1. United States
2. Texas
3. Letter

This past week feels like the last gasp of an awful experiment. Even the MAGA faithful couldn’t stomach the president’s vile response to the brutal murder of the Reiners. A Vanity Fair article with interviews, on tape, by the woman closest to Trump in the WH was brutal in its assessment of the chaos and lack of strategy in the administration. Wednesday night, Trump shouted his way through a rushed speech so full of lies that economist Paul Krugman said he couldn’t “find a single factual assertion Trump made that was true.” What Tom Nichols of The Atlantic saw was “an unnerving display of fear.” Bullying based in BS. Jack Smith seems to have eviscerated the attempt to discredit his years-long investigation into Trump’s illegal behavior, both in trying to overturn the 2020 election and hoarding of classified government documents in his Mar-a-Lago bathroom. Like Smith has requested, release his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee. We the people want to know what Jim Jordan et al heard behind closed doors. Friday was the deadline established by a vote of Congress for the administration to release all FBI files relating to its Epstein investigation. But the DOJ did not comply, and released only some of the files. And those were obviously heavily redacted to hide any mention of Trump and highlight Democrats: a search of the word “Clinton” delivered 109 hits. A search of “Trump” produced only two. News outlets reported that DOJ had redacted not just the names and identifying info of victims, but also of “politically exposed individuals and government officials.” The Epstein grand jury documents are simply 119 blacked-out pages. The big picture. The second Trump administration has exposed the lie of Reaganomics, spouted by the GOP as gospel since the 80s. We have been told in apocalyptic terms that the government that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, protected civil rights, and stabilized the international order since WWII was “socialism.” Undeserving “welfare queens” were cheating the system to take tax money from hardworking white taxpayers. Cutting business regulations and taxes would usher in a golden economic age, that would boost the prosperity of hardworking Americans, leaving behind those unwilling to work. Except it didn’t. A February 2025 report from RAND, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization, found that if the system in place before 1975 had stayed in place, the bottom 90% of Americans would have had almost $80 TRILLION more in 2023 than they did. Biden tried to reset the system in place before 1981 by protecting workers, boosting infrastructure investment, breaking up monopolies, and protecting consumers. It was working. Trump did not inherit an economic “disaster.” According to The Economist, it was instead “the envy of the world.” If Trump had left that system in place, he would have gotten credit for a booming economy. Instead, he undermined his own government with dramatic layoffs. Undermined the economy with tariffs. He continued deregulation, and additional tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. While cutting the tax credits that supported the ACA healthcare insurance markets. And we should remember longstanding Republican claims that Democrats can win elections only by offering handouts to their voters or by cheating through voter fraud was taken to its logical conclusion on January 6, 2021. Trump incited his supporters to attack the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn the legitimate results of a presidential election. Based on the Big Lie that your party never disavowed with any enthusiasm. Turns out Trump’s retribution was aimed at his own party. He is the manifestation of every misguided belief in a system of the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots.’ It was never going to work. And the Trump administration seems to be the one to finally prove it. Fingers crossed.