Another photo. Another war lost — this time, for basic decency and American democratic ideals.

The Atlantic’s Adam Sewer observed during the first Trump Administration that “cruelty is the point.” We have since watched MAGA supporters seek to one-up each other in terms of how much cruelty they can demonstrate.

The case of these Venezuelan immigrants crosses even more lines. As Embrich writes:

Every American should be asking: What happens when we normalize sending people — without hearings or trials — to cages in foreign countries known for torture? What happens when we rely on authoritarian regimes to do the dirty work we can’t legally carry out on U.S. soil?

These actions can have negative ramifications for generations. It is pretty clear that we have sent innocent people to a forced labor camp. But the Trump Regime’s spokespeople claim nothing can be done.

No, this is not normal. It is not acceptable. When we successfully overcome this democratic crisis, we need to hold those involved accountable, including the cosplaying cabinet members.

#7

• The Weekend That Shook the World (Garrett M. Graff, The Washington Post, Link to Article)

I love oral histories—and this one covers a vital weekend in the 21st Century: the collapse of the investment bank Bear Stearns in March 2008. As Garrett Graff explains:

American politics — and our collective future — has rarely felt as unstable and uncertain as it does this spring. Yet the foundations of the unraveling and changes that led us to here can be found in the multiple destabilizing epochal events that have marked the first 25 years of the 21st century — including the 9/11 attacks and the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Arguably no moment or crisis more shaped modern populism and the Republican Party, specifically, than the 2008 financial crisis, an economic catastrophe that upended the housing market, jobs, the broader economy and national politics. The crisis launched the tea party, began the rapid acceleration of the rising national debt and marked the beginning of the political ascendance of Donald Trump, who started in 2011 offering regular business and political punditry on Fox News.

The first major, public-headline-grabbing moment of that crisis came with the collapse over a single weekend of the venerable investment bank Bear Stearns — a firm founded in 1923 that had famously survived the Crash of ’29 without laying off any employees and grown by 2008 to be the country’s fifth-largest investment bank with some $400 billion in assets and 15,000 employees. That March weekend with Bear Stearns and the crisis as a whole would have been even worse but for enormous interventions and unprecedented actions by usually risk-averse government leaders at the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department.

Graff interviews the Treasury, Federal Reserve, and business leaders who came together in an unprecedentedly short period of time to facilitate the firm’s sale to JPMorgan Chase.

These decisions did contain the damage in the short term. However, the political decisions that extended into the Obama Administration to bail out the banks and their investors damaged our democracy.

There is a universe where using the bailout money to help the mortgage holders (whose payments, in turn, would still help the banks) would have created a more stable economy and political situation.

People were angry that the banks and investors did not face major consequences for their fraudulent actions. People lost their homes while bankers kept their bonuses and didn’t face legal ramifications. That was not a great outcome.

#8

• The Reality of the January 6, 2021, Insurrection

On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump instigated a violent insurrection against the United States government. Here’s a video from the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol that one can review if their memory fades.

People were hurt and police officers died protecting the Capitol. Vice President Pence and other elected officials just barely escaped danger. Our national streak of peaceful transfers of power ended.

It was not, as Trump claims, a “day of love.” And we must resist his efforts to rewrite the history of that dark day.

Quick Hits

• A U.S. invasion of Greenland could actually happen (Michael Cohen, MSNBC, Link to Article)
  As I noted in the section about tariffs above, we need to take it seriously when Trump says something repeatedly.
  
• Trump’s third term threats are not a distraction (Noah Berlatsky, Public Notice, Link to Article)
  Yeah, I need to repeat myself. We need to take literally what Trump says repeatedly. Yes, the interpretation of the 22nd Amendment that supposedly makes it possible for Trump to run for Vice President and then take office after a president’s resignation is ridiculous. But if Trump can get away with all he’s done with Musk so far, why should we assume he cares what words or laws mean?
  
• International unease ahead of NWSL international break (Justin Horneker, Talkin’ Soccer, Link to Article)
  While not nearly as important as the ramifications created by the Trump Regime sending innocent people to El Salvadorian prison labor camps while defying court orders, Trump’s anti-Constitutional immigration actions are creating chaos for other people who need to enter and leave the country. For example, the Football Association of Zambia told its NWSL-based players not to join their national team in China for a tournament his week because of visa concerns. The United States is scheduled to host the Men’s World Cup in 2026 and the Summer Olympics in 2028. How is that supposed to work while Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller is implementing his white supremacist immigration agenda?
  
• After Kennedy Center cancels LGBTQ+ musical, Guster brings cast on stage in protest (Marisa Kabas, The Handbasket, Link to Article)
  These are the kinds of moments that we must celebrate. I am glad the band Guster gave the cast of Finn an opportunity to perform at the Kennedy Center. Here’s your chance to watch this important moment.

Post-Game Comments

Today’s Thought from my Readwise collection:

“When you see important societal actors — be it university presidents, media outlets, C.E.O.s, mayors, governors — changing their behavior in order to avoid the wrath of the government, that’s a sign that we’ve crossed the line into some form of authoritarianism.”–Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard who co-authored 2018’s “How Democracies Die.

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Craig Cheslog (@craigcheslog.com)

GenXer against fascism. Talking politics, women’s soccer, WNBA, Manchester United men and women, USWNT, USMNT, Green Bay Packers, Boston Celtics, Chicago Cubs, and Taylor Swift. (he/him/his) My newsletter: https://thelongtwilightstruggle.com/.

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