Well Organized!
February 7, 2025
I’m telling ya. I am very taken with these two — Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg, founders of Indivisible. In the dark days of the first term of the president who would be dictator, they launched Indivisible and successfully lead demoralized dems through some well-fought battles to thwart some of the worst of trump’s early agenda. He was (thankfully) green, the resistance effort was green, but Indivisible’s ramp up was swift and their impact significant. It’s safe to say the big Obamacare repeal — a central feature of trump’s campaign — never materialized thanks in huge part to a massive grassroots campaign masterminded by Indivisible. The resistance was born.
Their organization has mushroomed and become incredibly well-oiled and Ezra and Leah are effectively mobilizing shell-shocked progressives once again. They are in coordination with a lot of great partners in the effort — MoveOn, the Working Families Party and many, many others. These guys are so smart, so easy and inspiring to listen to, so motivating. They have gotten the attention and earned the respect of so many in the media, in the resistance space and, AND, democratic lawmakers (who are now reaching out to them for advice on messaging and tactics).
I am just so grateful to be a part. I have made a priority their weekly checkins (Thursdays), that attract many thousand of activists from all over the country. Their most recent coalition gathering (with MoveOn, WFP and others) attracted 53,000 folks! They motivate, yes, but far more importantly develop strategies and accessible tool kits.. they always have action items at the ready so people can immediately step in, get activated, and add to the tremendous wave of folks who collectively ARE having an impact.
It’s the absolute best: an antidote to despair, action that adds up to influence, community that makes you feel like you’re not alone… and part of something important. It’s doable and sustainable.
It’s way too early to know whether trump is all bluster and recklessness or whether his goals of retribution, government destruction and authoritarian rule will succeed. It’s also too early to know whether courts will stand up for the rule of law, whether lawmakers will uphold their oaths to the Constitution and whether dems and progressives will sustain an effective resistance.
But I’m satisfied with my part in this, guided by people like Leah and Ezra.
Just Another Marker
February 2, 2025
I know, we’re only two weeks in and every day feels like a notch closer to something unfathomable. I just want to paste yet another piece by Heather Cox Richardson that summarizes where we are… as a marker.
Throughout now-president Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign, it was clear that his support was coming from three very different factions whose only shared ideology was a determination to destroy the federal government. Now we are watching them do it.
The group that serves President Donald Trump is gutting the government both to get revenge against those who tried to hold him accountable before the law and to make sure he and his cronies will never again have to worry about legality.
Last night, officials in the Trump administration purged the Federal Bureau of Investigation of all six of its top executives and, according to NBC’s Ken Dilanian, more than 20 heads of FBI field offices, including those in Washington, D.C., and Miami, where officials pursued cases against now-president Trump. Acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove, who represented Trump in a number of his criminal cases, asked acting FBI director Brian J. Driscoll Jr. for a list of FBI agents who had worked on January 6 cases to “determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.”
Clarissa-Jan Lim of MSNBC reported that Trump denied knowing about the dismissals but said the firings were “a good thing” because “[t]hey were very corrupt people, very corrupt, and they hurt our country very badly with the weaponization.”
Officials also fired 25 to 30 federal prosecutors who had worked on cases involving the rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and reassigned others. Bove ordered the firings. Career civil servants can’t be fired without cause, and these purges come on top of the apparently illegal firing of 18 inspectors general across federal agencies and a purge of the Department of Justice of those who had worked on cases involving Trump.
Phil Williams of NewsChannel 5 in Nashville, Tennessee, reported on Friday that federal prosecutors were withdrawn from a criminal investigation of Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN) for election fraud; Ogles recently filed a House resolution to enable Trump to run for a third term and another supporting Trump’s designs on Greenland. On Wednesday, federal prosecutors asked a judge to dismiss an election fraud case against former representative Jeffrey Fortenberry (R-NE). Trump called Fortenberry’s case an illustration of “the illegal Weaponization of our Justice System by the Radical Left Democrats.”
That impulse to protect Trump showed yesterday in what a local water manager said was an “extremely unprecedented” release of water from two dams in California apparently to provide evidence of his social media post that the U.S. military had gone into California and “TURNED ON THE WATER.” In fact, water was released from two reservoirs that hold water to supply farmland in the summer. They are about 500 miles (800 km) from Los Angeles, where the fires were earlier this year, and the water did not go to Southern California. “This is going to hurt farmers,” a water manager said, “This takes water out of the summer irrigation portfolio.” But Trump posted that if California officials had listened to him six years ago, there would have been no fires. Shashank Joshi of The Economist called it “real ‘mad king’ stuff.”
Trump’s loyalists overlap with the MAGA crew that embraces Project 2025, a plan that mirrors the one used by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán to overthrow democracy in Hungary. Operating from the position that modern democracy destroys a country by treating everyone equally before the law and welcoming immigrants, it calls for discrimination against women and gender, racial, and religious minorities; rejection of immigrants; and the imposition of religious laws to restore a white Christian patriarchy.
Former Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson has been a vocal proponent of Orbán’s ideology, and J.D. Vance this week hired Carlson’s son, 28-year-old Buckley, as his deputy press secretary. Although Trump claimed during the campaign he didn’t know anything about Project 2025, Steve Contorno and Casey Tolan of CNN estimate that more than two thirds of Trump’s executive orders mirror Project 2025.
You can see the influence of this faction in the indiscriminate immigration sweeps the administration has launched, Trump’s announcement that he is opening a 30,000-bed migrant detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and officials’ revocation of protection for more than 600,000 Venezuelans legally in the U.S. and possibly also for Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans. You can see it in the administration’s attempt to end the birthright citizenship written into the U.S. Constitution in 1868.
It shows in the new administration’s persecution of transgender Americans, including Trump’s executive order purging trans service members from the military, another limiting access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth, and yet another ordering trans federal prisoners to be medically detransitioned and then moved to facilities that correspond to their sex at birth, an outcome that a trans woman suing the administration calls “humiliating, terrifying, and dangerous.”
The administration has ordered that federal employees must remove all pronouns from their email signatures and, as Jeremy Faust reported in Inside Medicine, that researchers for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention must scrub from their work any references to “[g]ender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male, biologically female.” Faust notes that the requirements are vague and that because “most manuscripts include demographic information about the populations or patients studied,” the order potentially affects “just about any major study…including studies on Covid-19, cancer, heart disease, or anything else.”
Those embracing this ideology are also isolationist. As soon as he took office, Trump imposed a freeze on foreign aid except for military aid to Israel and Egypt, abruptly cutting off about $60 billion in funding—less than 1% of the U.S. budget—to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides humanitarian assistance to fight starvation and provide basic medical care for the globe’s most vulnerable and desperate populations. The outcry, both from those appalled that the U.S. would renege on its promises to provide food for children in war-torn countries and from those who recognize that the U.S. withdrawal from these popular programs would create a vacuum China is eager to fill, made Trump’s new secretary of state, Marco Rubio, say that “humanitarian programs” would be exempted from the freeze, but that appears either untrue or so complicated to negotiate that programs are shutting down anyway.
Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) appears to be beside himself over this destruction. “Let me explain why the total destruction of USAID…matters so much,” he posted on social media. “China—where Musk makes his money—wants USAID destroyed. So does Russia. Trump and Musk are doing the bidding of Beijing and Moscow. Why?” “The U.S. is in full retreat from the world,” he wrote, and there is “[n]o good reason for it. The immediate consequences of this are cataclysmic. Malnourished babies who depend on U.S. aid will die. Anti-terrorism programs will shut down and our most deadly enemies will get stronger. Diseases that threaten the U.S. will go unabated and reach our shores faster. And China will fill the void. As developing countries will now ONLY be able to rely on China for help, they will cut more deals with Beijing to give them control of ports, critical mineral deposits, etc. U.S. power will shrink. U.S. jobs will be lost.” Murphy speculated that “billionaires like Musk who make $ in China” or “someone buying all that secret Trump meme coin” would benefit from deliberately sabotaging eighty years of U.S. goodwill on the international stage.
And that brings us to the third faction: that of the tech bros, led by billionaire Elon Musk, who according to year-end Federal Election Commission filings spent more than $290 million supporting Trump and the Republicans in 2024. Musk appears to consider colonizing space imperative for the survival of humanity, and part of that goal requires slashing government regulations, as well as receiving government contracts that help to fund his space program.
Before he took office, Trump named Musk and another billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy, to an extra-governmental group called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but Musk has assumed full control of the group, whose mission is to cut the federal budget by as much as $2 trillion.
Musk is interested in the government for future contracts, although a report from January 30, when Musk’s Tesla company filed its annual financial report, showed that the company, which is valued at more than $1 trillion and which made $2.3 billion in 2024, paid $0 in federal income tax. Today, Musk’s X social media company became a form of state media when the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said it would no longer email updates about this week’s two plane crashes—one in Washington, D.C., and one in Philadelphia—and that reporters would have to get their information through X.
Musk’s goal might well be the crux of the drastic cuts to federal aid, as well as the attempt last week from the Office of Management and Budget to “pause” federal funding and grants to make sure funding reflected Trump’s goals. After a public outcry over the loss of payments to local law enforcement, Meals on Wheels for shut-ins, supplemental nutrition programs, and so on, the OMB rescinded its first memo, but then White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt immediately contradicted the new memo, saying the cuts were still in effect.
The chaos surrounding the cuts could have been designed to make it difficult for opponents to sue over them. This method of changing government priorities through “impoundment” is illegal. Congress—which is the body that represents the American people—appropriates the money for programs, and the president takes an oath to execute the laws. After President Richard M. Nixon tried it, Congress passed a 1974 law making impoundment expressly illegal. But the on-again-off-again confusion appeared at first to stand a chance of stopping lawsuits. It didn’t work: a federal judge halted the funding freeze, suggesting it was a blatant violation of the Constitution.
But then, yesterday, Elon Musk forced the resignation of David A. Lebryk, the highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department. Lebryk had been at Treasury since 1989 and had risen to become the person in charge of the U.S. government payment system that disburses about $6 trillion a year through Social Security benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, contracts, grants, salaries for federal government workers, tax refunds, and so on, essentially managing the nation’s checkbook.
According to Jeff Stein, Isaac Arnsdorf, and Jacqueline Alemany of the Washington Post, Musk’s team wanted access to the payment system. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) demanded answers from Trump’s new Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, warning that “these payment systems simply cannot fail, and any politically-motivated meddling in them risks severe damage to our country and the economy. I am deeply concerned that following the federal grant and loan freeze earlier this week, these officials associated with Musk may have intended to access these payment systems to illegally withhold payments to any number of programs. I can think of no good reason why political operators who have demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law would need access to these sensitive, mission-critical systems.”
Now, though, with Musk’s people at the computers that control the nation’s payment system, they can simply stop whatever payments they want to.
Wyden continued by reminding Bessent that the press has reported that Musk has previously been “denied a high-level clearance to access the government’s most sensitive secrets. I am concerned that Musk’s enormous business operation in China—a country whose intelligence agencies have stolen vast amounts of sensitive data about Americans, including U.S. government employee data by hacking U.S. government systems—endangers U.S. cybersecurity and creates conflicts of interest that make his access to these systems a national security risk.”
This afternoon, Wyden posted that he has been told that Bessent has given the Department of Government Efficiency full access to the system. “Social Security and Medicare benefits, grants, payments to government contractors, including those that compete directly with Musk’s own companies. All of it.”
Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo posted: “This is more or less like taking the gold from Fort Knox and putting it in Elons basement. Anyone who gets a check from soc sec or anything else[,] he can cut it off or see all y[ou]r personal and financial data.” Pundit Stuart Stevens called it “the most significant data leak in cyber history.”
All three of these factions are focused on destroying the federal government, which, after all, represents the American people through their elected representatives and spends their taxpayer money. Musk, who is an unelected adjunct to Trump, this evening gleefully referred to the civil servants in the government who work for the American people as “the opposing team.”
But something jumps out from the chaos of the past two weeks. Instructions are vague, circumstances are chaotic, and it’s unclear who is making decisions. That confusion makes it hard to enforce laws or sue, although observers note that what’s going on is “illegal and a breach of the constitutional order.”
Our federal government rests on the U.S. Constitution. The three different factions of Trump’s MAGA Republicans agree that the government must be destroyed, and they are operating outside the constitutional order, not eager to win legal victories so much as determined to slash and burn down the government without them.
Today, senior Washington Post political reporter Aaron Blake noted that while it is traditional for cabinet nominees to pledge that they will refuse to honor illegal presidential orders, at least seven of Trump’s nominees have sidestepped that question. Attorney general nominee Pam Bondi, director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard, now-confirmed defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, small business administrator nominee Kelly Loeffler, Veterans Affairs secretary nominee Douglas A. Collins, and commerce secretary nominee Howard Lutnick all avoided the question by saying that Trump would never ask them to do anything illegal. FBI director nominee Kash Patel just said he would “always obey the law.”
Who’s Really Getting the DEI Treatment?
January 31, 2025
The creep serving as the President of the United States blamed Biden, Obama and DEI for the plane/helicopter crash over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. a couple days ago.
I have hate in my heart for that man.
You want to know who really gets the special hiring advantage?
New News Plan
January 21, 2025
After yesterday’s inauguration, I lay awake most of the night in a state of great agitation. I just can’t bear the idea of four years of this.
It’s funny.. we all assume we only have to endure four years of painful and damaging chaos and will resume normalcy when sane dems return to the White House next presidential election. Some of us are saying we just have to get through two years because, if past is prologue, the Senate and House will likely flip to dem control during the midterms, removing most of the power of a reckless executive branch.
I don’t assume either. His lies about his “successes” will be ever more audacious and his propaganda power has now been greatly enhanced by an entire tech industry eager to suck up to him and reshape their social media platforms to suit his interests. Disinformation will become high art and I’m not convinced dems can/will effectively fight back. I just have no confidence. We are terrible at messaging. And we don’t play dirty. As a result, the bamboozlement will continue and MAGA or some facsimile thereof will remain in control for the rest of my life. The corruption and abuse of power will render the democracy experiment over.
Anyway. Sleep was fitful. I’m deeply anxious.
Which brings me to my news strategy. A work in progress. Hoping to settle on a healthy diet that keeps me informed, but not in a state of fear and agitation. I think what I’m going to do is allow some cable news in the early morning, as it coincides with my exercise schedule. Watching news is what gets me through my exercises. Movies and tv shows are too distracting. But then, no news. I may tune in sometime in the evening for another hit, maybe. Could be Rachel on MSNBC, could be Abby on CNN. Otherwise, it’s Heather, the Pod boys, Robert Reich, Jennifer Rubin, the NYT, Dan Rather’s Steady, WTFJHT, the 1440, the California Sun, maybe some Rick Wilson… just read them. Yeah, many of those lean left. I don’t care.
Indivisible will keep me informed, as well. I really value their people, their network and their action strategies. I will do as they advise. I will continue to do my part, ultimately ineffectual as it may be.
Anyway… I’m sure that’ll get me most of the way there in terms of information.
No news during the day, Kari. That’s an order.
As a marker on what happened yesterday, here’s Heather’s recap.
The tone for the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 47th president of the United States at noon today was set on Friday, when Trump, who once trashed cryptocurrency as “based on thin air,” launched his own cryptocurrency. By Sunday morning it had made more than $50 billion on paper. Felix Salmon of Axios reported that “a financial asset that didn’t exist on Friday afternoon—now accounts for about 89% of Donald Trump’s net worth.”
As Salmon noted, “The emoluments clause of the Constitution,” which prohibits any person holding a government office from accepting any gift or title from a foreign leader or government, “written in 1787, hardly envisaged a world where a president could conjure billions of dollars of wealth out of nowhere just by endorsing a meme.” Salmon also pointed out that there is no way to track the purchases of this coin, meaning it will be a way for those who want something from Trump to transfer money directly to him.
Former Trump official Anthony Scaramucci posted that “anyone in the world can essentially deposit money” into the bank account of the president of the United States.
On Sunday, Trump’s wife Melania launched her own coin. It took the wind out of the sales of Trump’s coin, although both coins have disclaimers saying that the coins are “an expression of support for and engagement with the values embodied by” the Trumps, and are not intended to be “an investment opportunity, investment contract, or security of any type.” Her cryptocurrency was worth more than $5 billion within two hours.
CNN noted that the release of the meme coin had raised “serious ethics concerns,” but those who participate in the industry were less gentle. One wrote: “Trump’s sh*tcoin release has caused possibly the greatest overnight loss of credibility in presidential history. He made $60B. Great for Trump family, terrible for this country and hopes we had for the Trump presidency.”
Walter Schaub, former head of the Office of Government Ethics under Trump in his first administration, who left after criticizing Trump’s unwillingness to divest himself of his businesses, wrote to CNN: “America voted for corruption, and that’s what Trump is delivering…. Trump’s corruption and naked profiteering is so open, extreme and pervasive this time around that to comment on any one aspect of it would be to lose the forest for the trees. The very idea of government ethics is now a smoldering crater.”
At a rally Sunday night at the Capital One Arena in Washington, Trump highlighted the performance side of his public persona. He teased the next day’s events and let his audience in on a secret that echoed the “neokayfabe” of professional wrestling by leaving people wondering if it was true or a lie. After praising Elon Musk, he told the crowd “He was very effective. He knows those computers better than anybody. Those vote counting computers. And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide. So it was pretty good…. Thank you to Elon.”
This morning, hours before he left office, President Joe Biden pardoned several of the targets of MAGA Republicans, including “General Mark A. Milley, Anthony S. Fauci, the Members of Congress and staff who served on the Select Committee, and the U.S. Capitol and D.C. Metropolitan police officers who testified before the Select Committee.” Biden clarified that the pardons “should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense.” He noted, “Our nation owes these public servants a debt of gratitude for their tireless commitment to our country.”
But, he said, “These are exceptional circumstances, and I cannot in good conscience do nothing. Even when individuals have done nothing wrong—and in fact have done the right thing—and will ultimately be exonerated, the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably damage reputations and finances.” He later pardoned his siblings and their spouses to protect them from persecution by the incoming president.
Before he left office, Biden posted on social media: Scripture says: “I have been young and now I’m old yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken.” After all these years serving you, the American people, I have not seen the righteous forsaken. I love you all. May you keep the faith. And may God bless you all.”
This morning, members of the far-right paramilitary organization the Proud Boys marched through the capital carrying a banner that read “Congratulations President Trump” and chanting: “Whose streets? Our streets!”
Two days ago, Trump moved his inauguration into the Capitol Rotunda, where his supporters had rioted on January 6, 2021, because of cold temperatures expected in Washington, D.C. Even with his supporters excluded, the space was cramped, but prime spots went to billionaires: Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Apple chief executive officer Tim Cook, Google chief Sundar Pichai, TikTok chief executive officer Shou Zi Chew, and Tesla and SpaceX chief executive owner Elon Musk, who appeared to be stoned.
Right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who launched the Fox News Channel in 1996, was there, as were popular podcaster Joe Rogan and founder of Turning Point USA Charlie Kirk.
Although foreign leaders are not normally invited to presidential inaugurations, far-right foreign leaders President Javier Milei of Argentina and Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni were there, along with a close ally of Chinese president Xi Jinping.
The streets were largely empty as Trump traveled to the U.S. Capitol. Supporters watched from Capital One Arena as Trump took the oath of office, apparently forgetting to put his hand on the Bibles his wife held. After Vice President–elect J.D. Vance had taken the oath of office, sworn in by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts had sworn in Trump, the new president delivered his inaugural address.
While inaugural addresses are traditionally an attempt to put the harsh rhetoric of campaigns behind and to emphasize national unity, Trump’s inaugural address rehashed the themes of his campaign rallies. Speaking in the low monotone he uses when he reads from a teleprompter, he delivered an address that repeated the lies on which he built his 2024 presidential campaign.
He said that the Justice Department has been “weaponized,” that Biden’s administration “cannot manage even a simple crisis at home while at the same time stumbling into a continuing catalog of catastrophic events abroad,” that the U.S. has provided “sanctuary and protection for dangerous criminals,” that the government has “treated so badly” the storm victims in North Carolina,” and so on.
Fact-checkers at The Guardian noted the speech was full of “false and misleading claims.”
Trump went on to promise a series of executive orders to address the crises he claimed during his campaign. He would “declare a national emergency at our southern border,” he said, and “begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.” (Border crossings are lower now than they were at the end of Trump’s last term.) He promised to tell his cabinet members to bring down inflation (it peaked in 2022 and is now close to the Fed’s target of 2%), bring back manufacturing (the Biden administration brought more than 700,000 new manufacturing jobs to the U.S.), end investments in green energy (which has attracted significant private investment, especially in Republican-dominated states), and make foreign countries fund the U.S. government through tariffs (which are, in fact, paid by American consumers).
He also vowed to take the Panama Canal back from Panama, prompting Panama’s president José Raúl Mulino to “fully reject the statements made by” Trump, and Panamanian protesters to burn the American flag.
With a declaration about the Pennsylvania shooting that bloodied his ear, Trump declared that he believes he is on a divine mission. “I felt then, and believe even more so now, that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again.”
After his inaugural address, former president Biden and former first lady Dr. Jill Biden left, and Trump delivered a much more animated speech to prominent supporters in which CNN’s Daniel Dale said he returned to his “lie-a-minute style.” He rehashed the events of January 6, 2021, and claimed that then–House speaker Nancy Pelosi is “guilty as hell…that’s a criminal offense.”
But the bigger story came in the afternoon, when Trump held a rally at the Capitol One Arena in place of the traditional presidential parade. Supporters there had watched the inauguration on a jumbotron screen, booing Biden and jumping to their feet to cheer at Trump’s declaration that he had been saved by God. In the afternoon, Elon Musk spoke to the crowd, throwing two salutes that right-wing extremists, including neo-Nazis, interpreted as Nazi salutes.
Trump and his family arrived after 5:00 for the inaugural parade. The new president spoke again in rally mode after six, and then staged a demonstration that he was changing the country by holding a public signing of executive orders. Those appeared to be designed, as he promised, to retaliate against those he feels have wronged him. Among other executive orders, he withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, drawing approving roars from the crowd.
As Jonathan Swan of the New York Times noted, “Signing executive orders and pardons are two of the parts of the job that Trump loves most. They are unilateral, instantaneous displays of power and authority.” After signing a few executive orders for the crowd, Trump threw the signing sharpies into the crowd, and then he and his family left abruptly.
Back at the White House, retaliation continued. Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of all of the January 6 rioters who had been convicted of crimes related to the attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election, including Enrico Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys who was serving 22 years for seditious conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States.
His pardon also included Daniel Rodriguez, who was sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison after pleading guilty to tasing Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone, who suffered cardiac arrest and a traumatic brain injury. “Omg I did so much f—ing s— r[ight] n[ow] and got away,” he texted to his gang. “Tazzed the f— out of the blue[.]”
Trump signed an executive order that withdraws the U.S. from the World Health Organization, another that tries to establish that there are only two sexes in the United States, and yet another that seeks to end the birthright citizenship established by the Fourteenth Amendment. He signed one intending to strip the security clearances from 51 people whom he accuses of election interference related to Hunter Biden’s laptop, and has ordered that an undisclosed list of Trump appointees immediately be granted the highest levels of security clearance without undergoing background checks. He also signed one ordering officials “to deliver emergency price relief.”
Behind the scenes today, officials in the Trump administration fired the acting head of the U.S. immigration court system as well as other leaders of that system, and cancelled the CBP One app, an online lottery system through which asylum seekers could schedule appointments with border agents, leaving asylum seekers who had scheduled appointments three weeks ago stranded. Trump officials have also taken down a government website that helped women find health care and understand their rights. They have also removed the official portrait of former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley from the hallway with the portraits of all the former chairs…now all minus one.
But for all their claims to be hitting the ground running, lawyers noted that some of the executive orders were poorly crafted to accomplish what they claimed—an observer called one “bizarre legal fanfic not really intended for judicial interpretation”—and lawsuits challenging them are already being filed. Others are purely performative, like ordering officials to lower prices.
Further, CNN national security correspondent Natasha Bertrand reported that almost an hour after Trump became president, “current and former Pentagon officials say they don’t know who is currently in charge of the Defense Department,” a key position to maintain U.S. security against adversaries who might take advantage of transition moments to push against American defenses.
Bertrand reported that the Trump transition team had trouble finding someone to serve as acting secretary until the Senate confirms a replacement for Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Trump’s nominee, former Fox News Channel weekend host Pete Hegseth has had trouble getting the votes he needs, although tonight the Senate Armed Services Committee approved him by a straight party line vote.
Bertrand notes that two senior department officials declined to take on the position. The Trump administration swore in Robert Salesses, deputy director of the branch of the Pentagon that focuses on human resources, facilities, and resource management—who has already been confirmed by the Senate in that position—as acting Defense Secretary.
Beginning tomorrow, the Republicans will have to deal with the fact that the Treasury will hit the debt ceiling and will have to use extraordinary measures to pay the obligations of the United States government.
Non Inauguration Day
January 20, 2025
Saw bits and pieces here and there.. but avoided any direct contact (visual, audible) with the incoming guy. Blah blah blah. Me me me.
He’s a nauseating P.O.S and limiting exposure is the best strategy. He degrades everything he touches and it’s just such soul sucking shit, one assault on our senses after another after another after another…
I had a fantastic workout this morning thanks to a 5-day-course of prednisone. This jury is out, but no denying a kinda miraculous response: mobility increased, pain decreased. How long will it last??
Then I made calls to Senator Padilla’s, Senator Schiff’s and Congressman Thompson’s office on some pending immigration legislation. It’s part of a Monday morning thing I plan to do regularly whenever I’m in town: Action Coffee, hosted by Indivisible Yolo. Small but steady steps and actions in the forward direction. My drip adds to the bigger wave. It was also my nod to MLK day and volunteerism that contributes to the cause of social justice.
Was happy to see the City of Davis maintained its flag at half staff today (rather than bow to the incoming guy’s ego by raising it) in honor of a president whose integrity, honesty and commitment to justice moves me deeply. Thank you Jimmy Carter.
Garland
January 16, 2025
I read this piece a few days ago. It is so painful.
I think so many of us defended Merrick Garland the last four years, in spite of our frustrations at the pace of the cases against trump, because of the huge injustice of Mitch McConnell having thwarted his nomination to the Supreme Court near the end of Obama’s presidency. Biden then choosing him as his Attorney General five years later seemed like such a sweet comeback! Garland seemed reasoned and seasoned and we trusted his sober, thoughtful, meticulous approach to the job. We expected the justice department, under his dignified leadership, would produce fair and just outcomes for so many things, but especially the resolution of those trump cases. I just hate that it ended up this way.
I do believe he’d have been a superb justice. But I also have to agree that, in the end, his tenure as AG was a disappointment.
Written by a guy, Tony Pentimalli.
Merrick Garland’s tenure as Attorney General is not just a failure—it’s a betrayal of justice at the most critical moment in modern American history. He may have been a great judge. He may have made a great Supreme Court justice. But his ineptitude regarding the slow investigations and prosecutions of Donald Trump is not just tragic—it’s inexcusable. Garland was handed the most urgent and consequential task of our time: holding Trump accountable for his blatant assault on democracy. And he failed. Miserably.
From the day he took office, Garland had everything he needed to act. Trump’s crimes weren’t buried in secret files—they were blasted on live television. The man incited a mob to storm the Capitol. He schemed to overturn an election. He stole classified documents and flaunted his disregard for the law. The evidence was overwhelming. The urgency was clear. Yet Garland hesitated. For months, then years, the Department of Justice appeared paralyzed under his leadership.
Take, for example, the nearly two-year delay in pursuing charges for Trump’s mishandling of classified documents. The public knew about Trump’s actions almost immediately after he left office. Boxes of stolen records sat in his Mar-a-Lago storage room, the subject of media exposés. Yet Garland’s DOJ moved at a snail’s pace, allowing Trump to manipulate the narrative and undermine public confidence in the investigation. Or consider the January 6 investigation. While Garland’s DOJ pursued hundreds of small-scale rioters—citizens who broke windows and trespassed—they ignored the architects of the insurrection. Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, and Trump himself skated free while their foot soldiers faced justice. This isn’t just mismanagement; it’s dereliction of duty.
Garland’s inability to distinguish between caution and paralysis has left the Department of Justice in shambles. A recent CNN report revealed just how much time and effort his DOJ wasted chasing known rabbit holes—dead-end investigations that served no purpose but to delay the inevitable. Meanwhile, prosecutors like Fani Willis in Georgia and Alvin Bragg in New York exposed Garland’s timidity by acting swiftly and decisively on crimes committed within their jurisdictions. Garland’s reluctance to aggressively pursue justice didn’t just slow progress—it gave Trump and his allies precious time to regroup, radicalize millions further, and continue poisoning the political discourse.
This wasn’t caution. This wasn’t prudence. It was cowardice. And the consequences are staggering.
Garland’s inaction allowed Trump to remain the dominant figure in American politics. His failure sent a chilling message to the nation: that the powerful don’t face the same accountability as everyone else. Public faith in the Department of Justice—a cornerstone of democracy—has been shattered. Millions of Americans now question whether the rule of law even applies to the rich and well-connected. Trumpism, with its lies, hatred, and authoritarianism, has taken root, not because Trump is uniquely brilliant, but because Garland’s inaction allowed it to fester unchecked.
The damage Garland has done won’t just last a few years. America will suffer the consequences of his failures for decades, if not a century. Millions of Americans no longer believe in democracy or the rule of law, not because Trump convinced them, but because Garland’s inaction allowed them to believe he might be right.
The Attorney General had a moral obligation to act—not cautiously, not incrementally, but decisively. His job wasn’t just to follow procedure; it was to protect the republic. And he didn’t. He squandered the chance to stop the descent into chaos. He watched from the sidelines as Trump’s propaganda machine rewrote the narrative. His failure to act with the urgency the moment demanded is an unforgivable betrayal of the American people.
Merrick Garland will not be remembered as a protector of justice or a defender of democracy. He will be remembered as the man who stood by while democracy burned, paralyzed by fear, and too timid to act. His legacy is failure. History will not forgive him. Neither should we.
Do you agree?
What is Strength?
January 12, 2025
This is what I want:
This is what we got:
After he invades Greenland, swallows up Canada and takes by force the Panama Canal, little trump wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America… or as the below suggests:
Meanwhile, one by one, major newspapers and social media platforms are bending to his will. His latest conquest Mark Zuckerberg, who’s decided that Facebook doesn’t need fact checkers after all.
Robert Reich wrote a piece a couple days ago about the incoming administration’s strategy to neutralize four key backstops of democracy. I found this substack terrifying:
Trump and his MAGA allies are already targeting the four major pillars of resistance to Trump during his first term.
As we prepare for Trump’s second regime — which promises to be far worse than the first — it’s important to do what we can to protect and fortify these four centers of opposition.
1. Universities
University faculties are dedicated to finding and exposing the truth — which has often meant calling out Trump’s lies. But Trump has warned that he’ll change the criteria for university accrediting in order to force university faculties into line.
In a campaign video, he said, “Our secret weapon will be the college accreditation system … When I return to the White House, I will fire the radical left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs.”
Authorized by the federal government, these accreditors are essential to college operations. If a college isn’t accredited, it can’t get federal funds.
Trump’s Project 2025 calls for replacing the current system of independent, nonpartisan accreditors with more politically pliable state accreditors. This would have disastrous effects.
Many of the worst educational gag orders at the state level, along with DEI bans and faculty tenure bans, have been voted down or toned down because state legislators realized they were putting their schools’ accreditation status in jeopardy. If Project 2025’s recommendations are adopted, that guardrail disappears.
Trump has also threatened to increase taxes on university endowments.
Republicans in Congress believe they were instrumental in getting the presidents of Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard to resign over their alleged failures to stop protests against Israel’s bloodbath in Gaza. Some are eager to resume their attacks on major universities.
2. Nonprofits
America’s nonprofits have been at the forefront of efforts to protect the environment, voting rights, and immigrants’ rights. Trump and his allies are seeking to stop nonprofit activism.
The Republican House has already passed a bill that would empower the Treasury to eliminate the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit it deems to be supporting terrorism. An identical or similar bill could come across Trump’s desk after being reintroduced in the next Congress.
The legislation doesn’t distinguish between foreign and domestic terrorism — whether real or imagined — thereby making it easier for Trump’s authorities to intimidate nonprofit personnel and donors.
We’ve already seen something like this at the state level. In Texas, state authorities have attempted to shut down charities that assist immigrants. Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has launched a probe of nonprofits, including the God Is Good Foundation, that have allegedly conspired to bring noncitizens to the state.
3. The media
I’ve been a critic of the mainstream media’s tendency to give “both sides” credence even when one side is clearly in the wrong and to “sanewash” some of Trump’s and his enablers’ rants.
But journalists are an important bulwark against tyranny — which is why Trump and his allies are seeking to intimidate news outlets that have criticized or questioned Trump.
The flurry of defamation lawsuits — such as Trump launched against ABC (and ABC caved to) and the Des Moines Register — is the latest sign. Trump and his allies have also discussed revoking networks’ broadcast licenses and eliminating funding for public radio and television.
Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee to head the FBI, has threatened to “take on the most powerful enemy that the United States has ever seen, and no it’s not Washington, D.C., it’s the mainstream media and these people out there in the fake news. That is our mission!”
Already social media platforms such as Musk’s X and Meta’s Facebook and Instagram have caved to Trump, allowing vicious authoritarian lies to be magnified unimpeded.
4. Organized labor
In the 1950s and 1960s, labor unions were viewed as a source of countervailing power because of their activism on behalf of the working class and their significant political clout.
In those days, a third of workers in the private sector were union members. But today, only 6 percent of private-sector workers are union members, and it’s far from clear that organized labor will be an active source of resistance to Trump. (If government workers are included, the percentage of American workers who are members of unions is around 10 percent.)
Trump has warned organized labor that he will oppose their efforts to organize. The president of the Teamsters Union even appeared at the National Republican Convention in support of Trump.
***
Each of these centers of resistance to Trump has been a powerful source of truth-telling in America. It’s no surprise that all have been targeted by Trump and his allies.
We need to be vigilant and do what we can to protect and fortify them. Remember: We lose only if we stop fighting.
Good Bye to a Great Man
January 9, 2025
Jimmy Carter died on December 29 at age 100. Today was the memorial (one of many) at the National Cathedral. It was extraordinary and moving, and a reminder of how incredibly decent and principled and forward thinking Carter was. He always placed country above politics, to his personal detriment. Though he was a one-term-only president, he leaves a beautiful legacy. The heartfelt eulogies were yet another reminder of how incomprehensible this moment is, that a majority of this country is a-ok with the incoming amoral, criminal, insurrection-fomenting, conman guy.
And wow, what a screen shot… five US presidents in one place, plus four former vice presidents (Dan Quayle is out of the frame) and assorted spouses. One was definitely not like the others.
Heather captures the sentiments well, especially the tensions roiling in the Presidents’ Club:
Family members, friends, and political leaders gathered today at the Washington National Cathedral to honor the life of former president Jimmy Carter, who died on December 29 at age 100. All five living presidents and most of their wives attended: George W. Bush and Laura Bush were there, along with Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Melania Trump, and Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden.
Trump’s former vice president Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, were also there, meeting Trump for the first time since January 6, 2021, when Trump tweeted to the rioters attacking the U.S. Capitol that Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution,” redoubling the crowd’s fury and sparking chants of “Hang Mike Pence.”
Pence shook Trump’s hand; his wife stayed seated, looking straight ahead. While Obama, sitting next to Trump, spoke to him, former president Bush refused to acknowledge Trump, instead walking past him and giving a familiar greeting to Obama.
By virtue of living to age 100, Carter survived many of his contemporaries, and some left behind eulogies for him. Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale, died in 2021 but recorded his memories of working with Carter in the White House from 1977 to 1981. His son Ted Mondale read the eulogy at today’s service.
Mondale recalled how he and Carter had redefined the role of the vice president of the United States, which had fallen into eclipse when President George Washington shut his own vice president, John Adams, out of his central circle of advisors and never recovered. Mondale recalled that Carter had honored his wish to change that pattern by becoming a full partner in the administration. Carter conferred with him regularly, put him in charge of certain central issues, and the two men became close friends.
Mondale also remembered that Carter was farsighted, ignoring short-term political interests to protect the next generations from harm. He tried to put the nation on a path that would find alternatives to fossil fuels, and did his best to advance women’s rights. He pushed for a law to extend the time for states to approve the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution to make women’s equality part of the nation’s fundamental law, and he appointed women to positions in his administration and the federal judiciary. Mondale noted that Carter “appointed five times as many women to the federal bench as all of his predecessors combined.”
Mondale recalled Carter’s “extraordinary years of principled and decent leadership, [and] his courageous commitment to civil rights and human rights.” He recalled that toward the end of their time in the White House, in the years immediately after the tumultuous years of President Richard Nixon, with his covert bombing of Cambodia and cover-up of the Watergate break-in, the two men were summing up their administration. The sentence they came up with was: “We told the truth, we obeyed the law, and we kept the peace.”
President Gerald Ford also left behind a eulogy for Carter, who had defeated Ford’s reelection attempt in 1976. Despite their political differences, the two men had become friends in 1981 when they traveled to and from the funeral of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, who along with Israel’s Menachem Begin had signed the 1978 Camp David Accords negotiated by Carter’s administration that established a framework for a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. Over time, Ford and Carter became close friends and agreed to deliver eulogies for each other.
Carter fulfilled his promise in 2006, and today Ford’s son Steve fulfilled his father’s.
Ford spoke to Carter’s deep faith in God when he noted that the former president “pursued brotherhood across boundaries of nationhood, across boundaries of tradition, across boundaries of caste. In America’s urban neighborhoods and in rural villages around the world, he reminded us that Christ had been a carpenter.” “I’m looking forward to our reunion,” Ford concluded. “We have much to catch up on. Thank you, Mr. President. Welcome home, old friend.”
Carter’s grandson Jason Carter, chair of the Carter Center’s board of trustees and a former Georgia state senator, emphasized Carter’s integrity: his grandfather’s political convictions reflected his private beliefs. “As governor of Georgia half a century ago, he preached an end to racial discrimination and an end to mass incarceration. As president in the 1970s…he protected more land than any other president in history…. He was a climate warrior who pushed for a world where we conserved energy, limited emissions, and traded our reliance on fossil fuels for expanded renewable sources. By the way, he cut the deficit, wanted to decriminalize marijuana, deregulated so many industries that he gave us cheap flights and…craft beer. Basically, all of those years ago, he was the first millennial. And he could make great playlists.”
Jason Carter called his grandfather’s life a “love story, about love for his fellow humans and about living out the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself.” He highlighted his grandfather’s work to bring cases of Guinea worm disease from 3.5 million cases in humans every year to fourteen.
Carter noted that “this disease is not eliminated with medicine. It’s eliminated…by neighbors talking to neighbors about how to collect water in the poorest and most marginalized villages in the world. And those neighbors truly were my grandfather’s partners for the past forty years [and have] demonstrated their own power to change their world.” When Jimmy Carter “saw a tiny 600-person village that everybody else thinks of as poor, he recognized it. That’s where he was from. That’s who he was.” He saw it as “a place to find partnership and power and a place to carry out that commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. Essentially, he eradicated a disease with love and respect. He waged peace with love and respect. He led this nation with love and respect.”
President Joe Biden, who was the first senator to endorse Carter’s run for president in 1976, also gave a eulogy today. In what appeared to be a reflection on the incoming president in the audience, who for years has mocked Carter as the worst president in history, Biden focused on what he called Carter’s “enduring attribute: character, character, character.” And, Biden said, quoting the famous saying from ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus: “Character…is destiny,” both in our lives and in the life of the nation.
Carter taught him, Biden said, that “strength of character is more than title or the power we hold. It’s the strength to understand that everyone should be treated with dignity, respect. That everyone, and I mean everyone, deserves an even shot. Not a guarantee, but just a shot…. [W]e have an obligation to give hate no safe harbor, and to stand up to what my dad used to say is the greatest sin of all: the abuse of power.”
Character, Biden said, is not about being perfect, for none of us are perfect. It’s about “asking ourselves: Are we striving to do…the right things?… What are the values that animate our spirit? To operate from fear or hope, ego or generosity? Do we show grace? Do we keep the faith when it’s most tested?”
Biden noted that Carter lived a faith that commanded its adherents to love their neighbors. He also noted that such a commandment is hard to follow, and that it requires action. It is, he said, the essence of the Gospel and many other faith traditions, and it is also “found in the very idea of America. Because the very journey of our nation is a walk of sheer faith. To do the work, to be the country we say we are, to be the country we say we want to be: a nation where all are created equal in the image of God and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives.”
“We’ve never fully lived up to that idea of America,” Biden said, but thanks to patriots like Jimmy Carter, “[w]e’ve never walked away from it either.”
Carter was “[a] white Southern Baptist who led on civil rights. A decorated Navy veteran who brokered peace. A brilliant nuclear engineer who led on nuclear nonproliferation. A hard-working farmer who championed conservation and clean energy.” He “also established a model post-presidency by making a powerful difference as a private citizen in America,” Biden said, showing “us how character and faith start with ourselves and then flow to others.”
“At our best,” Biden said, “we share the better parts of ourselves: joy, solidarity, love, commitment. Not for reward, but in reverence for the incredible gift of life we’ve all been granted. To make every minute of our time here on Earth count.”
“That’s the definition of a good life,” Biden said. It was the life Jimmy Carter lived for 100 years: a “good life of purpose and meaning, of character driven by destiny and filled with the power of faith, hope, and love.”
Biden Passes the Torch
July 24, 2024
We live in just plain amazing times. Every day an historic milestone. Deferring to Heather Cox Richardson tonight for a summary of today’s big event:
Tonight, President Joe Biden explained to the American people why he decided to refuse the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination and hand the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris.
Speaking from the Oval Office from his seat behind the Resolute Desk, a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880, Biden recalled the nation’s history. He invoked Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence; George Washington, who “showed us presidents are not kings”; Abraham Lincoln, who “implored us to reject malice”; and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who “inspired us to reject fear.”
And then he turned to himself. “I revere this office, but I love my country more,” he said. “It’s been the honor of my life to serve as your president.” But, he said, the defense of democracy is more important than any title, and democracy is “larger than any one of us.” We must unite to protect it.
“In recent weeks, it has become clear to me that I need to unite my party in this critical endeavor,” he said. “I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future, all merited a second term. But nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition. So I’ve decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation. It’s the best way to unite our nation.”
There is “a time and a place for long years of experience in public life,” Biden said. “There’s also a time and a place for new voices, fresh voices, yes, younger voices. And that time and place is now.”
Biden reminded listeners that he is not leaving the presidency and will be continuing to use its power for the American people. In outlining what that means, he summed up his presidency.
For the next six months, he said, he will “continue to lower costs for hard-working families [and] grow our economy. I will keep defending our personal freedoms and civil rights, from the right to vote to the right to choose. I will keep calling out hate and extremism, making it clear there is…no place in America for political violence or any violence ever, period. I’m going to keep speaking out to protect our kids from gun violence [and] our planet from [the] climate crisis.”
Biden reiterated his support for his Cancer Moonshot to end cancer—a personal cause for him since the 2015 death of his son Beau from brain cancer—and says he will fight for it, (although House Republicans have recently slashed funding for the program). He said he will call for reforming the Supreme Court “because this is critical to our democracy.”
He promised to continue “working to ensure America remains strong, secure and the leader of the free world,” and pointed out that he is “the first president of this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world.” He promised to continue rallying a coalition of nations to stop Putin’s attempt to take over Ukraine, and vowed to continue to build the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). He reminded listeners that when he took office, the conventional wisdom was that China would inevitably surpass the United States, but that is no longer the case, and he said he would continue to strengthen allies and partners in the Pacific.
Biden promised to continue to work to “end the war in Gaza, bring home all the hostages and bring peace and security to the Middle East and end this war,” as well as “to bring home Americans being unjustly detained all around the world.”
The president reminded people how far the nation has come since he took office on January 20, 2021, a day when, although he didn’t mention it tonight, he went directly to work after taking the oath of office. “On that day,” he recalled, “we…stood in a winter of peril and winter of possibilities.” The United States was “in the grip of the worst pandemic in the century, the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.” But, Biden said, “We came together as Americans. We got through it. We emerged stronger, more prosperous and more secure.”
“Today we have the strongest economy in the world, creating nearly 16 million new jobs—a record. Wages are up, inflation continues to come down, the racial wealth gap is the lowest it’s been in 20 years. We are literally rebuilding our entire nation—urban, suburban and rural and tribal communities. Manufacturing has come back to America. We are leading the world again in chips and science and innovation. We finally beat Big Pharma after all these years to lower the cost of prescription drugs for seniors…. More people have health care today in America than ever before.” Biden noted that he signed the PACT Act to help millions of veterans and their families who were exposed to toxic materials, as well as the “most significant climate law…in the history of the world” and “the first major gun safety law in 30 years.”
The “violent crime rate is at a 50-year low,” he said, and “[b]order crossings are lower today than when the previous administration left office. I’ve kept my commitment to appoint the first Black woman to the Supreme Court of the United States of America. I also kept my commitment to have an administration that looks like America and [to] be a president for all Americans.”
Then Biden turned from his own record to the larger meaning of America.
“I ran for president four years ago because I believed…that the soul of America was at stake,” he said. “America is an idea. An idea stronger than any army, bigger than any ocean, more powerful than any dictator or tyrant. It’s the most powerful idea in the history of the world.”
“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” he said. “We are all created equal, endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. We’ve never fully lived up to…this sacred idea—but we’ve never walked away from it either. And I do not believe the American people will walk away from it now.
“In just a few months, the American people will choose the course of America’s future. I made my choice…. “[O]ur great vice president, Kamala Harris… is experienced, she is tough, she is capable. She’s been an incredible partner to me and a leader for our country.
“Now the choice is up to you, the American people. When you make that choice, remember the words of Benjamin Franklin hanging on my wall here in the Oval Office, alongside the busts of Dr. [Martin Luther] King and Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez. When Ben Franklin was asked, as he emerged from the [constitutional] convention…, whether the founders [had] given America a monarchy or a republic, Franklin’s response was: ‘A republic, if you can keep it.’… Whether we keep our republic is now in your hands.”
“My fellow Americans, it’s been the privilege of my life to serve this nation for over 50 years,” President Biden told the American people. “Nowhere else on Earth could a kid with a stutter from modest beginnings in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and in Claymont, Delaware, one day sit behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office as the president of the United States, but here I am.
“That’s what’s so special about America. We are a nation of promise and possibilities. Of dreamers and doers. Of ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things. I’ve given my heart and my soul to our nation, like so many others. And I’ve been blessed a million times in return with the love and support of the American people. I hope you have some idea how grateful I am to all of you.
The great thing about America is, here kings and dictators do not rule—the people do. History is in your hands. The power’s in your hands. The idea of America lies in your hands. You just have to keep faith—keep the faith—and remember who we are. We are the United States of America, and there is simply nothing, nothing beyond our capacity when we do it together. So let’s act together, [and] preserve our democracy. God bless you all and may God protect our troops.
“Thank you.”
And with that, President Joe Biden followed the example of the nation’s first president, George Washington, who declined to run for a third term to demonstrate that the United States of America would not have a king, and of its second president, John Adams, who handed the power of the presidency over to his rival Thomas Jefferson and thus established the nation’s tradition of the peaceful transition of power. Like them, Biden gave up the pursuit of power for himself in order to demonstrate the importance of democracy.
After the speech, the White House served ice cream to the Bidens and hundreds of White House staffers in the Rose Garden.
And when the evening was over, First Lady Dr. Jill Biden posted an image of a handwritten note on social media. It read: “To those who never wavered, to those who refused to doubt, to those who always believed, my heart is full of gratitude. Thank you for the trust you put in Joe—now it’s time to put that trust in Kamala.”
Life of Wry 