A (or One) Skeptic

After what he posted in the wake of the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle by their very own son, our Cryto-pedohile piece of excrement of a President really has hit a new low. Rob Reiner and his wife died in about as cruel a fashion as you can die: being knifed to death by one of his own kids. Imagine lying there, with the life ebbing out of you, knowing that one of your own kids had done this to you.

And what did President Trump do? Made it all about him.

Trump has, of course, done many worse things which will have an impact on many more people, but in terms of personal behavior, it doesn’t really get lower than this. According to Trump, the cause of Reiner’s death was the “massive, unyielding, incurable affliction called TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.”

At this point, anyone who does not have Trump Derangement Syndrome is no longer a sentient human being. This guy is so hopelessly out of touch, so intentionally cruel, so blatantly self-deluded, that any sentient human being would be revolted by his presence. In the same post, Trump goes on to crow that the Trump administration has “surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness,” with the “Golden Age of America upon us.” Somehow, miraculously, Trump and his obsession with tariffs has not yet wrecked the American economy. (Why that is so will be the subject of a future post.) 

Trump really is disassociated from reality. I don’t know if the problem is that he can no longer discern reality or he can no longer say anything truthful because it is too painful for his fragile ego to bear. Is his cognitive dissonance so strong that anything but complete fantasy is unacceptable?

Regardless of what is true for Trump personally, the majority of Republican professionals clearly have a much better sense of the truth than he does. These Profiles in Cowardice will eventually have to answer for their crimes, but that may be too little too late. It will be to our everlasting shame that this piece of shit is the President of the United States, is the “leader of the free world,” is supposed to be an exemplar of morality for the rest of us.

MAGA Republicans, every day that you defend and excuse this guy, every day that you also claim to be part of a “Christian” nation, you piss away the very little credibility you have left. No one is going to care about you anymore. We’ll all be like, “can’t afford health care?”, “losing your family farm?,” “having an ectopic pregnancy?”, well too bad. Good luck getting that sorted out in the state where you come from.

We’re done already. After three more years of this guy, we will be unrecoverable.

You might have missed it, but a sad event took place last week in the legal cases against Donald Trump. It was the final dismissal of the case in Georgia. The one where they had Trump on tape, saying,

“All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. I just want to find 11,780 votes. Give me a break fellas.”

They had this mothereffer on tape! They had him on tape!

And we still didn’t get a conviction.

So, let’s review. The Georgia case was one of the four cases that together, accounted for Trump’s 91 indictments.

1. The case in New York, in which Trump was accused of the falsification of business records to hide his payments to Stormy Daniels, and which led to his conviction on 34 counts.
2. The case in Florida, in which Trump was accused of mishandling classified documents, which Judge Aileen Canon slow-walked to death.
3. The case in Washington D.C. stemming directly from the January 6th insurrection, which eventually also ran out of time, despite Jack Smith’s best efforts.
4. This Georgia case, brought by D.A. Fani Willis, revolving around Trump’s phone call and the conspiracy to overturn votes in Georgia.

The Georgia case had one big advantage, which is that it was brought under state law, so that Trump would not be able to pardon himself.

From the start, Fani Willis made several mistakes. First, she made the case too large. It eventually involved a conspiracy between 18 named defendants, plus Trump, which made it a behemoth to prosecute. Second, she began a romantic relationship with her lead prosecutor, Nathan Wade.

Oh boy.

Wade had been hired in November of 2021 as a “special” prosecutor to help oversee this large and complicated case. This romantic relationship was a nothingburger, it made  no difference to the prosecution of Trump. It was less of an ethical conflict than Trump engages in every single day. And yet, it derailed the case.

First, it should be acknowledged that it’s generally a bad idea for anyone at the top of a chain of command to get romantically involved with a subordinate. 

In short, Fani Willis should have known better.

But there was no actual ethical or financial conflict.

Some of the attorneys for defendants other than Trump alleged (without proving) that the arrangement was akin to a “quasi-kickback scheme” because Wade (who was being paid by Willis’s office for his work on the case) used some of those earnings to fund shared vacations with Willis.

This is absurd. It presupposes that Wade chose to prosecute people because he wanted more money from Willis’ office, whereas the reality was that Willis had had trouble finding someone willing to undertake this massive and complicated prosecution in a very politically charged environment. All indications are that she became involved with Willis sometime after he came on board.

Nevertheless, on March 15, 2024, trial judge Scott F. McAfee ruled that Willis’s relationship with Wade created a “significant appearance of impropriety,” which caused Wade to resign from the case.

Not good enough for the Georgia Court of Appeals, which ruled 2–1 in December that Willis (and her entire office) still had to be disqualified due to the “appearance of impropriety” arising from her relationship with Wade.

Willis appealed, but later the Supreme Court of Georgia declined to take up the case, thereby making the disqualification final. That triggered the transfer of the case to a new prosecutor, in this case Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia.

He, in turn, decided this week that “there is no realistic prospect that a sitting President will be compelled to appear in Georgia to stand trial,” so it would be “futile and unproductive” to push forward with the case.

He’s not wrong about that.

Also, complicating the case now is the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States, which would have required the courts to litigate which of the president’s many bad behaviors counts as “official acts” and is therefore immune from prosecution.

Commentators noted that Skandalakis’s decision to drop the charges was “not surprising” since his agency does not have the resources to prosecute such a complex case with numerous co-defendants.

Fani Willis, in the meantime, was re-elected District Attorney of Fulton County in November of 2024 with 68.1% of the vote, contradicting the notion that her voters were upset with her for her indiscretion with Nathan Wade.

Far from being the victim of a “witch hunt,” Trump has proven, again and again, to basically be the luckiest son-of-a-bitch alive with respect to legal matters. By now it’s clear that he’s never going to see the inside of a jail cell, and frankly it would be impractical (if not just impossible) to imprison a former President with his secret service protection. But the same is not true for most of Trump’s subordinates and associates.

Trump will die a very rich man, and maybe the greatest grifter of all time. 

From now on, it can never again be said that “no one is above the law.” Clearly Trump is above the law. He is the cherry on top of a massively distorted legal system in which the powerless are punished and the powerful mostly get away scot free. It will be interesting to see if the legal system ever catches up with the flagrantly corrupt Elon Musk. I’m not betting on that.

As we wait for the release of the Epstein files, a question arises as to how and why these particular files became so important. We have to set some context for all of this. Epstein wasn’t the first and won’t be the last powerful rich white guy to take advantage of women.

Pizzagate

For context, let’s go back to the “Pizzagate” conspiracy in which Qanon followers and other MAGA types came to believe that Democrats were running a child prostitution ring out of a pizza shop in Washington D.C. 

Huh?

How did they come to believe this?

Well, that turns out to be a long story, and involves John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign chair, whose personal Gmail was hacked and published by WikiLeaks. In those emails there were a bunch of references to people ordering pizza at a D.C. restaurant called Comet Ping Pong (which has ping pong tables inside). For some reason a lot of right wing types decided that the references to pizza were actually references to child abuse, and that the restaurant was the center of a child prostitution ring.

Why did they decide this?

Who the hell knows.

It’s what happens when you become more and more detached from reality.

Eventually, on December 4, 2016, 28-year old Edgar Maddison Welch drove to Washington D.C. from North Carolina, armed with an AR-15-style rifle and a .38-caliber handgun, to “save the children.” Miraculously, he didn’t kill anyone. 

That really should have been the end of it.

But, of course it wasn’t.

Epstein’s Island

MAGA conspiracy theorists were still convinced that Democrats were somehow promoting child sex rings and child pornography, and switched their inquiry to their involvement with Jeffrey Epstein. In particular, Qanon followers believe that a cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic child molesters in league with the “deep state” is operating a global child sex trafficking ring, and that Donald Trump is secretly leading the fight against them.

As if!

Epstein — although largely non-denominational — has (of course) been a long-time close friend of Donald Trump. There are many photos of Epstein and his “girlfriend” Ghislane Maxwell hanging out with Donald and Melania Trump. At some point, in the mid 2000’s, Trump and Epstein had a falling out. It’s not clear why. Competing theories include (1) that Epstein “took” spa staff from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, and (2) that it was the result of a real-estate conflict when Trump and Epstein both bid for the same Palm Beach property (Maison de L’Amitie) and fell out over it.

Who knows.

Their relationship had clearly soured by the time Trump became President.

Bill Clinton and Other Democrats

Now, why do so many MAGA types believe so ardently that Epstein was intimately involved with Democrats?

Again, who knows for sure. Some of it seems to have to do with their animus against Bill Clinton, who did have contact with Jeffrey Epstein — although never as much as President Trump — and their general belief that Democrats are somehow sordid and immoral.

Whatever.

For his part, Bill Clinton had limited contact with Jeffrey Epstein. What is verified is that Clinton took several flights on Epstein’s private jet in the period around 2002–2003, in connection with the work of the Clinton Foundation. Epstein also visited the White House during Clinton’s presidency. Records show Epstein made multiple visits between 1993–1995 when Clinton was President. But that was well before his June 30, 2008 guilty plea to “Solicitation of prostitution” and “Solicitation of prostitution with a minor” charges in Florida state court.

Having more contact and viewing him as a personal friend was Larry Summers, the former President of Harvard and United States Secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton. But even with Summers there is no evidence that Summers knew of Epstein’s sex trafficking, or did anything illegal. 

Then there is Ehud Barak, the former Prime Minister of Israel. The former leader of the Labor Party, Barak is neither American nor a Democrat. But he’s a “progressive.” Again, there is no evidence that Barak knew of or participated in Epstein’s illegal activities.

Scientific Funding

Like a lot of bad people, Epstein was a complicated guy. On the plus side, he contributed enormously to the funding of scientific research. For example:

• Epstein was a significant private donor to MIT’s Media Lab, and is known to have contributed $525,000 personally, another $250,000 from his foundation, and another $125,000 from other donors he “solicited.”
• Epstein donated approximately $6.5 million to Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics.
• Epstein donated somewhere between $250k–$500k to The Santa Fe Institute, which focuses on complexity science.
• Epstein donated approximately $500,000 to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.
• Epstein donated to various individual scientists, including Stephen Hawking, Lawrence Krauss (Arizona State University), Marvin Minsky (MIT), and George Church (Harvard geneticist)
• Epstein funded or hosted private scientific gatherings in the Virgin Islands and New Mexico, and including on his own island.

At the time that all of these luminaries were seeking funding from Epstein, he had only been convicted of two solicitation offenses. Should they all have refused to do business with him at the time?

Now we know, in light of the 2019 investigation into his sex trafficking of minors and related charges that Epstein had engaged in very bad things. But that is a post-hoc realization, after his “suicide” while waiting for the charges to be resolved.

Trump’s Pledges

During the 2024 campaign Trump promised several times to “release” the Epstein “files” as part of an overall pledge of transparency and open government. He apparently thought, at the time, that there would be material embarrassing to the Democrats in those releases. But, as is typical of Trump, they were not clear promises, just vague assertions. In June 2024, on Fox & Friends, when asked “Would you declassify the Epstein files?” Trump said “Yeah, yeah, I would.” In September 2024, on the Lex Fridman podcast, he said he would “certainly take a look at it,” and that he’d “have no problem” releasing additional Epstein-related documents. Still, this is what his MAGA supporters determined he would do.

By the time he was in office and Pam Bondi had had a chance to look at what was in the “files” — and it’s not exactly clear what the files encompass — they must have had a change of heart. 

But by then everybody, including his supporters, really wanted to know what’s in those files.

For example, people want to know what it meant when Mark Epstein wrote to his brother “Ask him if Putin has the photos of Trump blowing Bubba?” (That email appears in a set of documents released in November 2025 from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein to the House of Representatives in response to a subpoena.)

Now that the Epstein Transparency Bill has been signed into law, I guess we’ll find out the answer to some of these questions. The materials are more likely to be embarrassing  to Trump than to Democrats, and having made such a show of refusing to release them — including having his boy, Speaker Mike Johnson refuse to swear in Adelita Grijalva for 50 days after her special election victory on September 23, 2025 — people really want to see what the hell is in these files.

Since the Supreme Court liberated Trump from criminal liability in Trump v. United States, the Donald’s assault on legality has been non-stop and unrelenting. There are so many examples that we could examine, but I want to examine one particular issue, because it’s one that (as a former government lawyer) I have some familiarity with.

And that issue is Trump’s demand for $230 million compensation under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

So, let’s back up for a minute and answer the question, what is a tort claim act?

Federal Tort Claims Act

And briefly, a tort claims act is a way for citizens to sue their own government when they’ve been damaged by the government’s negligence. Historically, under English common law, the King could not be sued in his own courts (“The King can do no wrong”). This doctrine carried over into the U.S., where for much of American history, the federal and state governments were immune from civil lawsuits unless they expressly consented. In 1946, Congress enacted the Federal Tort Claims Act, to replace the system of ad hoc compensation that had grown over the years.

The way the Tort Claims Act works is that one has to make an official claim for a tort committed by one or more federal employees working within the scope of their employment. A tort is not a crime, but typically an accident where someone is injured. 

• So, with respect to the federal government, a car accident caused by a postal worker delivering mail would be a good example of a tort. 
• Another example might be a medical malpractice case against a doctor at a federally funded health clinic. 

The claim must be based on negligence (and not an intentional tort or a crime); if the federal employee was acting within their discretion (such as a federal judge), that will disqualify the claim. In other words, the Tort Claims Act is a very limited and specific exception to the rule that you cannot sue the federal government.

In order to make a claim you have to provide a presentment within two years of the incident; the claim must indicate the specific amount of money sought. The agency against whom the claim is made has six months to investigate and either approve or deny the claim. If the agency denies the claim (or fails to act within six months) the claimant can file in federal district court.

Trump’s Claims

Trump had made two claims (1) about the Aug. 8, 2022 search at Mar-a-Lago, and (2) about the “Crossfire Hurricane” Russia investigation back in 2016. The first claim is for $100 million and the second is for $130 million. It appears that most of these damages are “punitive” as opposed to “actual.”

Of course, punitive damages are not allowed under the tort claims act.

And that is only one of many problems with these two claims. These problems include:

• First, neither of the claims involves a tort.
• Second, both of the claims involve the discretionary function exception because they are part of an investigation. 
• Third, in the Mar-a-Lago case the upper damage limit is $200,000 because that is the tort claims limit in the state of Florida.
• Fourth, the “Russia” investigation is barred by the two year statute of limitations since it took place back in 2016, and in any case, Trump could have made the claim in the four years that he was out of office. (Just a quick reminder that the Mueller report did not exonerate Trump but that DOJ internal rules did not allow the prosecution of a sitting president).
• And fifth, as already mentioned above, the Tort Claims Act does not allow for punitive damages.

But really, most astonishing of all, Trump has asked his own Department of Justice to investigate the previous actions of the Department of Justice.

No President has ever made a FTCA against his own government. No Governor has ever made a tort claim against his state’s government. It is a complete and 100% conflict of interest.

And who, in this Department of Justice, is going to tell Donald Trump that he cannot have his $230 million?

• Donald Trump has already received $16 million from CBS on a meritless defamation claim so that the Skydance merger could go through.
• Donald Trump has already received $15 million from ABC on a very weak defamation claim so that Disney/ABC could get regulatory clearance for a spinoff of ESPN and Hulu assets

And for those who argue that Trump has given up his $400,000 presidential salary, I can only say, give me an effing break. It’s estimated that Trump has increased his personal wealth by approximately $3 billion since the beginning of his second term, much of it through cryptocurrencies. 

By the way, Trump gets a one-time $100,000 for redecoration of the White House. The new East Wing ballroom is expected to cost over $300 million (or 3000 times the allowed limit), and while Trump claims it is privately funded, most donors remain anonymous or undisclosed. The financing is routed through a nonprofit, allowing contributors to deduct donations and shield their identities.

Trump’s Corruption

It will take historians literally years to unravel the corruption of this Trump administration.

Trump doesn’t want that $230 million because he needs the money. He’s just peeved that he was ever investigated for anything, and he’s going to get himself compensated.

This, then, is just one of many examples one could cite that expose the glaring illegality of the Trump administration.

Trump himself will never see the inside of a jail cell, the Supreme Court has pretty much seen to that. His administration, however, is not so shielded.

That is why Steve Bannon recently said that if Republicans lose the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election, “some in this room are going to prison, myself included.” (Bannon made the remark on November 5, 2025, at a gathering hosted by the Conservative Partnership Institute, a pro-Trump advocacy group.)

Well, the Senate voted last night to re-open the government after 41 days of getting nowhere. The seven Democrats who voted to re-open are Dick Durbin (IL), Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen (NH), Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen (NV), John Fetterman (PA), and Tim Kaine (VA). Independent Angus King (ME) also voted in favor while Republican renegade Rand Paul (KY) voted against.

The approved bill would keep much of the federal government funded through January 30, while certain agencies would receive funding through the end of next September. The bill still needs to be passed by the house and signed by the President. A procedural vote on Sunday night secured the necessary 60 votes, paving the way for the final passage on Monday.

What Democrats got out of the deal was protection for federal workers who were furloughed or laid off during the shutdown (rehiring, back pay, and prohibiting additional mass reductions-in-force until the end of January); a full-year appropriations bills for certain agencies (military construction, veterans affairs, agriculture, and the legislative branch); and a promise of a future vote in the Senate on extending the Affordable Care Act (ACA) premium tax credits that are set to expire on January 1st.

What they didn’t get was a promise to extend those ACA tax credits. 

After the vote there was quite a bit of gnashing of teeth and outrage among the progressive side of the party, that the Democrats had “caved” instead of fighting to the bitter end.

I don’t know about that.

After the vote, Angus King explained that for his part he didn’t see any movement or any possibility that the Republicans would provide that guarantee, even if the government had stayed shut down for another month.

I don’t know that he’s wrong.

For whatever reason, Republicans seem hell bent on depriving Americans of health care and making their health care insurance costs go up.

Is that a winning strategy?

It sure doesn’t look like one.

I mean by now:

• Farmers finally understand that Trump doesn’t give a shit about them and that his tariffs on China have closed the soybean market for soybean farmers.
• Ranchers finally understand that Trump doesn’t give a shit about them and would rather support ranchers in Argentina than to open markets for ranchers here at home.
• Latinos who voted for Trump finally understand that Trump doesn’t give a shit about them and is happy to have his ICE agents racially profile them all over the streets of America.
• Black men who voted for Trump finally understand that Trump doesn’t give a shit about them and has actively worked to scrub DEI initiatives from American life.
• SNAP recipients who voted for Trump finally understand that Trump doesn’t give a shit about them and is eager to deprive them of food as a means to an end.
• Americans who voted for Trump (and who didn’t vote for Trump) now clearly understand that Trump doesn’t give a shit about them and will eagerly deprive them of their health care and send their health care costs skyrocketing.

The results of these policies precipitated the mini-blue tsunami we saw Tuesday of last week. It wasn’t a good look for Republicans.

Democrats have already proved that they are ones trying to save health care and health care costs for Americans. Would being shut down for another month make that any clearer? 

Those Americans who believe that Democrats are “just trying to give health care to illegals” are going to continue to believe that regardless of the evidence before their eyes. Cognitive dissonance will not let them believe anything else.

Would it have been nice to get those health care guarantees? Of course.

Would it have been nice to notch a win over Trump and the Republicans? Of course.

But I don’t think that was going to happen, no matter how long the government stayed shut.

And one hidden benefit that may prove to be important in the long run, the Republicans did not nuke the filibuster. That could have led to a lot of bad things being done. And that didn’t happen.

So President Trump, and a few of his acolytes (I’m looking at you Karoline Leavitt) are literally losing their minds. 

Let’s start with Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s official spokesperson. She said this last week before “No Kings” day:

So that’s literally, “The Democratic party’s main constituency are Hamas terrorists, illegal aliens, and violent criminals.”

Wow.

Let me just start by noting that none of those three groups can vote in the United States. It seems that Karoline has lost touch with reality.

Too bad. She’s a cute little thing, and at age 28, with her blond tresses, is the perfect Trump spokesperson. She ran for Congress in NH in 2022 and almost won.

Now to the real thing: the day of the “No Kings” protests, Trump posted a video in which he is depicted in a fighter jet wearing a crown, flying over what appears to be Times Square in New York City.

The jet is labeled “King Trump”, and the soundtrack is Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone” from Top Gun.

As he flies over the crowd, streams of brown sludge (intended to resemble feces) are dropped on protestors, including a close-up of left-wing influencer Harry Sisson (a 23-year-old political commentator and social media influencer.)

(The video is, frankly, too disgusting for me to post here.)

The video is AI-generated and was created by an account named @XERIAS_X, known for surreal pro-Trump memes. Trump did not add commentary, but the video was widely interpreted as a mocking response to the “No Kings” protests, which drew nearly 7 million participants across 2,700 U.S. cities.

And that, my friends, is our President of the United States.

Previous examples of memes that he’s posted include Trump as the Pope, Trump as Superman, Trump turning Gaza into a resort, and even a fake Taylor Swift endorsement.

The man is losing his mind.

When all is said and done and Trump is finally in the ground, this is going to be the Republican’s legacy. From the party of Abraham Lincoln to the party of this moron, the Republicans are going to own this legacy. It will likely stain them for the rest of their existence.

So, this story about the Young Republican National Federation is really quite astounding, and should reverberate throughout our news cycle for a while to come.

If you’ve been hiding under a rock, or just tuned out our relentlessly frustrating news cycle, there is a group of young Republican leaders that are part of the National Federation, that have been carrying on an extraordinary chat on the messaging app Telegram.

These messages were exchanged between leaders of four chapters — Arizona, Vermont, Kansas and New York — six of eight of whom were young(ish) white men. Incels, if you like.

• Samuel Douglass, state senator from northern Vermont.
• Peter Giunta, former chair of the New York State Young Republicans.
• Bobby Walker, chair of the New York State Young Republicans and former vice chair.
• William Hendrix, vice chair of Kansas Young Republicans.
• Alex Dwyer, chair of the Kansas Young Republicans.
• Anne KayKaty, New York’s national committee member.
• Joe Maligno, general counsel for the New York State Young Republicans.
• Rachel Hope, Arizona Young Republicans events chair.

While the chat at times involved formal conversations about votes, social media strategies and logistics, the chat included a “slew of racist and antisemitic slurs, white supremacist slogans and symbols, comments encouraging rape of political opponents to drive them to suicide, praise for Adolf Hitler, promotion of gas chambers, and enthusiasm for Republicans who they believed supported slavery.”

Wow.

Somehow, reporters from Politico managed to obtain 2,900 pages of messages spanning about seven months, roughly from January through August of 2025. How they got these pages is not clear, and unsurprisingly, Politico has declined to reveal its sources.

So there are two things about this story that I find remarkable. First, this seems to be the consequence of decades of grievance and resentment and fingerpointing on the part of conservatives, so that the Republican party has now fully become the party of hate. How else to describe it? Young white conservatives in America are actually doing pretty well in 2025. And yet, the “we love America” party seems to hate everyone in it.

Second, these  people were willing to put it into writing. When I worked for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, it was pretty much understood that you didn’t put into writing anything that you didn’t want published in the Boston Globe. And here are these young government professionals putting despicable things into writing. One of them reportedly wrote, “If we ever had a leak of this chat we would be cooked [for real, for real].”

No kidding.

So this is where we are in 2025. The GOP is going to have to own what it has created. And this is what it has created. Not for every member of the Republican party. But for a lot of them. A while back someone said something to the effect that “even if you’re not a racist or sexist or homophobe, still Trump’s racism or sexism or homophobia was not a deal-breaker for you.”

And that’s right.

It wasn’t a deal-breaker for you.

And then we had Vice-President J.D. Vance — who has now fully made the transition from sympathetic memoirist to soul-selling scumbag — saying that this was something that “kids do” — “Kids do stupid things, especially young boys.” These are professionals in their 30s, not kids. These are the future leaders of the Republican party.

God help us all.

The Politico Story

Should President Trump be eligible for the Nobel Peace Prize because of his efforts to procure a lasting peace plan between Israel and Hamas? The question is no longer quite the joke that it would have been a few months ago.

Below we consider that question in detail, here are the main points of the proposal. How many of these will actually be fulfilled, only time will tell. But here is what was negotiated.

1. Deradicalized Gaza: Gaza should be transformed into a zone that “does not pose a threat to Israel” or its neighbors.
2. Re-development for Gazans: Reconstruction, infrastructure, public services, and economic revival for the people of Gaza.
3. Immediate ceasefire and suspension of hostilities: If both parties accept the plan, war would end immediately. Israeli forces would withdraw to agreed lines, and all military operations (air, artillery, etc.) would be suspended.
4. Hostage return within 72 hours: Within 72 hours after Israel publicly accepts the plan, all hostages (alive or deceased) held in Gaza must be returned.
5. Release of Palestinian prisoners: After hostages are returned, Israel must release 250 life-sentence prisoners plus ~1,700 Gazans detained since October 7, 2023 (including all women and children detained in that context).
6. Amnesty / safe passage for Hamas members who disarm: Hamas members who relinquish weapons and commit to peaceful coexistence would be granted amnesty; those who choose to leave Gaza would receive safe passage.
7. Immediate large-scale humanitarian aid: Once the agreement goes into effect, humanitarian aid would be deployed immediately, including water, power, sanitation, hospitals, debris removal, road reopening, etc.
8. Neutral distribution of aid: Aid entry and distribution would be via the U.N. and other neutral international agencies (e.g. Red Crescent), free from interference by parties to the conflict. Opening of border crossings would follow pre-agreed mechanisms.
9. Transitional technocratic governance: Gaza would be governed temporarily by an apolitical committee of Palestinian technocrats, overseeing essential services and municipal functions.
10. Supervision by a “Peace Board” / international oversight: The transitional authority would be overseen by a “Board of Peace,” chaired by President Trump, and involving international experts.
11. Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza: The plan states there should be no Israeli annexation of Gaza.
12. Phased withdrawal of Israeli forces: As security and control are transferred to international stabilization forces (ISF, see below), the IDF would withdraw in stages, subject to conditions, milestones, and security assurances.
13. International Stabilization Force (ISF) / security arrangement: A multinational force would help secure border/perimeter areas, prevent arms smuggling, support new Palestinian police, and maintain stability.
14. Joint security cooperation: Israeli, Egyptian, and ISF / Palestinian security forces would coordinate border and security in Gaza to ensure no re-entry of weapons, etc.
15. “Free zones” and contingency if Hamas rejects or delays: If Hamas delays or rejects the proposal, Israel and its partners would begin implementing security, aid, and administration in “terror-free zones” that have been cleared.
16. Limitations on future Israeli attacks on Qatar: The plan commits Israel not to launch future attacks on Qatari territory, such as previous strikes to assassinate Hamas leaders.
17. Countering radical elements and narrative change: Educational and interfaith dialogue measures would be introduced to counter extremism, reshape narratives, and promote tolerance (including revising curricula).
18. Reforms of Palestinian Authority & governance prospects: The plan contemplates a reformed Palestinian Authority and opening the door to Palestinian self-determination when conditions are met.
19. Pathway to statehood / political horizon: While the plan does not immediately establish a Palestinian state, it envisions a future credible path toward statehood if reforms and security are achieved.
20. Dialogue to establish durable coexistence: The U.S. would launch a dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians to define a more permanent political horizon and vision of coexistence.

To state the obvious, there are a LOT of places where this plan could still fall apart. The first and most crucial test is whether Hamas will release the 48 hostages (only 20 of whom are believed to still be alive) and whether that will happen on Monday, as is currently contemplated. If so, Israel has a lot of prisoners that they have promised to release in return.

Now the question arises, who actually negotiated this agreement on behalf of the United States. The answer, it turns out, are Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and Bishara Bahbah. Kushner, some of you may remember, helped to negotiate the Abraham Accords during the first Trump Administration. Maybe the Nobel Committee should give him the peace prize next year. Boy, wouldn’t that take Trump over the edge?

But, to be fair, Trump did apparently make a phone call to Bibi Netanyahu telling him “this is the deal that you have to take.”

So, there is an argument to be made for Trump.

Of course, he’s not getting the prize this year, since this year’s prize has been awarded to María Corina Machado, a Venezuelan opposition leader and activist.

On the other hand, there are many arguments to be made for why Trump should never get the Nobel Peace Prize.

• The first and most obvious argument is his descent into fascism. 
• Then there is his lawlessness. 
• There is his refusal to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election. 
• There is his weaponization of the Justice Department.
• There is his destruction of boats in international waters without any evidence that they are “Tren de Aragua”
• There is his holding of immigrants in concentration camps like “Alligator Alcatraz” in violation of habeas corpus.
• There is his unilateral withdrawal from international agreements, such as the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Human Rights Council, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the Global Compact on Migration, and a number of others.

I’m really just scratching the surface here, and honestly, I don’t have the time or inclination to list all of the reasons that Trump should never get a Nobel prize. It doesn’t really matter, in any case, because the Norwegians hate Trump, and they are never going to give it to him regardless of what else he does.

It’s also pretty well known that Trump only wants the prize because Obama got the prize. He doesn’t care about peace in Palestine. He likes Netanyahu, but he doesn’t care about the Israelis. Just like he doesn’t care about his own voters, who are about to (or already have) get screwed on health care and farm subsidies and tariffs on consumer products.

As for the Nobel, Obama himself has conceded that he didn’t really deserve the prize. He mostly got it for “presidenting” while being black. Formally, Obama got the prize for promoting nuclear disarmament, diplomatic engagement, promoting multilateralism, climate change leadership, and his work on human rights and democracy. That’s not nothing, but again, it’s not the kind of thing that would normally get you the prize.

It’s a moot point, because Trump isn’t getting the prize. Not now, not ever. All I’m saying is, in the interests of objectivity, there is an argument to be made for giving him the prize.

For this latest shutdown you can thank Newt Gingrich.

He was the guy who invented the “who will blink first” game of chicken back in 1995 in the pair of shutdowns against Bill Clinton. That’s when Gingrich wanted significant cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, education, environmental protection, and other social spending along with tax cuts — where have you heard that before? — and triggered a five day shutdown in November and a 21 day shutdown in December to get his way.

That shutdown ended with Gingrich backing down after the media portrayed the Republicans as at fault for the shutdown and Gingrich (in particular) as petulant, with Gingrich having complained publicly complained about being snubbed on Air Force One by Clinton during a trip to Israel for Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral.

But the switch had been set.

Before that there had been the occasional one or two day “shutdown” at the end of budget cycles where the Congress and the President hadn’t finished dotting their I’s and crossing their T’s before a new budget came into effect. But those never caused major disruptions to the functioning of the United States government and never caused people to be furloughed.

It may also be of interest that these kinds of shutdowns never seem to happen in parliamentary governments around the world, where failing to agree on a new budget just causes the old budget to roll over until a new budget is enacted.

Only in America do these disputes lead to shutdowns. 

Only in America.

Trump, of course, procured the all-time record for shutdowns in his first administration, a 35 day imbroglio with Congressional Democrats over “border wall” funding, DACA, immigration caps and budget caps.

Trump, Mr. Art of the Deal, eventually backed down on that one. 

Will the GOP back down this time again?

I guess we’ll see. 

They, of course, are claiming that the Democrats are trying to “give health care to illegals.”

You would think that at some point just lying straight through your teeth would come back to bite you. Hasn’t happened yet.

What the Democrats want is (1) extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies, (2) reversing cuts to Medicaid made in the “Big Beautiful Bill,” and (3) restoring recissions for previously scheduled funding that the Trump administration unilaterally took out of federal funding (and the Republicans then rubber-stamped).

In other words, they don’t want health insurance to become more expensive for the average American.

Why Republicans want to burden their voters with more expensive health insurance (again, just like in the earlier Gingrich-Clinton dispute), remains a mystery to me.

But J.D. Vance and Republican leadership are out there claiming Democrats want to give healthcare to “illegals” even though they know perfectly well that the undocumented are not entitled to Medicaid, or ACA subsidies, or any other federally-sponsored health care funding.

(Not to get too technical, but in Massachusetts and other states there is something known as the Uncompensated Care Fund, which pays back hospitals when people without insurance walk into their emergency room and receive care that hospitals are federally mandated to provide. Before the enactment of the ACA this was a much larger problem because people with non-emergencies would walk into an emergency room to get some kind of routine medical care, and yes, that sometimes included the undocumented.)

Democratic leadership was roundly criticized by their own voters for backing down to Trump and the Republicans the last time that the federal budget was about to expire. They are well motivated not to let that happen again.

On September 22, in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Trump filed an executive order intended to designate Antifa as a “domestic terrorist organization.” Like so many of Trump’s other executive orders, this one is likely to be ineffective because there is no identified organization, leadership or membership to apply it to. In fact, if you look at the text of Trump’s anti-Antifa executive order there is no specific person or recognized organization mentioned in the text.

As our dear Leader and beloved President and his many acolytes toss adjectives around that they don’t understand, it may be time to distinguish between various of these terms, just so that our right wing friends can get a few modest guideposts to what these things actually mean.

To establish some modest bona fides, I should mention that I did actually study Marxian economics in 1976-80 at the University of Massachusetts, back when UMass was one of the three universities in the country where one could actually study Marxian anything. At the time UMass had inherited distinguished faculty from Harvard University, where they had not received tenure. It ended up being our blessing.

Also, I should also point out that there is no “radical” left wing in the United States. That pretty much went out of fashion with the death of Eugene Debs in 1926 and the subsequent demise of the Communist Party during the Second World War. 

About as radical as it gets in the United States these days is Bernie Sanders — still hugely popular among the masses — is a “Democratic Socialist” who believes in European style social democracies, such as Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and mostly the other Nordic states. And maybe New Zealand. Those are hardly “radical” states by any historic definition.

So what do these terms actually mean?

Communism is a political and economic ideology advocating for a classless society in which the means of production (factories, land, resources) are collectively owned, and wealth is distributed based on need. Although the idea existed before him, it was most fully articulated by Karl Marx, who based his economic theories on the Labor Theory of Value, or the idea that what makes things valuable is the labor that someone was willing to put into it. (Capitalist systems are generally based on the Utilitarian or Subjective Theory of Value, where things have value based only on what people are willing to pay for it.) 

Socialism is a softer version of communism, and in Marx’s system, a “transitional” phase between capitalism and communism. It is an economic and political system where the means of production are owned or regulated by the community (often through the state) to ensure more equality in wealth and opportunity. Private property and markets are permitted, but the system emphasizes redistribution and public control of essential industries. The former Yugoslavia might be the best example of a functioning socialist state, a planned economy with a vibrant free market.

Marxism is mostly the economic and political theory developed by Karl Marx. Communism and socialism existed before Marx, but (like Freud in psychology), Marx really articulated the modern formulation. His seminal work is Das Kapital, which is really about the exploitation of labor and working class conditions in London. He analyzes history as a struggle between classes, especially the bourgeoisie (owners of capital) and the proletariat (working class). It is more of an economic and philosophical framework, and not a blueprint for how modern states should actually function.

Leninism, on the other hand, is a political ideology trying to apply Marxist ideas in turn-of-the-century Russia. (Marx really expected his ideas to take hold in modern capitalist societies, and not a predominantly agrarian and semi-feudal economy with limited industrial development.) Established by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Leninism advocates for a vanguard party of professional revolutionaries to lead the working class in overthrowing capitalism. The state must act as a “dictatorship of the proletariat” after revolution to suppress counter-revolution and build socialism. (Of course, in actuality a dictatorship of the proletariat really just ends up being a dictatorship, plain and simple, which is one of the hard-won lessons of the 20th Century.)

Fascism is less of a political philosophy than a designation for a type of authoritarian state. It is generally a far-right, authoritarian ultranationalist state that rejects democracy, equality, and individual rights in favor of a strong centralized state, led by a dictator. The prototypes for fascism are Mussolini (who invented the term), Hitler, and Franco. The advantages of fascism are primarily a certain kind of efficiency, such as in Italy under Mussolini when “the trains ran on time.” Fascism is often good for businesses and corporations, where there are few limits or regulations on what businesses can do, and bad for everyone else. Also, fascism almost always leads to war, at least to civil war. It can be distinguished from Monarchism primarily in that monarchs are hereditary, and that monarchs can occasionally be “enlightened” and actually make daily life better for their own people.

Anti-fascism is simply the opposition to fascism. It is not an administrative “system” for how to run a state and is not correlated with socialism or communism (although sometimes people believe in both). During the lead-up to World War II there were many individuals who were passionately anti-fascist, but it has never been a structured movement, especially in the United States. Antifa, in the United States, has no leadership, no fundraising, and no designated membership. They have generally not engaged in political violence (mostly some property damage during the George Floyd protests), but are more likely to have individual activists show up to counter-protest events like the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville during Trump’s first term. 

And that’s about it, my friends. These are the terms that Trump and his acolytes so consistently misuse, and throw around as red herrings to try to make us all mad. Name-calling, pure and simple, is Trump’s stock in trade. And for many, many Americans, who don’t really understand what these terms mean, that will be enough.