- Robert Reich reminds us of the three branches of American government, and how, in plain site, Trump is attacking two of them;
- How Donald Trump doesn’t align with William McKinley so much as William Jennings Bryan.
- Bruce Springsteen’s “Outlaw Pete”.
Robert Reich puts the latest Supreme Court decision into perspective. There used to be a “civics” class in 6th grade, or junior high school, and I gather there isn’t any more.
Robert Reich, 29 Jun 2025: Sunday Thought: The One Branch of Government that Trump Wants to Keep Alive, subtitled “While eviscerating the two others:
As every American school kid learns, the U.S. Constitution establishes three branches of government that are supposed to check and balance each other.
Every school kid, that is, except Donald Trump and the people around him who have been usurping congressional authority and going to war against the judiciary.
Trump and his lackeys want there to be only one branch of government — the executive branch, under Trump.
Congress has now all but disappeared because it’s controlled by Republican zombies who will say and do whatever Trump wants.
This leaves the federal judiciary as the only remaining check on Trump. So far, federal courts have paused about 80 of Trump’s executive orders until judges have an opportunity to hear arguments and sift through evidence at full trials.
But even this is too much for the dictator-in-chief.
On Friday, a majority of the Supreme Court — at the prodding of Trump’s Justice Department — decided that federal judges could pause executive actions only for the specific plaintiffs that bring a case. (Previously, any of the nation’s more than 1,000 judges in its 94 district courts could issue nationwide injunctions that immediately halted government policies across all 50 states.)
On Tuesday, Trump and his lackeys filed a lawsuit against 15 federal judges who serve on the bench in Maryland, seeking a court order that would block them from making any ruling that might “interfere” in “the president’s powers to enforce the nation’s immigration laws.”
Beyond these are Trump’s personal attacks against federal judges who rule against him, calling them “monsters” who want America to “go to hell,” and “radical left lunatics” or worse — even demanding their impeachment.
This is Trump acting like he’s a king, or a dictator. And the last quotes resemble those from a couple posts ago — actually it was on the 20th — how if you’re not on Trump’s side, you must “hate America.” Simplistic, even lunatic thinking.
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From a couple weeks ago.
The New Yorker, Daniel Immerwahr, 16 Jun 2025: Why Donald Trump Is Obsessed with a President from the Gilded Age, subtitled “William McKinley led a country defined by tariffs and colonial wars. There’s a reason Trump is so drawn to his legacy—and so determined to bring the liberal international order to an end.”
Typically long, exploratory New Yorker piece, which I haven’t had time to read deeply. But there’s a revelation beyond the idea in the subtitle. The piece opens:
As a historical figure, Donald Trump is oddly hard to place in time. He was an icon of the nineteen-eighties, yet he’s also the defining figure of the post-Obama era. His politics oscillate between knuckle-dragging conservatism and manic accelerationism. He longs for a time when America was “great,” though when that was is unclear. His historical enthusiasms include the America First movement of the early nineteen-forties, Andrew Jackson, and Abraham Lincoln (“Most people don’t even know he was a Republican, right? Does anybody know?”).
Pause for a moment: no Lincoln was not a Republican in the modern sense. The great shift, or switch, between the two parties occurred in the 1960s, over the issue of civil rights. As detailed in many other places. And modern conservatives ignore this, if they knew about it in the first place.
Here’s the point of this essay:
If Trump resembles any Gilded Age politician, it isn’t William McKinley but his electoral opponent, William Jennings Bryan. In 1896, Bryan ran an anti-establishment campaign that took aim at the global financial élite. (A “bleak and gloomy” outlook, Rove scolds, and one that attracted antisemites.) Bryan received nominations from both the Populists and the Democrats, though Democratic Party insiders tried to block him. To support his improbable candidacy, Bryan gave some five hundred and seventy fiery speeches in twenty-nine states. Freaked-out businessmen wrote big checks to stop him. This allowed McKinley’s amply funded campaign to carpet the country in pamphlets while the candidate stayed home, in Canton, Ohio, serving lemonade to well-wishers on his front porch. It was charisma versus capital—and, in this case, the money won. Still, Bryan’s electoral map looked broadly similar to Trump’s in 2016.
The essay does not mention Bryan again. But Bryan was, of course, famous for his participation in the famous Scopes Trial, defending the literal truth of the Bible. His side won on a technicality, but history has come to regard him as a doofus. And the legitimacy of evolution has become unassailable. See my take on the movie and play.
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Continuing to explore the late Springsteen albums, which I’m defining as everything past The Rising. Here’s the first song on the 2009 album Working on a Dream: “Outlaw Pete.”
I’m sure this is obvious but: with the great songwriters, and singers: read the lyrics. Listen to them. Most pop songs succeed by virtue of catchy melodies and beats. Dance music.
Songs like this one, and many of Bob Dylan’s, are stories. The stories are energized and dramatized by the music. There’s a story here, and it all comes down to the plea: “Can you hear me?” And yet, who is asking who? Who needs to be heard?
