Clear back in 1992, while advising Bill Clinton on his ultimately successful White House run, James Carville coined the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid.” It has attained political immortality, still invoked virtually every election season more than thirty years later—and for good reason.
Americans may disagree about a lot of things—most things, if I’m being honest—but we are united when it comes to wanting a strong economy. Rich or poor, no one is happy with higher prices, rising unemployment, recession, or inflation. (The last one was one of the big reasons Trump won the election; inflation under Joe Biden was a global problem sparked by the pandemic, and Americans felt it. The US recovered from it without a recession, and our economy was strong and outperforming most other developed nations by the end of his term, but no one has ever accused American voters of an excess of attention to detail.)
Recent polls—gruesome for Trump, who is the first President in history to have an underwater approval rating in the first quarter of a term, and whose rating on the economy is an abysmal 38%, both from a FOX News poll and in line with other big pollsters—indicate that a lot of people already regret their vote for him. Unfortunately for all of us, that demographic is almost certainly going to swell in ranks, and quite soon.
The first 48 hours after Trump announced his across-the-board tariffs saw $5 trillion in American wealth go poof. But most Americans don’t feel it when the Dow plummets—not right away. The real results of these tariffs, and the chaos his on-again, off-again, now-it’s-145%-on-China whims have inflicted on the global economy, have taken time to take effect. And those effects are now looming.
After consistent economic growth for nearly three years, we now know that the US economy actually shrank in this first quarter of 2025. It didn’t plateau, it didn’t slow: someone slammed on the brakes and threw it into reverse. Job creation in April was 46% lower than expected, and was down 58% from the previous month. The dollar’s value is deteriorating to the point that major GOP donor Ken Griffin says “the US has become 20 percent poorer in four weeks.”
All these may still seem too abstract to some readers. Here are some not-so-abstract developments already here, or on the near horizon:
We are already seeing a precipitous decline in container ships arriving in our ports, particularly from China, formerly our third-largest trading partner. These canceled shipments will have a cascade of negative effects, from higher prices to product shortages, not to mention the sharp dropoff in work for truckers, most of whom are self-employed owner-operators.
UPS has announced it will cut 20,000 jobs this year due to the tariffs’ expected effect on shipping.
American farmers, who overwhelmingly supported Trump in the election, are already hurting. The President’s shutdown of USAID has ended $2 billion in annual purchases from farmers. And his trade war with China has caused a massive hit to American soybean, cotton, and pork exports, which are down 50%, 50%, and 72% respectively. The Administration has already indicated it may bail out farmers damaged by the trade war, just as Trump did in his first term, when his first (but smaller) trade war with China harmed them. And of course, any bailout, like the tariffs, will be paid by American taxpayers.
Supply chain researchers, shipping industry insiders, and logistics specialists agree that Americans can expect higher prices and goods shortages. The founder and CEO of supply chain logistics platform Flexport, Ryan Petersen, says that if Trump continues on his current course, we are certain to see extreme shortages, “Probably worse than anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes.” Nick Vyas, founding director of USC Marshall’s Randall R. Kendrick Global Supply Chain Institute, says “If we ratchet up the continued pressure on China, we create the huge destruction of the global economy, to the point that it’s as bad as the Great Depression of 1928 or something even bigger than that.”
JP Morgan projects the probability that we are heading into a recession at 60%. Some experts fear we face an even worse fate: stagflation.
Uncertainty is a killer for business development, and right now America is steeped in uncertainty thanks to the President’s haphazard tariff actions. One thing we can be certain of though: he will never accept responsibility for the consequences of those actions.
So, the economy that was booming under Biden was actually Trump’s doing, and the economy that has been crippled in the first 100 days of Trump’s administration by his unprecedented single-handed manipulation of global trade is actually Biden’s doing. Got it.
We can also be certain that he will do anything in his power to keep us from seeing his tariffs’ direct consequences to us. After reports surfaced that Amazon was planning to list the cost of tariffs right alongside the prices of products affected by tariffs, Trump placed an angry call to Jeff Bezos, who apparently assured the President that Amazon will not implement that plan. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the plan was a “hostile and political act” by Amazon. (The President cannot stop Chinese retailer Temu from doing the same, however, which Temu shoppers are now learning.)
Tariffs and trade wars have consequences, and Americans of all political persuasions are going to learn this the hard way, and soon.
What we can do:
As I’ve said before, POTUS only has the power to levy tariffs because Congress delegated it to him. They can take it away. Republicans in Congress are allowing this slow-motion train wreck, and we should let them know how we feel about it.
But more personally: donate to your local food pantry. The poorest Americans will be hit hardest and soonest, and they will need our help.
And if you like to cook Asian cuisine at home, stock up on fish sauce now.
During each of Donald Trump’s terms in office, we’ve heard that the government could be headed for a constitutional crisis: a situation in which the government faces a conflict its fundamental laws are not able to resolve. In this case, it’s because one branch of government is openly defying another, in direct violation of the Constitution.
The federal government consists of three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. Our system of checks and balances ensures that one branch cannot exert unchecked power. (This is Schoolhouse Rock-level civics; please stop reading and go sign up for a Social Studies class if any of this is unfamiliar.) The executive can veto bills passed by the legislature; the legislature can override vetoes or even impeach and remove the executive; the executive appoints judges and justices to federal courts; the legislature confirms (or blocks) those judges and justices. And federal judges can declare laws unconstitutional or countermand unlawful executive actions.
This system is the bedrock of our democracy. This is not a partisan claim. All Americans know this—or should.
And so all Americans need to know what is happening right now.
There is a lot going on right now with deportations and disappearings, and you’ll be hearing more from me about that topic in the near future. But today I’m going to focus on just one case. Kilmar Abrego Garcia is from El Salvador. He entered the United States illegally as a teenager, and now has lived here for over a decade; he is married to an American citizen, and is father to an American citizen child and stepfather to two more. In 2019, a legal protective order from a federal immigration judge granted him permission to remain in the United States. The order specifically prohibits his deportation to El Salvador, due to the likelihood he would be in danger from gangs there. (In his sworn testimony, Abrego Garcia said he fled El Salvador to escape MS-13, which was extorting his family and pressuring him to join the gang.) ICE did not appeal the ruling.
Since then, Abrego Garcia has spent six years making regular check-ins with immigration officials. He has never been charged with a crime.
Then, on March 12 of this year, he was pulled over by ICE officers and told that his immigration status had changed. (It had not.) He was arrested in front of his young son and put into an ICE vehicle. By the next day, he had been moved out of state. On March 15, he told his wife he was being sent to the Terrorist Confinement Prison (CECOT) in El Salvador. That was the last time anyone has spoken to him—although his wife did recognize him in a photo from the El Salvadorean prison: his head shaved, handcuffed, being forced through a hallway, bent double, his head shoved downward by two guards in full ski masks.
How could this happen, you may be asking? How can a man who has been checking in routinely with immigration officials, who has never been charged with a crime, and whom the government is explicitly prohibited from sending to El Salvador, now be in El Salvador at our government’s behest? And not only in El Salvador, but in a nightmarish prison intended to hold the most heinous criminals?
I’ll let this court filing made by the government answer for itself: “On March 15, although ICE was aware of his protection from removal to El Salvador, Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador because of an administrative error(emphasis mine).”
So, the government acknowledges that he should not have been sent to El Salvador. They made an “error.” To be fair, most people think of an “administrative error” as accidentally writing yesterday’s date on a document, not arresting an innocent man and within 72 hours throwing him into a brutal prison in the one country on earth you’re specifically not allowed to send him to. But I digress.
What’s important is that as soon as the Trump Administration realized they had inadvertently committed this colossal injustice, they explained the mistake to El Salvador and made certain Mr. Abrego Garcia was on the next plane home to Maryland.
Except, of course, that is not what has happened at all. The Administration claimed in the same court filing that their hands are tied—and so are the court’s—because now he’s in El Salvador’s jurisdiction.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Abrego Garcia “was a member, actually a leader, of the brutal MS-13 gang.” Apart from there being no evidence of this at all, one has to wonder, if there is any truth to this allegation, why ICE met with him this January for his routine check-in, and then sent him on his merry way?
Vice President JD Vance tweeted that Abrego Garcia was “a convicted MS-13 gang member with no legal right to be here,” despite the man never having been charged with a crime, much less convicted, found to be in danger from MS-13, not a member, and with every legal right to be here. A dizzying pile-on of falsehoods in such a short space.
A quick recap: the government wrongly deported a man and had him imprisoned without charge or trial, then said there was nothing they could do about it, then slandered and libeled him.
Next, four days after the Administration admitted in court that they had wrongly deported him, federal judge Paula Xinis ordered the Administration to return Abrego Garcia to the US within three days.
Rather than follow this objectively legal, moral, and ethical order, the adminstration appealed the following day, requesting an emergency stay. On April 7, the deadline by which they were ordered to have returned him, the Administration leapfrogged the appeals court, which hadn’t even yet ruled on their appeal, and asked the Supreme Court for an administrative stay, which would allow them to leave Abrego Garcia rotting in CECOT until the Supremes could rule on the case. Chief Justice John Roberts agreed—fortunately for the Administration, because the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals did reject the government’s appeal.
Last week, on April 10, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the lower court’s ruling, requiring the Administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return and then handle his case as though he had never been deported. Their decision acknowledged that Judge Xinis’s deadline had passed and was therefore now null, and they did not set a new one. They also instructed Judge Xinis to have “due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs.” They told the government to “be prepared to share” what steps it has taken to follow their ruling, and remanded the case back to Judge Xinis for further clarification and instruction.
The following day, April 11, Judge Xinis ordered the Administration to “take all available steps to facilitate the return” of the man they had wrongly deported and imprisoned. She also ordered them to provide her with an update on his location, as well as daily updates about what steps they are taking to bring him back. Government lawyers asked for more time. In subsequent filings they confirmed his location, but flatly refused to communicate what steps they were taking to bring him home—in direct defiance of both Judge Xinis and the Supreme Court.
Another day later, April 12, Trump posted on his Truth Social site regarding the men he has had sent to El Salvador: “These barbarians are now in the sole custody of El Salvador, a proud and sovereign Nation, and their future is up to President B [Bukele] and his Government.”
And now, yesterday, April 14, President Trump hosted President Bukele of El Salvador at the White House. Bukele, who has called himself the “world’s coolest dictator,” was asked by a reporter whether he planned to return Abrego Garcia. “How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States?” he mused. “Of course I’m not going to do it. The question is preposterous.”
Trump followed up with, “They’d love to have a criminal released into our country. These are sick people.”
At that same meeting with Bukele, President Trump and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller both claimed, incredibly, that the Supreme Court had ruled 9-0 in their favor.
Yesterday, for its required daily update to Judge Xinis, the government submitted this filing, which not only failed to declare what steps it is taking to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, but suggested he should not and will not be returned. It also quoted Bukele’s refusal to send him back, and again claimed it has no authority to “forcibly extract an alien from the domestic custody of a foreign sovereign nation.”
Trump has said repeatedly that he is going to make Canada our 51st state. He says he is going to take Greenland away from the sovereign nation of Denmark “one way or another.” He says he is going to take back the Panama Canal from Panama. His Administration helped make sure Andrew Tate—an outspoken Trump supporter—was permitted to come back to America from Romania, where he is charged with rape and sex trafficking.
But suddenly, El Salvador’s sovereignty is an insurmountable obstacle. It’s simply impossible for the President of the United States ask a favor of—let alone exert any form of pressure on—the man who sat chummily beside him in the White House, and whom we are paying $6 million to house the men Trump has had imprisoned in CECOT.
It’s a preposterous lie.
Trump is openly defying a ruling of the Supreme Court—and his oath of office.
The constitutional solution to this problem is impeachment, conviction, and removal from office. But the framers intended Congress to be filled with people of honor who would uphold their oath to the Constitution above any party loyalty. The Republicans in this Congress have proved they have no higher loyalty than fealty to Donald Trump.
This is a constitutional crisis.
I don’t know what will happen next. I don’t know what Judge Xinis will do, or even what she can do in the face of this unprecedented lawlessness perpetrated by the executive, whose entire purpose is to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” I don’t know if the majority-Republican-nominated Supreme Court will step in with a more forceful ruling, or how he’ll react if they do. In the absence of a Congress with the spine and moral compass to carry out their constitutionally-prescribed duty, we are adrift.
All I know is that all of this is wrong. (I haven’t even touched on the dangerous, probably unconstitutional policy of deporting people without due process, let alone sending them straight to prison for the rest of their lives without a trial.) The foundations of our constitutional system are crumbling before our eyes. By setting himself above the judicial branch, including even the Supreme Court, Donald Trump is showing open contempt for the Constitution he swore to uphold. Our foundations are crumbling because he is taking a jackhammer to them. Every single person who claims to love America should be appalled.
If this is allowed to stand, the American experiment will be over. Our constitutional republic will have ceased to exist. Whatever government we have afterward will be something else.
Update, April 17:
On April 12, Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s attorneys filed a motion pointing out President Trump’s own words from the previous day, that if “the Supreme Court said bring somebody back I would do that.”
And yet, on April 14, rather than complying with orders from both Juge Xinis and the Supreme Court, the DOJ again appealed Judge Xinis’s ruling, arguing that the courts have no right to order the executive branch to bring Abrego Garcia home.
On April 15, Judge Xinis, apparently fed up with the defendants’ noncompliance, ordered expedited discovery, a process in which relevant parties will be deposed under oath. This process must be completed within two weeks.
In the meantime, Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, where Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a resident, has traveled to El Salvador in an attempt to see him, verify his well-being, and hopefully facilitate his release. The Senator met with the Vice President of El Salvador (the president was not in the country), who refused to allow him to enter the prison or even speak to Abrego Garcia on the phone. When asked, the Vice President admitted his country has no evidence Abrego Garcia has committed any crime. The Senator asked why then they wouldn’t release him. “His answer was that the Trump administration is paying El Salvador, the government of El Salvador to keep him at CECOT,” Van Hollen said.
I want to note that this United States Senator was not permitted to enter the prison, even though multiple Republican members of the House of Representatives have toured the prison and posted photos of themselves standing in front of crowded cells full of men.
The Administration has continued to slander Abrego Garcia, even when it backfires on them. On April 16, Attorney General Pam Bondi tweeted a link, saying, “We are releasing additional information on Kilmar Abrego Garcia.” I’ve taken the liberty of including a screenshot from the linked documents here:
The allegations made against Abrego Garcia in these documents (including the accusation that he was part of a gang that operates in a state where he has never lived) were on a form filled out by a cop who, weeks later, would be suspended, indicted, and enter a guilty plea for revealing confidential information about a case to a prostitute. The allegations are so flimsy (and dismissed years ago by the judge who ruled he could not be sent to El Salvador) that in an earlier appeal for this case, Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephanie Thacker wrote: “If the Government wanted to prove to the district court that Abrego Garcia was a ‘prominent’ member of MS-13, it has had ample opportunity to do so but has not—nor has it even bothered to try.”
Most crucially, just today, April 17, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected the Trump Administration’s appeal, asking them to block Judge Xinis’s order for them to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
I want to highlight some of the words of Judge Wilkinson, who wrote the opinion for the panel. (Judge Wilkinson is a Reagan appointee.) These are directly from today’s ruling (all emphases mine):
“It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.
This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”
He writes that if the Administration were to continue on this course of refusing to “make what was wrong, right,” it “would reduce the rule of law to lawlessness and tarnish the very values for which Americans of diverse views and persuasions have always stood.”
And most poignantly, in his final words before denying the government’s motion, Judge Wilkinson writes, “We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.”
What we can do:
No member of the House of Representatives should know a moment’s peace until either the President complies with court orders or articles of impeachment are filed. Forget emailing. Call your representative, especially if they are a Republican, and politely demand they do their duty and restrain this lawless president. Demand impeachment. Call every day. https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
Trying to narrow down this topic into a single, coherent article has been a massive challenge, but I’ve done my best. Here are the keys to understanding what the president believes, what he’s doing, and why he’s wrong.
“America is getting ripped off.”
Trump has believed this for decades. In 1987 he took out full-page ads in various newspapers to complain about Japan and what he viewed as their unfair trade practices. He has long claimed that NAFTA was bad for America, so he killed it in his first term, replacing it with his own trade deal, USMCA (which he violated in February when he imposed broad 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico.)
The simplest and clearest explanation of the president’s views on international trade comes from 2018, when he was returning from the G20 summit, editing a speech. He scribbled three words on the page: “Trade is bad.”
That view is so manifestly incorrect that I won’t waste any space in this article to contradict it.
Here is the most crucial key to understanding his stance: He believes any trade deficit is evidence that we’re being ripped off.
I’ll explain this more soon, but first I want to be sure you understand what a trade deficit is—because let’s be honest: it sounds like a bad thing. It’s very simple: if we buy more from another country than they buy from us, we have a trade deficit with them. For example, I have a massive trade deficit with my grocery store. I’ve bought thousands of dollars’ worth of products from them over the years, and they have bought absolutely nothing from me. But does it follow that I’m being treated unfairly? Of course not.
More relevantly: we import lots and lots of stuff from Vietnam—Americans like buying affordable things made by people who earn $290 per month. Vietnam buys stuff from us too, but they buy less from us than we do from them, understandably. But apparently not understandably if you’re Donald Trump; he believes they’re treating us unfairly. More on this later.
“Foreign countries pay the tariffs.”
Trump has insisted this over and over for years, and he is just as wrong today as he was in his first term. Tariffs are import taxes paid by the importer. My kids learned this in 6th grade social studies. A conservative legal group believes he’s so wrong they are suing him. He is just plain wrong.
Or is he lying? In a conference call in March, the president warned US automakers not to raise prices in response to his upcoming tariffs. But why did he feel it was necessary to issue such a warning? If foreign countries pay the tariffs as he claims, why would American car manufacturers need to raise prices? (Read the linked article if you need more proof that his tariffs will force them to raise prices significantly.)
As far as understanding why the President of the United States would stubbornly and publicly cling to such a demonstrably false idea despite being told hundreds of times that he’s wrong, I’m afraid there’s really only one explanation that makes any sense: he has textbook narcissistic personality disorder, and when a narcissist is proven wrong, they double down. If anyone has a better explanation, I’m all ears.
“These are reciprocal tariffs.”
This one is a doozy, and if you want a really thorough explanation of how the administration came up with the “reciprocal tariff” rates unveiled on April 2, here is a very good resource.
In a nutshell, here’s what to understand about Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs announced last week:
The poster’s title of “Reciprocal Tariffs” and the column heading “Tariffs Charged to the USA” are simply false. Even the fine print, “Including Currency Manipulation and Trade Barriers” is false. Economists figured out, and the White House confirmed, that the “Tariffs Charged to the USA” figures were calculated not by calculating tariff rates plus trade barriers as claimed, but by dividing our trade deficit with that country by that country’s exports to us. For countries whose calculated rates were under 10%, he set the rate at 10% across the board.
So, these “reciprocal tariffs” have absolutely no relation to tariffs imposed on us. They are a completely made-up measure of “cheating” as declared by Donald Trump.
This is how he ends up claiming that Vietnam, a country which spends 3% of its GDP buying goods from America, actually charges 90% tariffs on the US: because although we spend only 0.49% of our GDP on goods from Vietnam, the dollar amount is less and therefore, they are cheating us. His chart shows that he really believes a nation less than one-third of our population and 64 times poorer ought to be buying every bit as much from us as we buy from them. And because they haven’t been, he will now punish them. (That’s his intention; but recall that the tariffs will in fact be paid by Americans.)
“It’s hard to state just how nonsensical that actually is,” one columnist writes. “You might as well divide the numbers of apples in your kitchen by the number of bagels and use it to calculate your mortgage rate. To criticise it on political or economic grounds is too generous. It operates below the level of rational thought.” When you consider that his “Liberation Day” announcement also levied tariffs on islands solely inhabited by penguins and an island that’s home only to a joint military base populated entirely by US and British troops with no exports to speak of, it’s hard to argue.
We’ve been “looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered…”
In his now-infamous Rose Garden address, he claimed this is what’s been done to the United States by “friend and foe alike.”
It’s an interesting way to describe the richest nation in the history of the world. If we’re so oppressed, how have we managed to consistently have the largest GDP of any country on the planet? A country so impressively dominant that there’s not a close second? (Our GDP is 64% larger than second-place China.) If we’ve been constantly “pillaged” by our trade partners, why is the value of our goods and services 50% higher than every country in the European Union combined?
If American companies have been “plundered” by other nations, then why is it that WalMart—which is only the tenth most valuable company in the US—would be the 22nd richest nation in the world if it were a country? If we have been “raped” by the rest of the world, then why could dozens of countries combine their worth and still not rival the value of Apple? Why is Illinois as valuable as the entire nation of Turkey?
As pillagers go, they seem pretty incompetent.
“This will be the Golden Age of America.”
He says his tariffs will bring the Golden Age of America, but markets, economists, history, and high-profile Republicans beg to differ.
America has spent decades dismantling trade protectionism, ever since the failed Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930. And those decades have seen the largest number of people lifted out of poverty in all of human history. With his tariff announcements on April 2, Trump did an abrupt 180 on American trade policy.
Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, says the new tariffs could bring in anywhere between $300-$600 billion in the next year. Even if they perform to his highest estimates, in one year the tariffs will recoup 12% of the market value wiped out in 48 hours by Trump’s tariff pronouncement. It’s hard to see how the Golden Age of America can be commenced by vaporizing $5 trillion of American wealth in two days.
It’s unclear how driving South Korea and Japan directly into China’s arms will aid America. No one has explained how angering and alienating virtually every ally we have will improve America’s standing in the world.
JP Morgan’s Chief Global Strategist says, “The trouble with tariffs, to be succinct, is that they raise prices, slow economic growth, cut profits, increase unemployment, worsen inequality, diminish productivity and increase global tensions. Other than that, they’re fine.”
The Economist says, “Donald Trump has committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era. Almost everything he said—on history, economics and the technicalities of trade—was utterly deluded.”
While the stock market line plummets, the likelihood of global recession line is climbing steeply—now as high as 60% thanks to these tariffs.
JD Vance tweeted in 2017: “Can’t be repeated enough: if you’re worried about America’s economic interest, focus more on automation/education than trade protectionism.”
Mike Pence tweeted on April 2: “The Trump Tariff Tax is the largest peacetime tax hike in U.S. history…and will cost American families over $3,500 per year.”
Bill Ackman, billionaire and diehard Trump supporter, tweeted on April 6 that if Trump follows through on implementing these tariffs, he will be launching “economic nuclear war on every country in the world,” and “destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner.” He says that small businesses and low-income Americans will suffer the most as a result, and that the consequences for our country will be “severely negative.”
Ronald Reagan, a year after Donald Trump took out those full-page ads calling for trade protectionism, had words for men like him: “Our peaceful trading partners are not our enemies; they are our allies. We should beware of the demagogues who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends—weakening our economy, our national security, and the entire free world—all while cynically waving the American flag.”
What we can do:
The Constitution explicitly grants Congress the power to regulate foreign commerce. In 1977 Congress passed a law that allows the President special powers to levy tariffs during a national emergency. Trump used this law to declare a national emergency and impose his tariffs—the first President ever to do so.
Congress delegated this power to the President, and they can revoke it. Congress can reclaim its Constitutionally-bestowed power and put a stop to these tariffs at any time.
Let’s make sure our representatives know we want them to take their power back and fix this, now.
The day after the presidential election, I wrote an article entitled Why He Won. I was reeling from his victory, in disbelief that so many Americans wanted to give him power again. I had thought that January 6 was enough on its own to make him electorally toxic. I had forgotten, again, that he could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any supporters.
I dealt with my bitter disappointment by writing about some of the ways Democrats need to change if they want to stop losing winnable elections. It helped me that day—writing through the pain—and I stand by my suggestions.
Afterward, I resolved to ignore politics as much as possible, for my own sanity. For my own enjoyment of life. I resented how many hours of my time this man had dominated. I just wanted to put my head down and focus on friends, family, and daily life. And for the most part, I succeeded.
Until the final week of February.
On Tuesday, February 25, we learned that the clinical trial that is part of our family’s fight against Alzheimer’s disease is in danger due to the ordered cuts at NIH, specifically the freeze on grant reviews. This freeze is—as the name suggests—having a chilling effect on research. Long-scheduled grant review meetings have been canceled, rescheduled, and canceled again. Without them, our funding can’t be released.
I’ll be honest: that news was terrifying. More than that, it was infuriating. We’ve been part of this community for fifteen years, fighting alongside brilliant doctors and researchers who’ve devoted their careers to stopping Alzheimer’s disease. We’ve wept and prayed alongside other families like ours that have been ravaged for generations by this cruel sickness. They, along with my husband, have given their blood, sweat, tears, and spinal fluid trying to defeat this disease—not only for themselves, but for everyone, everywhere.
And for many years, my country has supported us. Americans overwhelmingly want scientific research on our deadliest diseases to continue, which is why Congress has approved and appropriated billions of dollars for Alzheimer’s research (though it’s a fraction of what the government spends on care for Alzheimer’s patients.) This money is already set aside in the budget. These funds were already provisionally approved for our trial.
And now, because of this man, whom I’ve spent the past ten years begging people to realize is unfit to lead us, we may lose the prevention for Alzheimer’s disease. He is poised to throw away fifteen years of steady momentum up to this moment, when we are on the cusp of beating one of the most feared illnesses in the world.
My husband, whom I love more than my own life, and who has courageously fought for himself, for his children, and for the world against this disease, may sicken and die from early-onset Alzheimer’s rather than being its first survivor—as a direct result of Donald Trump’s reckless and myopic actions.
It’s been a lot.
And it has forced me to consider whether speaking out publicly against him is a good strategy, considering that we need all the public support we can get to try and spur action from our representatives. (I want to offer my thanks here to the family and friends who support this president and yet took action on our behalf, reaching out to the White House and their representatives, asking them to right this wrong.)
Three days after that phone call, the world watched the Oval Office ambush of Volodymyr Zelenskyy by Donald Trump and JD Vance. It made me feel physically sick. Watching America’s leaders berate and belittle the leader of a valiant country that’s been invaded and bombed for three solid years by a murderous, war-crime-committing dictator—a country which gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for our promise to protect it—left me shocked. I long ago lost the ability to be surprised by this man, but I can still be shocked.
I messaged a friend that evening: “In all the shock and horror and disbelief of the past 10 years, nothing comes close to the rage and despair I feel today. Pax Americana is over. We’ve switched sides. Today the whole world watched America spit on everything she used to stand for. I really believe we can’t come back from this, no matter who wins the next election. The world knows that America and Americans can’t be trusted.”
I wanted nothing more than to again write through the pain, to try to convey to people whose chosen sources of information will always and only praise whatever Donald Trump does, just how cataclysmic that spectacle was and will be for America and the world.
But I’d just learned that my husband’s life and the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease were at stake, and I didn’t want to risk angering people whose help I needed. So, I bit my tongue.
Since then, I’ve nearly bitten my tongue clean off. Almost daily there has been another impeachable offense, another outrage against democracy, another middle finger to the Constitution. The scale and scope of the corruption, cruelty, and destruction feel overwhelming—which is by design. It’s Steve Bannon’s “flood the zone” strategy: a relentless onslaught that’s nearly impossible to keep up with, let alone counter with any meaningful resistance. So far, it’s been extremely successful.
Two hundred and thirty-eight years ago at the Constitutional Convention, a woman asked Benjamin Franklin whether they had created a republic or a monarchy. He famously replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
For the first time in my life, I am afraid we may not keep it.
I know this will sound hysterical to my friends on the right who only hear how wonderfully the first 100 days of this term are going. In the coming weeks, I hope to show you why I don’t believe it’s hysterical at all.
It’s why I’m not going to keep quiet anymore. I don’t have delusions of grandeur; I know that writing my little blog is not going to topple this administration and save our democracy. But I believe we are at a crossroads; this country I love is in severe danger, and she is worth fighting for. So I will fight. With whatever gifts I have and whatever influence I possess.
I know I can’t fight alone, so at the end of each article, I will include a concrete action we can each take to stand up for the republic.
This isn’t the first time Americans have found themselves living under a despot who elevated himself above the law. We didn’t lie down and submit then, and we won’t now. That’s not what Americans do.
I’m sorry for lying down for the past few months. I’m standing up now. Stand with me.
What we can do: Nationwide protests are happening in all 50 states this Saturday, April 5. It will be by far the biggest show of public disapproval of Trump’s and Musk’s destructive policies so far. For you, it may be the mass firings of civil servants, the carelessness with national security, the detentions and deportations, the devastating tariffs, or something else. For me, it’s all of the above, but especially Alzheimer’s research. Marty and I will be at the one in Denver. Find one near you and stand up with us! https://handsoff2025.com/
The candidate I desperately hoped would lose has won. Rather than insisting the election was stolen or planning to storm the Capitol in January, I’m going to accept the results and pray for the best.
To my friends on the right: Congratulations. Truly. I know how strongly you felt about this election. I know you love this country. And I sincerely hope I’m proven wrong about how disastrous I expect the next four years to be.
To my friends on the left: I know how you’re feeling, because it’s how I feel. Shocked, stunned, sickened, that our fellow Americans would elect a seditious rapist felon. I wish it had gone differently.
That’s the subject of this article: what my friends on the left need to learn from this election so that things may go differently in the future. Because if the lesson you come away with is “half the country is racist/sexist/stupid/hateful,” you will learn nothing and you will continue to lose elections. Brace yourselves for some tough love.
First, a few caveats. Some things you can’t help. Global inflation causing prices to rise during your incumbent’s term is just bad luck. Bird flu causing 100 million chickens to be destroyed and egg prices to skyrocket will be blamed on the sitting administration, no matter how irrationally. The 30% or so of the Republican base who believe every wild conspiracy and that Democrats are all evil and want to destroy America cannot be reasoned with. I am not talking about them here.
I’m talking about normal Americans. Independents. Regular Republicans who don’t think Trump is perfect, just better than the alternative. You can appeal to them. If you want to win elections, you must appeal to them. Here’s how.
Stop being extremists.
I know. You don’t believe you’re an extremist. (Does anyone?) And maybe you, personally, aren’t. But Democrats in general hold several positions that America—a center-right nation whether you like it or not—despises.
Immigration. The Biden administration has been terrible on immigration. Despicable as it was, there’s a reason Trump killed the bipartisan border bill: He knew he could run on this issue. In your lefty bubble, you may not have heard the names Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray, Rachel Morin, or others murdered by illegal immigrants. Rest assured that Americans on the right have heard them. Can you even imagine one of your loved ones being murdered by someone who shouldn’t have been here in the first place? They have imagined it. It’s a powerful motivator.
If you shrug about millions of immigrants flowing into the country unvetted, you are the extremist, not the 73% of Americans who believe tightening security at the southern border should be an important priority for our government. Scolding them for saying “illegal” instead of “undocumented” will not win you any supporters, either.
Come up with, and implement, a real, sustainable border policy, or it will continue to bite you.
Abortion. Many people thought Dobbs would drive a blue wave this election. It did almost certainly have a lot to do with the gender gap this time around, but as we know, it wasn’t nearly enough. And Kamala campaigned hard on a woman’s right to choose.
It’s true that a large majority of Americans believe abortion should be legal. Democrats know this, and hammer on it nonstop. What they refuse to acknowledge is that a large majority of Americans also support restrictions on elective abortions based on gestational age. Roughly 65% believe they should be illegal in the second trimester, and nearly 80% want them banned in the third trimester.
Democrats, to my knowledge, do not support any restrictions on abortion for any reason, at any stage. This is a wildly extremist position, shared by only a handful of nations on earth, including China and North Korea. It’s seen by your fellow Americans as barbaric, and it will continue to hurt you at the ballot box if you don’t moderate your stance.
(“No one is aborting late-term healthy pregnancies!” I can hear you shouting. Fine. Then you should have no problem banning late-term elective abortions. Right?)
Israel. While Gen Z has been brainwashed on TikTok into wearing keffiyehs and staging their tentifada on college campuses, 80% of Americans still support Israel over Hamas in this war. Sixty percent of us want to continue providing military support at least until the American hostages are released.
If there’s something Americans hate more than terrorists, I can’t think what it could be. Siding with terrorists is, unsurprisingly, an unpopular position to take.
Putting up with campus antisemitism, and tepid-at-best support for Israel puts Democrats at odds with the large majority of Americans. Stop it.
Trans. You think this issue is being blown out of proportion. Maybe so. But when you make a claim as radical as “human beings can change sex,” you should expect pushback. When you claim to be the party of women, but cannot define “woman,” you should expect derision. When you call trans-identified males “women,” but call women “cervix-havers” and “chest-feeders” and “vagina owners” and “bleeders,” you should expect them to feel insulted and demeaned. When you tell women they must accept males on their podiums and in their prisons and changing rooms and rape crisis centers, you should expect a not-insignificant portion of them (and their husbands and fathers) to tell you to take a hike. When you swear up and down that no one is performing irreversible sex reassignment surgeries on minors, but people can do a 3-second AI search and see that you are either lying or ignorant, you should expect their contempt.
Sixty percent of Americans say a person’s gender is determined by their birth sex—and that number has been growing steadily for years.
Americans are generally kind, live-and-let-live people. So go ahead and advocate for trans-identified people to be treated with dignity and afforded the same rights as anyone else. But stop demanding everyone change their language and their science-backed beliefs, and that women give up their own hard-won rights. Stop being an extremist.
Latinos. Last night I saw a lot of disbelief from progressives that they’d lost so much ground with this demographic. I have only guesses, but I think they’re good ones.
First, these are voters, therefore they are citizens. They’re here legally. My understanding is that many of them, especially those who immigrated here and became naturalized, resent those living here illegally for not following the rules and jumping through all the hoops they had to. So again, fix your immigration extremism.
Second, this is a heavily Catholic population. They disagree with you about abortion. Stop being extremist on abortion.
Finally, they hate the made-up term Latinx. I mean, they hate it. And it’s not Republicans calling them that. Ninety-six percent of American Latinos have never used it to describe themselves. Half have never heard of it, to be fair, but of the half who have, 75% say it shouldn’t be used to describe Latinos or Hispanics.
White liberals trying to force a more “inclusive” nongendered term onto the speakers of a gendered language against their will is a perfect distillation of how conservatives view you. Knock it off.
Birth rate. I have the least hope of this one changing in the slighest, but here goes. Our birth rate is the lowest it’s been in a century. Young people are waiting longer and longer to start families—if they ever start families. It’s going to wreak havoc on our economy and society if we do nothing—though it is a good reason to advocate for streamlined, legal immigration.
But while the Millennials and Zoomers of the left have been building their careers and posting travel selfies on Insta and camping out for Gaza and marching for abortion rights, do you know what conservatives and Catholics and evangelical Christians have been doing? Getting married and having babies. And raising them according to their values.
You can’t expect to win the elections of the future when your opponents are outbreeding you.
(To be fair, getting married and starting a family young is the extremist route by today’s standards. I just believe this factor could play an outsized role in the not-so-distant future.)
In conclusion, I’ll repeat that America is a center-right country. The best thing the left can do to win voters is move toward the center.
Brianna Wu, longtime progressive and Democrat operative, summed it up well on Twitter today:
“Democratic path forward: Jettison the commies, Hamas fans, and designer gender crowd. No more land acknowledgments. No more trying to please everyone.
We have a point of view. Fight for normal people. Anything that gets in the way of that, we stop doing.”
My friends on the left, you’d do well to listen. Please don’t let this defeat go to waste. Learn from it.
As Russia began its violent invasion of Ukraine, this image started making the rounds on Facebook. It’s a hit with the MAGA crowd. We need a hero, you see. Ukraine needs a hero. A strong, powerful leader who would stand up to Putin and put a stop to his aggression.
“If only Trump were still in office,” they say, “this wouldn’t be happening.” (Probably because Trump himself says this wouldn’t be happening if he were still in office. When asked what has gone wrong in Ukraine, he said, “What went wrong was a rigged election.”)
They say this of the man who took Vladimir Putin’s word over the unanimous conclusion of the entire US intelligence community. The man who stood next to Putin in front of the world and took his side against our own intelligence agencies. The man who didn’t make a peep at that conference about Putin’s annexation of Crimea.
They say this of the man who invited the Taliban to Camp David. He is their ideal leader who is tough on autocratic rulers. They say this of the man who abandoned our Kurdish allies, allowing captured ISIS fighters to escape, and driving our former allies directly into the arms of the Russians. He is the brilliant strategist who would outsmart Russia’s ex-KGB president.
In 2020, during Trump’s tenure as president, the US government suffered possibly the worst cyberattack in our history, at the hands of Russia. What, you don’t remember that? Well, it’s understandable. Our president said next to nothing about it, except to deflect blame from Russia and say, without evidence, that maybe China was behind it—once again ignoring American intelligence to defend Vladimir Putin.
I’m sure Ukraine’s President Zelensky wishes he still had an ally in the White House who tried to extort him by withholding Congressionally approved aid that his country desperately needed to defend themselves against Russia.
Maybe the most absurd thing about this notion of Trump as savior is the man’s actual response to Putin invading the sovereign nation of Ukraine. He once again heaped praise on Russia’s autocratic ruler, calling him “genius,” and saying of Putin’s justifications for the attack, “Oh, that’s wonderful,” and, “You gotta say that’s pretty savvy.”
“But Putin didn’t invade Ukraine while Trump was in office!” I’ve heard. And for all his hero-worship of Putin, Trump always was a wild card. Maybe there’s something to that argument.
Or, maybe Putin’s dearest wish is for the weakening and eventual dissolution of NATO. And from 2016-2020, he was able to sit back and enjoy the show as the President of the United States did his dirty work for him.
Back in 2016, Putin’s troll farm flooded Facebook and Twitter with propaganda intended to sow discord in America, instill doubt in our institutions, and try to get Donald Trump elected. I don’t think he had any idea how successful he’d be. Five years later, we are as divided as we’ve ever been, and millions of Americans believe the election was rigged. Putin’s preferred candidate proved he’d rather tear the country apart than face up to the fact that he lost.
And now the most popular talking head on America’s most-watched cable news network is spouting such pro-Russia, pro-Putin rhetoric that he’s being featured on the Kremlin-backed news propaganda channel, RT.
During the Cold War, we had a term for people who were easily manipulated by the Soviets, who were susceptible to communist propaganda. Who could be persuaded to blame America and argue amongst themselves instead of focusing on the real enemy. “Useful idiots.” (It’s popularly believed that Lenin coined the term, but there’s no evidence of this.)
Now is not the time—especially for our elected representatives—to be pointing fingers at the president or each other. Now is not the time to absurdly claim, contrary to all evidence, that the former president would be doing a better job. Do I wish Biden were projecting more strength? Yes, definitely. Do I wish he hadn’t utterly failed in our withdrawal from Afghanistan? Absolutely. Do I wish the US were still a respected, decisive leader on the world stage? Badly.
But Biden is not the enemy. There is war on European soil today. Ukrainians are dying in defense of their country right now. Pax Americana is unraveling before our eyes. Our enemy is not the President of the United States. It isn’t Justin Trudeau. It’s the man who poisons his political opponents, who has doctors thrown out of windows, who imprisons dissidents, and who is waging an illegal, unprovoked war on a sovereign nation who gave up their nuclear weapons in return for the promise that the US and Russia would guarantee their safety.
Encourage your Congressmen to stand with Ukraine. Tell them you expect America to stand with democracy and against tyrants.
Don’t be like Tucker Carlson. Don’t be a useful idiot.
* * * * *
If you need more inspiration to support Ukraine, see these examples of heroism.
This Ukrainian woman offers sunflower seeds (Ukraine’s national flower) to an armed Russian soldier, urging him to put them in his pocket so “at least sunflowers will grow” when he is killed.
And here, in a story of courage for the ages, 13 Ukrainian border guards were holding tiny Snake Island in the Black Sea. A Russian battleship ordered them to lay down their weapons. Their last transmission, before all 13 were killed: “Russian warship, go f*** yourself.”
This is embarrassing to admit, and exposes one of my many character flaws. But four years ago, I spent a little time wondering, “When Trump inevitably damages every institution that has supported him, should I say ‘I told you so?'”
It’s an ugly inclination, I know. I’m sorry.
I was feeling incredibly frustrated at the time, because I had tried so hard to dissuade my fellow Republicans from making him the nominee in the first place. I was so convinced he belonged nowhere near power that I served, for the first time, as a delegate for my district during the primaries. My little district, at the very least, would not support his candidacy.
It didn’t matter. He won the nomination, and then the election.
Four years later, I can tell you this: I no longer feel like saying “I told you so.”
His supporters have long accused me and other Never Trump conservatives of being motivated by hate. They say we just hate President Trump. They’re wrong. Love has been my motivation. Institutions I care deeply about were in danger: conservatism and Christianity.
Now, watching the smoking wreckage of conservatism and the grievously wounded witness of evangelical Christianity, I feel anything but victorious.
Watching one friend after another walk away from the faith because of the hypocrisy of the church, I feel anything but vindicated.
Watching the American flag dragged down and a Trump flag raised over our Capitol, I felt only revulsion and a deep sadness. Watching deluded fellow citizens swarming over the representative heart of our democracy, raising a gallows, hunting our Vice President, beating one police officer with a flagpole, crushing another in a doorway, beating another to death, smearing their own feces on those hallowed halls, I felt only horror and heartbreak.
Worse, far worse, were the reactions of almost every single one of my Trump-supporting friends and relatives. Perfunctory condemnations of violence, followed immediately by whatabouts, excuses, defenses of their hero, and of course, conspiracy-fueled fantasies that boogeymen from the left were the true villains.
What should have been a solid red line, a unifying moment for all Americans of good will, became, stupefyingly, another illustration of how divided we’ve become. We can’t even agree on what we all saw: that a Trump-supporting mob, invited to Washington by Donald Trump, stormed the Capitol because they believed Donald Trump’s claims that the election was stolen, and that all of it was unequivocally wrong and should never have happened.
Look at where we are. Look at where this presidency, this man, has brought us. Millions of people believe Biden didn’t actually win the election; faith in our democratic system has been undermined by lies. Untold thousands—possibly millions—believe a Satanic cabal of baby-eating pedophiles is running the world. More than one of these deranged extremists has been elected to Congress. Ludicrous conspiracy theories have infected countless Americans, destroying relationships and tearing families apart. We suffered the worst cyberattack by a foreign adversary in American history last year, and it was barely a blip on the radar thanks to our domestic chaos. Four hundred thousand Americans are dead, and thousands more are dying every single day.
As I write this, I’m watching Joe Biden take the oath of office. I’m surprised by the tears in my eyes. I have never, never cried during an inauguration before. And although I voted for him, I’m not particularly thrilled that he is now president. I’m not excited that a party I’ve opposed my whole life is now in control of America.
But I am relieved. I am so, so relieved. It feels as though a hundred pound weight has been lifted off my shoulders. These have been four long, disillusioning years, and now, thank God, they’re over.
This is the first time in 152 years that an outgoing president has refused to attend the inauguration of his successor. It’s the final, petty act of a small, bitter man, and I’m thankful for it. His presence would have poisoned this solemn, hopeful event. Let him slink away in shame. Let his toxic influence wane, and wither away.
It will take time.
President Biden is speaking now, pleading for unity. He acknowledges that this may sound like a “foolish fantasy.” But he’s right. We do have to find a way to be united once again.
Unity doesn’t mean we will always agree. It doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be consequences for those who’ve attacked and undermined our democracy. It doesn’t mean we must try to find common cause with demagogues or lunatics or criminals.
It means we stop demonizing everyone who holds a different position than we do. It means we give each other the benefit of the doubt. It means we are willing to work together, to listen to one another, to compromise. It means our churches extricate themselves from party politics, and stop presuming to link a person’s vote with their salvation. As our new president said in his inaugural speech today, “Politics doesn’t have to be a raging fire, destroying everything in its path.”
Let’s put out the fire.
Let’s put this dark period in American history behind us.
Let’s lean in to a better, united future, together.
Amanda Gorman blew me away with her poem at the inauguration today. I encourage you watch the entire thing.
“We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be,
A country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free.”
The election is over. Yes, vote counts must still be completed and certified. Yes, the Electoral College won’t vote until December. But it’s over. We know who won. Just like we always know who won before results are official.
I take that back. One time in the past 20 years, we had to wait until December to know who our next president would be. The 2000 presidential election hinged on one state, Florida, whose initial final count had less than 2,000 votes separating the candidates. The recount saw a 1,247 vote change in Al Gore’s favor, but it wasn’t enough.
Still, 1,247 votes changing in a recount is a pretty large shift. Usually, recounts don’t see shifts of more than a few hundred votes. The all-time record for vote shift in a recount is 2,567.
With vote counts nearly finished, here are Biden’s margins in the states Republicans are pinning their hopes on:
Georgia: 10,000+
Arizona: 17,000+
Nevada: 34,000+
Pennsylvania: 45,000+
It’s over.
What’s maddening is that if every state had counted mail-in ballots early, like Florida did, the presidential race would have been called on Election Day, and it wouldn’t be seen as particularly close. What’s more maddening is several key states, including Pennsylvania, wanted to start counting their mail-in ballots early, but this change was blocked by Republican state legislatures. Republicans ensured there would be delays in counting votes, then used the delays they caused to claim fraud.
Of course, the GOP is simply following the example of its leader. And claiming fraud is what he always does when he’s losing.
He did it when Ted Cruz beat him in the Iowa primary in 2016.
He did it leading up to the 2016 general election, when he and everyone else thought he would lose to Hillary Clinton.
During the 2018 senate race recount between Democrat Bill Nelson and Republican Tim Scott, he taunted Nelson, telling him to concede before the recount was finished, and implying election officials were dirty. (The recount saw an increase in votes for Nelson, but not enough for him to win the election.)
He spent months leading up to this election sowing doubt and suspicion.
What he and his supporters have not explained is why the Democrats, hundreds of poll workers, and election officials who conspired to steal the presidency forgot to also steal the Congressional seats Biden will need to accomplish his secret socialist agenda.
He put out a statement on Saturday morning, shortly after the election was called for Joe Biden, in which he repeated his claims of fraud and vowed, “I will not rest until the American People have the honest vote count they deserve and that Democracy demands.”
Meanwhile, his campaign inundated supporters with fundraising emails, urgently requesting donations for the “Official Election Defense Fund.” The campaign sent at least 17 fundraising emails on Sunday alone. Trump’s official website tells supporters the president needs their money to stop Democrats who want to STEAL the election.
But in the fine print, you can see that 60% of donations will go toward paying off the campaign’s debts.
He primed his supporters to believe the election would be fraudulent. Then Republicans in state legislatures helped drag out the vote counting. And now that he’s lost, he’s going to squeeze his supporters for every dime while he still can.
But they believe in him. I’ve seen so many this weekend who fervently believe it’s not over, that he will still win, that he is fighting hard for them.
Maybe you’ve seen it recently, like I have (over and over and over): James Dobson’s “Final Thoughts about the Election.” I have to write about it; it’s just too much for me to take.
For those unfamiliar, James Dobson is a household name in conservative Christian homes, and has been for decades. His Focus on the Family organization has promoted Christian values and social conservatism since 1977. Dobson has long supported Republican politicians, and wielded significant political power thanks to his wide readership among Christians. The New York Times once called him “the nation’s most influential evangelical leader.”
In his “Final Thoughts about the Election,” Dobson doesn’t directly name either Trump or Biden, but it’s obvious who he’s talking about, and how he wants his readers to vote. He invokes Newt Gingrich, who believes “what we are facing now might bring an end to civilization as we have known it.” Yes, yes, by now we have all heard that if Joe Biden wins, America will be destroyed.
Dobson asks voters how they’re going to decide whom to vote for. Will we be like “dozens” of people he’s heard from, who will vote based “solely on a candidate’s rhetoric, tone, style, or likeability?” Later in the letter he laments that “the notion of choosing a president based on frivolous personality characteristics is so unfortunate.”
Can we pause here for just a second? Because this is something I’ve seen for years, and it drives me up the wall. I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve seen Trump supporters accuse conservatives like me of opposing him just because we don’t like his tweets, or because he’s brash, or because he’s unpolished, or because he’s orange. Because of his “frivolous personality characteristics.”
Anyway. The heart of Dobson’s open letter is actually an anonymous social media post which I’ve also seen making the rounds for weeks. The post begins thus: “This is not a junior high or high school popularity/personality contest. I’m not voting for the person—I’m voting for the platform!” It goes on to list a bunch of the usual policy reasons to vote for Trump: the Second Amendment, the military, abortion—as well as some vague ones, like, “I’m voting for the Republic in which we live,” and “I’m voting for the flag that is often missing from public events.” (Again, it is not explicitly in support of Trump, but it’s obvious.)
Possibly even more popular among conservative circles than “If Biden wins, America will be destroyed,” is this: “I’m not voting for the person—I’m voting for the platform!” It’s an understandable angle for evangelicals to take. When you’re voting for a man who represents most of the sins you’ve always said are disqualifying in a leader, you’ve got to justify your vote some other way.
It’s not the first time Dobson has used his influence to support Trump. In an article in Christianity Today calling for Trump’s impeachment, CT’s editor-in-chief, Mark Galli, wrote, “To the many evangelicals who continue to support Mr. Trump in spite of his blackened moral record, we might say this: Remember who you are and whom you serve. Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior.” Dobson defended Trump with a laundry list of policy positions.
So, now I think we’re all clear: Dobson’s position is that policy is the only thing that matters. The person doesn’t matter. The personality doesn’t matter. What he says and how he acts don’t matter.
Character doesn’t matter.
Which is really, really strange, because I am old enough to remember Bill Clinton, our last president to be impeached before Donald Trump, and what James Dobson had to say about him.
To refresh my memory for you, dear readers, I sat down and read a long newsletter James Dobson put out in September, 1998. There are so many gems, it’s hard to know where to start.
“What has alarmed me throughout this episode has been the willingness of my fellow citizens to rationalize the President’s behavior…”
“We heard it time and again during those months: ‘As long as Mr. Clinton is doing a good job, it’s nobody’s business what he does with his personal life.’ That disregard for morality is profoundly disturbing to me.”
In one paragraph, Dobson lists Clinton’s previous misdeeds: an affair, dodging the draft, lying, smoking marijuana, organizing anti-war rallies. Then he makes his main point: “There were other indications that Bill Clinton was untruthful and immoral. Why, then, did the American people ignore so many red flags? Because, and I want to give the greatest emphasis to this point, the mainstream media became enamored with Bill Clinton in 1992 and sought to convince the American people that ‘character doesn’t matter.’”
Dobson then lists seven examples of publications making excuses for Clinton’s lousy character, calling them an “effort by the press to undermine the moral values that we called ‘character.'” The very first one, from the San Diego Union-Tribune, says, “…remember that we are electing not clergy but political leaders…”
I nearly choked on my drink when I read that. Since 2015 I’ve had conservative Christians telling me, “We’re electing a president, not a pastor.” The exact thing Dobson called out as “undermining moral values” when it was used on behalf of Bill Clinton.
In his 1998 newsletter, Dobson takes care to point out Clinton’s various scandals, his lies about those scandals, women who accused him of sexual assault, his potentially illegal financial activities, and a slew of people connected to the president who were accused and/or convicted of crimes. It’s like a time machine; just change the names.
Then we come to this paragraph, and it is truly the pièce de résistance. Please take time to read it slowly. Savor each line.
“As it turns out, character DOES matter. You can’t run a family, let alone a country, without it. How foolish to believe that a person who lacks honesty and moral integrity is qualified to lead a nation and the world! Nevertheless, our people continue to say that the President is doing a good job even if they don’t respect him personally. Those two positions are fundamentally incompatible. In the Book of James the question is posed, ‘Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring?’ (James 3:11 NIV). The answer is no.”
In 1998, character did matter. It mattered more than anything else.
So I’d like to ask Dr. Dobson, and everyone sharing his more recent letter: what changed? What has changed since 1998? Because it wasn’t God. It wasn’t the Bible. It wasn’t morality.
Be honest. Bill Clinton’s real sin wasn’t adultery, or lying. It was having the wrong letter after his name on the ballot.
Be honest. You were always going to vote for the Republican, and you’ve conveniently bent and molded your standards to fit that predetermined fact. Immorality in Democrats is disqualifying. Immorality in Republicans is “frivolous personality characteristics.”
I was seventeen in 1998. I remember. I remember all the Christian adults in my life bemoaning the sad state of the world, the immorality of our president, the shame he’d brought on our country, the awful example he was setting for our children.
Eighteen years later, I was begging them not to vote for a man who had paid hush money to a porn star he’d cheated on his wife with—his third wife, who had posed nude for money and could easily be seen naked by anyone who wanted to look.
The hypocrisy still blows me away, to this day. A porn star. Dirty hush money. A First Lady with nude photos. Bragging about walking in on naked teenage girls. Bragging about sexual assault. And they excused all of it. And they’ve excused or ignored virtually everything since then.
And they scold me for voting against him because of “frivolous personality characteristics.”
Dr. Dobson would have done well to listen to Mr. Galli’s exhortation: “Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior.” I promise you, the world has noticed evangelicals’ justification of President Trump. They’ve noticed the hypocrisy—how could they possibly miss it? Time will tell how much damage has been done, but I fear it’s significant. We have ceded the moral high ground, likely for a couple generations.
The election is coming soon, and if it turns out the way I believe it will, we’ll have a resounding verdict from Americans, in spite of what Dobson and evangelicals have been saying for four years.
Conservatives who oppose Donald Trump—or, horror of horrors, plan to vote for Joe Biden—are guaranteed to have some version of this accusation hurled at them from fellow pro-lifers. I’ve heard it plenty, especially since I explained publicly why I’ll be voting for Joe Biden. The retired leader of the denomination I belonged to for most of my life recently posted on Facebook, “The Christian has no choice…we must vote for…the Republican Party.” He went on to warn any Christian thinking of voting for a Democrat, “God will hold you accountable for killing human life.” Megachurch Pastor John MacArthur said last month that he personally discussed with President Trump why Christians “could not vote Democratic.” MacArthur went even further, claiming that “any real, true believer” will be voting for Trump. Just before I sat down to write this article, I saw someone on Facebook tell my cousin, “…if you vote for those who will murder babies in or out of the womb, their blood is on your hands.”
No pressure, Christians.
Abortion, more than any other issue, binds conservative Christians to the Republican party. Elected Democrats bear much of the blame for this; their extremist opposition to any form of abortion restriction is wildly out of touch with Americans, a large majority of whom believe abortion ought to be subject to restrictions starting in the second trimester.
To be sure, for anyone like me who believes life begins at conception (not a belief so much as a biological fact), the very idea of abortion is morally repugnant. The argument that a woman ought to be able to choose what to do with “her own body” doesn’t fly with people who understand that one human being can’t have two sets of DNA, four arms, two hearts, two brains. I have personally felt two babies growing inside me, and I assure you they were separate, distinct individuals. I wasn’t kicking my own uterus from the inside—don’t be stupid. The most militant pro-choice people in the world still attend baby showers, not fetus showers, and if they experience the grief of miscarriage, they know that something valuable, irreplaceable, and undeniably human has been lost. “Don’t like abortion? Don’t have one,” sounds the same to me as, “Don’t like slavery? Don’t own one.”
And so, in every election of my life (with the exception of president in 2016), I dutifully voted for the candidates with an R after their names. They were the ones who were pro-life, like me. They were the ones who would fight to protect innocent, vulnerable, unborn babies. They said so. It’s in their party platform.
Everyone in Christian subculture knows the term “nominal Christian.” There are loads of them in America: people who call themselves Christians, who say they believe in God, who show up to church on Christmas and Easter, but whose hearts, lives, and actions remain untouched and unchanged by the gospel. They are Christians in name only.
The Republican Party is nominally pro-life. It’s pro-life in name only.
It’s so searingly obvious to me now that I can’t believe it took me so long to see it. Let me show you, my fellow pro-life conservatives.
Roe v. Wade is the super-villain of the pro-life story, the Big Bad that started it all. (For the record, I believe Roe was a terrible decision, a prime example of “legislating from the bench,” and a lot of legal scholars agree—even Ruth Bader Ginsburg thought it was faulty. I think it ought to be overturned and given to the states to decide, as it should have been in the first place.) Christians are told we must vote for Republican presidents, so they can nominate conservative justices, so we can overturn Roe v. Wade. Overturning Roe v. Wade is the Holy Grail of the pro-life movement.
But on the Supreme Court that delivered Roe v. Wade, six of the nine justices were Republican nominees. Five of those six concurred with the ruling. Legal abortion is the law in America thanks to Republican-appointed justices. Only two justices dissented, and one of them was Democrat-appointed.
For 49 of the past 50 years, the majority of the Supreme Court has been made up of Republican nominees. You read that correctly.
Pro-life Catholic William T. Cavanaugh lays out why if overturning Roe v. Wade were possible, it would have happened by now: “By 1992, pro-life presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush had appointed five justices, giving the Republicans an 8-to-1 advantage, and the lone Democratic appointee, Byron White, was one of two justices who voted against the Roe decision. If ever Roe v. Wade was going to be overturned, this was the time. But when Planned Parenthood v. Casey came before the court that year, it not only failed to overturn Roe v. Wade, but also outlawed restrictions that put an ‘undue burden’ on women seeking abortions.”
Republicans have held unified control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency for six out of the past twenty years, including the first two years of Donald Trump’s term. Yet Planned Parenthood is still fully funded—they actually received a record-high total of taxpayer dollars during Trump’s presidency after the passage of his new tax bill. No federal personhood bill has even been attempted during any of the six years Republicans held complete power.
In late February 2019, during debate over the “Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Bill”, Senate Republicans seized the opportunity to cast Democrats as inhuman monsters who want dying babies left alone and unaided as they gasp for air. Democrats called the bill a “political stunt” and pointed out that it is already a crime to not provide care to infants born alive after an attempted abortion. In the end, the Republican-held Senate didn’t have a filibuster-proof majority, so the bill failed to receive a vote—as predicted.
Less than five weeks later, those same Senate Republicans used the “nuclear option” to kill the filibuster, in order to speed up confirmation of President Trump’s judicial and executive branch nominees.
So I have to ask my fellow pro-lifers: Why was filling government positions more important to the Republicans they elected than protecting the lives of babies? Why did Republicans fight harder and dirtier to confirm judges than to prevent infanticide? They had the power to overrule the Democrats during the Born-Alive fight if they really wanted to—they proved it just weeks later. But they chose not to use that power in the fight for life. Why?
During the recent Vice-Presidential debate, Mike Pence was asked directly about that pro-life dream-come-true: a world where Roe v. Wade has been overturned. “If Roe v Wade is overturned, what would you want Indiana to do? Would you want your home state to ban all abortions?” What an opportunity for the pro-life VP to make a passionate, eloquent statement about the value of all human life! To argue convincingly before millions of Americans why we ought to turn our backs on the barbarity of abortion!
Because the Republican Party is only nominally pro-life.
I’m not talking about Republican voters; I know firsthand that so many of them fervently believe in protecting unborn babies—indeed, it is the one thread that has kept some of them connected to a president they would otherwise disapprove of. I’m talking about Republican politicians, who are keenly aware of this dynamic.
When the GOP knows that abortion will keep evangelicals voting for them en masse year after year, why wouldn’t they keep using it to court us? When wielding abortion as a club has been so effective at beating otherwise dissatisfied Christian voters into submission, why would they want to surrender it? When their leader, the most immoral, offensive, un-Christlike man imaginable, can do and say as many indefensible things as he wants because a huge portion of their base will always say, “But abortion!” and vote for them anyway, why would they ever voluntarily lose that advantage?
In his recent book, Pastor Patrick Kahnke bottom lines it for us: “Most Republican politicians have no real interest in seeing meaningful progress on the abortion issue, because once that happens, they will lose the hold they have on their evangelical base.”
My entire life, I’ve been told I must vote Republican to save babies’ lives. But for almost 50 years, electing Republicans has not ended abortion. They’ve done precious little to even curb it. They did pass a partial-birth abortion ban in 2003; I’ll give them that. But abortion providers simply get around this law by killing the baby in the womb before it is delivered. The ban has made no real impact. The overall rate of abortions has dropped steadily since Roe—but it has dropped slightly faster under Democrat presidents.
At the state level, yes, Republicans have made real attempts to restrict abortion (most of which have so far been struck down by the majority Republican-nominated Supreme Court.) But at the federal level, their track record is clear. The GOP doesn’t really want to end abortion.
Some of you may wonder if I’m being too cynical. Is the party well-meaning but just inept and unable to enact its agenda when in power? No, clearly not. Republicans have seen great success at cutting taxes, rolling back environmental protections, defending gun rights, lavishly funding the military, and keeping health care largely run by the private sector. They know how to get wins when they’re in the majority.
And they know how to keep their base in line. Casting themselves as righteous crusaders for life against the forces of evil is a very powerful weapon. Powerful enough to keep “pro-life” people voting for them while they mock Americans for trying to protect their fellow citizens’ lives by wearing masks. While saying older people should be willing to die to keep the economy running smoothly. While slashing the number of refugees we welcome by over 80%—to hell with your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. While responding with shrugs when a whistleblower nurse reported forced hysterectomies on immigrant women at ICE facilities—it’s probably best if those women don’t have babies, anyway. While saying COVID-19 “affects virtually nobody” as 200,000 Americans lay dead from the virus. While refusing to even answer whether they’ve ever impregnated a woman who then had an abortion.
The Republican Party is pro-life in name only.
My pro-life friends, I don’t expect you all to vote for a Democrat. I understand why some of you can’t bring yourselves to do it—though perhaps you’ll be encouraged, as I was, to learn of the group, Democrats For Life of America, who recently took out a full page ad in the New York Times urging their party to moderate on the issue of abortion.
But I hope you can see now that being single-issue voters has gotten us nothing. For half a century, it has gotten us nothing. Worse than nothing: we have handcuffed ourselves to a party that is cynically using us. I will not be lectured any longer by fellow pro-lifers who tell me I must vote Republican. The blinders are off.
I’m pro-life, and I’m voting for Joe Biden even though he’s wrong about abortion, because the GOP needs chemo. In the meantime, as we have done for years, my family will continue donating to pro-life organizations that help women choose life by providing real, practical support for them and their babies.
It’s clearly a better use of our efforts than voting for Republicans.
Wilderness Dispatch 
