The Dogs of War

Posted on June 22, 2025 by Arlen Grossman

By Robert Reich/ RobertReich.substack.com/ June 22, 2025

Friends,

The United States is now at war with Iran. 

A single person — Donald J. Trump — has released the dogs of war on one of the most dangerous countries in the world, and done it without the consent of Congress, our allies, or even a clear explanation to the American people. 

Anyone who has doubted Trump’s intention to replace American democracy with a dictatorship should now be fully disabused. 

I share your despair, sadness, and fear. Just a week ago Saturday millions of us gathered in solidarity against Trump and for democracy, the rule of law, and social justice. Those demonstrations feel as if they occurred years ago. 

Last night I spoke with a number of people experienced and knowledgable about American foreign policy and politics. Here, in brief, is what I asked and what I learned. 

1. Why is Trump taking us into war with Iran?

It’s possible that he believes the attacks give him more bargaining leverage with Iran. But a more likely explanation is that the attacks fit perfectly with Trump’s desire to divert attention from his multiple failures at home: The on-again-off-again tariffs that have spooked financial markets while eliciting no meaningful concessions from other nations (especially China). An immigration crackdown that’s been stymied by federal judges. The so-called “big beautiful bill” that’s in deep trouble in the Senate. Trump’s embarrassing tiff with Musk. His failures to achieve peace in either Ukraine or Gaza. And last weekend’s record-breaking “No Kings” demonstrations as compared to his scrawny military parade. 

Besides, there’s nothing like a war to help a wannabe dictator like Trump justify more “emergency” powers. 

2. Is (or was) Iran building a nuclear weapon?

No one knows for sure. In March, Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, testified before Congress that the intelligence community [IC] “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and Supreme Leader [Ali] Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.” 

Iran’s growing stockpile of enriched uranium could allow it to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon. Experts differ in how long Iran would need to make a usable nuclear weapon out of the fissile material. 

In the face of such uncertainty, it’s useful to recall George W. Bush’s claims of Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” that proved bogus — at a cost of 4,431 American lives, 31,994 Americans wounded in action, and an estimated 295,000 Iraqi lives. 

3. Is Trump getting good information and advice?

Unlikely. He told reporters on Friday that Gabbard was “wrong” to say that Iran is not currently building a nuclear weapon but he didn’t say where he was getting his intelligence from. In May, Trump fired his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and dismissed half the professionals at the National Security Council (the Middle East section went from 10 staffers to five). 

Trump is being advised on Iran by a close-knit group of political advisers and ideologues, none of whom has deep knowledge of Iran or the Middle East. All are totally loyal to Trump. (They include JD Vance; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Chief of Staff Susie Wiles; Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller; Steve Witkoff, Trump’s envoy to the Middle East who was formerly a luxury real estate developer; lieutenant general Dan (Razin’) Caine, now serving as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs; Erik (“The Gorilla”) Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM); John Ratcliffe, CIA director who served in the first Trump administration and was previously a Texas congressman and a mayor of a small town; and Steve Bannon.)

As a result, he’s probably getting decent advice about what’s good for Trump but not about what’s good for America or the world. It’s an inevitable consequence of purging from the government anyone more loyal to the United States than to him. Besides, Trump only listens to information he wants to hear. 

4. Will Iran now cave and agree to destroy its remaining stockpile of enriched uranium and allow inspectors to confirm that the stockpile is gone? 

No. Not one of the experts I spoke to thought this likely. Iran doesn’t trust the United States or Israel, and it doesn’t want to give up its potential nuclear capacities. 

5. Have the bombings wiped out Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons?

Unlikely. Trump claims that the facilities were “completely and totally obliterated,” but who trusts Trump to tell the truth, or to be told the truth? 

Iran has buried its uranium-enrichment facilities deep underground and distributed them to many locations. Iranian officials acknowledge that three sites were attacked but did not describe the extent of damage. 

In any event, America does not have good intelligence about how long it will take Iran to get the three targeted sites back to running order. 

6. What’s the worst Iran can now do to the United States in retaliation? 

It could wholly or partially close the straights of Hormuz, a vital waterway through which about a fifth of global oil must pass. While not completely closed during past conflicts, Iran possesses the capabilities to significantly disrupt or halt traffic with mines, anti-ship missiles, and air defense systems. This would cause oil prices to soar in the United States and Europe (helping Big Oil but not American consumers). 

Iran could also engage in a range of terrorist actions directed toward the United States. No one knows the extent of any “sleeper cells” in the U.S. or in Europe. The mere possibility could give Trump more license to restrict civil liberties. 

7. Will the American public “rally ‘round the flag” and support Trump in this war?

Some Americans clearly will. But a drawn-out war in Iran will be deeply unpopular. A recent YouGov poll found that only 16 percent of Americans thought the U.S. military should get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran; 60 percent said it should not. 

Trump promised no foreign entanglements and lower consumer prices. But this war could prove to be the largest foreign entanglement in years, and the attacks will almost certainly raise oil and gas prices. 

8. Will he send in American ground troops? 

On balance, the experts I consulted with thought Trump eventually would send in troops if Iran retaliated and the conflict escalated. Last night he explicitly threatened more action against Iran if it did not return to diplomatic efforts: “If they do not [make peace], future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.”

More than anything else, Trump has an abiding need to save face, he hates to lose, and he likes nothing more than conflict. He was willing to send the active military into California to stop trumped-up protests. He’ll likely be willing to send them into Iran. 

The war will not be over quickly. Iran and its extensive networks in the Middle East could keep hostilities going for months or years, at a substantial cost of human life. 

9. What’s Congress likely to do now? 

I hope Democrats will use the War Powers Act to force a vote on the war, putting Republican lawmakers in the awkward position of voting for a war that’s immensely unpopular and can easily go very badly. 

10. Bonus question: Where does the phrase “dogs of war” come from?

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, in which Mark Antony (in Act 3, Scene 1) says: “Cry ‘Havoc!’, and let slip the dogs of war” — signifying that war unleashes chaos and violence. 

Now that the bombing has begun, there’s no telling where this will end. 

Be strong. Be safe. Hug your loved ones.

Posted in America, Donald Trump, foreign policy, government, intelligence, Iran, nuclear weapons, politics, war | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Hear Us Now!

Posted on June 15, 2025 by Arlen Grossman
Posted in America, democracy, government | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Trump’s Police State

Posted on June 9, 2025 by Arlen Grossman

It endangers all of us

By Robert Reich/ RobertReich.com/substack/ January 9, 2025

Friends,

Now that Trump’s tariffs have been halted, his One Big Beautiful Bill has been stymied, and his multibillionaire tech bro has turned on him, how does he demonstrate his power? 

On Friday morning, federal agents from ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Drug Enforcement Administration conducted raids across Los Angeles, including at two Home Depots, a doughnut shop, and a clothing wholesaler, in search of workers they suspected of being undocumented immigrants. 

They arrested 121 people.

They were met with protesters who chanted and threw eggs before being dispersed by police wearing riot gear, holding shields, and using batons, guns that shot pepper balls, rubber bullets, tear gas, and flash bang grenades against the protesters.

On Saturday, Trump intentionally escalated the confrontations, ordering at least 2,000 National Guard troops to be deployed in Los Angeles County to help quell the protests. 

He said that any demonstration that got in the way of immigration officials would be considered a “form of rebellion.” Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, called the protests an “Insurrection.”

Saturday evening, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threatened to deploy active-duty Marines, saying, “The violent mob assaults on ICE and Federal Law Enforcement are designed to prevent the removal of Criminal Illegal Aliens from our soil. A dangerous invasion facilitated by criminal cartels (aka Foreign Terrorist Organizations) and a huge NATIONAL SECURITY RISK. Under President Trump, violence and destruction against federal agents and federal facilities will NOT be tolerated.”

Friends, we are witnessing the first stages of Trump’s police state. 

Last week, raids in San Diego and Massachusetts — in Martha’s Vineyard and the Berkshires — led to standoffs as bystanders angrily confronted federal agents who were taking workers into custody.

Trump’s dragnet also includes federal courthouses. ICE officers are mobilizing outside courtrooms across America and are immediately arresting people — even migrants whose cases have been dismissed by judges. 

History shows that once an authoritarian ruler establishes theinfrastructure of a police state, that same infrastructure can be turned on anyone. 

Trump is rapidly creating such an infrastructure: 

(1) declaring an emergency on the basis of a so-called “rebellion,” “insurrection,” or “invasion,” 

(2) using that “emergency” to justify bringing in federal agents with a monopoly of force (ICE, DHS, FBI, DEA, and National Guard) against civilians inside the nation, 

(3) allowing those militarized agents to make dragnet abductions and warrantless arrests and detain people without due process,

(4) creating additional prison space and detention camps for those detained, and

(5) eventually, as the situation escalates, declaring martial law. 

We are not at martial law yet, thankfully. But once in place, the infrastructure of a police state can build on itself. Those who are given authority over aspects of it — the internal militia, dragnets, detention camps, and martial law — seek other opportunities to invoke their authority. 

As civilian control gives way to military control, the nation splits into those who are most vulnerable to it and those who support it. The dictatorship entrenches itself by fomenting fear and anger on both sides. 

Right now, our major bulwarks against Trump’s police state are the federal courts and broad-based peaceful protests — such as the one that many of us will engage in this coming Saturday, June 14, on the No Kings Day of Action (information here).

If you are in the National Guard or active-duty military and you believe you are being ordered to violate the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens, I urge you to call the GI Rights Hotline for advice and support, at 877-447-4487. 

It is imperative that we remain peaceful, that we demonstrate our resolve to combat this tyranny but do so nonviolently, and that we let America know about the emerging infrastructure of Trump’s police state and the importance of resisting it. 

These are frightening and depressing times. But remember: Although it takes one authoritarian to establish a police state, it takes just 3.5 percent of a population to topple him and end it.

Posted in America, civil liberties, democracy, Donald Trump, immigration, Justice, law, law enforcement, politics | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Who Owns America? Musk and Trump Are Fighting Over the Deed

Posted on June 7, 2025 by Arlen Grossman

A Supreme Court justice handed the keys of our democracy to billionaires — and now they’re crashing it in public…

By Thom Hartmann / ThomHartmann.com/ June 6, 2025

The alpha-male dick-measuring contest between Trump and Musk isn’t entertainment: it’s the inevitable outcome of America’s complete surrender to oligarchy.

After centuries of democratic progress, we’re watching the World’s Richest Man® and the World’s Most Powerful Man® battle for supremacy on social media like feuding warlords. How did the land of Lincoln and Roosevelt, Eisenhower and Kennedy, become a playground for billionaire sociopaths?

The answer has a name: John Roberts.

Back in the day, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis warned us: 

“We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

In 2010, Chief Justice John Roberts made his choice: He chose the billionaires. He chose oligarchy. He chose to detonate 240 years of American democracy.

The case was supposed to be simple: Could a right-wing group funded by fossil fuel billionaires show their anti-Hillary Clinton propaganda film within a month of an election? The Federal Election Commission said no because it violated McCain-Feingold’s ban on corporate electioneering.

But Roberts wasn’t satisfied with just allowing the movie.

At Justice Kennedy’s urging, Roberts pulled off a judicial coup. He ordered both sides to re-argue the case, but this time on the broader question of corporate and billionaire election spending, something that wasn’t even part of the original lawsuit. This was judicial activism on steroids, the kind of power grab that would make a third-world dictator proud.

The result, as I lay out in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America, was an all-Republican-appointee 5-4 decision that legalized political bribery and unleashed an avalanche of billionaire and corporate cash that has, in the years since, largely buried American democracy.

Justice John Paul Stevens (a Republican Jerry Ford appointee) was so furious that he read his 90-page dissent aloud from the bench, forcing his five bought-off Republican-appointed colleagues to listen in awkward discomfort.

Stevens said the ruling “threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation. The path it has taken to reach its outcome will, I fear, do damage to this institution.”

In a prescient moment of outrage, he added:

“A democracy cannot function effectively when its constituent members believe laws are being bought and sold,” pointing out that Roberts and Kennedy had “changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law.”

The result of this bizarre decision, one embracing a theory no other advanced democracy in the world tolerates, has been an explosion in billionaire and corporate money flooding our election system. It’s made a mockery of Roberts’ and Kennedy’s assertion that transparency requirements would guarantee that “citizens can see whether elected officials are ‘in the pocket’ of so-called moneyed interests.”

As a result, Musk is now claiming — almost certainly correctly — that:

“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate. … Such ingratitude.”

In other words, “I’m the rich guy who bought the White House for you, Trump, and you owe me.”

Of course, Musk isn’t the only one saying such things. The entire GOP knows how fossil fuel billionaires — particularly the Koch brothers — have been so instrumental in building and maintaining a national messaging infrastructure that there’s not a single Republican politician at the federal level who’ll acknowledge the importance of stopping global warming even as it regularly kills Americans.

Thus Stevens, it turns out, was absolutely right.

Outside spending exploded from $574 million in 2008 to $4.5 billion in 2024. In 2024, eight of the top 10 largest donors supported Republicans, with Elon Musk dumping over $290 million. Dark money spending surged from less than $5 million in 2006 to more than $1 billion in 2024. Just 21 billionaire families contributed $783 million in 2022, easily outspending millions of small donors combined, and in 2024 a hundred billionaire families poured $2.6 billion into electing mostly Republicans.

Musk isn’t just boasting when he claims he single-handedly delivered the White House to Trump. The world’s richest man dumped over $290 million into electing Trump, including $238 million to his America PAC, $20.5 million to the deceptively named “RBG PAC” that dishonored Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s memory, and arguably illegal $1 million daily “lottery” payments to swing-state voters.

This isn’t political participation: it’s a hostile takeover of the American government by the biggest money in America.

Musk’s America PAC became one of the most prominent get-out-the-vote efforts for Republicans, essentially functioning as Trump’s campaign while pretending to be “independent.” 

The FEC’s toothless “coordination” rules have become a joke since Roberts and his four corrupt colleagues ruled that billionaires and corporations can simply buy entire campaign operations.

And the corruption doesn’t stop with Musk. The cryptocurrency industry alone poured $238 million into the 2024 elections, more than oil, gas, and pharmaceuticals combined. Crypto money accounted for 44% of all corporate political spending in 2024. 

The payoff was immediate: Trump ordered the SEC to drop lawsuits against crypto firms, signed an executive order establishing a national Bitcoin reserve, pardoned a bitcoin fraudster after he directed millions into Trump’s personal pockets, and appointed crypto insider David Sacks as White House AI and crypto czar.

This is corruption so blatant it would embarrass a banana republic.

Citizens United didn’t just corrupt presidential elections: it’s also systematically destroying Congress. Crypto super PACs alone spent $134 million targeting 67 congressional races, successfully defeating crypto-skeptical Democrats like Katie Porter with $10 million in attack ads. 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg called Citizens United “the worst ruling” of her time on the Court. At least 22 states and hundreds of cities have voted to support a constitutional amendment to overturn it. 

The American people know their democracy has been stolen.

Billionaires Musk and Trump are now locked in a dirty battle with Trump claiming Musk read and loved the “Big, Beautiful [Billionaire Tax Cut] Bill” while Musk is implying Trump was regularly boffing teenage girls at Jeffrey Epstein’s home just down the street from Trump Tower.

While Trump and Musk trade insults about who’s more corrupt, they’re both symptoms of the same disease. 

— Trump sold us out to Middle Eastern potentates and Putin, and is making billions with the bitcoin bros. 

— Musk gutted federal investigations into his companies while forcing taxpayers to subsidize his businesses and demanding South Africa and several other poor nations adopt Starlink. And he gleefully destroyed the one US agency most responsible for ending apartheid in South Africa: USAID. 

This is what happens when five unelected judges — several of them nakedly on the take from billionaires at the time — decide that the morbidly rich should rule America.

We now have what the Brennan Center for Justice calls “a fusion of private wealth and political power unseen since the late 19th century.” It’s the Gilded Age robber barons’ wildest dreams made real.

The sordid spectacle of Trump vs. Musk isn’t just embarrassing; it’s the death rattle of American democracy. Two oligarchs are publicly fighting over who owns our government, while Republicans on John Roberts’ Supreme Court uneasily pretend this is “free speech.”

We’re not witnessing a democratic election cycle. We’re watching the final consolidation of American oligarchy.

Unless we overturn Citizens United and reclaim our democracy from billionaire sociopaths, the Musk-Trump cage match is just the opening act. Coming soon: President Bezos vs. President Zuckerberg (or their proxies), brought to you by Chief Justice John Roberts and the Supreme Court’s pro-oligarchy majority.

The choice Brandeis warned us about in 1919 has been made: John Roberts and Sam Alito chose wealth concentration. Clarence Thomas chose oligarchy. Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy chose to let billionaires buy our democracy.

Now we’re living with the consequences, at least until we all decide to do something about it. And that starts with voting out of office every possible Republican and all of the corporate so-called “moderate” Democrats who have enthusiastically embraced Citizens United and the corruption it’s brought us.

The work, in other words, falls to us. Pass it along.

Posted in America, democracy, Donald Trump, Economics, economy, government, politics, Supreme Court | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Who Can Fix This Country?

Posted on June 4, 2025 by Arlen Grossman

Hal Ginsberg, the host of the YouTube videocast, Halitics, and I (on my weekly guest appearance) share the frustration of making sense of what is going on in the political world.

The Trump Administration doesn’t seem to have a clue about how to make government work, and the Democrats haven’t figured out a way to regain the trust and respect they’ve squandered away in recent years. Hal blames both major parties and despite the long odds, would like to see an independent or third party progressive candidate run against the GOP. I would like to see AOC or another younger progressive candidate fire up Democratic voters as a more realistic scenario.

In foreign policy, we talk about Nicholas Kristoff of The NY Times documenting the loss of life as the result GOP cutbacks to foreign assistance, while Marco Rubio claims “No children are dying on my watch.” We note the Gaza war crimes against civilians by Israelis, while our country looks the other way.

Posted in America, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, foreign policy, Gaza, government, politics | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Elon Musk Calls Trump’s Big Bill ‘Disgusting Abomination’

Posted on June 4, 2025 by Arlen Grossman

By Amanda Castro/ Newsweek/ June 3, 2025

Elon Musk launched a scathing attack on President Donald Trump‘s marquee spending proposal Tuesday, calling the so-called “big, beautiful bill” a “disgusting abomination” in a series of posts on X. Musk, who leads the White House’s Deficit Optimization & Government Efficiency (DOGE) office, said the bill is packed with “outrageous pork” and accused lawmakers of knowingly voting for legislation that would balloon the federal deficit.

The comments were posted just as White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt held a press briefing. She dismissed Musk’s earlier remarks to CBS about his disapproval of the bill, saying, “The president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill.” The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the legislation would add $2.5 trillion to the deficit over the next decade.

Elon Musk
Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks alongside U.S. President Donald Trump to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on May 30, 2025 in Washington, DC. 

Musk’s public rebuke marks a rare and obvious break with the Trump administration’s legislative agenda. His opposition complicates GOP efforts to unify support behind the spending bill. His criticism also raises questions about the direction of federal budget policy and the credibility of cost-cutting efforts led by DOGE.

The controversy could deepen divisions within the Republican Party, as fiscal conservatives weigh the political risk of crossing Trump against mounting concerns over national debt.

In a string of posts, Musk didn’t mince words. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore,” he wrote. “This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong.”

According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the proposed legislation would increase the federal deficit by $2.5 trillion over 10 years, largely due to tax cut extensions and campaign pledges such as eliminating taxes on tips.

“Congress is making America bankrupt,” Musk wrote, warning that the bill will leave American taxpayers saddled with “crushingly unsustainable debt.”

Posted in America, Donald Trump, Economics, economy, Elon Musk, government, politics | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Conspiracy Theory Dementia

Posted on June 1, 2025 by Arlen Grossman

It’s hard to believe many Americans think this guy has a fully functioning brain……{TBPR Editor}

President Trump shared an outlandish conspiracy theory on social media on Saturday night saying former President Joseph R. Biden had been “executed in 2020” and replaced by a robotic clone, the latest example of the president amplifying dark, false material to his millions of followers.

Mr. Trump reposted a fringe rant that another user had made on the president’s social media platform, Truth Social, just after 10 p.m. on Saturday. The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the post about Mr. Biden, whom Mr. Trump has targeted for criticism almost daily since the start of his second term.

The president has blamed Mr. Biden for all manner of societal ills and assailed his mental acuity, including with the specious theory that Mr. Biden’s aides used an autopen to enact policies and issue pardons without Mr. Biden’s knowledge. (Mr. Trump has acknowledged that his administration uses the autopen system on occasion.)

Mr. Trump has long had a penchant for sharing debunked or baseless theories online, but his embrace of conspiracies is not limited to social media. He has also elevated false claims inside the White House and surrounded himself with cabinet officials promoting such theories.

Last month, while sitting next to the president of South Africa in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump claimed that white South African farmers were victims of mass killings and displayed an image intended to back up his assertion; the image was actually of the conflict in eastern Congo. Mr. Trump has falsely asserted that white South Africans are victims of genocide, even though police statistics do not show that white people in the nation are any more vulnerable than other groups.

Mr. Trump’s first four years in the White House were filled with false or misleading statements — according to one tally, he made 30,573 of them, or 21 a day on average — and he repeatedly shared conspiracy theories in the lead-up to the 2024 election.

A New York Times analysis of thousands of Mr. Trump’s social media posts and reposts over a six-month period in 2024 found that at least 330 of them described both a false, secretive plot against Mr. Trump or the American people and a specific entity supposedly responsible for it. They included suggestions that the F.B.I. had ordered his assassination and accusations that government officials had orchestrated the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

Mr. Trump’s repost of the robot conspiracy theory came a day after Mr. Biden told reporters that he was feeling good after beginning treatment for an aggressive form of prostate cancer. Mr. Trump has suggested that Mr. Biden’s diagnosis last month was not new and had been concealed from the public.

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“Big Beautiful Bill” Adds to National Debt

Posted on May 30, 2025 by Arlen Grossman

Karoline Leavitt: “President Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill “does not add to the deficit.”

By Louis Jacobson/ PolitiFact/ May 21, 2025

true
false

As House Republicans continued their efforts to advance what President Donald Trump calls his “big, beautiful bill” of tax and spending cuts, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt played down the bill’s expected federal deficit impact.

At a May 19 press briefing, a reporter asked Leavitt, “Is the president OK with this bill adding to the deficit?”

Leavitt disagreed with the question’s premise. 

“This bill does not add to the deficit,” she said. “In fact, according to the Council of Economic Advisors, this bill will save $1.6 trillion. … There’s $1.6 trillion worth of savings in this bill. That’s the largest savings for any legislation that has ever passed Capitol Hill in our nation’s history.”

A deficit is the annual amount by which spending exceeds revenues; the accumulation of all past annual deficits, minus any annual surpluses, is called the federal debt.

The bill is still being negotiated, so its potential deficit impact is a moving target. However, numerous independent analyses agree that the bill is on track to add significantly to the federal deficit. That’s because the bill’s tax cuts would reduce incoming federal revenue by more than it restricts spending.

Leavitt’s “$1.6 trillion worth of savings” appears to refer only to the bill’s proposed spending cuts  without factoring in the lost tax revenue that will increase the annual deficit and the federal government’s cumulative debt, experts said.

“Bottom line — because that is what matters — is that simple math of all the additions and subtractions equals nearly $3 trillion in additional debt” during the standard budget time frame of 10 years, said Steve Ellis, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan group that tracks the federal budget.

The White House did not respond to inquiries for this article. 

Analyses of the bill show it increasing the deficit and adding to the debt

The reconciliation bill, as it is called, must pass the House and the Senate in identical form by simple majorities, then be signed by the president. So the measure’s provisions are subject to change, making any point-in-time analysis somewhat uncertain.

That said, no expert assessment has shown that the bill will add nothing to the deficit. 

Congress’ official scorekeepers — the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation — have analyzed parts of the bills but have not produced a unified figure for its deficit effect. But, building on CBO and JCT’s work, multiple organizations have compiled assessments of the bill’s potential deficit impact. 

These assessments show increased deficits from $3 trillion to $4 trillion over the next 10 years.

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Pardons become the latest Trump flex

Posted on May 29, 2025 by Arlen Grossman

How President Trump is changing government, the country and its politics

When it comes to pardons, presidents are able to use unlimited power to give pardons to anyone the president wants to, even to those who have been declared guilty in fair jury trials, to those who have given that president huge financial donations, and even to those who attack outnumbered peace officers during illegal assaults on our nation’s capital. Could we ever have a president who would abuse this kind of power? We do now!–TBPR Editor

By Jess Bidgood/ New York Times/ May 28, 2025

Before he left office in 1953, President Harry Truman handed out a number of pardons to politically connected convicts — and, perhaps to avoid blowback, he did so entirely in secret.

In 2001, Bill Clinton waited until the final day of his presidency to issue a pardon he knew would go off like a political bomb: to Marc Rich, the oil trader and fugitive indicted in a sprawling tax evasion case, whose former wife had made donations to the Clinton presidential library and the Democratic Party.

And around Christmas in 2008, President George W. Bush rescinded a pardonhe had granted to a Brooklyn developer, Isaac Toussie, after The New York Post reported that Toussie’s father had donated $28,500 to the Republican National Committee and another $2,300 to Senator John McCain.

“This is a good decision,” a Justice Department lawyer told the White House aide who went to retrieve Toussie’s pardon grant before it could be delivered to him, according to my colleague Peter Baker’s book on the Bush presidency, “Days of Fire.” “Because I don’t know if anybody could survive this.”

The power of the pardon is so absolute that the only way to punish a president for how he uses it is to impeach him or to vote him out. Most presidents have wanted to avoid those things. So they’ve granted pardons carefully, even furtively, often saving what might prove scandalous until the very last days of their terms.

“The pardon power for a president is virtually unlimited,” said Alberto Gonzales, who served under Bush as White House counsel and then as the attorney general. “In almost every case at the federal level, the question is not a concern over the authority to grant clemency, but whether clemency is appropriate given history, the circumstances of the offender and the politics.”

This week, though, President Trump has shown he has no intention of allowing such an unchecked executive power to go unexploited over as trifling a concern as the ordinary rules of politics. Rules that say, among other things, that doling out favors to donors and allies might carry an odor of impropriety.

Today, Trump pardoned former Representative Michael G. Grimm, a Republican from New York who pleaded guilty in 2014 to felony tax evasion. Grimm has been a vigorous and public Trump supporter.

My colleague Ken Vogel reported Tuesday that the president had pardoned Paul Walczak, a convicted tax cheat, after Walczak’s mother raised millions of dollars for Trump’s presidential campaigns and those of other Republicans.

The same day, the White House announced pardons for two reality-television stars, Todd and Julie Chrisley, who had been convicted of evading taxes and defrauding banks of more than $30 million, after their daughter depicted them as persecuted conservatives in a speech at last summer’s Republican National Convention.

And this week, the president’s new pardon attorney, Ed Martin, told The Wall Street Journal that he had personally fast-tracked a pardon for Scott Jenkins, a Virginia sheriff convicted of bribery who has been an outspoken supporter of Trump’s immigration agenda.

This is scarcely the first time Trump has defied political gravity. But it still represents something new.

Trump knows that his first-term pardons of political allies like Roger Stone, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn didn’t cost him much if any political support.

Since that first term, he has pressed so hard and for so long to demonize and undo the work of the Biden administration’s Justice Department — claiming that it was weaponized against him and his supporters — that he may have conditioned much of the public to believe him if he says that the recipient of a pardon was indeed a fellow victim.

He appears to be counting on his having changed the weather, hoping that the old rules won’t apply to him in this term, either.

Posted in America, crime, Donald Trump, government, politics, scandals, U.S. Constitution | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

All Trump, All the Time

Posted on May 28, 2025 by Arlen Grossman

Donald Trump is the greatest president ever, according to millions of Americans. But millions of others will say he is easily the worst. I’m in the latter camp, and Halitics host Hal Ginsberg, on his YouTube videocast, won’t dispute my opinion. Hal thinks the Democratic Party is much to blame, and I am emphatic that our political system, increasingly dominated by wealthy Americans, has got to change. Both of us see this country’s present and future on a downhill trajectory.

Our president is all about enriching himself and acting like a king. The Gaza and the Ukraine war, economic uncertainty, partisan anger, distrust of our fellow citizens, the breakdown of institutions–Trump appears to only make these problems worse. Political analysts, Hal and I included, seek answers, but solutions seem beyond our grasp.

But we keep trying.

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