March 28, 2026

Friday Talking Points -- Chaocracy

Maybe we need a new word for the way Donald Trump seems to be running the country: "chaocracy." Rule by chaos. The "Madman Theory" writ large. Nobody has any clue what's going to happen next, from Trump himself all the way down to average Americans and the rest of the world.

Of course, this has always been Donald Trump's modus operandi to some extent, but it is much more apparent now that we're in what seems to be a prolonged war. Trump is now attempting a feint in this war, but nobody's really sure what is the feint and what will become reality in the next few weeks. Trump himself probably doesn't know, at this point.

On the one hand, Trump seems increasingly desperate to strike some kind of deal with Iran that would end the conflict and open the Strait of Hormuz. But on the other hand, he's moving thousands of U.S. soldiers to the region -- and in the past, whenever he's created a big buildup of military resources, he has wound up using them. So which is it going to be? An offramp that provides a path to eventual peace (or at least "stability" ), or a ground invasion of Iran by U.S. Marines and paratroopers? Nobody knows, because the chaocrat-in-chief could go either way depending on which side of the bed he got out of that morning.

His spokespeople are tying themselves in knots trying to make the case to the American public that all is well, of course Trump knows what he is doing, and everything is going to be fine. Often this leads to language that can only be properly described as "Orwellian." Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was interviewed on a Sunday-morning show and he was asked about Trump's conflicting messages on the war (whether it was almost over or about to ramp up in a big way). Here was his response: "Sometimes you have to escalate to de-escalate." Um, sure... yeah, that clears everything up!

In other Orwellian news, rather than presenting Donald Trump with a daily detailed intelligence briefing on the war, his aides have reportedly just been putting together a two-minute video full of clips showing things in Iran being blown up. Trump's not a "get into the details" kind of guy, but even so, the image of him watching such a thing every day is rather galling. You can picture his reactions: "Boom! Whoosh! Blam! This is so cool...." Perhaps the White House should start releasing these video montages to the public? There's even a great name for them, taken straight from Nineteen Eighty-Four: the "Two Minutes' Hate."

The way things are going, you have to wonder whether Team Trump is about to change the name of the Pentagon again, this time to the "Department of War Is Peace," perhaps? Wouldn't be too surprising, at this point.

Here's how one columnist summed up all this chaos:

Here is another very similar take on the situation:



Chaocracy. Plain and simple.

The pressures on Trump are increasing from all sides, it now seems. This could be one reason for the manic rollercoaster week we've just had, as competing forces yank Trump in different directions. Last weekend, Trump issued an ultimatum to Iran: open the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, or Trump would bomb all their power plants. But before the deadline was reached, Trump flip-flopped by announcing that he was holding "very strong" talks with the Iranians, and that they were going so well that he would postpone his deadline another five days. Later in the week, he extended this for another 10 days.

Iran's reaction was astonishment: "Talks? What talks? We're not talking to Donald Trump at all... there are no negotiations taking place." This sounded pretty believable, considering the fact that Trump has not hesitated to just flat-out lie about multiple aspects of this war. Trump insisted that talks were taking place, and that Iran was pretty close to agreeing to terms.

The reality emerged after a few days of this chaos, and seemed to be that the U.S. and Iran had been passing notes back and forth by using Pakistan as an intermediary. America proposed a 15-point plan to end the war, which Iran rejected out of hand. Iran's basic position hasn't changed from the position they've held for decades, which isn't really too surprising. No actual talks or direct negotiations are taking place at all.

For Trump and America, this is a war of attrition, in multiple ways. First there is the military sense of the term. Perhaps Trump's newfound eagerness to end the war stems from the reporting that Israel is reportedly running out of interceptors? They used up a great number of them last year, when Israel and the U.S. bombed Iran's nuclear facilities, and they've been using them up at a frantic pace since the current war began four weeks ago. So far there haven't been any direct reports that America is also running low on interceptors, but apparently we are informing our NATO allies that we won't be able to resupply all those missiles that have been going to Ukraine, which is a worrisome development (especially for the Ukrainians, obviously). Today it was reported that we've fired off over 850 Tomahawk missiles in only four weeks' time, which has drawn down our own military stockpile.

There's an imbalance here, because precision high-tech missiles -- whether offensive ones such as Tomahawks or defensive interceptor missiles -- are very expensive and take a long time to make. But drones and basic ballistic missiles are a lot easier and cheaper to build. So if Iran has enough of them to launch, they can effectively cause us to use up an enormous amount of very expensive weapons without having to spend much themselves. And those very expensive high-tech weapons can't be replaced in the numbers that are being used in this war. Meaning this part of the war of attrition might be influencing Trump's new push to strike a deal with Iran.

You can use that phrase in other contexts, as well. The longer oil and gasoline prices remain sky-high, the more political support Trump loses, both at home and abroad. He's already taken the extraordinary step of waiving sanctions on oil from Russia and Iran -- two countries that we are either in a direct war with or a proxy war -- which brought a windfall pile of money to both countries. This, not to put too fine a point on it, is not normal, because it is actually helping our enemies out during a war.

Gas prices are currently scraping four dollars a gallon here at home (that's a nationwide average -- it has gone over that milestone in many states already), which is already not only causing economic pain to American drivers but is also having ripple effects across all other sectors of the economy as well. Mortgage rates are way up. Prices are either going up or about to go up on all kinds of things, due to diesel fuel prices spiking even higher than gasoline prices. This is going to lead to a big increase in inflation across the board. All of this could get a lot worse, if Trump does decide to send in the ground troops (which would almost certainly lead to an even bigger spike in the worldwide price of oil).

We're even at the point where Republicans in Congress are getting nervous about the chaotic way Trump has been waging this war. The Pentagon has given Congress closed-door classified briefings -- but without actually answering any important questions or laying out a coherent war plan (much less an exit strategy). Democrats have been pointing this out since the war began, but now it's causing some worry among Republicans as well:



Here's some more of what Rogers had to say:



All of this chaos is having a big effect on Trump's domestic support as well. His polling has taken a nose dive since the war began, and he is now roughly 16 points underwater. His approval ratings hover around 40 percent (lower, in some polls), while his disapproval ratings are rising to the high 50s (and even 60 percent or more, in some polls).

And he keeps right on shooting himself in the foot. When asked about the rising price of gasoline and the stock market taking a big dive as a result of his war, this week Trump responded: "It didn't matter to me." Which is about as far away from "I feel your pain" as you can get, obviously. Prices going up? Trump does not care. The message is simple, and it is likely exacerbating his falling poll numbers.

There was one other big bit of political news this week, as a last-minute deal to fund the Transportation Security Administration seems to have fallen apart. All week long, Senate Democrats and Republicans have been going back and forth over a bill which would fund almost everything at the Department of Homeland Security (including the T.S.A.), and after all their wrangling Republicans agreed to a plan that Democrats had proposed many weeks ago. It would fund everything at D.H.S. except for ICE and the Border Patrol, but it would leave out the basic Democratic demands over changes to those two agencies (which spurred the partial government shutdown in the first place). Earlier in the week, Republicans had floated a plan which would have funded some of ICE with some of the Democratic demands met, but the Democrats balked at this. In any case, since Congress is about to go on a two-week vacation, late last night the deal was struck. A vote was held at 2:30 in the morning, and the bill passed. All the senators then patted themselves on the back and today flew back home to start their vacation.

Today, however, the House rejected the Senate plan. Maybe they were just annoyed that the Senate used the same tactic that Speaker Mike Johnson has been fond of using (passing something right before everyone scarpers off on vacation, and essentially telling the other house: "Take it or leave it" ). In any case, they proposed their own funding bill which would kick the can down the road for two months, but this bill is dead on arrival in the Senate (or it would be, if they were still in town). The pressure is on Johnson now, because the Senate bill would likely pass if it was brought onto the floor (because many House Democrats would support it). So he's got to decide whether to hold the House back from their vacation plans to do so, or whether he's going to let the whole thing go nowhere for two weeks.

In the midst of all this legislative chaos, Donald Trump signed an executive order that will allow the D.H.S. to see that all the T.S.A. agents start to get paid again. So many of them have called in sick or just quit altogether that it led to huge lines at some airports (not all -- it was never as widespread as the news made it sound, but it was bad enough in some big hub airports). The media's spotlighting of all of this is what lit a fire under everybody to act, it bears mentioning. Trump's first chaotic move, earlier this week, came after he was made aware of a phone call from "Linda from Arizona" to some MAGA show, where she suggested moving ICE agents to the airports to do all the T.S.A. workers' jobs. Trump eagerly (and chaotically) championed this move (while claiming it was his idea and his alone -- sorry, Linda from Arizona...) and by Monday ICE agents were walking around various airports, in full battle gear (for some reason). Trump also mused about maybe sending National Guard troops to help as well, but thankfully he never issued that order.

This didn't exactly help all that much, since as some media reports showed, all they really were doing was walking around the airports, without actually helping out the T.S.A. at all. This was likely due to the seat-of-the-pants way the whole policy was implemented. And, as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pointed out, the ICE agents were not wearing their masks -- proving that yes, they can indeed appear unmasked in public without the sky falling.

But due to Trump's new executive order, starting next week T.S.A. agents will get paid even if Congress doesn't reach a funding deal. This could lower the pressure on Congress to actually get something done, but we'll have to wait and see. Hopefully it will bring relief to all the T.S.A. agents' families, at the very least (who haven't seen a paycheck in over a month).

This all happened in just one week, mind you. And these are just the two biggest political stories out there. There's plenty of other things going on in the world of politics, many of them equally as chaotic as the big two, but this article is long enough already, so we're just going to ignore them for now.





This is an easy one, this week. Our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week is Emily Gregory, who just won an upset victory in a special election race for a district in the Florida legislature. But it's not just any district she won:



Democrats were (understandably) gleeful at this upset win. Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee said: "Donald Trump's own neighbors just sent a crystal-clear message: They are furious and ready for change." Heather Williams, the president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee was even more pointed in her reaction: "Mar-a-Lago just flipped red to blue, which should have Republicans sweating the midterms. If Mar-a-Lago is vulnerable, imagine what's possible this November."

Both Gregory and another Democrat who flipped a different seat in the same election put together a winning margin by not only turning out Democrats to vote, but by getting lots of independent and even Republican voters to support them as well. And it all boils down to a focus on the economy, as it has in so many other races Democrats have been winning:



Gregory's win continues a remarkable streak for Democrats. Since Donald Trump got elected, they have flipped 30 races nationwide (at various levels of government). To date, the Republicans have flipped zero such districts. This bodes well for November, folks.

For continuing this streak -- but mostly just for who lives in her district -- Emily Gregory is easily the winner of this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week.

[Since this was a special election, she has already been sworn in and you can congratulate Florida Representative Emily Gregory on her new Florida House contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]





Sadly, this one is also easy this week. A House Democrat is now in danger of being expelled from the chamber, as the House Ethics Committee has now made its judgment. Here's the basic story:



The Committee hasn't made a determination on what it is going to recommend the rest of the House do yet. They have a range of options:



We've already seen the House expel a member recently (George Santos), even though this is incredibly rare (Santos was only the sixth member to ever get chucked out). But even if the committee does recommend expulsion, this would require a two-thirds vote to accomplish. That means a whole bunch of Democrats would have to vote to expel Cherfilus-McCormick. And it would also give Republicans more breathing room on their razor-thin margin, until a special election could be held to replace her.

So far, Cherfilus-McCormick is insisting on her innocence and is not going to resign her seat. But the news of the Ethics Committee's decision today easily made her the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week. Democrats will now have to decide whether they take their professed anti-corruption stance seriously, or whether they will allow Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick to continue to serve (for purely partisan reasons).

[Contact Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick on her House contact page, to let her know what you think of her actions.]




Volume 834 (3/27/26)

It was a week jam-packed with possible talking points -- so many, in fact, that we had a tough time choosing. So we thought we'd provide a list of those that didn't make the cut, as a sort of "build your own talking point" exercise for the reader.

Let's see, we already mentioned the "Two Minutes' Hate" videos (and all the other Orwellian nonsense coming from the administration, like that "Sometimes you have to escalate to de-escalate" comment, for instance).

Then there was a bit of hilarity from the podium of the White House briefing room, when the press secretary was asked what people can believe about the war when they are getting such mixed and contradictory messages. She responded with one of the funniest whoppers any Trump spokesperson has ever come up with: "Look, if you've heard it from the president of the United States, obviously it's true." Maybe she's trying her hand at stand-up comedy? It's hard to tell....

What else... Trump voted in that Florida special election the way he always does: by mail. Seems it's good enough for him, he just wants to prevent any Democrats from using the same system.

The Department of Justice admitted in court that it actually has no evidence that the Fed chair has committed a crime, they're just on a partisan witch hunt and want the judge to let them keep fishing.

And finally, someone had some fun hacking Google's database, which caused reporters calling in to the White House switchboard to see on their phones' screens that they were calling "Epstein Island." Nice one!

As we mentioned, any or all of those could have made good talking points, but here is the list we finally settled on:



Chaocracy

We will admit we're not great at launching internet memes, but that never stopped us from trying!

"This is government-by-chaos, folks. Donald Trump has no idea what he's doing, he changes his mind on a whim, and even his closest advisors have no clue whether he's about to escalate his war in Iran with American boots on the ground or whether he's really desperate to end the whole thing. It's pure chaos. We'd do better to turn the whole war over to a Magic 8 Ball than what we've got now. Even that would be better than the chaocracy we've got now."



No end in sight

The longer this goes on, the worse it is for Trump. So don't be shy -- point it out!

"Gas prices are through the roof, with no end in sight. Prices for diesel are even worse. Prices for fertilizer are skyrocketing too -- right as farmers need to do their spring planting. This is all going to mean higher prices for everything in the coming months. Donald Trump's War is being paid for by the American consumer, and he does not care -- he has explicitly said so, several times. We're already paying a premium at the gas pumps, and we'll soon be paying a premium to fly on an airplane, to buy food, or to buy anything that moves anywhere by truck -- which is almost everything. And there is no end in sight. Trump has no exit plan, period. And we're the ones paying the price for that."



A check on Trump

The affordability argument is indeed going to be a strong one, all through the midterm campaign season, but there's another argument to make to voters as well.

"Donald Trump needs a check on his chaotic impulses. The Republican-led Congress is quite obviously not up to this task. The only way Trump is going to get any sort of check on any of his bad and dangerous ideas is if Democrats win Congress back this November. So when you go to vote, think to yourself: do I want another two years of unchecked chaos, or do I want someone to put the brakes on the worst of it? And then vote for the Democrat, because that's the only way this is going to change."



Participation trophy

More Orwellian stuff, as the Dear Leader just can't get enough of it.

"Did you see that the Republicans in Congress created yet another fake award to give to Donald Trump? Mike Johnson announced Trump had won the first-ever 'America First Award,' which was a little statue of a golden eagle. And Jen Psaki on MS NOW nailed it, saying in response: 'Little Mike Johnson and all those Republicans have just created yet another participation trophy to give to their very special boy in the White House to make sure he feels good about himself.' She's right -- remember when conservatives mocked fake awards like this for children? Now it seems they've decided their toddler-in-chief needs as many of them as they can dream up. How pathetic is that?"



Paying the enemy

Even some Republicans are having problems with this one (as they should):

"Donald Trump has come up with a novel way to fight a war. He's decided that we should just hand the enemy we are fighting a whole ton of money. Yeah, you read that correctly -- Trump's big idea was to just start paying the enemy. He waived oil sanctions on Iranian oil, which meant that they could sell it freely on the world market and make a lot more money for it than they otherwise would have. This is insane! He likes to throw around the word 'treason' when he talks about his political opponents, but how does 'aiding and abetting America's enemy in an active war' not qualify? Just imagine for one tiny second what Republicans would have said if a Democratic president had done such a thing."



Too, too funny

Speaking of the enemy, Iran has been doing some world-class Trump-trolling of late.

"Iranian leaders are now just openly mocking Trump. A spokesman for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps released a video where he used both the phrases: 'Hey Trump -- you are fired!' as well as: 'Thank you for your attention to this matter.' Earlier in the week, when Trump blustered about holding negotiations with the Iranians, the speaker of Iran's parliament reacted with some more mockery: 'Fake news is used to manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the U.S. and Israel are trapped.' They certainly do know exactly what to say to get under Trump's skin, don't they?"



What this money could be doing

To give credit where it is due, these all came from an article Nicholas Kristof wrote for the New York Times that points out the many, many things we could be doing with the money we are paying for Trump's War (which Kristof figures is costing us $1.3 million per minute). The whole article is worth reading, but here is a three-for-one talking point from it (because we just couldn't narrow it down to just one), for Democrats to make the case that this money could have been better spent (emphasis in original):






Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

March 21, 2026

Friday Talking Points -- Promises Made, Promises Broken

Donald Trump seems to be determined to break as many campaign promises as he possibly can, in the shortest period of time possible. Conveniently (for Democrats), he is doing all of this right at the start of the midterm campaign season, as the first states conduct their primaries. This seems like a rather spectacular way to commit political suicide, but then again Trump is a master at avoiding consequences, so who really knows how it will all play out?

Here we are at the end of Week Three of Trump's War, with no end in sight. Remember him campaigning on avoiding foreign wars? Well, all of that has gone right out the window. In the midst of all of this, Trump was downright astonished that learn that NATO actually can be useful to the United States (who knew?), but due to his naked belligerence towards them (complete with threats to take over Greenland and Canada, playground insults, and other assorted instances of boorishness and contempt), they are not exactly leaping into action to help Trump out. It's hard to blame them for this, but it certainly is amusing to see Trump flip-flopping from threatening NATO countries to insisting (in that petulant way only a butt-hurt 6-year-old can manage) that he really doesn't need their help at all, dammit!

Our weekly review: last Friday, the average national price of gasoline in America was $3.65 per gallon. Today, it hit $3.92. Of that total, a full 98 cents of it (at the very minimum) is due to Trump's war. The lowest price this year (back in mid-January) was $2.75, which means Trump's War is actually responsible for a rise of $1.17 (since prices began rising when the world realized that this time Trump wasn't just bluffing about attacking Iran). And prices show no signs of levelling off any time soon, so we should all expect gas to be well over four bucks a gallon by early next week (at the latest).

Remember when Trump campaigned on bringing prices down? He singled out gas prices specifically during his campaign, promising that he'd somehow magically reduce the price of gas by a whopping 50 percent during his first year in office. He didn't come anywhere close to keeping this promise -- gas would have had to have been down to $1.55 per gallon at the end of January for this to have been true. But now he is directly responsible for the price going through the roof due to his war of choice in the Middle East. Promises made, promises broken!

One rather chilling aspect to all of this is that Trump (being Trump) just keeps right on lying through his teeth, even though we are now at war. Anything about the war that he doesn't like, he either pretends didn't happen or that someone else is responsible. Dead Iranian schoolgirls? Iran must have bombed the school, not us. Israel bombed a natural gas field and Iran retaliated against Qatar? Well we didn't know anything about such plans! The media, astonishingly, refuses to press Trump on these lies -- no matter how blatant and easily-disprovable they are -- even though we are at war.

Trump, as usual, is trying to have as much fun as he can, with absolutely no regard for how sane and decent people see things. The White House keeps putting out propaganda videos (there is really no other term for them) with clips from movies and video games and football interspersed with real-life scenes of bombings, as if it is all some sort of game to delight prepubescent boys. Both the media and the Republican Party are mum, even though if a Democrat ever did anything even remotely as disgraceful and disgusting, they'd be losing their collective minds.

As for Trump's attitude towards the economic pain his war (which he bafflingly keeps calling "an excursion" ) is causing Americans here at home, it is pretty dismissive. No "I feel your pain" moments will be forthcoming, obviously, since admitting that such pain exists means admitting Trump caused it. So Trump's answer to high gas prices is: "They'll come down real soon after the war's over, trust me!" and that's it. Both Trump and his advisors aren't even shy about brushing off high prices at the pump, either. The amount of disdain they are showing is just jaw-dropping. Here's Kevin Hassett, Trump's top economic advisor, being interviewed on CNBC this week:

Got that? As you stand in front of the gas pump watching the numbers fly upwards, you can rest assured that all of it is "the last of concerns" for Donald Trump. As we said, this is not exactly: "I feel your pain." It is more like: "Pain? You're feeling pain? Well, that's just too freakin' bad for you, because we simply don't care at all."

It almost seems like Trump is trying to commit political suicide.

Now Trump and his minions are left floundering around, grasping at straws, in a belated effort to do something to stop the price of oil from skyrocketing. Most of what they have tried hasn't had any effect at all. So they've now latched onto the rather novel idea: "Hey, maybe if we helped fund our enemies, that might help?" Sanctions on Russian oil were unceremoniously dropped, and now they're considering dropping sanctions on Iran as well -- even though we are now at war with them. This is beyond incompetence, this is downright insanity, but that doesn't seem to faze them at all. Here's how one expert described this new concept:



Trump and his macho cheerleader Pete Hegseth quite obviously are in [iway over their depth]. With no "adults in the room" to tell Trump "No," he has been blundering into making mistakes that any rational analyst could have easily predicted before the fact. A few reportedly even did -- Trump was warned by a top military general about the danger of Iran shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, but Trump decided (on gut feeling alone) that they wouldn't do so -- they'd just roll over and allow us to bomb them without launching any retaliation at all. Also, there used to be a whole bunch of experts -- at the State Department and elsewhere in the executive branch -- who had the job of "gaming out possible scenarios if the Strait of Hormuz was closed." So why didn't they warn Trump beforehand? Well, because Elon Musk fired them all. NOTUS revealed this in a shocking (but not too surprising) report that really should have gotten more media attention this week:



Even Trump's loyalists in the intelligence services were forced to admit that Trump's justifications for launching his war were beyond farfetched, while testifying before Congress this week. Nope, Iran wasn't on the brink of making a nuclear bomb, and nope, they also weren't on the brink of building an intercontinental ballistic missile that could have reached the United States. The most Tulsi Gabbard would say was that Iran might "begin to develop" an I.C.B.M. "before 2035." That doesn't exactly sound "imminent," does it?

Another footnote in this clown parade of incompetence: Trump pulled out all the minesweepers America had positioned in the region and shipped them all back to Philadelphia in January, right before Trump decided to launch his war of choice. And now he's whining about European countries not sending their own minesweeping ships? No wonder they are all laughing at his requests -- after we sent home our entire minesweeping fleet just before the war started!

This was all too much for one member of Team Trump, who resigned this week in disgust. Joe Kent was, up until this week, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, and was a dyed-in-the-wool MAGA conspiracy theorist. He's no paragon of virtue (or sanity), in other words. But he reached his breaking point and publicly posted his resignation letter online, which was absolutely scathing in its denunciation of Trump's War:



Meanwhile, Trump's head of the Federal Communications Commission has decided to go full-on Orwellian, threatening broadcast television networks with the loss of broadcast licenses if they don't start to provide sunny, cheerleading news reporting on Trump's war. So much for the First Amendment's guarantee of the freedom of the press, eh?

We're only three weeks into Trump's War. But there still is no end in sight, and the gas prices just keep going up. Trump doesn't care about public opinion and he doesn't care that millions of his own voters are now feeling the pain from his war of choice. We can only hope that they remember all of this come November, personally.





Illinois held their primary election this week, and the results were sort of a mixed bag. Some progressives won, some lost. Some establishment candidates won, some lost. Some pro-Israel candidate won, some lost. It wasn't really an across-the-board victory for any particular faction, truth be told. But there was one race that was more interesting than some of the others, because of who did lose there -- not a candidate, but a special interest group.

Here's the basic story:



Long story short: it worked. Biss won. Afterwards, he summed his victory up, saying: "The candidate [AIPAC] spent the most money attacking is me, and I won. The district they spent the most money in is this, and they lost. And they lost because the voters knew who was spending the money and why. I think there's a really important message in that, that the whole country should hear."

Now, allow us to be clear. We are not against special interest groups trying to influence elections by spending money. We are not even anti-AIPAC, per se. But what we find pernicious is the tactics they have been using in multiple Democratic primary races.

AIPAC doesn't directly run ads on their main issue, which is supporting both Israel and the Netanyahu government without any reservations or qualifications. Israel isn't even mentioned in most of their ads (if not all of them). In fact, AIPAC doesn't even admit that it is spending money on the race. They use a loophole in campaign finance law to do so, by creating new super PACs out of thin air so late in the election cycle that by the time the proper paperwork has been filed to show who is footing the bill, the election's already over. That is intentionally deceitful.

In the Illinois race, they created the groups "Elect Chicago Women" and the "Chicago Progressive Partnership" to attack the candidates they didn't want to win (both Biss and Kat Abughazaleh, who is much more critical of Israel than Biss).

Then, when the polls close and the votes are counted, AIPAC comes out and admits that it was indeed them who paid for all those ads.

We find we have to agree with Biss, who said of AIPAC: "They're putting in all this money because they want to buy the seat for someone who's going to offer a blank check of military aid for Israel. And they're hiding it because they know that you won't like that if you hear it."

Here is how we feel (in general) about such tactics: if you want to advocate for a cause in a primary (or general) election, then go right ahead and do so. But do so openly -- without using campaign finance loopholes to hide your identity, and without completely avoiding the issue you are advocating for or against. Doing otherwise is not honest. Which is why we were glad to see Biss win. It is also why -- for so effectively pointing out the sneakiness involved -- we are awarding him this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award.

[Daniel Biss is still currently a candidate for office, and it is our blanket policy not to link to campaign websites, so you'll have to search his contact information out yourselves if you want to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





He was much more of a Labor leader than a Democrat, but he did campaign for Robert Kennedy when he ran for president, so we decided that was close enough for the purposes of this award.

César Chávez was, up until this week, a revered figure in California and much of the rest of the country. California made his birthday a state holiday, which was also recognized by the federal government. He won a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work organizing farmworkers into Unions. Countless things were named after him in the state and elsewhere.

All of that came crashing down this week, with an exposé in the New York Times that revealed accusations that Chávez groomed and then sexually molested at least two underage girls back in the 1970s:



After the news broke, Dolores Huerta -- who worked closely with Chávez and was considered his equal in the farmworker Labor movement -- revealed that not only had Chávez raped her too, but that she had had two children as a result:



All of these revelations have created a frenzy both in California and elsewhere to remove his name from all sorts of things (streets, parks, monuments, etc.) and to hastily repackage the holiday set aside to honor Chávez. Which is all a very appropriate response, to such horrific allegations.

The word "disappointed" falls far short of the way we feel about Chávez now, but it's all we've got, so we are hereby posthumously awarding this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week to César Chávez.

[Since he is deceased, no contact information is possible for César Chávez.]




Volume 833 (3/20/26)

Another mixed batch this week. And we didn't know where else to put it, but if you need a laugh (and who doesn't, these days?) you should go check out all the Trump effigies that were created -- and later burnt -- for a festival in Spain this week. Maybe some town in America needs to start up such a festival here? Just an idea....



Who voted for this war?

Promises made, promises broken.

"I'd like to know -- who voted for this war? I'd really like to ask all the Trump voters one question: Did you vote for this? Did you? Didn't Trump promise to avoid unnecessary foreign wars -- especially in the Middle East? Don't you remember him campaigning on that? So why is he now doing exactly what he promised he wouldn't do? I don't know about you, but I didn't hear one Trump voter last year proudly stating that they had voted for Trump 'because I want to see him start a war with Iran.' So who, exactly, voted for this war?"



Maybe don't fire all the experts?

Seems obvious, doesn't it?

"Donald Trump lives in fear of people who are smarter than he is -- which is a whole lot of people, by the way. He trusts his gut rather than pointy-headed experts, in all things. But maybe gut feelings aren't the best thing to rely on when fighting a war? Maybe you should listen to people who have actual military experience, when they warn you what the enemy is almost certain to do? Or I dunno, maybe don't fire all the experts who know about how the oil business works in the Middle East? Because from what we've seen so far, 'Trump's gut feeling' leaves a whole lot to be desired in a war plan."



Who voted for $4 a gallon?

Another good question to ask.

"Who voted to see gas prices climb above four bucks a gallon? Anyone? Because for the life of me I don't think anybody voted for that, unless you maybe count oil company executives or something. Trump promised he'd slash the price of gas by half in his first year in office. Instead, he started a war that has hiked the price through the roof. When asked when these prices can be expected to come down, he has no answer. He wants everyone to pay outrageous prices at the pump and just not notice them at all or something. It's just another one of Trump's campaign promises that he lied about, folks. I mean, really -- who voted for this?!?"



Your concern is underwhelming

This quote should be carried on a little piece of paper by every Democrat being interviewed any time in the near future, because of the striking callousness of it.

"You know, when Trump's top economic advisor was asked about the skyrocketing price of gas, he actually said the quiet part out loud. After first telling everyone that sky-high gas prices -- even if the war went on for a long time -- quote: 'wouldn't really disrupt the U.S. economy very much at all,' he then did admit that: 'It would hurt consumers,' before revealing how little that meant to either him or his boss Donald Trump, saying: 'that's like, really the last of our concerns right now.' So there you have it folks -- the pain at the pump is the last of Trump's concerns right now. He's telling you plain and simple that he just doesn't care about you at all. He doesn't feel your pain -- he caused your pain. And he just doesn't care."



Tell it like it is, Rep. Ryan

It's always amusing to see the comeuppance of a bully. And with Europe, Trump's chickens came home to roost in a big way this week. It was pathetic watching him first beg for NATO's help and then throw a tantrum when they refused to give it (for many good reasons other than Trump's insults, to boot). But the best commentary on the whole situation came from Representative Pat Ryan, a Democrat from New York. When asked about Europe's reluctance to bail Trump out, he responded incredulously:





If I ran China...

It's kind of surprising that so few people have brought this up yet. It seems kind of obvious....

"You know what? If I ran China, I'd be thinking to myself: What better time could there ever be to invade Taiwan? Seriously -- the U.S. Navy has been sent from Asian waters to the Middle East, and they're reportedly already running low on all those high-tech interceptor missiles that can take down incoming enemy missiles. They can't quickly build any more of them, since China controls the rare earth minerals necessary (and the production lines couldn't handle it anyway). Donald Trump is mired in a war that he's not exactly winning, and Europe just laughs at him when he asks for their help. So what better time could there ever be to achieve one of China's longstanding objectives -- taking over Taiwan and kicking the U.S. out for good? It's a scary thought, you've got to admit."



Hail Trump!

Numismatists are horrified, and rightly so.

"First, it was the fact that the new dime minted for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence shows a U.S. eagle clutching a bundle of arrows -- but without an olive branch in his other talon. That was bad enough. And Trump's trying to get his own face on the dollar coin they mint to mark the occasion as well. But even that's not enough for Trump's planetary-sized ego. Because now Donald Trump wants the U.S. government to mint a solid-gold coin with his ugly face on it. Does he want to be emperor now, or what? Because it's usually monarchs that put gold coins out with their faces on them while they are still alive. This really doesn't matter to Trump, of course... he'd love it if everyone stood up and yelled out: 'Hail Trump!' every time he walked into a room."




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

March 14, 2026

Friday Talking Points -- Trump's War

After two weeks of war with Iran, gas prices in America have now reached a national average of $3.65 per gallon. That is 71 cents higher than they were before Donald Trump started this war, and 90 cents higher than the average was in mid-January. And prices continue to climb -- oil is now trading worldwide at over $100 per barrel.

Trump has no clue what to do about this. He even tried spinning it as a positive thing this week, posting on social media: "The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money." You'll note that the "we" in that sentence absolutely does not include the American public buying gasoline at the pump. "We" means giant oil companies, and they "make a lot of money" because American consumers have to pay a whole lot more to fill their tanks up.

It's hard to figure how Trump thought bragging about this would be seen as a good thing, but then his entire approach to this war has been chaotic and unserious from the start. It has also been full of "magical thinking," especially in terms of the expectations of how Iran would respond:

Senator Chris Murphy, after attending a briefing given by the White House, said he was shocked that they had no plan for reopening the Strait and did "not know how to get it safely back open."

Secretary Wright has admitted that the military is "simply not ready" to begin escorting tankers through the Strait, and vaguely talked about this happening maybe later this month. Trump also vaguely promises that this is going to happen... at some point. This all shows a severe lack of planning and seriousness about this war, to state the painfully obvious. And now there is news that Marines and amphibious assault ships are being sent to the region, which might portend American boots on the ground soon in Iran.

Trump is equally clueless about what to do about the high cost of oil. The White House is now going to allow sales of Russian oil to take place in a desperate effort to calm the markets, which means we will be helping them make money that they can spend on the battlefield in Ukraine (against our ally). Trump's answer to the sailors on the tankers was to just "show some guts" and attempt sailing through the Strait, even though Iran has been blowing ships up for even approaching it.

Pete Hegseth's macho bluster is wearing a bit thin already, two weeks into this ill-conceived war. He's now banned photographers from Pentagon briefings, because he was apparently not happy with some of the pictures of him. Meanwhile, Donald Trump attended a "solemn transfer ceremony" (where the bodies of dead American soldiers are brought back home) wearing a golf cap that is conveniently for sale (for $55) on his website. The White House is busily cranking out cringeworthy and juvenile war propaganda which mixes scenes of the actual war with video games, action movies, and football being played (which has unsurprisingly led to an outcry from the actors and football players portrayed in them). Even calling all of this "unserious" is an understatement. Imagine what Republicans would have said if a Democratic administration had done any of these things.

Trump has no clue when the war will end. His answer to this question ranges all over the map and often descends to the idiotic or ridiculous (case in point: today's answer from Trump was that the war would end "when I feel it in my bones" ). In fact, pretty much all of his statements about the war have been pretty idiotic and contradictory:



That last part shouldn't come as any sort of surprise to anyone. In Trump's first term he reportedly mused about lobbing a few missiles into Mexico to blow up drug cartel sites, and when it was pointed out to him that this would be an act of war, he suggested that we just flat-out deny that we had launched the missiles and try to blame someone else. Now he is doing precisely that:



Iran has no Tomahawks. They just don't. There is video of the bombing which clearly shows a Tomahawk hitting near the school. Iran displayed fragments of the missile which plainly show it was an American Tomahawk. And now even the Pentagon's own inquiry has come to the preliminary conclusion that yes, it was indeed us that blew up that school and all those children. Trump still has yet to even acknowledge the possibility that this might be true.

The only real open question at this point is how much artificial intelligence programs had to do with the targeting decision, versus actual human beings making such life-or-death calls. Which is a scary thought indeed.

Higher gas prices are not the only hit the economy is going to take from this adventurism. American farmers are already feeling the pinch when they try to buy fertilizer for their spring planting season. Much of the world's fertilizer is produced in the Gulf, which means supplies are just as bottled up as all those tankers full of oil. Diesel prices have skyrocketed even faster than gasoline prices, which also hits farmers (tractor fuel) and truckers hard.

Today, the news broke that the economic numbers put out last month had actually overstated the health of the American economy, and that growth in particular (for the last quarter of last year) was only half what they claimed it was (a reduction from 1.4 percent to only 0.7 percent). Inflation came in higher as well, with one benchmark up to 3.1 percent. And all of these numbers are for periods before the war started -- next month's numbers are going to be a lot worse. The spike in gas prices is going to cause a big spike in inflation -- the only real question is how high this spike will turn out to be.

Trump does not care about any of it. He has been notably lackadaisical when speaking of high gas prices, promising that they'll come down real soon after the war is over (without showing a shred of empathy for what people are currently paying at the pump), he does not care about inflation (which he continues to refuse even admitting exists anymore), he does not care about the problems farmers are facing, he does not care that he is helping Russia with their war plans, he won't even admit that the U.S. military launched a cruise missile to blow up Iranian schoolgirls, it will apparently take weeks and weeks for the military to even come up with a plan for escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, so in the meantime Trump thinks oil tanker crews should just "show some guts" and sail right into the missiles and mines waiting for them, and he and his military advisors apparently had no clue that Iran might fight back in any way at all. And he won't even take off his damn golf hat while saluting the bodies of dead American soldiers.

And just to drive the point home, this is all a war of Trump's choice. He was not forced into it in any way. It was entirely optional. He can't even explain why he went to war, much less when it might end. He is so delusional that he even demanded veto power over who will be Iran's next leader.

Plenty of people warned what would happen when Trump got rid of all the "adults in the room" for his second term. Now we are seeing what it truly means, in real time.

The midterms can't come soon enough, folks.

[Editorial note: While this section was being written, the average price of gas in the U.S. went up again, to $3.67 per gallon. At this rate, it'll be well over four bucks a gallon by next week.]





They're at it again. Political artists "The Secret Handshake" have placed another golden statue on the National Mall, this time depicting Donald Trump embracing Jeffrey Epstein from behind in the classic Titanic "I'm flying, Jack!" pose.

The piece has a placard on it which states:



The statue is surrounded by 10 banners that have a photo of Trump and Epstein and the words "Make America Safe Again," complete with a logo of the Justice Department with the word "Justice" redacted by a black bar.

The statue is "located on Third Street NW between Jefferson and Madison Drives," and will only remain for a short period. Nobody knows how long, because on the permit for the installation the end date is also redacted (nice touch).

This is definitely worthy of an Honorable Mention award.

But this week there was a truly impressive Democrat, even if the mainstream news media downplayed the achievement. Because Marjorie Taylor Greene quit her House seat, there was a special election this week in Georgia to replace her. And even though it is a very conservative district, Democrat Shawn Harris won the most votes.

This doesn't mean Harris won the seat, however. Because no candidate got more than 50 percent of the vote, he will move on to a runoff election with the second-place candidate, Republican Clayton Fuller.

There were a lot of candidates on the ballot -- nine Republicans, three Democrats, one Libertarian, and one Independent. The GOP vote was split so widely that Harris came out on top, with 37.3 percent of the vote. Fuller only managed to get 34.9 percent.

Since the Republican vote will assumably consolidate for the runoff election, Harris probably doesn't have much chance of actually winning Greene's seat. Even having said that, though, it is still incredibly impressive that he won the first round in such a red district. Which is why we decided that Shawn Harris was indeed the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Shawn Harris is still a candidate, and it is our blanket policy not to link to campaign websites, so you'll have to search out his contact information for yourself, if you'd like to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





While some of the "old guard" of the Democratic Party -- politicians who have long passed a decent retirement age -- have graciously announced they will be stepping down this year, some are still hanging on.

Which is why we have two Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week awards this week, both for members of the House. In Mississippi, Representative Bennie Thompson just won his primary this week, at age 78. Over in South Carolina, Representative James Clyburn has filed paperwork to run for re-election as well. He's 85 years old and will be 88 before the end of the next term in Congress.

Both men are well-respected and have a long history in the House. But their decision to run for yet another term means that younger Democratic candidates can't emerge and take their places. In a year where several prominent Democrats are gracefully exiting the Washington stage (most notably, Nancy Pelosi), we find it disappointing indeed to see that not everyone has made this decision. Which is why Bennie Thompson and James Clyburn are this week's winners of the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award.

[Contact Representative James Clyburn on his House contact page, and Representative Bennie Thompson on his House contact page, to let them know what you think of their actions.]




Volume 832 (3/13/26)

One big goal for Democrats this week is to firmly tie Donald Trump to his misbegotten war, and tie the war itself to the economy at large. Which is pretty easy to do, since everyone can see for themselves what a disaster it has all been so far. So hammer it home: this is Trump's war and it is hurting American families.



;I'm not "making a lot of money"!

This quote should be Exhibit A from Democrats, not only for this week but for a long time in the future as well.

"Donald Trump does not care about his war adventure making the price of gas go through the roof. He does not care about you. He just doesn't. In fact, he thinks skyrocketing prices at the pump are a good thing. He posted just this week, and I quote: 'When oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.' Well, I don't know about you, but I don't own an oil company. I'm not 'making a lot of money,' what I am doing is paying a lot of money when I fill up my car. And every time I do, I am reminded that Trump does not care one bit."



90 cents a gallon

We wrote about this earlier this week -- Democrats have simply got to force the mainstream media into framing the price hike correctly.

"In the middle of January, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in America was $2.75. That price has now gone up over 90 cents, and we haven't even hit the ides of March yet. At this rate, four bucks a gallon seems right around the corner, folks. This is hurting American families, but Trump doesn't care. The price of diesel has gone up even faster, meaning farmers and long-haul truckers are being squeezed in a big way, but Trump doesn't care. The message to farmers who can't even buy fertilizer because of Trump's war is: 'you're on your own.' Trump certainly doesn't care. He just shrugs and says the price will come back down at some unspecified point in the future. For now, his message to all Americans is just: 'Suck it up, Buttercup.' We're all paying for this war already in a big way and it looks like things are going to get worse before they get better. But Trump doesn't care."



Let's review

Cluelessness abounds.

"Let's get one thing straight -- this is Trump's war. It was not necessary, there was no imminent threat, there was no attack on America. Trump just decided he wanted to go to war one day -- that's it. He saw some protests in Iran and impulsively promised them that the U.S. would have their back. But it took a month before Trump could get Navy ships in the region. By then, the protests had ended. But Trump decided what the heck and started his war of choice anyway. He went to war without a plan. His intelligence services told him that just raining bombs down on Iran was unlikely to oust the regime, but Trump just went ahead and did it anyway. Trump had no plan for the Strait of Hormuz being shut down by Iran, even though anyone with half a brain could see that was Iran's best way to retaliate. There still isn't a plan for military ships escorting tankers through the Strait. It'll take another month to get enough ships there to do so. Trump had no plan at all for skyrocketing gas prices, and we're all paying that price now and will continue to do so for months to come. He has no plan for ending the war. The first six days of Trump's war cost a whopping $11 billion, with no end in sight. A total of 13 American military servicemembers have lost their lives so far, but to Trump this is all nothing but a fun video game he gets to play. So once again, this is Trump's war. It was not necessary. It was a war of choice, period. And he owns it all now."



Show some respect

Even some Republicans were aghast at this (and rightfully so).

"Donald Trump couldn't even bother to take off his golf cap when saluting the returning bodies of six fallen American soldiers. And of course you can buy one of these caps for yourself for the low, low price of only 55 bucks. Can you even imagine what Republicans would have said if Barack Obama had been this callous at a dignified transfer ceremony? They would have been screaming 'Show some respect!' for months afterwards, that's my guess. Which was my exact reaction to seeing Trump in his little golf cap: 'Take off your damn hat -- show some respect!'"



Speaking of respect...

This is disgraceful.

"Remember when Republicans made a big deal out of how much they respected police officers? Yeah, those were the days.... After the insurrection attempt on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, in March of 2022 Congress passed a law which mandated the installation of a memorial plaque to all the officers who had bravely fought the violent mob that day. This law stated that the plaque should be hung in the Capitol within one year. But when it came time to do so, House Speaker Mike Johnson refused to, so it sat in the Capitol's basement for years. Finally the Senate tried to do the right thing and install the plaque, which they finally did this week -- in the dead of night with 'no announcement, no ceremony, no news cameras.' Two of the brave officers from that day had to actually sue Congress to make this happen, which is an absolute disgrace (that a lawsuit was even necessary). But it was hung in a hallway, which is not what the law mandated, so the lawsuit continues. The hallway it was hung in is not even accessible to the public -- it is behind a sign stating: 'Closed to all tours.' This is absolutely disgusting. It is disrespectful in the extreme. All because Donald Trump doesn't want anyone to remember that day of infamy in the U.S. Capitol. I call on Republicans to do the right thing, honor the people who protected you with their lives, and put the plaque up where the public can actually see it. This has gone on far too long, and it is an absolute disgrace. Show some respect!"



Republicans have no plan

This is worth pointing out, as many times as you can.

"Republicans in Congress have no plan whatsoever to solve even a tiny part of the affordability crisis Americans are feeling. They have no plan at all to lower prices on anything. They just met to plan out what their legislative agenda for the rest of the year, and not a single agenda item would lower prices for anyone any time soon. No wonder they are in such trouble, heading into the midterms! Because just like their leader Donald Trump, their plan for making the economy better for average Americans can be summed up as: 'Suck it up, Buttercup.'"



Crisis? What crisis?

Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, right? This one comes from Representative Suzan DelBene, who put it exactly right:






Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

March 7, 2026

Friday Talking Points -- The Costs Of War

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan famously expressed his anger at his own budget director by metaphorically "taking him out to the woodshed." This week, you might say that Donald Trump took Kristi Noem "out to the gravel pit."

Sorry, but we just couldn't resist. Trump was finally forced to fire one of the members of his cabinet, and it just couldn't have happened to a nicer person. Which is also pure snark, of course, because Noem was one of the most odious members of Team Trump by far (which is saying a lot). She even got yelled at this week by a fellow Republican for the heartlessness of the story she included in the book she wrote about herself, where she took the family dog out to the gravel pit and shot him dead. For good measure, she also shot a goat. Because of "leadership," or something.

This week, Noem wasn't mercilessly killed in a gravel pit, she was instead metaphorically defenestrated. She had reportedly been on thin ice (thin ICE?) for a while with Trump, after the immense political blowback from federal immigration agents summarily executing American citizens in the streets of Minneapolis. This week saw Noem testifying before two congressional committees (one from each chamber), and although she put on a typical Mean Girls performance, it apparently wasn't enough for Trump.

Noem ripped into her questioners, as is now common with Trump cabinet officials (see: Pam Bondi, et al), but she apparently made a few mistakes. While being grilled by a fellow Republican (more than one of whom expressed their dissatisfaction with her doing her job during the hearings) about the $220 million in taxpayer money she spent creating "cosplay" ads -- of her in various costumes, role-playing her toughness -- Noem directly answered a question about whether Trump himself had approved such spending. She said he had. This is the cardinal sin in Trumpworld -- even hinting in any way that Donald Trump could possibly be to blame for anything -- and Trump was reportedly not amused. There may have been other things that set Trump off during her two days of testimony, but this was apparently the last straw for Trump.

So he announced he had created some made-up policy initiative and that Noem would serve in some made-up job title running it. Absolutely nobody was fooled by this -- Noem was fired, plain and simple. Trump announced she will be replaced by current Senator Markwayne Mullin, who makes bags of hammers and boxes of rocks look like Mensa members (to be blunt). Can't wait to see how he runs the Department of Homeland Security, but at least he won't be out there dressed as a cosplay cowboy or soldier (one assumes).

This was all the most enjoyable news of the week for Democrats (which we thought we would lead with today, just because). But the biggest news was not enjoyable at all, for anyone (or shouldn't have been, at any rate), as Donald Trump started a new war of choice with Iran last weekend. We have to say that the column we wrote last Friday predicted this, but we certainly weren't the only ones worried about Trump's new love for starting wars anywhere he feels like.

True to form, Trump not only decided to start a war completely on a whim (his own press secretary admitted he merely "had a feeling" Iran was about to attack us), but he's been making it up as he goes along (which has led to many cringeworthy statements from him, as he flounders to comprehend what he has unleashed). The rationale for going to war shifts every time Trump is asked about it. Trump is not exactly instilling confidence in the American people, to put it mildly. Instead, he is instilling incoherence.

The White House even laughably sent talking points out to Republicans in Congress instructing them all not to call it a "war." This is the same administration who has unilaterally tried to change the name of the Defense Department back to the Department of War, it is worth mentioning. Both Trump and Pete Hegseth proudly used the word "war" on a daily basis this week, but somehow other Republicans were supposed to tie themselves in Orwellian knots to avoid using the word. It was all reminiscent of Vladimir Putin, at the start of his illegal invasion of Ukraine, insisting that nobody in his government call it a "war."

There simply is no "endgame plan" at all. Trump apparently expected the Iranian people to somehow rise up and overthrow their government within days, which did not happen (not even slightly). Then he flirted with arming the Iranian Kurds, which would start a civil war within the country that could lead to it splitting into several countries. The direct costs to the American public of waging this war are increasing by the day (estimates now range from $1 billion per day to $2 billion), but Trump's Fantasyland view of the war still does not include what is supposed to happen to end it (or what the country will look like afterwards).

Meanwhile, the indirect costs of the war are hitting hard, as the price of gasoline is already through the roof. Trump simply doesn't care. He's not even shy about saying things like: "I don't have any concern about it," and: "if [gas prices] rise, they rise, but this is far more important than having gasoline prices go up a little bit."

The national average of a price of a gallon of gasoline at the pumps has risen -- in one week -- from $2.94 to $3.40. And you have to refresh your browser when checking the sites that track such prices, because it just keeps going up on an hourly basis (when we started writing this article, the price was $3.35, which rose to $3.37, and then to $3.40 -- but it still may have not hit its highpoint even for today). After Week One of the war, prices at the pump here at home have already risen a whopping 46 cents per gallon, and they show no sign of peaking any time soon. If your car is getting low on gas, it'd be a smart thing to go fill it up now, because by tomorrow it'll probably cost a lot more. To say nothing of next week.

The stock markets are down too, and they fell even further when today's jobs report showed America had lost almost 100,000 jobs last month alone. So it is no surprise to find out that the American public does not support this war at all -- which isn't too surprising when you consider that Trump isn't even interested in attempting to make the case for it.

Pete Hegseth and the White House even had the gall to complain that the media was covering the six American soldiers who have so far died in this war. Seriously? Dead American soldiers are just supposed to be ignored by the media? So much for all that vaunted Republican "support for the troops," eh?

Even Trump's MAGA base is divided over this war. It has brought to a boil the simmering disagreements within the movement over whether we should support the current government of Israel or not. Some MAGA influencers (Tucker Carlson, most notably) are denouncing the war as a betrayal of all the "America first" promises Trump made. Others are falling in line with whatever their Dear Leader says. Trump seems to be getting a little testy about this divide in his base, but there's not much he can do about it at this point (as we said, this core disagreement has been simmering for quite a while now).

Nobody has any clue what all of this means politically, beyond the obvious observation that Trump and the Republicans are almost certainly going to get less popular the longer gas prices stay elevated. Which may not bode very well for them in the midterms. Even before Trump's war of choice was launched, Republicans were facing some stiff political headwinds with the economy, and recently (since about November), gas prices had been one bright spot in all the other economic struggles average families face. That is not going to be true any more.

There was one other big political story this week, as the midterm primary season kicked off in Arkansas, North Carolina, and Texas. But we've been writing about it (the Texas Senate race, for the most part) all week long, so we're only going to mention it in passing here before we move along to this week's awards.

The most amusing outcome from the Texas Senate primary is the angst it is now causing among the MAGA base. Their preferred candidate, Ken Paxton, came up short in his run to dethrone sitting Senator John Cornyn, but the story's not over yet. Due to a third candidate on the ballot, neither Paxton nor Cornyn managed to get over 50 percent of the vote, so they'll face each other again in 12 weeks in a runoff.

Donald Trump decided to horn in on the contest and told the two candidates that he would be endorsing one of them soon, and that he expected the other to gracefully withdraw from the race. But Paxton immediately rejected this idea, which is pushing Trump towards endorsing Cornyn -- which he really doesn't want to do (since Paxton is much more MAGA-ey than Cornyn). This schism within the Republican base might even mean the Democratic candidate has a healthy shot of winning (and finally making the impossible dream of "turning Texas blue" at least a semi-reality), so it'll all be lots of fun to watch play out over the next few months.

But as we said, we've spent a lot of time writing about all of that already this week, so let's just move along, shall we?





We have no idea who was behind the idea, but we have to say we were amused to hear of the "Jeffrey Epstein Walk Of Shame" which spontaneously popped up on the sidewalks of Washington this week:

Prominent names were featured, including: Larry Summers, Howard Lutnick, Steve Bannon, Elon Musk, Formerly-Known-As-Prince Andrew, and Bill Clinton.

We have to say, we're a big fan in general of guerrilla art, and this seemed more effective than most, so we have to give at least an Honorable Mention to whomever came up with the idea. Well done!

We also have to give an Honorable Mention to James Talarico, who defeated progressive firebrand Jasmine Crockett in this week's Democratic primary in the Senate race in Texas. Talarico, however, probably has a better chance of actually being competitive against whichever Republican (Paxton or Cornyn) who winds up with the nomination, so he at least deserves recognition here in the awards this week.

But we're going to give the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week to Senator Chris Van Hollen, who may be contemplating a 2028 presidential run. We say this because of the bill he announced this week, which would revamp the income tax system in a major way and reverse the way Republicans have been cutting taxes for decades. Instead of slashing taxes for those at the top, Van Hollen wants to raise their taxes and completely eliminate income taxes for most people at the bottom. Here's his plan in a nutshell:



This is an incredibly fresh new idea. And it's a good one. Rather than the usual "bait and switch" of Republican tax cuts, which always promise big cuts for all but only ever seem to deliver them for the wealthiest of the wealthy, this would produce tangible benefits for tens of millions of American taxpayers, in one fell swoop.

This wouldn't be just tinkering around the edges of the tax code. It would be a huge change that would be incredibly easy for people to understand. Single? Your first $46,000 of income is tax-free. Married? No income tax on your first $92,000.

Donald Trump sold the snake oil of fake populism, but this would be some real economic populism. It would be a big change for the better, for tens of millions of people.

Of course, as the article says, it has virtually no chance of becoming law any time soon. Even if Democrats have a stellar midterm and retake both houses of Congress, it's highly doubtful that Trump would go along with such a scheme. It would probably require a Democrat in the White House to actually enact.

Chris Van Hollen knows all that, and if he can use such an idea to ride all the way to the White House himself, well... more power to him. Democrats need to think big when proposing a new agenda, and this certainly fits the bill. So for introducing such a sweeping rewrite of the nation's income tax system, Van Hollen is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Congratulate Senator Chris Van Hollen on his Senate contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





Jasmine Crockett's loss in the Texas primary for U.S. Senate certainly disappointed a lot of Democrats, who would have preferred a feisty Democratic candidate rather than one who preaches the politics of love. But we have a much better candidate for this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award.

Jared Polis, the governor of Colorado, has been under a lot of pressure from Donald Trump for a while now. Trump, apparently unaware of how such things work, tried to pardon one of his election-denying followers who was convicted of state crimes in Colorado and sentenced to jail (where she now sits). But the only person who can pardon such crimes is the state's governor, of course.

Polis is now hinting that he might at least commute the prison term, although he hasn't gone as far as suggesting a full pardon yet. But the news was not exactly welcomed by other Democrats in the state. Here's the basic story:



And here's some of the Democratic reaction to the news:



As of this writing, Polis hasn't actually done anything yet. But even for floating this trial balloon, he still gets this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week. He can try to explain it away however he wants, but if he follows through he will be seen by Democrats everywhere as knuckling under to Donald Trump's bullying. Right now, when Trump is politically weak, that would send exactly the wrong signal.

[Contact Colorado Governor Jared Polis on his official contact page, to let him know what you think of his actions.]




Volume 831 (3/6/26)

Once again we are pre-empting our discrete talking points to deliver up a rant. This is a rant designed for Democrats to use, because it is designed to be a convincing argument for midterm campaigning. Democrats need to point out not just that Trump attacking Iran was a monumentally stupid idea, but why. They need to point out how we are all going to pay for this misadventure, and not just through our tax dollars being misspent on it.

Bring it home. Make the connections. And lay the blame where it belongs.



The costs of Trump's war of choice are being paid by all of us

This is going to be a very costly war. In fact, Americans are already paying for Donald Trump's reckless war of choice in Iran. We're paying something like one or two billion dollars a day in direct military costs, financed by our tax dollars, but these aren't even the most visible costs to Americans.

Have you been to the gas station, since the war began?

Since the start of this year, the average national price of gasoline has risen an astonishing sixty-five cents per gallon -- and it keeps going up, day after day, as the war continues. And we've only been at war for a single week. So where will the price of gas be next week? Or next month? Your guess is as good as mine, but the safe bet is to just say: "a lot higher than it is now."

When asked about the price of gasoline this week, you know what Donald Trump had to say? "I don't have any concern about it." There you go, folks. He does not care about you, period. Here's what else he had to say about gasoline prices: "If they rise, they rise, but this is far more important than having gasoline prices go up a little bit." He added that costs "haven't risen very much."

Think about that, the next time you gas your car up.

The national average price of gas now stands at $3.40 per gallon. It was $2.94 right before Trump started this war, and as low as $2.75 back in January. But Trump doesn't care. These are the highest gas prices of Trump's second term, but to him it's no big deal.

Since his second term began, Trump has just flat-out lied about gas prices. He told America only months after he took office that the price of gas had magically fallen to $1.99 a gallon, even though that was not remotely true anywhere in the country. He kept telling this lie over and over again, in the hopes that people would believe it. But as prices at the pump continue to skyrocket, now he just shrugs his shoulders and says he doesn't care.

Oil is now trading at over $90 per barrel -- the highest price in years -- and it hasn't peaked yet. It just keeps going up. Jet fuel is already up 58 percent since the war started, and airfares will be rising soon to reflect this. Natural gas prices are up, which is going to make electricity and home heating more expensive Diesel fuel has risen even faster than gasoline, which is going to raise trucking costs for everyone. Inflation is going to head upwards too, since all products are affected by transportation costs one way or another.

So my question now to all those people who voted for Donald Trump would be: "Is this what you voted for? Do you really want to pay a lot more for gasoline just so Trump can pretend to be a tough guy and wage a pointless war that nobody wanted?" How many people -- other than oil company executives -- have been thinking to themselves: "Hey, you know what would be great? If the price of gas spiked up 65 cents a gallon! That would surely make America great again!" Personally, I don't know anyone who has been thinking that.

Trump keeps boasting that the American economy is now doing great -- he calls it "the best ever!" You know what I say to him? Words are cheap, but groceries are not. Prices have not come down, even though Trump promised time and time again that they would -- starting on "Day One." Well, it's been more than a year now, and we're still waiting. Inflation is still bad and it's about to get a lot worse.

The Supreme Court even helpfully provided an offramp for Trump to back down on his tariffs, but he stubbornly refused to take it. Instead, he doubled down on his trade war. Tariffs are a tax on you, but Trump simply does not care. To him, "tariffs" is "his favorite word in the dictionary." Think about that when you shop for food, because you are the one paying those taxes -- while farm bankruptcies are up by 46 percent due to Trump's trade war. Not only did Trump not do anything at all to bring prices down, everything he's done has instead raised prices for you and your family. And he refuses to change course.

He says this is all to save American manufacturing jobs, but the numbers don't back him up. In fact, America has been steadily losing manufacturing jobs, ever since Trump took over. We lost 12,000 factory jobs just last month, in fact. So his big goal for all his tariffs has been a total failure.

Speaking of jobs, today we got yet another negative jobs report, showing America actually just lost almost 100,000 jobs in a single month. If you add up every single month in Trump's second term, you only get a net gain of 116,000 jobs. That's for over an entire year, folks. That's pathetic. Five of those months showed America losing jobs -- this month was just the latest. And yet Trump brags that the American economy is the best ever.

When Joe Biden was president, adding 116,000 jobs was just an average month for him. In some months, Biden saw double or even triple that number of new jobs added. Not during a period of "over a year," but just for a single month. In Biden's four years in office, he didn't have one single month where the country lost jobs. Not a single one. Trump has had five, so far.

But Trump doesn't care. He's much more concerned with what the drapes in his new ballroom will look like. Trump is building a ballroom for all his Epstein class buddies to party in, because that is what is important to him -- not you. Public comments on his ballroom ran 97 percent against the idea, but Trump simply does not care. So I ask again: "Is this what you voted for?"

Trump campaigned on the fact that he was going to be a man of peace. He denounced "forever wars" and swore that he would never start one on his watch. He claimed to want to bring about peace in the Middle East and swore that he would end all the wars on his first day in office. Well, it's been a year and the Russian invasion of Ukraine shows no signs of stopping. And now Trump has decided to spend billions upon billions of dollars in a new Middle East war, and he only offers up the vaguest of reasons why he started this new war. In fact, his reasons change pretty much every time he is asked about it. He simply has no clue why he started the war, what the objectives of the war should be, how long it will last, whether American troops will be necessary on the ground, or what the endgame should look like. Trump is completely clueless on all of those things.

Is this really what you voted for?

Marco Rubio let the cat out of the bag by admitting that America was dragged into this war because Bibi Netanyahu decided he was going to bomb an above-ground meeting of Iran's leaders. The aftermath of such a strike would have meant Iran attacking American military and civilian targets, so Trump just decided he better go along with Bibi and bomb Iran first. Is that really "America first"? Getting dragged into a war because leader of Israel forced us to back him up? I don't know about you, but I must have missed that part of Trump's campaign speeches when he was running for office.

Brian Schatz, a Democratic senator from Hawai'i, summed things up pretty well this week on social media. He posted: "This war is costing a billion dollars a day. In one fucking month we will spend more over there than we needed to save healthcare for more than 2 million Americans. They literally are taking away your food and your healthcare for this regime war of choice."

Those are the choices that Donald Trump and the Republican Party aiding and abetting him have made. So much for "America first" -- because they are happy to spend billions upon billions on a war nobody wanted which was launched for no defensible reason, rather than spend money here at home to help out the American people. Consider that as their Big, Ugly Bill causes more and more rural hospitals to close their doors. Consider that as millions of people are denied food assistance. Consider that as you see your medical insurance costs rise so high that you can't afford it anymore. These are all conscious choices that Trump and the Republicans made. They've got money to burn when it comes time to bombing some foreign country for no reason whatsoever, but they pinch pennies when it comes to helping out Americans.

I mean, seriously... is this really what you voted for?!?




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

February 28, 2026

Friday Talking Points -- Slouching Towards War

It was a big week in American politics, with Donald Trump giving his first official State Of The Union speech of his second term to Congress, but we felt even this was overshadowed by Trump seemingly slouching towards a new war with Iran. America going to war used to be a very big deal to the public, but on Trump's watch it seems to be just another item within the firehose of distractions he continually creates.

That sounds cynical, but it's not even the most cynical take on things. Hardcore cynics point out that Trump seems to launch his military attacks whenever the Epstein files begin to get some traction in the news again. We're not sure if we totally buy into that thinking, but it is worth considering, seeing how Trump does almost everything for the stupidest of reasons.

Distraction or not, America seems awfully close to just going in and bombing the heck out of Iran -- for no real particular reason. Trump has moved two aircraft carriers to the region (and something like one-third of our total naval power to support them), as well as at least 150 warplanes (that's in addition to all the ones onboard the two carriers). So it certainly looks like Trump is planning to unleash them very soon now.

If he were a normal president, and if there were actual reasons for starting a new war with Iran, Donald Trump would have laid those reasons out in detail during his big speech. He didn't. He spent a scant few minutes -- during a record-length 108-minute speech -- talking about Iran. This was more than Ukraine got (Trump mentioned the Ukraine war for only about 20 seconds, and forgot to mark the fact that it was the fourth anniversary of Russia's unprovoked and illegal invasion), but it still didn't answer any key questions -- like why this war seems so imminent.

Trump kind of painted himself into this corner, it should be pointed out. When mass demonstrations against the Iranian government took to the streets in Iran back at the end of December, Trump promised them that America would have their back. Unfortunately for him, he didn't have the military forces in place to make good on his threats, so he wound up doing absolutely nothing. The Iranian government killed thousands of protesters, and then the protests died down.

Trump, meanwhile, moved more and more military assets into the region. He now has enough of them to launch effective airstrikes, but his ostensible reason for doing so no longer exists. So he began tossing out reasons (or demands), almost at random.

According to Trump (during his big speech), Iran has to say the "secret" (or "sacred," as he had said earlier) words that they would never have a nuclear weapon. Iran has indeed said these words, repeatedly making this commitment over and over for decades now. Whether they can be believed or not is a big open question, but that's not how Trump framed it -- he is now demanding (as he did in his big speech) that Iran just say these words and he won't attack. Which is nonsense, of course -- Trump may still attack even if they do.

This all exposes a lie from the administration, however. Less than a year ago, Trump launched a massive bombing campaign against Iran's nuclear sites, after which he insisted -- insisted, even in the face of intelligence reports that raised doubts -- that Iran's nuclear capabilities had been completely "obliterated." Now, less than a year later, Trump and his henchmen are trying to state that Iran is just one week -- one week! -- away "from having industrial-grade bomb-making material." That is not a very precise statement, you will note. What exactly qualifies as "industrial-grade bomb-making material," after all? We're supposed to believe both that Iran's nuclear program was totally "obliterated" last summer, but that somehow they magically bounced back and recreated it all to the point of being a week away from putting together a bomb? That makes no sense whatsoever -- either Trump and his administration were lying to us back then (probably), or they are lying to us now (also probably).

In his first term, Trump (of course) pulled out of the deal Iran had previously agreed to with both the U.S. and the rest of the world. This had severely limited their nuclear activities and allowed U.N. inspectors in to monitor their compliance. Trump hated this deal because Barack Obama was the one to achieve it, plain and simple. So he pulled out of the deal -- which is exactly why Iran's nuclear program became such a threat again in the first place. Now Trump is negotiating with Iran to put in place another deal -- that will probably wind up being indistinguishable from the one Obama negotiated.

But the nuclear question isn't the only justification for war Trump has been floating (ever since his "we have the protesters' backs" idea disappeared when the protests ended). He's also demanding that Iran get rid of its ballistic missile program, claiming that they are also on the brink of having intercontinental ballistic missiles that could deliver a nuclear warhead to American shores. This is also not backed up by any actual facts or intelligence on the ground. Iran does have missiles that could possibly reach some parts of Europe, but they still have a ways to go to develop I.C.B.M.s, much less have an arsenal of them.

Trump is also demanding that Iran stop funding proxy terrorist groups, just for good measure. But these groups are at their weakest point ever after the prolonged war with Israel. Trump has also floated that he would like to see "regime change" in Iran, but according to military experts that sort of thing is pretty much impossible to do just by raining bombs down on a country.

As you can see, there are multiple demands from Trump and his administration, and there has been no public explanation of which ones are red lines, what would be acceptable to the U.S., or what would be acceptable enough to avoid going to war with them. Trump appears totally clueless even as to what he is demanding, and he certainly hasn't bothered to inform the American people about any of it (even though he had the biggest audience of the entire year this week for his State Of The Union speech, which would have been the perfect opportunity for him to do so).

Militarily-speaking, attacking Iran might not be the cakewalk Trump seems to be expecting. As was done before, the U.S. could probably knock out all the air defense systems Iran has and gain control of Iran's skies, but Iran still has plenty of ballistic missiles they could launch -- either at American ships or American bases in the region, or at Israel. And one thing that hasn't been mentioned much (if at all) is the progress Iran seems to have made in constructing drones. Russia has used uncountable Iranian drones in its air attacks against Ukraine. Most of them have been described as not very sophisticated, but without knowing how many of them found their targets, it's hard to accurately measure their threat potential.

One other thing worth pondering is whether Iran has made any progress on developing sea-based drones. As Ukraine has proven in the Black Sea, such drones can radically alter the balance of power on the water. Russia, unlike Ukraine, has a fleet of technologically-advanced warships in the Black Sea -- but they have been all but neutralized by Ukraine's low-cost drones. That is a sobering thing to contemplate when much of the American force now surrounding Iran is naval power. Just imagine what a game-changer it would be if an Iranian submarine drone successfully struck an American aircraft carrier (whether the carrier sank or not, this would still be stunning, on a geopolitical scale, since it would alter how modern wars will be fought in the very near future).

And one last thing worth pointing out is how the Trump administration has already totally shot itself in the foot. They've been trying to destroy one huge part of American "soft power" ever since they got into office -- the radio and communications news services that America runs worldwide. Outlets like Radio Free Europe and Voice Of America have served, ever since World War II (all the way through the Cold War), as respected sources of information for people inside totalitarian dictatorships. They could tune in a radio and hear the truth about the world, when such information was not available at all to them in any other way.

For no particular reason, Trump has been trying to kill off this vital service. There were mass firings at the start of Trump's term, which were only ended after a judge ruled they were illegal. This has all left the Farsi-language version of Voice Of America with a skeleton crew. During the operation to bomb Iran's nuclear sites, the service broadcast "just 75 minutes of content targeted to the audience in Iran" over the space of 72 hours. It used to be up and running 24 hours a day, every day.

Here is how Marc Thiessen put it, in an article he wrote last week in the Washington Post. Thiessen is about as hawkish as you can get, and about as right-wing as you can get as well. And he's not impressed with the Trump administration's dereliction of duty:

The entire article is blistering in its condemnation of Trump's (and Lake's) attempts to kill off this mighty lever of American soft power, and it is well worth reading. And now it is being reported that the Voice Of America Farsi broadcasts have been banned from even mentioning the name of the exiled Iranian crown prince -- who could be instrumental in creating a better "day after" scenario, if Trump is truly going to attempt to overthrow the current Iranian regime. Otherwise, even with a forced regime change (if we killed all their leaders with bombs, for instance), Iran will likely just wind up being ruled by their military -- which is not exactly going to be an improvement.

America is slouching towards a war. Nobody knows what the outcome will be. Nobody knows why we're even contemplating war at this juncture. And the Trump administration's short-sightedness could lead to disastrous results. Will we all wake up one morning to the news that the bombs have started falling? At this point, that seems like the likeliest outcome, and it seems like it's going to happen at some point in the next week or so. Never has America entered a war with such vague objectives and without the American public even being told what is going on. So what could possibly go wrong?

In other news this week, Trump's State Of The Union address happened, but it will likely be one of the most-quickly-forgotten speeches of all time. At best, people might remember the U.S. Men's Hockey Team showing up. The reviews -- even from conservatives -- were pretty scathing. An editor at the Wall Street Journal posted on social media his snarky take on things: "So far this speech has been so full of falsehoods and fictions that I'm now starting to wonder whether the USA men's hockey team did actually win the gold medal." A conservative writer at the New York Times summed it up a different way:



A few other commentaries are worth noting here, just for amusement value. HuffPost won the best headline of the week award for their: "Trump Delivers Excruciatingly Tedious, Lie-Packed Mess Of A 'State Of The Union' Speech." But one pundit at the Washington Post had perhaps the funniest take on it all:



Or, as one commenter pointed out, maybe they didn't even have to pretend?

What else? As usual, other things happened in the political world this week, but we thought the prospect of entering a war without Congress (to say nothing of the American people) even weighing in was so important it kind of shoved everything else to one side. But we will end with another scary-ass story from the White House, because it too may need the American public to pay close attention to it at some point.

The Washington Post reported this week that Donald Trump is being urged to declare a national emergency -- based on moonbeams and lies -- and just take over the operation of the midterm elections. Here is the story, for those who missed it:



Such an executive order would "empower the president to ban mail ballots and voting machines as the vectors of foreign interference," according to Ticktin.

So far, the White House has remained noncommittal on the proposal. It was not so long ago that Republicans liked to sanctimoniously carry around little pocket copies of the U.S. Constitution, to prove their bona fides as a conservative. Any Republican who still does so (and has actually read the Constitution and abides by their oath to it) should immediately denounce such a breathtaking power grab as horrendously unconstitutional.

So let's see... how many of them are lining up to do so?

[sound of crickets chirping]

Yeah, that's kind of what we thought.





Well, for starters, we have to award "Best Protest Sign Of The Week" to Representative Al Green, who may have broken his own record by getting kicked out of Trump's State Of The Union speech even quicker than he did last year. His sign, in case you haven't seen it, read: "BLACK PEOPLE AREN'T APES!" Just to remind everyone of precisely how racist our president truly is, of course.

Runner-up in that category would have to go to the woman (unidentified in the coverage we saw) on the Democratic side of the aisle wearing a button that simply said: "FUCK ICE" -- which is a good lead-in to an amusing story from New Jersey:



Sounds about right to us.

And we would be remiss if we didn't give at least an Honorable Mention to Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, for her response speech to the State Of The Union this week (which we reviewed yesterday, if anyone's interested). The text of the speech was impressive, and will serve as a blueprint for Democrats running in the midterm elections, which is about as good as you can get from one of these response speeches.

But our winners of the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award this week are a handful of Democrats who are jumping on the Supreme Court decision striking down Trump's tariffs in a big way. Here's the story:



Newsom also demanded: "Every dollar unlawfully taken must be refunded immediately -- with interest. Cough up!"

He wasn't the only one. Citing studies that have shown that Trump's tariffs cost Americans over $1,700 each, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker also called on Trump to "cut the check" for that exact amount, adding:



Trump has reportedly been considering just trying to keep all the money he's illegally and unconstitutionally collected. Private companies are suing to get refunds for all the tariffs they paid, but Democrats may have come up with a powerful political idea in demanding that the money all be returned to American families -- who, after all, were the ones to actually pay this tax.

Trump himself -- before the Supreme Court ruled -- even flirted with the idea of sending all Americans "rebate checks," which would have been conveniently timed to arrive in the mail just before the midterm elections happened. So all Democrats have to do is point to this offer and demand that Trump follow through.

And they should demand it loudly, and often. Which is why we're giving this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week to Senator Elizabeth Warren as well as Governors Newsom and Pritzker. Strike while the iron is hot, Democrats! Demand Trump pay the American people back for his illegal tax!

[Congratulate Senator Elizabeth Warren on her Senate contact page, Governor Gavin Newsom on his official contact page, and Governor JB Pritzker on his official contact page, to let them know you appreciate their efforts.]





Um... all of them?

[sigh]

About the best thing you can say for the overall Democratic response to the State Of The Union speech this week was that it was slightly better than last year's efforts. But that's not really saying that much.

The highest-ranking members of the party, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, did not exactly impress. Schumer did offer up one line that one of his speechwriters must have come up with, that it was Trump's "state of delusion" that was on display, but neither one brought the intensity that countering Trump really requires.

We suppose we shouldn't be too hard on them, because nobody anywhere has really come up with a magic way to forcefully counter Trump's carnival act, and everyone's had an entire decade to do so, meaning it'll probably never happen.

Even so, to see the Democrats' rather tepid and fractured attempts to protest Trump's cavalcade of lies was, in a word, disappointing.

[We can't really hand out the award to the entire Democratic Party, so you'll just have to let them know individually what you think of their actions for now.]




Volume 830 (2/27/26)

Another mixed bunch this week. We saved the best one for the end, though. Have fun and use responsibly!



We want our money back!

Hit this one hard.

"Donald Trump said he was going to send all Americans a refund from all his tariff tax money. And that was before the Supreme Court ruled that the tariffs were illegal. So now he owes us this money -- because it is ours. We paid those taxes. We paid all of those tariffs. And I for one would like my money back. So, Donald, economists have figured that it cost each and every American family more than $1,700 to pay your illegal tax. Now that the Supreme Court is ruled, I'd like my check for that amount -- plus interest. Because we want our money back!



Huge lead in enthusiasm

This one isn't too surprising, since it's been showing up in all the special elections. But it could wind up being the winning factor for Democrats in November.

"Public opinion polls have been asking American voters not just who they're going to vote for in November, but how enthusiastic they are about it. And Democratic voters are a lot more enthusiastic about sending a message with their vote than Republicans are -- by a whopping fourteen percentage points. That ought to scare Republicans, since it is one of the largest 'enthusiasm gaps' ever recorded. Every Democratic voter I've talked to is rarin' to go vote, in fact. Which is precisely what we need, to send a message that the public does not support Donald Trump's chaos."



Do Trump next!

Both of them actually used some of their time to point this one out.

"Both Hillary and Bill Clinton were forced to testify before a House committee this week -- the first time in history a former president was forced to do so -- on their connections to Jeffrey Epstein. Neither one of them had much to add to what is already known, but both of them pointed out that there is one person who was closer to Epstein than anyone else during the time period in question. So I'm with the Clintons: 'Hey! You want to know more about Epstein? Do Trump next! I bet he's got some answers to some of your questions...'."



Surprise, surprise...

Could've knocked us over with a feather (rolls eyes...).

"Well, surprise, surprise! Donald Trump's Department of Justice has been caught red-handed trying to hide documents in the Epstein files that cover an accusation one of the victims brought against Trump. She didn't just say she was raped by Epstein, but also that she was raped by Donald J. Trump as well. And even though the law that Congress passed -- and Trump signed -- stated specifically that no redactions should happen to save any possible perpetrator embarrassment, no matter who he was, nobody should be surprised that they tried to get away with doing just that for Donald Trump. This is the most corrupt Justice Department in the most corrupt administration in American history, folks."



42,695 times... approximately

They're trying to set some sort of record, obviously.

"A federal judge just found that the Internal Revenue Service broke the law 'approximately 42,695 times' when they illegally offered up identifying information on suspected immigrants to the immigration enforcers. I have to assume that 'approximately' was an instance of judicial humor. Seriously, though, this is the most lawless administration in American history, folks. A separate federal judge in Minnesota is about to start holding Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in criminal contempt since they have ignored or otherwise not complied with 210 judicial orders, to date. And federal judges elsewhere have started doubting pretty much everything any member of the administration tells them, since they have been caught lying in court so often and so blatantly. So I will repeat that again -- this is the most lawless administration in American history, folks. Think about that the next time some Republican starts getting sanctimonious about 'the rule of law'."



Seriously? Doggi Gras?

File this under "you just can't make this stuff up, folks"....

"We are still in a partial shutdown of the federal government. But you wouldn't know it looking at Republicans in Congress. Instead of doing the hard work to hammer out some sort of deal to get the Department of Homeland Security funded and fully functioning again, Senator Thom Tillis decided to -- one week late -- hold a 'Doggi Gras' event for costumed dogs. Yeah, you heard that right. Rather than working on the government shutdown, Republican senators thought holding a Mardi Gras pet parade would be a good use of their time. Now just imagine for one tiny second what Republicans would say if Democrats were this unserious during a government shutdown. I mean, it really boggles the mind...."



The only measure he cares about

Want to get under Trump's skin? There's an easy way to do so, this week.

"Well, the television ratings are in and Donald Trump's marathon speech -- which lasted almost two unbearable hours -- got terrible ratings. In fact, Trump was down over ten percentage points from last year's audience. Oooo... that's gotta hurt. Trump measures everything in his life to how good the ratings are on television, and the verdict is in from the American people -- they just aren't that into him anymore."




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

February 21, 2026

Friday Talking Points -- SCOTUS Smacks Down Trump's Tariffs

Donald Trump just got the biggest smackdown of his second term from the Supreme Court today, as they ruled -- 6 to 3, even! -- that Trump does not have the authority he assumed he had to slap any tariff he felt like, on any country he felt like, for any reason he felt like.

This is a big deal, obviously. Trump has gleefully revelled in doing whatever he felt like to the rest of the world up to this point, using a law that simply was not designed for this purpose. Today the high court ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (or "IEEPA" ) doesn't allow Trump to slap any tariff he wants -- in willy-nilly fashion -- on any country, for no particular reason. The IEEPA law doesn't even mention the word "tariff" at all, in fact. Here is the meat of the decision against Trump, which was written by Chief Justice John Roberts:

Justice Neil Gorsuch, in a concurring opinion, refuted the notion that Trump had "substantial discretion" over tariffs. History, Gorsuch wrote, "does not support the notion that Presidents have traditionally enjoyed so much power. More nearly, history refutes it." He continued:



Trump, true to form, immediately threw a very public hissy fit, in the form of a press conference where he tried (in vain) to spin it all as some sort of victory for him (more on that in a moment).

One has to wonder what next Tuesday's State Of The Union speech is going to be like. You can bet your bottom dollar that major portions of the speech are now being hastily rewritten, and that Trump will at some point go off script and berate the justices who turn up to hear him speak in person. This is a monumentally stupid thing for him to do, since the Supreme Court has many other high-profile cases involving Trump before it which it has yet to rule on. Being subject to public humiliation from the president might just strengthen the backbone of Roberts and a few others sitting there -- especially if Trump resorts to gutter talk or playground insults (which he is fully capable of doing).

The Supreme Court left one gigantic question completely open, because their ruling does not address whether companies who paid the tariffs up until now will be entitled to a refund. It sure seems like they deserve to get their money back, if the tariffs themselves were unconstitutional from the get-go. The logistics for such refunds would be daunting, but it would also be do-able -- the government assumably has records of every dollar it collected, so even if it would be a huge task for the Treasury, they could indeed refund all the tariffs Trump unconstitutionally collected.

But back to that presser. Trump was in a very petulant mood, and tried to regain face by promising that he's still going to slap tariffs on the rest of the world, by using a different law. He has one law that allows him to do so immediately, but this would only work for 150 days (about five months). During that time, he can do the necessary paperwork to institute tariffs using other laws that would allow them to stay in place beyond the five months. The Supreme Court didn't strike down all the tariffs Trump has instituted -- the ones targeting certain industries such as steel and aluminum (rather than individual countries) will still remain in place. For now, Trump announced a new 10 percent tariff on the rest of the world, as the five-month-clock starts ticking.

Trump didn't really have much of an answer during the presser for what happens now to all the deals he has cut with other countries. The leverage for such deals was the threat of the illegal tariffs. Absent that threat, perhaps some of these other countries will want to renegotiate their deals, or just walk away from them?

In other words, the chaos will continue. Chaos has been the hallmark of the past year of tariffs, as Trump announces them, chickens out, threatens, changes the rates, or announces deals that are never actually made public (sometimes all in the same day). Businesses and other countries had no idea what was coming next, and therefore could not make long-term future plans for any of it. With Trump's ability to make such decisions on a whim curtailed, you'd think the chaos would lessen, but that is probably not going to be the case. With the uncertainty over whether the tariffs will be refunded, Trump now hell-bent on imposing the same tariffs using different laws, and the deals made with other countries also up in the air, nobody has any clue what is going to come next. Except for the near certainty that Trump will (in a fit of pique, and that's putting it mildly) do whatever he possibly can to reinstate his tariffs everywhere.

Trump loves tariffs, please remember. He thinks "tariff" is the "most beautiful word in the dictionary." He cannot be convinced of the economic reality that tariffs are nothing short of a tax that American consumers wind up paying, no matter how many times people much smarter than he is try to explain this basic truth to him.

And also please remember, there are no "adults in the room" anymore with Trump. This week, the head of Trump's National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, tried to curry favor with the Dear Leader by denying reality in a forceful way. Here's the story:



Actually, using only that November number makes it sound better than the overall conclusion:



Tariffs were also supposed to usher in a boom in manufacturing jobs, but once again the data says otherwise. Last year America lost 80,000 manufacturing jobs. Which is exactly the opposite of what Trump promised.

Here's some more reality for you. It was actually astonishing that no reporter asked Trump about this today (although Trump refuses to call on reputable reporters, since he prefers rightwing echo-chamber toadies instead). It was just revealed that even with all of Trump's beloved tariffs, the main "problem" he was trying to fix actually got worse last year, and in fact hit a new record:



Got that? Trump's bugaboo about the trade deficit was not "fixed" at all -- in fact, it got worse. You'd think someone would have brought this up and asked him about it, but you'd be wrong.

Trump, of course, is not going to admit any of these realities in his big speech next week. In fact, if a speech he gave this week in Georgia is any indication, Trump is teeing up what might be considered his "Misson Accomplished" moment. Just like George W. Bush prematurely announcing the end of a war he started, Trump is going to prematurely announce the end of economic woes for all Americans. Here is some of what he had to say on the issue:



He also framed the affordability issue as: "we've solved it." Mission accomplished!

This is an awfully risky strategy for Trump, but it is no real surprise, since he's been saying similar things for a while now. "Affordability," according to Trump, "is a Democrat [sic] hoax." And now he's somehow solved the hoax! Hey, presto!

Trump is quite obviously planning on running the Republican midterm election campaign on: "Pay no attention to the prices you pay at the grocery store, because all of your affordability problems have been solved!"

Even some of his MAGA faithful might balk at this obvious gaslighting, one might think. But then to top it all off, the subject of tariffs is going to be front and center for months now, as Trump flails about and tries to levy the same tariffs using different laws (which require investigations and drawn-out processes). Trump will be fighting hard for tariffs even though the public does not support tariffs, by almost a 2-to-1 margin (the most recent poll showed 64 percent of the public opposed tariffs, while only 34 percent supported them). Tariffs are wildly unpopular and people know full well there is indeed an affordability crisis, and Trump is going to kick off his midterm campaign theme by telling people that the crisis doesn't exist and tariffs are wonderful.

One route Trump could take (which admittedly he probably won't) on tariffs would be to ask Congress to pass a new law which gave him unfettered power to slap tariffs on any country for any reason. The Supreme Court reaffirmed in a big way with today's decision that the power to tax -- and tariffs are definitely a tax -- lies with Congress and with Congress alone. Congress can allow presidents to use tariffs, but only by passing a law which essentially abdicates their own constitutional duty in this regard. So they could very easily write a law which says all the things that Trump argued IEEPA says, giving him unlimited power to impose tariffs on any country.

The question is whether they would want to do that or not. They could conceivably do so using budget reconciliation rules which would allow them to pass a bill through the Senate without having to have 60 votes in favor, but even then it's doubtful whether such a bill could actually pass or not. Because it is Republicans in Congress whose jobs will be on the line this November, not Trump. They all have to get re-elected. And running on Trump's: "Ignore reality, reality is what I say it is!" would likely not work out too well for them. Just recently, the House of Representatives actually passed a bill that would end the tariffs on Canada, which they were able to do when six Republicans crossed the aisle and voted with the Democrats. That doesn't bode well for Trump getting a bill through Congress which gave him full and unfettered control over tariffs.

Even if they don't choose the route of passing a new bill to let Trump do what he wants, Republicans in Congress might have to face a vote on the tariffs anyway. The law Trump used today to institute a new 10 percent tariff on the world requires Congress to vote to extend such tariffs beyond 150 days. Five months from now would be the end of the summer -- right when the midterm election campaign should be heating up. Are vulnerable Republicans really going to rush to support tariffs their constituents hate right before an election? Of course, by that deadline Trump may have done all the paperwork to institute tariffs using different laws, which would avoid Congress having to vote, but that's no sure thing. In any case, it seems almost guaranteed that the political fight over tariffs is going to be a lot more prominent in the midterm campaigns than it would have been if the Supreme Court had ruled for Trump today.

Republicans worried about their prospects for re-election might want to take a gander at a new poll out this week, which showed that if the 2024 election were magically held again today, Donald Trump wouldn't win the popular vote by 1.5 points. Instead, Kamala Harris would beat Trump by a whopping eight points. Those are the headwinds Republicans already face, heading into the midterms. And Trump's insistence on making tariffs a whopping big deal for months on end certainly isn't going to help that situation one bit.

And that's just one issue Trump is losing votes on. Republicans in Texas are getting awfully concerned about their chances in this year's elections as well, as Trump's brutality against immigrants is causing his support among Latino voters to crater. The Lone Star state's construction industry is also getting very worried about the situation, for good reason (Trump keeps deporting all the workers they need). The head of the South Texas Builders Association made a trip to Washington last week to urge the White House and Republicans to shift course dramatically or else, as he put it: "South Texas will never be red again."

It was one of those weeks, however, where all our research and notes into all the other things that happened in the political world had to be scrapped at the last minute with the breaking news from the Supreme Court, so we're not even going to try to run down all the rest of it here. But there was one snippet that was so outrageous (and so insulting to members of the military) that we had to close with it. In an article titled: "Trump Wants To Give Himself Medal Of Honor: 'I Was Extremely Brave'," Trump shows his contempt for the military in general as well as every single recipient of the nation's highest military honor in specific. Even for Trump, that's pretty disgusting and repulsive. Here's what Trump had to say about why he deserved this award, after visiting the troops in Iraq for Christmas in 2018 (with the highest possible levels of security in place):



Anyone who thinks Trump was "just kidding" should remember all the other things we all thought was just a joke to him (see: Greenland, among many, many other flights of fancy turned into sober reality).

In fact, we don't even feel qualified to express how insulting and egotistical Trump was, here. We will defer those comments to people (especially Democrats running for office, hopefully) who have proudly served in this nation's military, who might just have something to say about Trump's "I went to Iraq, therefore I deserve the best medal there is" disrespectful idiocy.





California Governor Gavin Newsom certainly knows how to get under Trump's famously-thin skin. He did so once again this week, by charting a different course for California than Trump is charting for the rest of the country. Which annoyed Trump no end, of course. Here's the story:



Not surprisingly, Newsom wore Trump's annoyance as a badge of honor. As his aides gleefully admitted:



You just gotta love that last bit of snark.

Snark aside, though, Newsom leading his state forward while Trump tries to drag America backward was pretty impressive. And like his advisors said, provoking Trump's annoyance was just the icing on the cake, really.

For refusing to let Trump's delusions on climate change dictate what the state of California will do, for standing up for science over ignorance, and for getting under Trump's skin, Gavin Newsom is easily the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Congratulate California Governor Gavin Newsom on his official contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





Once again we find ourselves with no real candidate for the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award this week. Which is a good thing, as Martha Stewart would say. So the MDDOTW award will go back on the shelf for another week, we are happy to report.




Volume 829 (2/20/26)

First off, we have to note how sad we were to hear the news of the passing of Reverend Jesse Jackson. We wrote about our own personal connection (which was about as minimal as you can get) with Jackson earlier this week, for anyone who is interested. Requiescat In Pace.

Moving along... because of the importance of today's Supreme Court decision, we are going to forego our discrete talking points this week and instead offer up what we would work into the Democrats' response to the State Of The Union speech next Tuesday night. Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger has been chosen to give this response, and we have no idea what she will say, but here is how we would work the subject into such a speech.

Some Democrats were quick off the mark in responding to the news, as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer celebrated:



Hakeem Jeffries also chimed in, calling the decision "another crushing defeat for the wannabe King." Which is where we'll start our own rant, in fact....



No kings!

This year, America will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. This revolutionary document is mostly a long list of grievances the American colonies had with the King of England. And right there in the middle of this list are two that seem especially relevant right now. The Declaration denounces King George III, "For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world" and "For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent."

Think about that for a minute. These were two of the reasons we broke away from being ruled by a king. Remember the slogan we all learned as schoolchildren: "No taxation without representation"?

Donald Trump, beginning last year, has done exactly the same things to the American people as the Declaration denounces. On his own whim, he cut off trade with other countries and imposed taxes -- for tariffs are indeed taxes on American consumers -- upon us without our consent. Why should Trump get to do what we rebelled against King George for doing? Do you really think the Founders really intended that to happen?

I don't. Because unlike Donald Trump I have both read and understand our Constitution. And it clearly says that the power to tax is given to Congress, period. Not to the president. Because they didn't want to be governed by a king -- even an American one.

Donald Trump is not America's king. He just isn't. In fact, last year the biggest protest rallies in American history gathered in the streets of our country nationwide as millions upon millions of Americans stood up for this very basic and foundational idea -- No kings!

No matter how many times Donald Trump denies it, the vast majority of the American public knows full well that tariffs are a tax. And they're not just a tax -- they're a tax that we all have to pay. The tariffs are not paid by foreign countries. They are not magically paid by anyone else. They are paid by hard-working American families, and we can all see the effect on prices Trump's trade war has had every time we have to buy something. Because tariffs are a tax -- that you pay. Period.

Trump's trade war has backfired no matter how you look at it. Even using the metric that Trump based the whole thing on, his trade war has been an utter failure. For some reason (probably because he just doesn't understand basic economics), Trump thinks that running a trade deficit means America is somehow "getting ripped off." So he announced his tariffs to shrink the trade deficit America runs with the rest of the world. His tariffs were supposed to magically solve this imagined problem. But you know what? The trade deficit actually rose last year and hit an all-time high! That is a failure even using Trump's own metric, folks.

Trump's tariffs were also supposed to launch a manufacturing boom. If Trump raised the price of imports by taxing them, then American manufacturers were supposed to benefit, since they wouldn't have to pay the tariffs. So what actually happened? America lost 80,000 manufacturing jobs last year. So much for Trump's "boom," eh? He can lie all he wants about how wonderful everything is, but when you look at the reality of the situation, Trump's trade war has been a gigantic failure.

We heard a lot of sour grapes from Trump tonight, on many subjects. This is because he has the mind of a petulant little child. And he had the gall to berate members of the Supreme Court to their faces, because he didn't like losing on tariffs. But you know what? Trump is not a king. He can't bully the Supreme Court around, or have them jailed or executed on a whim. Because that's what tyrannical leaders do, not American presidents. And we say: "No kings!"

If Trump were smart -- which he isn't, quite obviously -- he would have realized that the Supreme Court threw him a lifeline with their decision. Trump's approval rating has been heading downward pretty much ever since he took office, and the economy is a gigantic reason why. People are still worried about affordability because it is a hard, cold reality. Trump can claim he has "won on affordability" and that it is no longer a problem until he is blue in the face, but it doesn't change the facts for everyone's wallet out there. Trump can stand up and declare "Mission accomplished!" on affordability, but he might want to ask George W. Bush how that all turned out for him.

With the electorate so worried about high prices and the cost of living, if Trump was smart he would have embraced the Supreme Court's ruling and watched as the tariffs were lifted and prices began to do what he promised -- finally come down. He ran on that, remember? Prices on everything were supposed to come way, way down. "On Day One," in fact -- that's what Trump promised us all. Instead, they have gone up on almost everything people have to buy.

Ending all Trump's tariffs would have eased prices on all sorts of things. So if Trump had embraced the Supreme Court's ruling, by the time the midterm election rolls around, people might actually be giving him some credit for easing the affordability crisis. When Trump initially threatened the rest of the world with his trade war tariffs, he called it "Liberation Day." He could have just rebranded the Supreme Court's ruling as "Liberation Day 2.0," as the court liberated everyone from paying the extra tax Trump has slapped on everything.

But Donald Trump is not that smart. He just isn't. Instead of grasping the economic lifeline the high court just threw him, he is now determined to reinstate the taxes he has put on the rest of the world through different tariff laws. He is going to fight tooth and nail to keep his taxes on everything. He is going to fight to make sure that prices stay high, all while telling you everything is peachy-keen and America is enjoying the best economy the world has ever seen.

But you and I know the truth. The truth is what your grocery receipt says, not what Donald Trump says. Tariffs are unpopular because they drive prices up. But Trump is telling all the Republicans to run their midterm election campaigns on the idea that up is down and affordability has been solved. The crisis doesn't exist. You're imagining it.

You know what I have to say to Trump and every Republican stupid enough to try to run on that idea? Good luck. Good luck with that. Because the American people are smarter than you think.

The Republicans who don't run on Trump's fantasy of him "winning" on affordability stand a much better chance of winning their own re-election. Because Trump doesn't really care about them. He certainly doesn't care about you, either. All he cares about is himself. He wants to rename everything in sight after himself, he wants to build a tacky ballroom at the White House, and he was pleased as punch when the Department of Justice put up an enormous image of Trump on their headquarters. These are all things you might expect a king to do -- slap his name and face on everything while ignoring what average people are going through.

But you know what? I agree with the protesters last year, just as I agree with the signers of the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago. Because if there is one unifying bedrock belief that unites Americans both back then and today it is the simple concept of "No kings!"

After all, we fought a whole war over that very idea -- a war which gave us the United States of America. Without a king to rule us, ever.




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

February 7, 2026

Friday Talking Points -- Outrage After Outrage

Today Donald Trump proved yet again that he is nothing short of a stone-cold racist. He reposted a message on social media that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. That's really all you need to know about it, other than the fact that (for once) it was so unbelievably offensive that, hours later, it was deleted. The White House blamed an unnamed "staffer," to which Black voters everywhere responded: "Yeah, right." Trump's hatred for the Obamas is well-known, of course, but even some Republicans complained at this latest racist outrage from Trump.

Of course, this wasn't the only outrage from Trump this week, just the most recent and most racist. There were plenty of others in the competition for the "outrage of the week" gold medal. So far, the one that is leading in the standings is Trump's new push to "nationalize" elections and have the Republican Party "take over the voting." In related news, the F.B.I. raided Fulton County's elections department and confiscated all the ballots from the 2020 presidential election, because Trump still cannot face the hard, cold fact that he lost that election. Now that all the ballots are in Trump's weaponized Justice Department's hands, look for an upcoming announcement that they have "found 11,780 votes" for Trump, as he had requested long ago. Welcome to Banana Republic America, folks!

This week, one government shutdown ended while the next one got teed up. The House passed the bill the Senate had passed last week, which will fund everything in the government except the Department of Homeland Security (which contains ICE). The D.H.S. funding only got extended until next Friday, and Congress has until then to come up with a deal. Democrats are demanding changes to ICE and other immigration enforcement agencies, which are pretty obviously needed right now.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer released a letter that outlines the Democrats' list of demands, all of which seem entirely appropriate and in a sane world would be considered not only reasonable but downright unobjectionable. Previously, a bill to make such changes probably would have gotten bipartisan support and may have even been introduced by a Republican. It wasn't that long ago that Republicans were the ones adamantly against "jack-booted federal agents" (who may or may not be flying around in unmarked black helicopters). But these are not normal times, and that script has been flipped.

Nowadays, every American can see for themselves what out-of-control federal agents are doing in their name, paid for by their tax dollars. The thuggish brutality is on full display, which certainly strengthens the Democrats' arguing position. Masked men in full combat gear with weapons designed for the battlefield are roaming American cities in packs and attacking not just suspected immigrants but also any American citizen who dares to be offended by such totalitarian behavior.

Democrats didn't create this wave of revulsion against ICE, they are merely riding it. Watching American citizens being executed in cold blood by anonymous masked federal agents with a "shoot first, ask questions never" attitude sickened and outraged a large majority of the public. When Donald Trump ran on deporting "the worst of the worst," few expected that would include a 5-year-old boy wearing a Spiderman backpack, to state the obvious. Now that Trump's immigration crackdown has been revealed for what it truly is, the public recoils in horror. Democrats are seen as trying to fight back -- for the Constitution and for basic human rights.

Republicans, of course, are on the other side of those issues. So another shutdown next week is a very real possibility, except that this time it will only be D.H.S. who sees their funding end (the rest of the government is now funded through the end of the fiscal year).

You'd expect in the midst of such a political crisis for it to pop up in Saturday Night Live skits, and to see "ICE out" pins proliferating at the Grammys, worn by pop stars. But things have gotten so bad that the United States Olympic team had to rename their own "shared athlete hospitality area" in Italy, because they had previously chosen to call it the "Ice House." That obviously now has connotations they didn't want, so they're now calling it "Winter House" instead. During a recent winter storm, FEMA was told by its D.H.S. bosses to avoid using the word "ice" in their warnings, and instead say things like "freezing rain" -- so they wouldn't have to deal with memes based on government warnings that "Ice is making the roads dangerous" and whatnot.

Donald Trump has realized what a losing issue this is for him politically, which is a good sign. Whenever Trump wants to put something behind him, he is usually open to cutting a deal to get the whole thing off the front pages. And he's made a few moves in that direction so far. Trump personally told immigration agents not to get involved with the protests, which is a definite shift in tone from the top. He also turned over the immigration besiegement of Minneapolis to Tom Homan, who is seen as less of a thug than the people who previously had been the face of the operation. Which is ironic, as that SNL skit pointed out:

Kristi Noem announced this week that all agents in Minneapolis would be provided with body cameras "effective immediately," and by week's end it was announced that 700 of the occupying officers (out of a total of 3,000) were being sent home. That's not a full retreat, but it does show that Trump is aware of how much this is hurting him in the public eye. If he felt confident of public opinion, he never would have made any of these moves, obviously.

Meanwhile, ICE is trying to buy up warehouses across the country to turn them into detention centers (or as some might call them, "concentration camps" ). Localities are actually beginning to push back against these moves, when they realize what is happening. Who wants an ICE human-misery facility in their own town, after all?

Federal judges, both in Minnesota and elsewhere, are beginning to get seriously annoyed at ICE's tactics and their blatant refusal to obey court orders. One of these rulings -- a short one -- was so witheringly dismissive of the lies, misrepresentations, and willful ignorance displayed in court (on the issue of that 5-year-old boy's detention, in fact) that the New York Times took the time to annotate it to point out how scathing each passage of it truly was. But the feds keep right on lying, no matter how unbelievable these lies are. ICE recently turned over a man in their custody in Minneapolis to a hospital and told the doctors that his injuries were because he "purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall." Even the nurses knew they were lying, since he had multiple fractures and bleeding in his brain, in several different places. So now they're just lazily using the language of a common wife-beater in an attempt to cover up their own unchecked brutality.

One Justice Department lawyer was pushed to the breaking point by all of this, and was summarily fired for telling the truth in court. She had been buried by having 90 cases assigned to her and just snapped when the judge asked why his court orders in some of these cases had just been flatly ignored:



She went on to express her own exasperation and frustration with trying to make sure the judicial orders were obeyed:



It's gotten to the point where local police in Chicago are now being told to document any aggressive or potentially illegal behavior they see from ICE agents in their streets. D.H.S. is now also using "administrative warrants" (translation: no judge's signature required) to legally harass United States citizens they don't like, including one person who merely wrote a letter to a judge in support of a person who was at risk of deportation. We are slowly slipping into being a police state, which is why Democrats are finally fighting back.

Trump, meanwhile, has his own priorities to take care of. Which apparently includes continuing to slap his own name on everything in America that he thinks he can get away with. There is a huge tunnel project between New York City and New Jersey whose funds are being held up by Trump, and it should surprise no one to learn that Trump's price for freeing up the funding was to get both Dulles Airport and Penn Station (only one of which is even in New York City) renamed after him. This is precisely how petty Trump is, folks.

Speaking of the depths of Trump's pettiness, he went into a snit this week because pretty much every performing artist worth seeing is cancelling their scheduled dates at the Kennedy Center, now that Trump demanded to slap his own name on the building too. This list has grown so long it even has its own Wikipedia page now, in fact. Faced with plummeting ticket sales and the continuing and growing wave of artists refusing to perform there, Trump abruptly announced that the Kennedy Center will be closing its doors after July 4th for two whole years, so that it can be "renovated." This might mean Trump tears the entire building down, knowing his approach to such "renovations" (see: the former East Wing of the White House). Or maybe he'll just completely gut the interior and rebuild it as yet another monument to Trump's tacky and cringeworthy "style" design choices (see: the tawdry gilded additions to the Oval Office, done in classic "cheap brothel" style). This sudden announcement took everyone at the Kennedy Center by complete surprise, naturally, since it was nothing short of another Trumpian tantrum.

It all adds to our growing belief that any Democrat running for president in 2028 would boost their chances by including a plank in their campaign platform that promises to undo all this blizzard of bad taste. Promising to tear down whatever tacky palace Trump erects as his new White House ballroom and restoring the Kennedy Center to its dignity and grandeur seems guaranteed to get a lot of voter support, don't you think?





We have two candidates for this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award, and it was a close call because both were impressive in their own way.

The runner-up (who will have to settle for an Honorable Mention award) was Senator Elissa Slotkin. Here's the story, in case you missed it:



Slotkin released a video this week explaining why she told Pirro to go pound sand, where she said that her lawyers had cautioned her to "just be quiet, keep my head down, and, hopefully, this will all just go away." She refused to take that route, as she explained:



Her legal team met with two lawyers from Pirro's office and afterwards Slotkin's lawyers stated that Pirro's team: "could not articulate any theory of possible criminal liability or identify any statute they were relying on or that could have been violated." Which is why Slotkin refused to take part in such an obvious textbook example of the weaponization of the Department of Justice.

But this week had an even more impressive Democrat in the headlines. Last weekend a special election was held in Texas. Democrats won a U.S. House seat that they were expected to win, which cut Speaker Mike Johnson's GOP majority down to the slimmest margin imaginable (he can now only afford to lose one GOP vote and still muster a majority of the chamber). But it was the state-level election that made the biggest political news:



That is a 31-point swing in the vote, in a district Republicans had held for decades. Which is pretty darn impressive, you've got to admit. Even more impressive is how much Republicans are freaking out about the result, as they look towards the midterm elections in November. Democrats, meanwhile, are filled with glee at the news. For the far-reaching nature of his victory, Taylor Rehmet's stunning upset in his race makes him the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week, in our opinion.

[The online Texas state senate site has not listed Taylor Rehmet yet (he represents the 9th district), so you'll have to wait to officially let him know you appreciate his efforts.]





There were a few minor questionable things Democrats did last week, but we find that none of them rise to the level of the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award, so we're putting it back on the shelf once again until next week.




Volume 827 (2/6/26)

We've got another mixed bunch of talking points this week, and we couldn't even fit in one about how we could be at the dawn of a new nuclear arms race (we wrote about the expiration of the last nuclear arms limitation treaty yesterday, if anyone's interested). So let's just dig in and get right to them, shall we?



Outraged

This is an old favorite of ours, we have to admit.

"You know, there's a political bumpersticker slogan that is so well-written that it continues to be relevant, even though the first time I saw one was decades ago. And never has it been more true than today. It says: 'If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.' These days, as Trump and his goons pile up outrage upon outrage, it's getting harder and harder for anyone not to notice it all. Some of us pay attention to all of them, but most everybody has been forced to pay attention to the worst of it, by now."



ICE just ignores their own rules

This hasn't really been a part of the whole conversation, but it should be.

"You know, while Democrats try to write some rules to rein in ICE, what nobody seems to be addressing is that they already have rules -- they're just flat-out ignoring them. Just like every other police agency in this country, they have a handbook which lays out what is allowable and what is not. It's called the 'ICE Firearms and Use of Force Directive,' and the officers who shot Renée Good to death violated so many of the rules this handbook contains that it's hard to even count them all. So I hope Democrats keep this in mind while negotiating ICE reforms next week. Because creating rules for the use of force won't matter in the slightest if ICE agents are allowed to just flat-out ignore such rules."



That pesky Fourth Amendment

Republicans are already pushing back on Democrats' demands, but their position is awfully hard to defend. So point it out!

"Republicans seem upset that Democrats are demanding that all federal agents fully comply with the United States Constitution. They are pushing back on a demand that judicial warrants must be in place before ICE breaks down doors of private houses and floods in with military weapons drawn and ready for use, without a judicial warrant. How can they even argue for this? For this to be allowable tactics for federal agents to use would require that Republicans pass a constitutional amendment to overturn the current Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights. For all those sanctimonious Republicans who used to make a big deal out of carrying a copy of the U.S. Constitution with them at all times, I would direct them to read it again -- especially that pesky Fourth Amendment."



Still a sore loser

Trump is the "greatest of all time" when it comes to sore losers, that's for sure.

"Donald Trump is openly suggesting that he might just 'nationalize' the upcoming midterm elections. He thinks that Republicans should be in charge of the entire process of counting all the votes. And if anyone thinks he is 'just kidding,' for Pete's sake he is still trying to steal the 2020 presidential election -- you know, the one that he lost? He just grabbed all the 2020 ballots from Fulton County, Georgia and keeps promising that any day now he'll produce some sort of evidence to back up his extended sore-loser tantrum about losing. It's been five years now and Donald Trump still can't face the fact that sometimes voters vote for Democrats. Which is what makes all his threats about the midterms so frightening."



Send in the paratroopers!

Trump isn't even the worst on this subject.

"Steve Bannon -- who used to be a close Trump advisor but thankfully no longer is -- is going further than Trump on how the midterms should be conducted. He not only wants to flood all the voting places in blue states and cities with ICE agents -- to intimidate possible Democratic voters -- but he openly called for 'not just ICE' but that Trump 'call up the 82nd and 101st Airborne [Divisions] on the Insurrection Act.' We're nine months away from the midterm elections and already the MAGA lunatics are calling on Trump to flood the polling places with Army paratroopers. Because that's the America they want to live in, folks."



It was all a lie!

Better late than never... Marjorie Taylor Greene is not mincing words these days, since she has broken herself out of the Trump personality cult in a big way. Here is just some of what she had to say in a YouTube interview this week (all of which pretty much any Democrat could agree with):





Dying in darkness

This last one is just sad. This is a newspaper that once took down an American president by exposing his crimes to the public, after all.

"Did you see that the Washington Post laid off 300 journalists this week? This was the same week that a slobbering wet kiss of a documentary about the First Lady was released after Jeff Bezos -- the Post's owner -- paid over $75 million to create it, with $28 million of that going right into her own pocket. So Bezos isn't exactly hurting for money or anything. The Post, however, has gone from being a respectable news outlet to being nothing short of an apologist for everything Trump does. Their editorial board pieces are so laughably bad these days they put Fox News to shame. Subscribers have been leaving in droves, ever since Bezos refused to endorse a candidate in 2024 and then announced that the paper was going to strive to be Trump-friendly. Years earlier, he came up with a new motto for the paper which still exists in their masthead: 'Democracy dies in darkness.' This is nothing short of a joke these days, and it really should be replaced with a more appropriate motto: 'Will the last reporter to get fired please turn the lights out as they go.'"




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

January 31, 2026

Friday Talking Points -- Remember The Names Of Those Who Died On The Streets Of Minneapolis

We're going to begin today with a prediction that is completely unrelated to what happened last week. Because next Friday the 2026 Winter Olympics will begin. Our prediction: the U.S.A. is going to get booed. Loudly. It'll probably be most noticeable during the opening ceremonies, but will likely sporadically pop up throughout the games. Perhaps this is why Donald Trump decided to skip the whole thing and send JD Vance in his place? Maybe Vance -- who is not as well-known worldwide -- won't get booed as loudly as the catcalls would have been if Trump had been there?

This all seems like a safe bet, since Trump has spent the past year being as belligerent and offensive as possible to pretty much every other nation on Earth (with the possible exception of Russia and a few oil emirates). Trump has insulted country after country, belittled and denigrated their leaders, thrown America's weight around as the world's biggest bully (and a psychotic one, at that), and threatened the post-World-War-II world order in almost too many ways to count. Trump has used the rest of the world -- Europe in particular -- as his punching bag all year long. So it shouldn't be any surprise if people from the entire world join together in a chorus of boos to let Trump and America know exactly how low we have sunk in the world's opinion.

And we were going to say all of that even before it was announced that Trump is sending ICE agents to Milan, Italy "for security purposes." Anti-ICE protests are already planned, as of this writing. Which isn't too surprising, seeing as how anti-ICE protests are now taking place on a daily basis here at home.

Which brings us to the big news of the week, of course. Donald Trump was finally forced to back down -- in style, at least, although the jury's still out on whether he's actually going to back down on substance or not.

Trump has always expressed praise for cops acting like jackbooted thugs, of course. He's said so many times, in many ways, ever since he entered politics (and long before, for that matter). He wants to see cops breaking heads and shooting protesters -- as long as those protesters aren't on his side. He appointed people who think just like him to key positions in his cabinet and in his White House, and has supported sending either federal agents dressed and equipped for a battlefield or actual military troops to any city he deems to be insubordinate in any way. He gleefully demonized any Americans who dared to protest any of his actions, and praised to the skies the brutality shown by his stormtroopers.

So it wasn't all that surprising that he followed the same playbook after immigration cops shot and killed yet another protester in Minneapolis who was doing absolutely nothing to deserve such summary execution. From Trump on down, when the news broke last weekend, the dead man was called a domestic terrorist and an assassin and a violent radical and anything else they could think up to demonize him and blame him for his own death at the hands of out-of-control federal agents.

Then the videos appeared of what had actually happened. And all the videos plainly showed that Trump and his henchmen were lying. Blatantly and shamelessly lying. Nothing matched their portrayal of events at all. Instead of a wild-eyed wannabe assassin approaching federal officers while waving a gun around and threatening to kill them all, we saw a man who intervened when a federal thug violently shoved a woman into a snowbank and then pepper-sprayed her in the face -- for no valid reason. She was not interfering with the officer's duties, she was not attacking him, she was not resisting arrest, she was just standing there exercising her constitutional right to free speech. When she was on the ground helpless and being sprayed with caustic chemicals in the face, another man positioned himself between her and the jackbooted thug attacking her. So the thug attacked him instead, spraying him in the face as well -- even though he was also not attacking the cop or interfering with him in any way. He was just trying to prevent the woman from a vicious and unfounded attack.

So the cops piled on top of him and then shot him 10 times, even though he did nothing threatening and did not pull out or even attempt to reach for the gun he had in his waistband. ICE and the Border Patrol are now judge, jury, and executioner, as everyone in America could plainly see for themselves.

In response, even after the videos had been seen by most Americans, Trump and his minions doubled down on their lies. They refused to admit what everyone's eyes could plainly see. The attorney general of Minnesota accused Trump and Kristi Noem and all the rest of them of spouting "flat-out insane" lies. This is part of a pattern, and it was about time Trump and the rest of them were called to the carpet over such lying. In every single one of the 16 shootings from ICE or the Border Patrol over the course of the last few months, Trump and his toadies have immediately leapt to sing from the same songbook of lies: they're all "domestic terrorists" who "attacked the officers" and they had to shoot "in fear for their lives." These stories often fall apart on examination, since they are not based in reality at all. The Trump administration has even been castigated by judges for lying in court and under oath, and federal judges are now just assuming that everything the government says in any of these cases is a blatant lie unless proven otherwise by solid factual evidence.

For days, Trump et al kept insisting that their lies were true. Even after the videos so clearly debunked them. And then the shift happened. Trump finally realized that the public wasn't buying the official lies, and that people were turning against him and his fellow Republicans in a big way. So Trump did something he rarely ever does -- he decided it was time to change course and do a little damage control.

Part of the reason for this shift was that cracks were appearing among Republicans. Washington GOP politicians were publicly contradicting Trump and stating the truth (some extremely timidly, some less so) and a Republican who had been running for governor in Minnesota abruptly announced he was ending his campaign because he just couldn't continue calling himself a Republican, saying: "I cannot support the... stated retribution on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so. United States citizens are carrying papers to prove their citizenship. That's wrong."

Even the Second Amendment enthusiasts were angry, after Trump (and others) essentially said that carrying a weapon to a protest was reason enough for a federal agent to execute you on the spot. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pointed out the rank hypocrisy of such a stance, saying: "How rich is it that she is saying showing up to the scene of a protest with a legally owned weapon should be grounds for a person's death, execution at the hands of the state, by the same party and the same administration that praises Kyle Rittenhouse?" Good point.

Federal judges are not happy with the Trump administration either. One threatened to hold the head of ICE in contempt of court if he didn't obey a summons to appear personally. "The court's patience is at an end," the judge wrote. "The Court acknowledges that ordering the head of a federal agency to personally appear is an extraordinary step, but the extent of ICE's violation of court orders is likewise extraordinary, and lesser measures have been tried and failed."

ICE then obeyed the court's underlying order (to release one of their prisoners) and the judge backed off on the demand, but was equally scathing in his order, noting that ICE had ignored 96 judicial orders in over 70 cases since the crackdown in Minnesota began, noting: "This list should give pause to anyone -- no matter his or her political beliefs -- who cares about the rule of law. ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence."

Federal prosecutors in Minnesota also reportedly considered resigning en masse to protest the investigation after the most recent shooting.

Other conservative voices expressed their disgust as well:

After even conservative media began to turn on him by channeling their inner Pink Floyd ("Set the controls for the heart of the sun" ), Donald Trump finally realized that the tide had turned and there was simply no way to bluster his way through this mess. Instead, he decided to blame another scapegoat (Noem, as of this writing, is still not on a rocket, headed sunward). So he demoted the "commander-at-large" of the Border Patrol, a guy named Gregory Bovino, and instead send in Tom Homan to take charge in Minneapolis.

Trump even called up Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and made nice with them. This is in direct contrast to the way Trump had been treating these two up to this point -- accusing them of inciting all the violence and siccing his Justice Department on them -- so it was a noticeable shift in tone. Since Homan arrived, Noem has disappeared from the scene and ICE sent out a new memo to all their officers telling them: "DO NOT COMMUNICATE OR ENGAGE WITH AGITATORS. It serves no purpose other than inflaming the situation." This also told the ICE goons to back off and stop arresting people with no criminal history. So maybe things are changing for the better. Time will tell.

The Justice Department, reversing an earlier decision not to, has now reportedly opened a civil rights investigation into the killing of Pretti. So maybe it's not just ICE and the Border Patrol who have been told to change how they've been operating. We'll see.

Meanwhile, the protests continue. Last Friday Minneapolis held an unofficial "general strike" where most businesses shuttered their doors in protest of the federal jackbooted thugs in their streets. Today, one week later, there is a massive protest march happening after a protest concert was held (with a very special guest performing). And a third "No Kings" rally has been announced, which will have Minneapolis as the center of attention, for the end of March (when the weather warms up a bit).

In Washington, Democrats are using the outrage all of this has sparked to actually get something productive done. Because of the coincidence of the government's funding running out at midnight tonight, Democrats are using the leverage of public opinion to absolutely demand changes to ICE and other Homeland Security agencies. And they've already got an impressive amount of Republican support for their efforts, which is strange so early in the shutdown process. When a vote on a bill that would have funded everything happened in the Senate, eight Republicans crossed the aisle and voted with the Democrats to kill the bill. That is a stunning amount of bipartisan support, these days.

The government will technically shut down starting at midnight, but it will likely only remain shut down until Monday (or perhaps Tuesday). The Senate will divide up the bill that failed and pass all the parts of it that are not contentious, while holding up Homeland Security's budget for another two weeks. Democrats have made three reasonable demands for reform, which include banning ICE agents from wearing masks and mandating body cameras (we wrote about the Democratic demands yesterday at more length).

For once, the Democratic minority in Congress clearly has the upper hand in the negotiations. Trump's thugs are not popular. Midterm elections are a little over nine months away. Republicans are scared of what the voters are going to do (and not just on this issue). And now that even Trump has realized what an enormous political liability this all has become for him, Democrats will be on offense during the negotiations as to how severely to rein in the Department of Homeland Security. While Republicans will be in a defensive crouch.

All in all, things are looking up for the Democrats, at least over the course of the next two weeks. Which is a good place to end on for today.





Senator Amy Klobuchar has been doing a pretty good job of expressing her state's outrage at what is going on in Minneapolis, and just this week she officially launched her campaign to become Minnesota's next governor. She is now seen as the frontrunner in the Democratic primary race, which at least earns her a Honorable Mention.

We have two musicians who are worth some sort of honor, but can't say for certain if they officially belong to a political party, so we'll just note them in passing here. First, Neil Young offered free access to his entire musical catalog online to everyone in Greenland. Young is now an American citizen, but he was born in Canada and wanted to offer his solidarity to the people of Greenland after Donald Trump's maniacal obsession with owning the island.

That was impressive, but closer to home Bruce Springsteen reacted to the news from the Twin Cities by writing, recording, and releasing a new song: "Streets Of Minneapolis." In it, he expresses his rage quite eloquently (more on this in a bit). He made a personal appearance in the city today and sang his new song at a protest concert being given, much to the audience's delight.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer deserves at least an Honorable Mention as well, for pulling Democrats together behind a list of demands for the government shutdown fight. It's rare that Democrats act so quickly in a moment of crisis, so we had to at least acknowledge this.

But our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week goes out to a Democrat for a completely different reason. Representative Ilhan Omar was addressing a crowd this week when a crazed Trump supporter walked up to her podium and sprayed her with an unknown substance (which later turned out to be vinegar), just as she was calling for Kristi Noem to resign or be fired. Omar later said she initially thought the guy had spit on her.

Her reaction, however, was astonishing. Despite being roughly half her attacker's size and weight (Omar is not exactly John Fetterman in terms of having what might be called an imposing physical presence), Omar advanced towards her attacker, one hand curling into a fist. If the guy hadn't been tackled by security, she doubtlessly would have thrown a punch at the guy's face (which she later confirmed was her intent, in an interview). Watch the video to see the unequal physical match between the two and ask yourself if you were Omar's size would you have been that brave?

For her fearless response to an unprovoked attack against her, Ilhan Omar is definitely our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week. "Minneapolis strong" indeed!

[Congratulate Representative Ilhan Omar on her House contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]





Once again we are delighted to report that no Democrat disappointed us in any major way this week. Democrats are united in response to Trump's immigration overreach and seem like they are going to successfully use the threat of a government shutdown to effect real changes -- without a single dissenting voice. So we're going to put the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award back on the shelf for another week.




Volume 826 (1/30/26)

We had planned on offering up a mix of talking points this week, from the outraged (at ICE and all the other Trump thugs), to the snarky ("Is Kristi Noem on thin ICE with Trump?" ) to the unrelated.

On that last one, Democrats should indeed keep their big issue for the midterm campaigns simmering on the back burner, since no matter what happens with ICE in the next few weeks the economy is still likely to be the biggest issue of the election. And things just keep getting worse out there in the public's opinion. It was revealed this week that consumer sentiment is now at the lowest point it has been for over a decade -- which includes the entire COVID-19 pandemic. People feel worse about the economy now than they did when the economy came to a grinding halt in 2020, to put it another way -- and this is true for every single metric they use to measure consumer confidence. They're all way down.

Add to this the fact that because Republicans have now successfully blocked the Obamacare subsidies from being extended (which we wrote about earlier in the week), healthcare costs are now Americans' top worry. Here are the new numbers:



Those are two enormously important talking points for Democrats to keep in mind, obviously (since they happen to be on the winning side of both of those arguments).

But this week was a one-subject week, politically-speaking. And rather than try to come up with our own talking points to express the rage in the streets, we decided to just let The Boss do so for us.

So instead of this week's talking points, here are the lyrics to Bruce Springsteen's new song, "Streets Of Minneapolis" instead (which you can follow while listening to the official video release):






Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

January 24, 2026

Friday Talking Points -- Standing Up To The Bully Worked

Welcome back to the ongoing saga of "The Arsonist Fireman." In this week's episode, our protagonist lights a fire which could burn down the entire Western world -- starting with its military alliance -- before grabbing a fire extinguisher and singlehandedly snuffing it out. As usual, he then wonders why everyone doesn't congratulate him on having bravely averted such a disaster.

Sorry for the snark, but it's really hard to see the past week through any other lens. This week, Donald Trump followed through on his sword-rattling over owning Greenland (or perhaps Iceland?) by going to Davos, Switzerland, giving a meandering and insulting speech (full of lies, as usual), and then declaring victory before going home.

However, there was no actual victory. Nothing changed. Trump spoke of a "format of a deal" and "concepts of a deal," but there simply was no actual deal in sight. And certainly not one that gave Trump any of what he was demanding. Denmark and Greenland have unequivocally stated that they are not giving up even one inch of their sovereignty over the island to Trump, period. That has not changed. But all of a sudden, Trump was claiming that somehow all of his goals had been met.

Again: nothing has changed. America already had the ability to open military bases and beef up Arctic defenses on Greenland to their heart's content. That has not changed -- we can still do so quite easily. No new agreement with Denmark is necessary for us to do so. No new "deal" is required. So Trump's big victorious "deal" is a giant nothingburger, or (more properly) Trump desperately seeking some sort of way to save face after the entire rest of the world stood up to his bullying.

Trump's goal in owning Greenland was ridiculous from the get-go, it bears mentioning. All his arguments for why we needed to do so were nothing more than "self-evidently bullshit from top to bottom," as a former Obama State Department official put it. Even some Republicans were denigrating Trump, with Representative Don Bacon calling his obsession over Greenland "the dumbest thing I've ever heard." Mitch McConnell was more polite, but equally as scathing: "I have yet to hear from this administration a single thing we need from Greenland that this sovereign people is not already willing to grant us." A bipartisan delegation from Congress even flew over to Denmark, in an attempt to reassure them that Trump was politically out on a limb even in his own country with this whole obsession.

But a funny thing happened in response to Trump's megalomania: Europe stood up for itself. They challenged the bully. First, several nations sent a token amount of soldiers to Greenland for joint exercises. The unspoken reason for doing so was to serve as a "tripwire" -- the same way American soldiers in Germany during the Cold War and current American soldiers in South Korea serve. They are a warning to the host country's enemies: attack, and you will be at war with the United States. Which is why Europe sent their troops to Greenland -- to provide the same sort of warning to the United States. The message was clear (if unstated): "Attack, and you will be at war not just with Denmark, but with all of us."

Trump, in response, flipped out. He ranted on social media, "Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Finland have journeyed to Greenland, for purposes unknown," and called it a "potentially perilous situation." He further complained: "This is a very dangerous situation for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Planet. These Countries, who are playing this very dangerous game, have put a level of risk in play that is not tenable or sustainable." Which, you will note, would only be true if the United States militarily attacked Greenland. In a fit of pique, Trump then announced new tariffs on those countries. This is his go-to answer in response to anything foreign countries do that he doesn't like, and brings to mind the maxim: "When the only tool you have is a hammer, pretty soon every problem begins to look like a nail."

After all this happening during last weekend, the stock market and the bond markets took a big dive when they reopened. Which was another way people (and foreign countries) were standing up to the bully. People in Greenland rallied, wearing red caps with the slogan: "Make America Go Away."

Then Trump let everyone know precisely how petty this whole episode was, by releasing a text he had sent to the leader of Norway whining about not winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Yep, that's why Trump has been throwing a tantrum over Greenland -- because he is still outraged that he didn't get a shiny gold medal. It's notable that this text didn't leak -- Trump voluntarily released it himself, completely unaware that the entire rest of the planet would conclude that he was being a total whiny baby.

One Democratic senator called for consideration of using the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to oust Trump (which we also had wholeheartedly supported, earlier in the week).

When Trump finally did get to Davos and give his speech, he merely proved on the world stage that he is now a doddering old man who is essentially yelling at them damn kids to get off his lawn. He couldn't even remember what country he was threatening, and used the wrong name four times during his speech:

When asked about this, the White House spokesperson flat-out denied it had happened. Because of course she did.

Later, Trump couldn't remember what another word was and had to resort to talking about "the opposite of peace," and then at one point he just completely garbled the two: "Peace is so destructive for everyone. Even countries that are not involved. It's so destructive for everyone, when you have wars."

Trump was speaking about peace because he is apparently attempting to set up a new United Nations, ostensibly to rebuild Gaza. He wanted all the other countries of the world to pony up $1 billion to join an international group that Trump himself will lead. Oh, and only he will have a veto. Most Western countries either politely declined or made no announcement while quietly not joining Trump's effort. This brought forth another tantrum from Trump, as he threatened France with 100 or 200 percent tariffs on their wines.

But even in the face of all this abuse, Europe actually stood together. They spoke openly of using a "bazooka" they had written into their trade laws which, if triggered, would have allowed them to block any company or country from doing business in the European Union. They also immediately halted the ongoing negotiations over the trade deal that Trump cut with them last year (which has not been finalized yet). And they all supported Denmark over the United States, because they all know full well how important NATO is.

Donald Trump, in the face of this blowback (and in the face of the markets tanking), then totally capitulated. He announced almost casually during his Davos speech that he had decided that a military invasion would not in fact be necessary, and then after meeting with the head of NATO started his victory lap for his non-existant concepts of a framework of a "deal." When reporters asked him whether this "deal" would mean America would own all or parts of Greenland, Trump had no clear answer (since the real answer is: "No, we would not," which Trump doesn't want to come right out and admit).

As we began with, the entire thing was just another episode in the long-running series "The Arsonist Fireman," where Trump causes some major crisis because he has no clue what he is doing or even what he is demanding, and then later on has to pretend that he solved it all by accepting absolutely nothing in return for backing down. Or perhaps our ongoing series might be called: "TACO Man Strikes Again!"

In other "standing up to Trump" news, the city of Minneapolis is currently closed for the day. Well, that's an overstatement, but a "day of economic blackout" to protest the invasion of ICE thugs did indeed cause many businesses to close down for the day. Roughly 100 clergy were just arrested at the airport today, for protesting deportation flights.

Earlier in the week, a federal judge blocked ICE from "using pepper-spray or similar nonlethal munitions and crowd dispersal tools against persons who are engaging in peaceful and unobstructive protest activity," and also from pulling cars over who were following them at a safe and appropriate distance. Stephen Miller, meanwhile, called for local police in Minneapolis to "stand down and surrender."

Trump's ICE tactics are taking a toll on his standings in the polls. Immigration was the one issue that Trump maintained support from most of the country even after they had soured on the rest of his agenda, but now his poll ratings on immigration are underwater. ICE and the brutal tactics they are using are also massively unpopular with the public.

This is understandable, since ICE is basically out of control in the Twin Cities. They are ignoring the Fourth Amendment, they are using White nationalist slogans in their recruiting efforts, they are even targeting non-White local police officers on the streets, they are lying their faces off to federal judges when called to account for their actions, and they just got caught snatching up a 5-year-old boy, who was then whisked away to be deported. The photos of this last one are having the same sort of impact as the videos of them killing a suburban soccer mom did a few weeks ago.

Throughout all of it, the Justice Department has their backs. Both the governor of Minnesota and the mayor of Minneapolis (and others who have spoken out against ICE) are now being investigated (with grand jury subpoenas being issued) for the "crime" of disagreeing with Donald Trump. A man detained by ICE died in their custody in Texas, and the medical examiner ruled it a homicide -- so ICE tried to quickly deport the two other detainees who witnessed the killing and then completely contradicted the "he committed suicide" official explanation (a federal judge stepped in and blocked their deportation just in time).

JD Vance, perhaps aware of how politically damaging all of this has been for the Trump administration (and Republicans in general) flew to Minnesota and tried to calm things down. But, of course, he didn't announce any changes in tactics or mission for ICE, so this was no more than an empty gesture. Vance was ridiculed for one remark he made during his visit, where he begged for cooperation from the community: "Like, if we're trying to find a sex offender, tell us where the guy lives." Plenty of people were happy to do so online, sending in photos of the White House or the simple answer: "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."

This week also marked the end of Donald Trump's first year of his second term. A few articles appeared to note the year in chaos that was, but our favorite was one that looked at it all from the point of view of what America has become during that year. This is just one part of the list, which we encourage everyone to read in full:



Or you can check out a scorecard the New York Times ran, which tries to measure Trump's progress (or lack thereof, on most of them) on his major campaign goals.

Trump's polling has taken a real dive, even in the past few months. There is only one president who is even remotely as unpopular as Donald Trump in his second term -- since modern presidential polling began -- and that is Donald Trump in his first term. The Washington Post noted: "Trump has always been a uniquely unpopular president, and he's as unpopular as ever. Two major polls out last week show 40 percent approve of how he's doing as president. A Washington Post average of polls in January finds 57 percent of Americans disapprove of how he's handling the country."

This is reflected across the board, as voters agree that Trump has made the country worse during his first year back in office. Polls also show that when elected, Trump had gained the support of some traditionally-Democratic groups (such as Latinos or young voters), but they've all soured on him now in a big way.

Trump celebrated his anniversary by appearing in the White House briefing room to give a press conference that was almost two hours long (over an hour of it was him just boasting about his "accomplishments" and endlessly rambling on about other unrelated subjects) and was notable only for its overall incoherence. Jake Tapper at CNN called it: "a marathon rambling, at times incoherent, possibly unsettling White House News briefing." This was being charitable. Other commenters called the spectacle "genuinely insane" and observed that Trump seemed "clearly unwell."

As we mentioned earlier in the week: one year down... three more to go [heavy sigh].





We have to begin this week with two people who are technically ineligible for the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award, before giving it to a group whose eligibility is unclear.

First, Jack Smith stood up for himself and the rule of law in a public hearing before a House committee. Republicans on the committee tried to paint him as some sort of rabid out-of-control partisan who launched a "witch hunt" to go after Donald Trump, after being told to by Joe Biden. Smith denied all of this, of course, since none of it is true.

The Republicans had absolutely nothing to base any of their accusations on, and never have. They are just following their Dear Leader's instructions to demonize Smith in any way they can, plain and simple. Smith reportedly made mincemeat of them, for which he is to be commended, but he's not (to our knowledge) technically a Democrat, so we can't hand him an award.

Our second non-eligible person doesn't qualify because he isn't even an American, much less a Democrat. But Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney did an exemplary job of standing up to Trump in Davos this week, by accurately summing up where the world stands right now -- at the end of the era where all freedom-loving democracies could count on the rock-solid support of the United States of America as a given, and instead moving into a new era where an egocentric madman sets American policy on personal whim. Trump backed down in the end, but even the thought that the United States would militarily threaten another member of NATO does indeed mark a turning point in world history, that's for sure.

Other world leaders also (to one degree or another) pushed back on Trump this week -- starting with the leaders of Greenland, Denmark, and Norway -- but none did so with such elegant rhetorical style, which is what made Carney's speech so notable.

But we have to award our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award to a group that is not only not officially Democratic, but is actually completely anonymous. This is a smart move on their part, since claiming public credit would doubtlessly bring the weight of the Trumpian weaponized Justice Department down on their head(s), so it is entirely understandable.

The group in question is an anonymous group of artists known as "The Secret Handshake," which has been putting installations up on the National Mall for the past year or so which draw attention to the relationship between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, among other things. Here's the story, for anyone who missed it:



There are two basic ways to defeat a bully. One is to stand up to him and punch him in the nose. The other is to just laugh at him -- so long and so loud that everyone else joins in.

For being true pioneers of the latter, when it comes to Donald Trump, we hereby award this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week to "The Secret Handshake," and we certainly look forward to learning who was behind it all -- which (we assume) will happen roughly one day after the next Democratic president is sworn into office.

[Since they are anonymous, The Secret Handshake has no public contact information available. But we'd certainly like to send a rousing, "Keep up the good work!" message to them, whomever they may be....]





There was one story that mostly got lost in all of the Greenland frenzy this week, and that was of Bill and Hillary Clinton refusing to appear before a House committee which had subpoenaed them to appear in person.

We can't really say that this was all that disappointing, since (as Hillary knows full well) a Clinton appearing before a Republican-led congressional committee means sitting for over 10 hours while they try to rip you to shreds on any subject under the sun. It's understandable why they were not looking forward to that.

Then the committee voted to hold both Clintons in contempt of Congress -- with some Democrats voting for the measure. We also find this understandable, since subpoenas from Congress are not supposed to be considered optional, so these Democrats can state that they were merely standing up for the rule of law. Breaking party ranks for such a vote certainly disappointed some Democrats out there, but as we said, we can understand the reasons why they did so.

Instead, we are giving the award to a different group of House Democrats who broke party ranks this week and voted for a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security -- which includes money for ICE.

Congress is facing yet another government shutdown deadline at the end of January. If a full budget hasn't passed by then, the government will shut down again. Some argue that ICE funding wouldn't have been affected even if the government had shut down, while others point out that the bill also funds FEMA and other important departments.

But the math is the math. Seven Democrats voted for the bill. The final vote was 220-207. Take those seven away and add them to the other side, and the vote would have been 213-214 and failed. Republicans would likely have been able to scare up another two votes if they had really needed them (they do still have a majority), but it would have been spectacularly embarrassing for them to pull the bill from the floor while they scrambled to do so.

Which is why we have to collectively award these seven Democrats -- Henry Cuellar, Jared Golden, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Laura Gillen, Don Davis, Tom Suozzi, and Vicente Gonzalez -- this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award.

The real battle, of course, will be in the Senate, since Republicans are going to need seven Democrats there to overcome the filibuster threshold. But that will come next week -- for now, the seven House Democrats who helped the Republicans pass their budget are this week's winners of the MDDOTW.

[Contact Representative Henry Cuellar on his House contact page, Representative Jared Golden on his House contact page, Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez on her House contact page, Representative Laura Gillen on her House contact page, Representative Don Davis on his House contact page, Representative Tom Suozzi on his House contact page, and Representative Vicente Gonzalez on his House contact page, to let them all know what you think of their actions.]




Volume 825 (1/23/26)

A very mixed bunch this week, with one at the end just for fun. Enjoy, and as always, use responsibly....



Six percent

We just had to start off with this one, for obvious reasons.

"You know what we weren't all talking about this week, because Donald Trump was having his Greenland tantrum? The fact that an overwhelming amount of Americans are still waiting to see the Epstein files. While a lot of issues in politics poll fairly evenly, other issues show a big majority versus a small minority. But few issues poll that show only six percent support -- that is almost 19-to-1 against, folks. But that's precisely how much of the public is happy with the way the Trump administration has been releasing the Epstein files: six percent. Even among Republicans, that number was only twelve percent! Two-thirds of the public believes the Department of Justice is intentionally holding things back. So maybe that's what we should all be talking about -- how the Justice Department is breaking the law by not fully releasing the Epstein files and how only six percent of Americans support their delays."



Wait a minute... Iceland?

Moving along to the distraction of the week....

"Remember when everyone -- Republicans, Democrats, and most especially the news media -- went on and on and on about how the president was losing his mental capacity? Remember that? Back when Joe Biden was in the White House? So where is any of that concern now when Donald Trump can't even figure out which foreign country he wants to invade? Or whether he's talking about war or peace? In Davos, Trump mentioned Iceland four times in his speech about how the United States really needed to take over a different island altogether. He got confused between Greenland and Iceland. On the world stage, with everyone watching his mental decline accelerate. So where is the flood of media coverage asking if the president still has enough mental capacity to serve? That's what I'd like to know...."



TACOs for all!

Can't resist this one, even if it did happen on a Wednesday rather than a Tuesday....

"It was TACOs for all this week in Davos, as Trump chickened out, once again. Now don't get me wrong -- I am extremely relieved in this case that Trump did chicken out, since what he was threatening was nothing short of the end of NATO -- but still, it was noticeable how quickly Trump caved not only on his demands that the U.S. be given Greenland but also on his threats to levy tariffs on all European countries who disagreed. The rest of the world must be getting sorely tired of this endless "Boy Who Cried Wolf" nonsense, don't you think?"



China is laughing

Trump continues to make America small again.

"You know what the end result of Trump's threats and trade wars and insults to our longtime allies has been? To push all of them into the welcoming arms of China. Trump said he was going to 'Make America great again,' but instead what he is doing is to make America look scary and unpredictable and unstable to our allies. Just recently, Canada announced a big trade deal they had cut with China, because they are looking for more stable countries to trade with than us. Europe signed a deal with a bunch of Latin American countries for the same reason. While Trump flailed around scaring the Hell out of everyone in Davos, China welcomed other countries in, promising stability and longterm free-trade agreements. Trump is singlehandedly helping their efforts to eclipse the United States as the most popular country in the world to do business with, plain and simple."



Five years old

This is important, mostly because it proves what a lie the administration's propaganda truly is.

"From Trump on down, the administration insists that ICE is only concerned with getting violent criminals off the streets. This is a lie. They are sweeping up everyone they can -- even U.S. citizens -- because they have their quotas to meet. They don't care if the people they deport have criminal records or not. Did you see the videos this week of ICE snatching up a five-year-old boy in Minneapolis? I would love to hear some intrepid reporter ask Kristi Noem or Donald Trump what violent crime this five-year-old had committed. Was he a murderer or a rapist? Because they keep telling us that is all they are going after -- the so-called 'worst of the worst.' So what crime did this five-year-old commit?"



Eyes wide shut

The optics of this were just downright bizarre.

"Recently a party was held at Mar A Lago that featured people dancing with each other dressed up in Bridgerton-style outfits -- period dresses and costumes -- while wearing dog masks. Seriously. You simply cannot make this stuff up. One podcaster noted the jarring disconnect of these video clips with the fact that 'it's literally the end of the world!' and also helpfully including a clip from the movie Eyes Wide Shut. From the way these dogs were dressed, you would not have been surprised to hear one of them growl, 'Let them eat cake.' Is this the type of event we can all expect to see if Trump ever finishes building his new ballroom at the White House? I shudder to think about it, personally."



Fled Cruz

And finally, just for fun....

"I see that another horrendous winter storm was approaching Texas, so it was obviously time for someone to catch Senator Ted Cruz fleeing the state once again. He was seen on a flight heading to (gasp!) California, while his home state was preparing for the worst. Nothing like Ted Cruz to show us all the exact opposite of a profile in courage! Have fun in the sun, Ted... while your fellow Texans brave the storm, that is."




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com

January 17, 2026

Friday Talking Points -- One Year In, Trump Just Keeps Getting Worse

In another four days, we will have survived the first full year of Donald Trump's second term in office. That's right -- one down, only three more to go!

(Sigh.)

The defining feature of this past year has been -- just like it was in his first term -- the continuing cycle of being so aghast at Trump's planet-sized ego, flailing insecurities, and toddler-grade tantrums and thinking to oneself: "Well, it surely can't get any worse than this!" -- only to wake up the next morning, read the headlines, and find out that yep, it sure can get worse, in ways you would never have imagined in a million years, pre-Trump.

At times the irony can get so overwhelming you just have to shake your head. Such as: ICE detaining people in Minneapolis who are members of a Native American tribe. Think about that just for one second: the immigration cops just rounded up some of the people who were here first. It wouldn't be that surprising if some tribes responded by forming their own immigration police and rounding up everyone they considered "illegal immigrants," would it? I'd suggest starting with Stephen Miller, personally, just to see how he likes it.

More irony: Trump has been threatening Iran with military strikes if it continues to crack down on protests in the streets by shooting people. Meanwhile, here at home, Trump is threatening to unilaterally (via the Insurrection Act) send American troops in to a U.S. city to forcibly suppress by military means protests against ICE agents shooting people in the streets for no justifiable reason.

And Trump shows no signs of slowing down. Here was one striking paragraph from an article in Salon which made the case that Trump wasn't just instituting fascism but full-on tyranny:

That's all happened just since New Year's Day. And the pace just seems to keep accelerating. A federal judge just accused the Trump administration of the worst crime imaginable, and it barely even made the news. Did you miss this development? Here are the details, from an article titled: "Trump Cabinet Secretaries Conspired To Violate Constitution, Judge Says":



This judge, appointed by Ronald Reagan, was speaking of the harsh crackdown by the administration on noncitizen students for the crime of exercising their free speech on Palestine and Israel, which began almost immediately after they all took office. And the judge did not mince words:



In normal times, this would be the biggest news story around and it would be headline news for weeks, if not months. After a whole year of Trump, though, it barely even registered, because (as always) there are so many other, more immediate outrageous things happening. Such as Trump musing about not holding midterm elections ("When you think of it, we shouldn't even have an election" ). And his press secretary later insisting that he was "simply joking," or facetiously trying to say: "We're doing such a great job, we're doing everything the American people thought, maybe we should just keep rolling."

On the international front, Trump is once again obsessed with owning Greenland, no matter what anybody else thinks of the idea. He gets an insane bee in his bonnet, and the rest of the world has to react to it (rather than just laugh at him) because at this point who knows what he'll do? He obviously has no constraints on his actions whatsoever, so nobody in Europe is going to be particularly surprised if Trump orders the Marines in to occupy the island. They'll be outraged (as they should be), but they won't be surprised.

That last one may even be a bridge too far for Republicans in Congress, however. Several GOP senators have strongly spoken out against the idea, and they may even try to rein Trump in before he can act. Taking Greenland is wildly unpopular with the American public, because doing so would be so insane. We already have any and all military access we want to the island, neither China nor Russia is trying to take it (which Trump keeps lying about), and it would be the end of NATO. But Trump being Trump, he is absolutely obsessed with owning it. The leaders of Greenland and Denmark met with Marco Rubio and JD Vance this week, but absolutely nothing was resolved. Trump's newest petulant response is to threaten more tariffs on any country that does not support America taking Greenland (by force, if necessary).

In "If you don't want to be called a Nazi, then stop emulating Nazis" news, we have the Department of Labor, who trotted out a new slogan, in a reel on social media showing American artwork they approve of: "One Homeland. One People. One Heritage." They followed this up with: "Remember who are you, American." As HuffPost reported:



In other "acting like a schoolyard bully" news, Trump successfully strong-armed the winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize into giving the medal to him. This is because Donald Trump is the biggest baby and biggest sore loser in all of American history. People are now calling it the "Nobel Appease Prize," for obvious reasons.

The biggest thuggish Trump news of the week was domestic, however, as even the president's own supporters are now using words like "Gestapo" to describe what is happening on American city streets. Nobody believes a word that comes out of Kristi Noem's mouth any more about any of it, since their go-to move is just to flat-out lie about what happened (which they've done before in court, after shooting someone for no reason). And a death that happened to a man in ICE custody is about to be ruled a homicide, too (another story that deserved more attention this week).

The Department of Justice is reacting to the fallout from the cold-blooded killing of a suburban soccer mom in a predictable way (these days), since it has become fully weaponized to attack anyone Trump doesn't like. A number of prosecutors and lawyers quit en masse this week because they were told to go after the widow of the slain woman. They were also told not to open any civil rights investigation into the shooting itself. This was such a disgusting reversal of what the Justice Department should be doing that it was too much for several career prosecutors, who threw up their hands and walked away from it all.

Meanwhile, the F.B.I. searched the home of a Washington Post reporter, who hadn't even been accused of any crime. And the chair of the Federal Reserve is under investigation, which threatens the political independence of America's central bank (which could have dire consequences, obviously). This one also generated some strong pushback, both from Republicans in Congress and from around the world as well.

All of this frenetic activity has caused Trump's job approval ratings to take a rather noticeable dive recently, since pretty much none of what he is doing is in any way popular or supported by the American public. The most recent poll up on Real Clear Politics shows Trump down by a whopping 19 points -- 40 percent approval to 59 percent disapproval -- and his polling average is the worst it has been for his entire second term.

And the midterms are less than ten months away.

So Trump is desperately trying to gaslight all American consumers into thinking prices are all coming way, way down, even though we all know full well that this is not true. Grocery prices just experienced a one-month price jump that was higher than at any point since the COVID pandemic's aftermath. Here are the actual numbers Trump wants you all not to believe: "The price of beef has risen 16.4 percent over the last year. The price of coffee is up a whopping 19.8 percent. The price of lettuce is up 7.3 percent and frozen fish 8.6 percent." And we're beginning to hear anecdotes of how not just Trump's insane tariffs are driving prices up, but how Trump's immigration crackdown is influencing all this too: "A lack of workers in some areas has led to cherries rotting in Oregon fields, blueberries rotting in New Jersey fields and Pennsylvania dairy farmers selling off cows." Congress is now debating how big a bailout farmers are going to need ($11 billion? $15 billion?), since the tariffs have driven so many of them so close to absolute ruin.

At this point, Democrats should trot out an old political favorite: "Are you better off now than you were a year ago?" That's all they really need to say -- everyone already knows the specifics and can fill in the details on their own.

Democrats have plenty of details they can use, of course. They should also start using the term "child-care crisis" to sum up what millions of parents are going through (and highlight how Democrats at the state and local level are making child care free for all parents). Or the fact that for all of Trump's bluster about bringing lots of manufacturing jobs back home, American has actually (and steadily) lost manufacturing jobs over the past year.

Trump's response is, as always, to just lie his face off about everything. Inflation has disappeared (according to him), grocery prices are all way down, and anything which contradicts this fantasy is all Joe Biden's fault, period. He trotted all of these out in a speech he gave in Detroit, where he also flipped off a protester who was working in the truck factory he was touring. The guy was yelling: "Pedophile protector!" at Trump, to which Trump responded by mouthing "Fuck you!" and flipping the bird at the guy. The worker was then suspended from his job -- which his Union is fighting -- and a crowdsource funding drive immediately raised $800,000 for him.

Michael Steele, who used to run the Republican Party, called the whole thing a "punkish move" by Trump. Democratic strategist James Carville urged Democrats to start using the phrase whenever Trump is in earshot, since it so obviously gets under his skin.

In judicial news, Trump keeps losing. Federal judges ruled this week (in no particular order): that the Trump administration has to restore funding to blue states that it had halted for purely political reasons (on child care payments and energy grants and election funding), that a wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island can continue construction after Trump tried to pull the plug on it, that California's new congressional districts are indeed constitutional, and that Trump can't just demand all kinds of election data from California as well.

We always try to end this weekly review on a positive note, and this week we're (metaphorically) heading out for a night at the opera. The Washington National Opera announced this week that it was leaving the Kennedy Center, since it didn't want to have anything to do with Trump's politicization of the place and because ticket sales were way, way down since Trump started mucking with it, and by week's end the W.N.O. had seen a big spike in fundraising as a direct result. That's a story with a happy ending!





We have two Honorable Mention awards this week before we get to the main one. The first goes to Representative Ilhan Omar, who hails from Minnesota, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who announced this week that they will be opposing all ICE funding bills (as well as Department of Homeland Security funding) to force meaningful reforms on the agency. ICE is pretty obviously completely out of control, and the American public can see with their own eyes how bad the situation has gotten, so right now pushing back on them is a very popular political stance to take.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul is also pushing back, supporting legislation that would explicitly allow New Yorkers to sue ICE for violating their civil rights. This is traditionally a federal legal matter, but with Donald Trump now openly stating that the only civil rights he cares about protecting is those of White people, since (according to him) they are the real victims of discrimination, it seems like a necessary step to flip the legal model to the state level instead.

But the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week hails from Alaska. Democrats just widened the field for possible states to flip in the midterm Senate races, because Mary Peltola has announced she is running for the Senate seat now held by Republican Dan Sullivan. Peltola was described in an article about her announcement as: "Widely considered the only Democrat with a prayer of making that race competitive," since she previously won the statewide race for Alaska's lone House seat. She'll be running on the same slogan she used to win previously, which is: "fish, family, and freedom." Also: "Alaska first."

Democrats face a very steep uphill climb to regain political control of the Senate, as they have to defend some swing seats (in places like Georgia) as well as flip four from the Republicans. But so far Chuck Schumer has been doing a pretty good job at recruiting candidates with the best shot at doing so, and Peltola's candidacy certainly puts Alaska on the table as a battleground.

Also impressive was Peltola's subsequent announcement that she had raised a whopping $1.5 million in campaign funds in her first 24 hours.

If a blue wave does develop this November, then perhaps -- just perhaps -- it might reach far enough north for a Democrat to flip a Senate seat in Alaska. The chances of doing so seemed pretty remote before this week, but now they seem a lot more plausible. For shifting the political landscape in such dramatic fashion, Mary Peltola is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week

[We do not, as a rule, link to campaign websites, and Mary Peltola is not currently in any public office, so you'll have to seek out contact information for her yourself if you'd like to let her know you appreciate her efforts.]





Former senator and former Democrat Kyrsten Sinema is being sued by a woman claiming Sinema seduced her husband (who worked on her security detail) and destroyed her marriage. Here is what the lawsuit accuses Sinema of doing:



Of course, this is only one side of the story, since Sinema's legal team has yet to respond. So she doesn't qualify for an award quite yet, but we will be watching the case to see further developments, that's for sure.

Instead, we are giving the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award to former New York City mayor (and also "former Democrat," since he tried to get re-elected as an Independent) Eric Adams, who -- true to his nature -- tried to cash in big time on becoming a private citizen once again. Here's the story, which ran under the headline: "Eric Adams's Crypto Coin Crashes Soon After Launch, Sparking Scam Accusations":



There's really not much more to say about this one other than: "Grifters gotta grift, right?"

[Eric Adams is also now just a private citizen, and as a rule we do not provide contact information for such persons, so you'll have to search for his info as well, if you'd like to let him know what you think of his actions.]




Volume 824 (1/19/26)

Before we begin, we have to note our personal sadness at the passing of one of the founding members of the Grateful Dead. Bobby Weir was the last remaining frontman for the group, and his death marks the end of an era for millions of fans.

Requiescat In Pace, Bobby. And say hello to Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, and Pigpen (and everyone else) when you get to Rock-n-Roll Heaven....

But back to politics. This week we've begun to think about Democratic slogans for the midterm campaign trail, so we tried to keep them as short and bumper-sticker-ey as possible. We'll be trying to come up with such Democratic slogans for the rest of the campaign season, but here's what we've got at the start of it.



This should not happen here

This is a good political phrase because it can be used to describe a whole lot of things, although right now it applies to one in particular.

"You know what I keep thinking as I see the tactics of ICE in places like Minneapolis? I keep thinking: 'This should not happen here in America.' Federal agents wantonly using the most violent tactics they can to round up every Brown or Black person they come into contact with should not happen in the U.S. of A. People being killed for protesting such tactics also should not happen. And people who have been killed being demonized as some sort of deranged terrorist -- when everyone can plainly see this is untrue -- should not happen here. We are better than this, or we should be. These things should not happen here in America, period."



Pedophile protector!

We have to say, James Carville has a point.

"Every time anyone gets close enough to Donald Trump that he can hear their voice, they should shout what that autoworker did. Yell: 'Pedophile protector!' at the top of your lungs. Trump is breaking the law by refusing to release all the Epstein files, and people have to let him know that they still care. And it obviously gets under Trump's very thin skin, so I would encourage anyone close enough to him for him to hear to let him know what we all think he is -- a pedophile protector."



Not once

This is the easiest way to laugh at Trump's fantasy about prices coming down everywhere.

"Donald Trump is absolutely delusional when he says that grocery prices have all come way down. The man has obviously never shopped for groceries in his entire life. He didn't even recognize the word 'groceries' when he was campaigning, and still thinks it is an 'old-fashioned word,' for some bizarre reason. As any American family knows, grocery prices just keep going up under Trump's presidency, and he doesn't care. He is delusional when he denies this reality, because he has never -- not once -- shopped for groceries in his entire life."



Child-care crisis

Start using this term, and maybe the media will be helpful and pick up on it too.

"The cost of child care has now gotten so high for so many millions of American families that they simply can't afford it. It costs more for child care than it does to send a student to college, in many places. And Trump deporting every immigrant in sight means there are fewer and fewer people actually working in child care these days, which makes the problem worse. It's gotten to the point where it is a real crisis in America. But Democrats are fighting to fix the child-care crisis in meaningful ways. States like New York are moving towards free child care for all, championed by Democrats. New Mexico already offers it -- again, because Democrats fought to make it happen. Imagine how life would be easier for millions of parents nationwide if the child-care crisis was fixed in such a fashion! Republicans are just making the situation worse, while Democrats are trying to tackle the child-care crisis in a big way."



What manufacturing boom?

This needs pointing out too.

"Donald Trump keeps telling Americans that there's this big boom in American manufacturing on his watch. His tariffs were supposed to bring back zillions of American manufacturing jobs, right? Remember when he promised that? Well, it turns out America has lost manufacturing jobs at a steady rate throughout Trump's entire first year back in office. That's right -- the job market has softened in general, but manufacturing keeps bleeding thousands of jobs month after month. Trump swears a manufacturing boom time is happening, but what I'd like to know is what manufacturing boom? It's just another one of Trump's economic delusions, folks."



Are you better off now than you were a year ago?

This one, as previously mentioned, doesn't even need any explanation. It will have to be adjusted, as we get closer to November (since "a year ago" would then mean "after Trump already took office" ), but for now it works just fine. This is what every Democrat running for every seat in Congress should start their campaign pitch off with:

"Are you better off now than you were a year ago?"



Can you feel it?

OK, this one is rather optimistic, but the more time goes by the more probable it is looking that Democrats at least regain control over the House, so we feel it's justified.

"You know what? Every political analyst I've noticed keeps moving the midterm elections into more and more favorable territory for the Democratic Party. It's now a safer bet that Democrats take back the House than to bet that Republicans keep it. The Senate is now even in play -- something that was considered a wildly-optimistic fantasy even just a few months ago. So what I have to ask everyone is: can you feel it? Can you feel a big blue wave building up? Because I can. November can't get here fast enough...."




Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
Follow Chris on Twitter: ChrisWeigant
Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com