- A majority of Americans favor impeachment;
- Now the Trump administration is threatening the Vatican;
- Yet more evidence that they’re white supremacists;
- Revisiting the question if Trump is suffering dementia;
- Long piece about how Trump is stuck in the era of the 1980s;
- Brief items: The administration delays published news about vaccine benefits; the USDA secretary sends a Jesus email to 100,000 of her workers; comment on Fb about why MAGA thinks protesters are being paid;
- Radiohead’s “Dollars and Cents”.
Newsweek, updated today: Donald Trump Impeachment Backed by Most Americans: Poll
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Now they’re threatening the Vatican.
The New Republic, 8 Apr 2026: Pentagon Threatened the Pope After He Criticized Trump, subtitled “It was so bad that Pope Leo changed his plans to travel to the U.S.”
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They’re definitely white supremacists.
The Atlantic, Adam Serwer, 8 Apr 2026: Pete Hegseth Is Trying to Resegregate the Military
Subtitled: “Color-blind and merit-based” now seems to be anything but.
Earlier examples we’ve seen, and more examples. It concludes:
Authoritarian regimes behave as the Trump administration is behaving—optimizing for political loyalty rather than competence. Merit, in short, has little to do with it.
Hegseth is a prime example. Deeply unqualified for the job and convinced that brutality provides an easy path to victory, he has led the United States to the verge of a strategic defeat with a weaker adversary in Iran. The current cease-fire leaves Iran with a more hard-line government than before, one in total control of a shipping lane crucial to the world economy. The Islamic Republic is arguably in a stronger position today than it was when the war started, and probably in a stronger position than it was before Trump, in his first term, scrapped the Obama-era nuclear deal.
On Sunday, Trump posted on his social network a refrain that he and his toadies seem to think is insightful: “If you import The Third World, you become The Third World!” This archaic social Darwinism is the ideological mortar of the Trump project. It fuses Hegseth’s disdain for diversity in the military’s senior leadership and valorization of brutality with the administration’s attack on birthright citizenship and its deployment of federal agents to occupy American cities. It is a worldview that would assume an easy victory against a country like Iran, especially with America’s new, “unwoke” military. Bigotry isn’t just inefficient, as the U.S. military discovered in the 1940s. It also makes you stupid.
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And
Robert Reich, today: The truth about Harmeet Dhillon, Trump’s likely pick for attorney general, subtitled “She’s now assistant AG for civil rights but is intent on reversing civil rights.”
Dhillon admits that her overall vision is not just slowing down civil rights in America but “turning the train around and driving in the opposite direction,” as she told the conservative Federalist Society after her appointment as head of the division.
She has eliminated federal oversight of police departments accused of discrimination, once the centerpiece of the Civil Rights Division’s work.
She has directed universities to end all types of affirmative action, once defended by the Civil Rights Division.
She is now suing states to acquire voter databases in an effort to disenfranchise minority voters. The Civil Rights Division once existed to protect their voting rights.
Harmeet Dhillon is no advocate for civil rights. She’s a legal hack for Trump’s cruel agenda of attacking Americans trying to stop ICE and Border Patrol agents from doing their worst, of seeking to destroy academic freedom in American universities in favor of Trump’s narrow view of what should be allowed, of undermining equal opportunity for people of color, and of prosecuting anyone — like Cassidy Hutchinson — with the courage and integrity to stand up against Trump’s despotism.
Harmeet Dhillon is the last person who should be running the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. She should never become attorney general — which means Trump will probably nominate her.
(So it’s not precisely white supremacy. Note that she’s not purely white herself.)
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Slate re-posted this piece, from January. Yes, people are asking this every day.
Slate, Anna Gibbs, 26 Jan 2026: Is Trump Losing It?, subtitled “It’s time to seriously ask the question.”
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Here’s an interesting piece — it expands on the familiar idea that Trump (like so many conservatives) is stuck in the past and wants the present to return to what was familiar to him in his youth.
The Atlantic, Jonathan Lemire and Isabel Ruehl, today: 1979 Is the Year That Explains Donald Trump, subtitled “And pretty much all of the 1980s do too.”
Longish piece. Here’s a sample from the middle.
By the late 1980s, Trump was a celebrity real-estate developer, a best-selling author, and a tabloid fixture. But what he said then effectively previews how he is governing now; indeed, for a politician who has few consistent ideologies (except on tariffs; he has always loved tariffs), it’s striking how Trump’s views on Iran haven’t really changed. A New York Times write-up of an October 1987 speech in New Hampshire relayed that the businessman had suggested that the U.S. “should attack Iran and seize some of its oil fields in retaliation for what he called Iran’s bullying of America.” A couple of months later, Trump complained to Phil Donahue (we told you this was a very 1980s tale) that American allies were not doing enough to protect access to oil in the Persian Gulf. The following year, Trump told The Guardian that if he were ever to run for president, he’d be “harsh” on Iran, declaring that “one bullet shot at one of our men or ships, and I’d do a number on Kharg Island. I’d go in and take it.” Nearly 40 years later, the Pentagon has prepared a plan for a ground invasion to do just this. It’s awaiting Trump’s approval if the cease-fire falters.
Fast forward to now, and Trump’s backing off his threats against Iran.
Hours later, Trump backed off the unhinged threat, and a two-week cease-fire materialized. The fragile truce, however, seemed to only strengthen Iran’s claim over the strait; if that becomes permanent, it will be difficult to view the war as anything other than a strategic defeat for the United States.
Trump and his aides, though, would hear none of it. They insisted that the war has been won, that Iran’s regime has been changed, and that, as the president put it this morning on social media, we could soon see “the Golden Age of the Middle East!!!” How was that possible? Trump’s aides pointed us to the madman theory, saying that the president’s unpredictability, combined with his genocidal threat to wipe out Iran, had forced the agreement. “That’s The Art of the Deal, baby,” one White House aide crowed to us.
That book, of course, was published in 1987.
Linking a David Frum piece from yesterday.
In a sense there’s a truth of human nature here, not just of conservative human nature. Most people develop fixed ideas by their 20s or 30s and then never change. Even scientists, supposedly the most objectively thinking people. That’s why there’s a saying that, in order for science to progress, sometimes you have to wait for the oldest scientists (the stick-in-muds) to die.
I think most scientists are conscious of this and try to avoid it. Certainly I’ve been conscious of this. I’ve acknowledged having changed my mind significantly two or three times over the years, and I’ve learned a lot about human psychology over the past decade that has allowed me to rethink how I understand political issues.
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Briefly:
- Washington Post, today: CDC delays publishing report showing covid vaccine benefits, subtitled “The acting CDC director cited concerns with the methodology, but the design has long been used to test vaccine effectiveness.”
- Yet again, they’re suppressing news that conflicts with their anti-vax ideology. News they don’t like. Authoritarianism.
- JMG, today, from Washington Post: USDA Secretary Sent Jesus Email To 100,000 Workers
- “Happy Easter — He is Risen indeed!”
- Do Christians not realize how inappropriate this is in a country that is not, by definition, a religious theocracy? What would they think if a Jewish or Muslim employee send out a message of celebration about something in their faith?
- Anonymous comment on Facebook:
The reason MAGA thinks protesters are being paid is because they can’t fathom doing something without a “what’s in it for me?” angle. It’s called having a moral compass … which is why it’s so confusing to them.
I think this principle can be applied more broadly.
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And here’s the Radiohead song that, for some reason, popped into my head today. All day.
Why don’t you quiet down?
(Maybe I’ll wander the promised land
I want peace and honesty)
Why don’t you quiet down?
(I want to live in the promised land
And maybe wander the children’s land)
Quiet down!
(Yeah, and there, there we can free)
