BE AFRAID, VERY AFRAID

'Cast of dangerous clowns': Columnist claims Cabinet picks reflect 'allure of Trumpism'

Kathleen Culliton
November 19, 2024 9

RAW STORY

People dressed as clowns attend the Zombie Walk, October 20, 2024. REUTERS/Pablo Sanhueza

The kind of man Stephen King would depict luring unsuspecting children into sewers is the kind President-elect Donald Trump would pick for the secretary of education, a political columnist argued Tuesday.

Salon writer Amanda Marcotte on Tuesday made the case that Trump is actively seeking out men accused of sexually assaulting women for top positions in his administration or, as she calls it, his "cast of dangerous clowns."

"It's not just that Trump doesn't care about sexual assault," wrote Marcotte. "He appears to see it as a bonus if one of his nominees or allies has faced such allegations."

Three men Trump has tapped for Cabinet have faced sexual assault accusations, reports show.

The congressional Ethics committee investigated whether former Rep. Matt Gaetz sexually assaulted an underage girl, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been accused of sexually assaulting his children's babysitter and Fox News personality Pete Hegseth has been accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a hotel room, reports show.

The three men have publicly denied the accusations.

Marcotte argued Tuesday that the denials — and the accusations — don't matter to Trump or his voters.

"He expects his base voters to see these ... like they see him, as an aspirational figure," Marcotte wrote. "And not because they believe they're innocent men done wrong, either. The ability to commit crimes — even sex crimes — and get away with it is part of the allure of Trumpism."

Marcotte argued Trumpism came as response to the #MeToo movement that sought to hold men such as film mogul Harvey Weinstein — the convicted rapist Trump recently complained had been "schlonged" — accountable for attacking women.

"Defending a man's 'right' to have sex with underage girls would be making good on a campaign promise," she wrote. "It's tempting to hope this will anger the public and result in consequences for Trump, but frankly, that's unlikely."

'Apparently not a joke': Critics stunned as WWE co-founder reportedly expected for Cabinet as Education Secretary
Matthew Chapman
November 19, 2024 8:01PM ET

Donald Trump is reportedly expected to appoint Linda McMahon, the former co-founder of WWE and the chief of the Small Business Administration in his previous presidency, to head up the Department of Education.

The appointment, which swiftly followed Trump's announcement of TV personality and former Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz to head up the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, prompted an instant reaction from commenters on social media.

"Linda McMahon being tipped for Trump’s education secretary," wrote Telegraph editor Gareth Davies on X, attaching a clip of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin's famous "Stunner" finishing move. "Another senior US politician who has been Stunnered."

"Cause nothing says educating our children like being an ex-professional wrestling performer and running the @WWE, which has allegedly failed to protect employees from workplace harassment and sexual misconduct," wrote Kendra Barkoff Lamy, a former spokesperson to President Joe Biden while he served as vice president.

In addition to the reaction on X, others commented on the site's growing competitor, Bluesky.

"And, in further 'apparently not a joke' news, Linda McMahon of the WWE for Secretary of Education. LULZ PWNED as a theory of governance, I guess," wrote McGill University professor and Niskanen Center fellow Jacob T. Levy.

"Sort of like Oz at CMS, it’s not clear to me that McMahon would have an agenda of her own, but that might not be a problem for an administration that wants to shrink and eliminate much of DOE," wrote Yahoo Finance's Jordan Weissmann.

"I wonder if Linda McMahon will allow Jim Jordan and @timgill924.bsky.social [to] settle education policy disagreements in the ring?" wrote Michigan State University professor Brendan Cantwell.

'Betsy DeVos 2.0': Trump education pick raises alarms

Jake Johnson
Common Dreams

November 20, 2024

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced late Tuesday that he intends to nominate Linda McMahon, the billionaire former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, to lead the Department of Education, a key agency that Republicans—including Trump and the authors of Project 2025—have said they want to abolish.

McMahon served as head of the Small Business Administration during Trump's first White House term and later chaired both America First Action—a pro-Trump super PAC—and the America First Policy Institute, a far-right think tank that has expressed support for cutting federal education funding and expanding school privatization.

Trump touted McMahon's work to expand school "choice"—a euphemism for taxpayer-funded private school vouchers—and said she would continue those efforts on a national scale as head of the Education Department.

"We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort," Trump said in a statement posted to his social media platform, Truth Social. (McMahon is listed as an independent director of Trump Media & Technology Group, which runs Truth Social.)

The National Education Association (NEA), a union that represents millions of teachers across the U.S., said in response to the president-elect's announcement that McMahon is "grossly unqualified" to lead the Education Department, noting that she has "lied about having a degree in education," presided over an organization "with a history of shady labor practices," and "pushed for an extreme agenda that would harm students, defund public schools, and privatize public schools through voucher schemes."

"During his first term, Donald Trump appointed Betsy DeVos to undermine and ultimately privatize public schools through vouchers," NEA president Becky Pringle said in a statement. "Now, he and Linda McMahon are back at it with their extreme Project 2025 proposal to eliminate the Department of Education, steal resources for our most vulnerable students, increase class sizes, cut job training programs, make higher education more expensive and out of reach for middle-class families, take away special education services for disabled students, and put student civil rights protections at risk."

"The Department of Education plays such a critical role in the success of each and every student in this country," Pringle continued. "The Senate must stand up for our students and reject Donald Trump's unqualified nominee, Linda McMahon. Our students and our nation deserve so much better than Betsy DeVos 2.0."

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, took a more diplomatic approach, saying in a statement that "we look forward to learning more about" McMahon and that, if she's confirmed, "we will reach out to her as we did with Betsy DeVos at the beginning of her tenure."

"While we expect that we will disagree with Linda McMahon on many issues, our devotion to kids requires us to work together on policies that can improve the lives of students, their families, their educators, and their communities," Weingarten added.

McMahon is one of several billionaires Trump has selected for major posts in his incoming administration, which is teeming with conflicts of interest. During Trump's first term, McMahon and her husband, Vince McMahon, made at least $100 million from dividends, investment interest, and stock and bond sales.

The Guardian noted Tuesday that "in October, [Linda] McMahon was named in a new lawsuit involving WWE."

"The suit alleges that she and other leaders of the company allowed the sexual abuse of young boys at the hands of a ringside announcer, former WWE ring crew chief Melvin Phillips Jr," the newspaper reported. "The complaint specifically alleges that the McMahons knew about the abuse and failed to stop it."

'Declaration of war on expertise': Experts explain danger of Trump 'MAGA zealot' nominees

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump is interviewed by Fox and Friends co-host Pete Hegseth at the White House in Washington, U.S. April 6, 2017. 

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

David Badash

November 20, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump has surprised and even alarmed many across the country, and “puzzled” and “baffled” some within his own party, with his Cabinet and other top White House nominations. Critics on the left have denounced his picks for their apparent lack of experience or qualifications for the roles they are expected to take on, noting some hold controversial or even false positions in the fields they may soon direct policy on. Meanwhile, experts in the fields of government, fascism, and democracy, are raising serious concerns about the potential “danger” some nominees represent, drawing comparisons to the “professional propagandists” often found in authoritarian regimes.

Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an NYU professor of history and a recognized expert on fascism and authoritarianism, on Wednesday pointed to this report on one of Trump’s most-recent nominations, Linda McMahon:





McMahon was Trump’s former administrator of the Small Business Administration, and is a former CEO of WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), a major GOP donor, and has recently been the chair of a pro-Trump Super PAC, the board chair of a pro-Trump think tank, and the co-chair of Trump’s second transition team.

“Trump’s cabinet picks are a declaration of war on expertise and facts (that’s why there are several Fox hosts in the mix). The con artists, fraudsters, and professional propagandists that populate authoritarian governments see facts and laws as impediments to their goals,” Dr. Ben-Ghiat wrote.

READ MORE: JD Vance Accidentally Reveals FBI Director Wray Is Likely Being Replaced

Trump, announcing McMahon’s nomination, claimed, “Linda will use her decades of Leadership experience, and deep understanding of both Education and Business, to empower the next Generation of American Students and Workers, and make America Number One in Education in the World.”

McMahon’s only brush with the field of education came about 15 years ago, when she served on the Connecticut State Board of Education. She resigned after 15 months. At the time, her appointment was controversial, with one lawmaker lamenting, “her depth of knowledge regarding education is lacking.”




McMahon is far from the only controversial nominee.

On Tuesday, the vice chair of the powerful House Rules Committee Jim McGovern (D-MA) blasted Trump’s nominees as “beyond insane.”

“Someone who is credibly accused of having sex with an underage girl. Someone who sucks up to foreign dictators and has attracted major concern that they can’t be trusted to protect America’s secrets from our adversaries. Someone who paid hush money to cover up a sexual assault accusation, you know, to lead our military, he’s picked because Donald Trump likes him on Fox News? Someone who says that tap water turns kids gay? I mean, this is the dream team? This is the dream team? Really?”

He appeared to be referring to Attorney General presumptive nominee Matt Gaetz, Director of National Intelligence presumptive nominee Tulsi Gabbard, Defense Secretary presumptive nominee Pete Hegseth, and HHS Secretary presumptive nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The Democratic Association of Secretaries of State posted video calling Trump’s nominees “a trainwreck.”

“Gaetz, Gabbard, RFK – none of them have the experience or qualifications for the positions they’re seeking, in addition to the fact they’re all dangerous MAGA zealots,” the organization declared. They posted a video clip (below) from MSNBC with a chyron that noted opposition from the right to Trump’s Attorney General nominee, Matt Gaetz.

MSNBC’s justice and legal affairs analyst Anthony Coley told viewers that Gaetz, the recently resigned U.S. Congressman, “has no national security experience—not anything meaningful—little anti-trust experience, and he certainly has no experience with criminal law, except for being the target of a federal criminal investigation looking into inappropriate sexual contact, allegedly, with a minor.”

Trump has also just appointed his former acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, a strong Trump loyalist, to be the U.S. Ambassador to NATO.

“Whitaker has little evident foreign policy or national security experience, making him an unknown to many in U.S. security circles,” The Associated Press reports. “Previous ambassadors to NATO have generally had years of diplomatic, political or military experience.”

“Before serving Trump,” Mother Jones notes, “he helped a company hawk bizarre products like a ‘masculine toilet’ to help ‘well-endowed men’ avoid unwanted contact with water.”

But The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, a former U.S. Naval War College professor and an expert on Russia and nuclear weapons, served up this warning: “This is just hilarious, but the danger here is that it makes him Senate-confirmed and available for other stuff later.”

In other words, assuming Whitaker is confirmed, Trump could nominate him to another, even more critical role, declaring he’s qualified because he’s already been Senate-confirmed.

Last week, Nichols declared that Trump’s “nominations for intelligence, defense, and justice were revenge on people he thinks are his enemies. This is just endangering millions of innocent people.”

On Monday on MSNBC, Nichols went much further, delivered a scathing analysis of Trump’s nominees, calling them “an all-fronts assault on American democracy,” in another warning.

Trump, he said, is “trying to break the institutions of American government and American society, and what you’ve been seeing for the past few weeks is an all-fronts assault on American democracy, especially with these nominations.”

“I think the most dangerous of these nominations is actually [Pete] Hegseth,” Nichols explained. “And I’m kind of startled that we’re not sitting here talking more about taking a morning Fox [News] host and sticking him in the nuclear chain of command, to lead the largest—one of the largest—bureaucracies in the United States, in the world, including the person that’s supposed to look after the most powerful fighting force on the planet.”

And he concluded, “it’s also important to recognize that we could be in the first phases of a major constitutional crisis, even before Trump is sworn in.”

Watch the video above or at this link.

Dr. Oz nomination seen as potential boon for Medicare privatization

Donald Trump looks on as Pennsylvania Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz speaks at a pre-election rally to support Republican candidates in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, U.S., November 5, 2022. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo
Donald Trump looks on as Pennsylvania Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz speaks at a pre-election rally to support Republican candidates in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, U.S., November 5, 2022. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo

Eloise Goldsmith, 

Common Dreams

November 21, 2024

Dr. Mehmet Oz, whose unsuccessful 2022 Pennsylvania Senate bid included pitching voters on a plan to expand the privatized Medicare Advantage program, is now in a position to potentially actualize that plan.

President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday that Oz, also known by his TV personality name Dr. Oz, is his pick to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

"Dr. Oz—a massive investor in Pharma—told the voters of Pennsylvania his plans to privatize Medicare… and they rejected him. Now Trump is giving him the authority to see his industry-approved plan carried through," wrote the progressive-leaning outlet The Lever, which covered Oz's support for Medicare Advantage back in 2022.

Through Medicare Advantage, which has been promoted by Trump and other congressional Republicans, seniors can opt out of traditional government-run Medicare health plans and instead choose plans administered by private insurers, such as UnitedHealthcare and Cigna.

According to The Lever's 2022 reporting, Oz pushed Medicare Advantage plans on his show The Dr. Oz Show and co-wrote a 2020 column for Forbes with a former healthcare executive in which they argued that a "Medicare Advantage For All" plan can "save" our healthcare system. In the column, Oz and his co-author articulated a plan to expand Medicare Advantage by imposing a 20% payroll tax.

Oz "is not a good pick for a very powerful position in charge of a trillion dollars of healthcare spending," wrote Matt Stoller of the American Economic Liberties Project on X, in reference to The Lever's investigation.

The Lever also reported that Oz's plan to expand private plans under Medicare Advantage could "boost companies in which he invests." For example, Oz and his wife owned up to $550,000 worth of stock in UnitedHealth Group, at the time of reporting. UnitedHealthcare and Humana account for nearly half, or 47%, of Medicare Advantage enrollees nationwide, according to the health policy organization KFF.

Additionally, a 2022 investigation by The New York Timesfound that major health insurers have exploited Medicare Advantage to boost their profits by billions of dollars.

Project 2025, a list of right-wing policy proposals led by the Heritage Foundation that Trump has tried to distance himself from, calls for making Medicare Advantage the default option for Medicare beneficiaries, which, if enacted, "would be a multibillion-dollar annual giveaway to corporations at the expense of Medicare enrollees and taxpayers," according to the liberal research and advocacy organization the Center for American Progress.

Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, offered a related critique of Oz: Americans "need someone who will crack down on insurers who want to deny care to the sick, providers who skimp on quality healthcare, corporations that want to privatize Medicare, and Big Pharma profiteers and ideologues who want to slash Medicaid and refuse care to low-income people. What they do not need is a healthcare huckster, which unfortunately Dr. Mehmet Oz appears to have become, having spent much of his recent career hawking products of dubious medical value."

In addition to the potential boon for private insurers, some researchers, news outlets, and members of Congress have also raised concerns about the quality of care administered under Medicare Advantage.

A 2022 government report found that "[Medicare Advantage Organizations] sometimes delayed or denied Medicare Advantage beneficiaries' access to services, even though the requests met Medicare coverage rules" and also "denied payments to providers for some services that met both Medicare coverage rules and [Medicare Advantage Organization] billing rules."

In October, a group of three Democratic lawmakers wrote to the current CMS administrator about increasingly widespread abuses and care denials by for-profit Medicare Advantage insurers.

"We are concerned that in many instances MA plans are failing to deliver, compromising timely access to care, and undermining the ability of seniors and Americans with disabilities to purchase the coverage that’s right for them," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), and Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) wrote in a letter.

"We continue to hear alarming reports from seniors and their families, beneficiary advocates, and healthcare providers that MA plans are falling short, and finding a good plan is too difficult," they wrote.


In particular, they pointed to Medicare Advantage plans' growing reliance on prior authorization, a complex, barrier-ridden process whereby doctors must demonstrate a proposed treatment is medically necessary before the insurer will cover it.

"Overuse of prior authorization is not only harmful to patients, it hinders healthcare providers' ability to offer best-in-class service," they added.

Social Security Works, a progressive advocacy group, warned in a social media post Tuesday that "Dr. Oz wants to fully privatize Medicare."

"That's why Donald Trump put him in charge of Medicare," the group added. "We will fight to stop this charlatan from getting anywhere near our Medicare system."

Trump nomination of crypto banker Howard Lutnick another 'win for the billionaire class'

Howard Lutnick, Chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, gestures as he speaks during a rally for Donald Trump at Madison Square Garden, in New York, U.S., October 27, 2024. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly/File Photo

Julia Conley

Common Dreams

November 20, 2024

Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen feigned surprise on Wednesday over President-elect Donald Trump's nomination of Wall Street CEO Howard Lutnick to lead the U.S. Department of Commerce.

"Oh look, another billionaire has made his way into Trump's Cabinet," said the group, noting Lutnick is also a promoter of cryptocurrency and a Trump megadonor. "The conflicts of interest are almost too many to count."

Among the conflicts are Lutnick's involvement in the crypto industry and federal and state cases against Cantor Fitzgerald.

In addition to running the Wall Street firm, Lutnick is a banker for the "stablecoin" company Tether; purchasers receive a Tether token for $1, with the proceeds invested in reserves and Treasury bonds managed by Lutnick's Cantor Fitzgerald.

As Public Citizen noted, New York Attorney General Letitia James found in 2021 that Tether and another crypto firm "recklessly and unlawfully covered up massive financial losses to keep their scheme going and protect their bottom lines."

The company is also reportedly under federal investigation over alleged criminal violations of anti-money laundering rules and sanctions.

Public Citizen also said that while co-chairing Trump's transition team, Lutnick "may also have helped arrange a meeting between Trump and Coinbase chief Brian Armstrong," who "helped steer a record amount of political spending from the crypto industry into the 2024 election."

Crypto firms poured over $119 million into directly influencing the 2024 federal elections, Public Citizen found in August, making the industry's spending second only to that of fossil fuel companies.

As Politico reported in October, even other members of Trump's inner circle have accused Lutnick of using his transition team co-chair position to take meetings on Capitol Hill and "talk about matters impacting his investment firm, Cantor Fitzgerald—including high-stakes regulatory matters involving its cryptocurrency business."

Lutnick's nomination, said former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, serves as a reminder that "Trump serves the oligarchy, not the people."

"Debris from crypto's political spending tsunami will jam up more halls in Washington than ever before if Lutnick is confirmed as secretary of commerce," said Bartlett Naylor, a financial policy advocate for Public Citizen. "The president-elect, who once correctly called bitcoin a scam, now surrounds himself with even more crypto enablers. Cryptocurrency won't return good jobs to the heartland or reduce food prices; it will only thin the wallets of those vulnerable to a now government-legitimized con."

Government watchdog Accountable.US pointed to more than $19 million in political donations Lutnick has made since 2009, nearly all of which went to GOP candidates and political action committees. He contributed $6 million to Trump's super PAC, Make America Great Again, Inc., in 2024 alone.


"Howard Lutnick's questionable qualifications to lead the Department of Commerce begin and end with his loyalty to the president-elect," said Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk.

Tether isn't the only Lutnick-linked company that's been investigated for wrongdoing. The Securities and Exchange Commission fined Cantor Fitzgerald $1.4 million in 2023, saying the company repeatedly failed "to identify and report customers who qualified as large traders." The company also agreed to pay $16 million in fines to the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2022 for using unauthorized communication channels.

Should Lutnick be confirmed as commerce secretary, Accountable.US said a "major regulatory conflict" could arise due to a dispute between the BGC Group, a spin-off brokerage of Cantor Fitzegerald, and futures and commodities exchange CME Group, over a competing trading platform BGC Group is launching.

"Lutnick's company's violations resulting in financial regulator fines and millions in right-wing political donations shows that political devotion takes precedence over actual experience to do the job in Trump's Cabinet," said Carrk.

Trump campaigned as a champion of working people as he railed against high grocery prices. As The New Republicreported on Tuesday, Lutnick has showered Trump's plan for across-the-board tariffs with effusive praise—even as leading economists warn the plan to impose tariffs on foreign imports will pass higher costs onto consumers, not foreign countries.

"In September, Lutnick told CNBC that 'tariffs are an amazing tool for the president to use—we need to protect the American worker,'" wrote Edith Olmsted. "Lutnick also gushed about tariffs at Trump's fascistic rally in Madison Square Garden last month, claiming that America was better off 100 years ago, when it had 'no income tax and all we had was tariffs.' His high praise for tariffs came even as he admitted Americans would face higher prices as a direct result."

Lutnick's nomination, said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), "is a win for the billionaire class at the expense of working people.


"The across-the-board tariff plan," she said, "is a distraction from the MAGA scam to extend tax giveaways for giant corporations and billionaires like Howard Lutnick."

Trump's Cabinet of horrors exposes his totalitarian drift

John Stoehr
November 19, 2024 

Former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard attends a campaign rally of Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump in Greensboro, North Carolina, U.S. October 22, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

Donald Trump nominated an alleged rapist and sex trafficker to be attorney general. He picked a Russian asset to be director of national intelligence. He chose a religious fanatic and Kremlin stooge to be secretary of defense. And for secretary of health and human resources, he selected an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who once had a literal brain worm, and who habitually takes (“legal”) steroids to maintain, at the age of 70, the appearance of a physique of a man half his age.

There are the obvious things to say about this motley crew. Matt Gaetz, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr are , respectively, not qualified to lead the agencies they have been chosen to lead. None has managed anything larger than an office. None has the expertise required. Gaetz has never worked in law enforcement, Gabbard in intelligence, Hegseth in military leadership or Kennedy in public health. Their only qualification is their loyalty to the man who picked them, and how they look to him when they are on television.

Right now, the discussion seems to be concentrated on the Senate Republicans, who will have majority control of that chamber in January. They will be responsible ultimately for vetting Trump’s cabinet picks. The question is whether they will find the courage to restrain the President-elect or roll over, either by approving them or by letting Trump have what he wants through recess appointments.

Among liberals, the discussion seems to be limited to the absurdities each of these people brings to governance as well as the dangers they pose. “Yes, shake your head at the seeming absurdity of these picks,” wrote MSNBC’s Jen Psaki. “But don’t stop there. These choices aren’t just controversial; they require us to stay vigilant about how each potential new Cabinet member could negatively affect our lives.”

But I think we’re missing the bigger picture. These nominations signal the totalitarian drift that’s coming to Washington and the country. Yes, that’s right. No, I’m not exaggerating. It’s time to start using that word.

Totalitarianism seeks dominion over the individual to the point where individuality is erased. That’s what happened to the Republican Party. Individuals have looked the same, talked the same, acted the same and thought the same for a long time. (The men sometimes literally dress the same as Donald Trump, with a blue suit and a long red tie.) After the election, however, Republican behavior has finally been totalized.

As one GOP congressman said, Trump “is the leader of our party. … His goals and objectives, whatever that is, we need to embrace it. All of it. Every single word. If Donald Trump says jump three feet high and scratch your head, we all jump three feet high and scratch our heads.”

The objective is forcing the rest of America to conform the way the Republican Party has conformed. This can be seen in the anger expressed by some MAGAs. It wasn’t enough to win. Losers must now shut up and get in line, too. As a Trump attorney said recently: “You’ve got to own when you lose and say: this is America. We have to stand behind President Trump.” Senate Republicans are likely to approve his picks, no matter how bad, because the losers must be taught a lesson.

Totalitarianism also seeks to dominate the individual’s mind by going to war against facts, reason, science and any useful meaning of the word “proof.” In normal times, pre-Trump, we could expect the Senate to have a spirited debate over a President-elect's cabinet nominations, beginning with whether they’re qualified. Such debate is going to be impossible now, because “being qualified” is a meaningless term.

It is a stone-cold fact that Kennedy’s views on vaccines are not only insane, but in direct opposition to the moral principles of public health. But that fact won’t be accepted as fact. It will be taken as evidence of Trump’s enemies trying to sabotage his presidency. And there’s no way to break through this "conspiracist mindset," as Lindsay Beyerstein calls it. It is impervious, she said. “When scientists or the government or journalists come forward with evidence that vaccines save millions of lives and prevent untold suffering, the conspiracist answer is: Well, that’s what conspirators to kill our children would say.”

Because there’s no empirical anchor to conspiratorial thinking, totalitarians can make reality into whatever they want. Up is down, left is right – or in the words of the totalitarian regime in George Orwell’s 1984: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

Therefore, the Republicans are likely to see nothing wrong with his picks. His nominee for the law is anti-law. His nominee for national intelligence is anti-intelligence. His nominee for national defense is anti-defense. His nominee for science is anti-science. But there’s no dissonance in the world of conspiratorial thinking. Up is the new down, and the only measure of morality is whether it pleases the dear leader.

The drift toward conformity and away from individualism isn’t limited to the GOP. Thanks to the right-wing media apparatus, which is global in scale, totalizing groupthink has also been growing in the culture at large. The trick is that it comes disguised as subversive individualism.

During his interview with Trump, popular podcaster Joe Rogan said, “the rebels are Republicans now. They’re like, you want to be a rebel? You want to be punk rock? You want to, like, buck the system? You’re a conservative now. That's how crazy. And then the liberals are now pro-silencing criticism. They’re pro-censorship online. They’re talking about regulating free speech and regulating the First Amendment.”

If you are listening to liberals directly, you know there are no such efforts. But if you are listening to the right-wing media apparatus, or if you just feel the conspiratorial ambiance that it generates, it’s possible to cast yourself as a person who’s bucking the system, as if the party of billionaires is the party of the common people, as if people who look the same, talk the same, act the same and think the same are punk rock.

But the strongest evidence of totalitarian drift is the plain awfulness of Trump’s cabinet picks. They have not earned the right to be called on. They haven’t studied or mastered their disciplines. They haven’t built reputations among leaders, peers and professionals in their fields. They haven’t overcome adversity and hardship. They haven’t reached high and achieved. They certainly haven’t followed the road toward the American dream, which asks us to work hard and play by the rules.

And that’s the point. Totalitarians fear individual excellence, first because they can’t understand it, and second because excellence threatens their goal of totalizing conformity. They are not humble enough to admit that they are mediocre people but they are arrogant enough to believe they can force the rest of us down to their level.


With this cabinet, Trump can pick up where his second campaign left off, which is a movement toward “the consistent persecution of every higher form of intellectual activity …” as Hannah Arendt once wrote.

“Total domination does not allow for free initiative in any field of life, for any activity that is not entirely predictable,” she said. “Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty” (my italics).

Quirks of Right-Wing Populism

Far-right populists do share some things with the left. But boss rule Trumps them all.


Looking for some dim silver linings, some progressives have made the accurate observation that some right-wing populists have criticisms of capitalism that mirror the left’s. They may be, if not useful idiots, occasional allies.

For instance, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has criticized Big Food and Big Pharma. If he can just drop some of his more lunatic views, as secretary of HHS he might shine a useful spotlight and revise some bad industry practices.

Dr. Deborah Birx, COVID response coordinator during Trump’s first term, said Sunday she expects that Kennedy’s nomination will lead to illuminating discussions about public health. Speaking on CBS’s Face the Nation, she said, "I’m actually excited that in a Senate hearing he would bring forward his data and the questions that come from the senators would bring forth their data."

CBS showed a clip of Kennedy saying, "I’m just going to tell the cereal companies to take all the dyes out of their food. I’ll get processed food out of school lunch immediately. Ten percent of food stamps go to sugar drinks to, you know, sodas. We’re creating diabetes problem, and our kids are giving them food that’s poison, and I’m going to stop that."

Birx is actually a serious person. She served as Obama’s global AIDS coordinator. Could she be onto something?

The populist right also has mixed feelings about tech billionaire monopolies (Elon Musk and Peter Thiel excepted) because of their fundraising for Democrats and their socially liberal views. Our friend Matt Stoller published a startling item on the admiration of Matt Gaetz for FTC Chair Lina Khan, charmingly describing Gaetz as a "Khanservative."

As Stoller wrote, "Gaetz proudly calls himself a Lina Khan fan, and filed a brief with the conservative Fifth Circuit asserting that the Federal Trade Commission has the authority to ban non-compete agreements, and personally hosted her as a guest on a show on Newsmax to discuss how to get rid of ‘creepy’ commercial surveillance. He has praised the Biden Antitrust Division’s Jonathan Kanter’s work on Google."

Stoller also quoted Gaetz: "It is my belief that the number one threat to our liberty is big government. It is also my belief that the number two big threat to our liberty is big business, when big business is able to use the apparatus of government to wrap around its objectives."

This sounds hopeful, but Gaetz may well not get confirmed as attorney general. And if he does, he still has to answer to Trump, who could easily find antitrust officials with his own highly selective views of which monopoly abuses to go after and which to give a pass.

And while Kennedy does have some views that are critical of Big Food and Big Pharma, consider what happened on the food front over the weekend.

In the past, RFK Jr. has been highly critical of Trump’s diet. "The stuff that he eats is really, like, bad," he said. "Campaign food is always bad, but the food that goes onto that airplane is, like, just poison. You have a choice between—you don’t have the choice, you’re either given KFC or Big Macs. That’s, like, when you’re lucky, and then the rest of the stuff I consider kind of inedible."

Well, on Sunday, all the talk shows showed images of Trump forcing Kennedy to choke down a burger, fries, and a Coke.

The deeper problem with far-right populism is that the boss is the boss of bosses. Because far fringe appointees like Gaetz and Kennedy, if confirmed, will be entirely creatures of Trump’s whims, they will do what he says.

E.E. Cummings wrote in a poem, celebrating a brave conscientious objector named Olaf who was brutalized by his captors, declaring, "There is some shit I will not eat." That evidently does not describe RFK Jr.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

The American Prospect.

Vote For The Candidates Endorsed By The Peoples’ Socialist Caucus of The Republican Party

By Phil Wilson

November 15, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.




The Democrats and those who inhabit the DNC orbit have been in a rush to skip all five stages of grief.

My Email inbox has more pieces titled, “resist,” “fight back,” “organize” than at any time since Tim Berners-Lee invented the Internet. Those five stages of grief, elucidated by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The patient has died. We peeled off the oozing bandages on November 5th and we all witnessed the worms, maggots and gangrene. We stared at the shriveled carcass and breathed in the odor of death. And yet I am asked to donate to the DNC, not for a coffin, but for the naked principle of Three Stooges style absurdity – James Carville wants money that I don’t have to fund something that doesn’t exist.

Do these DNC functionaries really have the temerity to beg me for cash – after I have drained my life savings for Bob Casey, Colin Allred, and Jon Tester? What did those donations get me? That’s obviously a rhetorical question – but to be transparent, I didn’t give a dime to any of these people running on the “Titanic Ticket.” But some of you did. The “Iceberg Collision Party” – the one owned by big tech, big pharma, big bombs, and Wall Street – died like a beached jelly fish due, perhaps, to my unwillingness to part with the price of a Cumberland Farms cup of coffee in a plastic cup. Nancy Pelosi emailed me again – “with your donation we can go back into the past and time-travel our way to defeat Trump last week.”

I wasted roughly six months of my sad, elderly life clicking the delete button on every Email from the DNC, the Congressional Black Caucus, and a million surrogate entities that shilled for the Biden/Harris/Walz/Weimar ticket.

The emails I get (by the thousands) proposing that we build a better, more progressive Democratic Party should not be seen as merely the garden-variety denial of Kubler-Ross – rather, we should see such expansiveness as the mirror reflection of MAGA. Both capitalist parties have become psychotic, with members drifting into a perpetually hallucinating state of paranoid fantasy. “Stop the steal” or resurrect the Democratic Party – both of these unhinged notions beg for a national shot of Thorazine.

The Democratic Party is dead – as in decomposing flesh and rigor mortis. Hold a stethoscope to the blue heart. You will hear a living Elvis singing “Jailhouse Rock” before you detect a Democratic Party pulse. If you laid the Five Hundred Meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (the world’s largest radio telescope) on the chest of that decomposing donkey, the silence would make a Buster Keaton Film seem like a primal scream. One can easily argue that the Democratic Party died decades ago, and only a collective and uniquely American variety of mass psychosis has held reality at bay.

The first act of the aspiring progressive movement has to be a funeral. The Democratic Party needs to be put in a cheap pinewood coffin (after driving a wooden stake through its heart as an act of caution), and then interred. Perhaps Liz Cheney, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi can be made to deliver the eulogies. Once that coffin is lowered deep in a suitable crevice (I am fond of the San Andreas Fault) then those of us concerned about corporate crimes, environmental collapse and human rights need to get the fuck out of the earth quake zone, fast! But where do we go?

Is there a home somewhere for people who want to transform the fetid wasteland that is the USA into something at least marginally better? Any Marxist will tell you that you go to the working class, the proletariat, the people who work three jobs to pay rent and get no vacation or sick time, and pay through the nose for private medical insurance with more holes than swiss cheese. Those working people – the ones who we haven’t seen in the Democratic base since Ronald Reagan went brain-dead and the gods of capital resurrected him as Bill Clinton – hold the key to a renewed left wing. There is no other way.

And where will you find working people in vast numbers? Uh, that may seem like a trick question, but it really isn’t. The working class is being held in custody by the Republican Party. Why are they there? you ask. Because they have been offered something to distract themselves from the empty, meaningless, tedious anomie of US life – racism, cruelty and political theatrics. Working people would rather have affordable housing, free dental care, job security, a reduced work week, sick leave, child care, a living wage and paid vacation – but no one is offering them that. When one party offers racism and the other offers nothing at all it is an easy choice. Something is always better than nothing.

And another thing that is absolutely critical – Trump told the truth on the most important issue there is – he correctly opined that life in the US sucks. He may have put that truth in fascist terms, blaming suffering on dark skinned foreigners and trans people, but the Democrats never acknowledge the basic truth. Life in the US, for many working people, teeters on the edge of a self-inflicted gunshot to the skull. On the deepest level, Trump is more honest than most all Democrats.

Some of us think of racism as a terminal, irredeemable affliction. I have an anecdote to address that idea:

In the early nineties, I worked in a group home for teens in Hayward, California. One day I did an intake on a kid I will call Tom. Tom, a white kid, began by telling me his most essential value: “I am hecka racial and if you make me live with a bunch of n*s, I am going to run away.”

Well, Tom was true to his word – he ran away that night, but he didn’t run alone. He ran off with Tony, one of our most defiant residents. The Police found Tom and Tony walking together in downtown Hayward a few days later, and brought them back. We had provided a description – a small, skinny blond kid with a tattoo of a snake winding around his wrist and a heavy set Black teen with low slung pants hanging below his boxers in the style of that era. Tom informed me brashly that he and Tony were “brothers” and that, therefore, he was no longer ‘racial.’ Tom said that Tony had told him just how badly “this place” sucked, and that he and Tony would run again. Both wound up in different programs, and I hadn’t really even thought about them until now. The point is childishly obvious. Racism, for most bigots, hangs by an ephemeral thread.

Let me restate my points thus far:

1) Racism is a place holder for the things working people really want – to be given human rights – housing, nutritious food, medical care, decent wages, security and free time.

2) The Democratic Party of college educated, comfortable suburbanites is as dead as any skunk crossing I – 95 in rush hour.

3) If progressives want to have a meaningful voice they have to migrate to the place inhabited by the working class and join forces with poor and working people.

4) The working class – much of it – can be found at the so called GOP.

5) The GOP/fascist party is an echo chamber with no access to nuance, or basic reality

Therefore????

It may seem counterintuitive to suggest that fighting fascism is contingent on a massive influx of progressive voices joining the GOP. After all, the GOP, like the Democratic Party, is owned, shaped and exploited by corporate power. If progressives gained no traction in the Democratic Party, why would they be heard in the Republican/fascist Party?

That question has no good answer – we are tossing a hail Mary – but the Republican Party has just undergone a hostile takeover from without. The neocons gave way to the fascist zombies. The idea that the “establishment” is dirty, vile and profane has been stolen from the left. We have, in some vague form, a rhetorical precedent to exploit. This was never the case inside the dead and departed Democratic Party. The Republican/fascists have torn the wrapper off of America’s secret. Those in power are indeed scoundrels and murderers, but not for allowing a few victimized asylum seekers to sneak in, but for pouring a fortune into weapons, fossil fuels and political lobbying. In the process, the elites have robbed working people to the point of suicidal despair.

Allow me to provide a caveat to my argument that racists – in droves – are eagerly waiting to be humanized, before we go further. The US is a racist nation with more racist politicians dog whistling for white votes than fish in the ocean (these days), but institutional racism and human hearts are not inevitably in sync. The racism that thrives in the human heart needs to be watered by bigoted, fear mongering media like FOX and Newsmax. These propaganda juggernauts have become the driving force of Republican fascism, and they have the ear of the working class. You might argue that the left needs its own counterattacking media sphere, but corporate money will always prevent rational ideas from being platformed on anything larger than “The Young Turks.”.

I am arguing that the most crucial task of a progressive coalition – as we reach the juncture where fascism, the climate apocalypse and nuclear war merge into a sort of narrative certainty – is to go into the mosh pit of fascism and speak to “Zombies” as if they were human beings.

Now it is time to disrupt the Republican echo chamber. Trump and his billionaire pals talk a populist anti-corporate line – Trump accused Hillary Clinton (rightly so) of being a Wall Street stooge, and the Republican choir nodded along. So let us expand the choir – imagine the Republican ranks swollen with me and you. Envision union members, communists, social democrats, Bernie Sanders, Ralph Nader, Chris Hedges and tens of millions more of us all suddenly becoming registered Republicans. We need people – passionate Republicans, of course – who can elaborate in detail about what it means to be anti-corporate, anti-establishment and opposed to the deep state. Who is putting flesh on the bones of the concept of “the deep state?” Who tells the zombified masses being held hostage in the MAGA Empire that Exxon, Tesla, Amazon, The Heritage Foundation, The New York Times, Facebook, RTX Corporation, FOX News and CNN all sit at the table of the deep state?

Imagine MAGA candidates running in Republican primaries against candidates vowing to fight for a $25 dollar minimum wage. These same anti-MAGA radical Republicans will promise a Draconian reduction in military spending, and the end to corporate campaign lobbying and spending – and how about a fierce vow to pass anti-trust legislation, and universal healthcare. We have always had a one party system – the Dog-on-a-Leash Corporate Party – but now we can have an eclectic party that questions political obedience. We will have a one party system with the complex discourse forbidden in our alleged (now rotten) two party system to date. After all, what the fuck is Trump but a symbol of disobedience – even if Trump’s disobedience is empty and merely a ruse to hide his slavish corporate fidelity.

The position we newly radicalized “Republicans” take will have to be simple, direct and focused on working class aspirations. Do we define disobedience as being nothing more than being a greedy, crass asshole, or does disobedience mean civil disobedience, with the aim of arresting and jailing those who commit environmental crimes, and extort the working class?

I am Phil Wilson and I am running for a senate seat in Massachusetts on the “Republican” ticket with the following platform – a $35 dollar minimum wage, six weeks paid vacation, universal health care, a deal with China to import low cost EV’s to be offered to working families at reduced prices via subsidies. Who will pay for it? The savings from all the bombs, drones and planes that won’t be sent to Israel and Ukraine will be given to working people. Okay, I am not cut out for the senate, but someone else will do it and I’ll knock on doors. Picture every blue state without a single Democratic official, but with “red” replacements – in the rather forgotten shade of red that terrified Joe McCarthy 75 years ago.

The “Republican” candidate that I’ll be supporting will also be introducing the idea of replacing the senate altogether with a “citizen’s assembly.” This would put decision making in the hands of ordinary people like you and me. It ought to play well on the populist right who – now that everyone is a Republican – will be forced to confront life outside of the Trumpian vacuum.

If history is a guide, being anti-capitalist inside of a fascist party will be extremely dangerous. Ask Ernst Rohm what happened to the Nazis who wanted to carry out a socialist revolution. But Rohm’s SA had a confused identity, muddied with all the eugenic nonsense that percolated in every faction of the Nazi movement. As a professional thug specializing in street violence, Rohm had no useful role to play once the Nazis came to power. It may be a stretch to compare the Nazi SA to the US progressive movement, but history provides an imperfect roadmap for political strategy. The radical faction of the Republican Party will have to do what a limited thinker like Ernst Rohm could not do – engage the erstwhile fascist masses in a peaceful, civil dialogue about populism, capitalism and the power of the working class.


Phil Wilson also writes at Nobody’s Voice.

For more on this topic, consider Lonnie Ray Atkinson’s series, Don’t Think of a Republican: : How I Won A Republican Primary As A Lefty Progressive And You Can Too.


Phil Wilson  is a retired mental health worker and union member. His writing has been published in ZNetwork.org, Current Affairs, Counterpunch, Resilience, Mother Pelican, Common Dreams, The Hampshire Gazette, The Common Ground Review, The Future Fire and other publications. Phil's writings are posted regularly at Nobody's Voice https://philmeow.substack.com/

Don’t Follow Sanders Back into the Democratic Party

Sanders is a carnival barker at the graveyard of social movements. He’s spent years cheerleading for Biden — what good is his recent criticism?


Nathaniel Flakin and Otto Fors

November 15, 2024

LEFT VOICE

Photo: Jonathan Ernst

The day after Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders put out a withering statement placing the blame for that loss squarely on the Democratic Party:


It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them … While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change.

He asks if “the big money interests and well-paid consultants who control the Democratic Party” will ever “understand the pain and political alienation that tens of millions of Americans are experiencing.” He wonders if they will take on the “increasingly powerful Oligarchy,” concluding “Probably not.” He finally announces that “very serious discussions” will take place, and ends with an open-ended: “Stay tuned.”

This is the Bernie Sanders people remember from his 2016 and 2020 primary campaigns, who mobilized millions of young people disaffected by the misery wrought by decades of neoliberalism. His language will resonate with the millions of people who did not vote for Harris, and the millions more who cast a ballot while holding their noses, because she ran a campaign in defense of the status quo.

Yet does Sanders think we can just forget the last four years, and everything he said until the day after the election?
Sanders: Biden and the Democrats’ Most Enthusiastic Cheerleader

Just a few months ago, after Biden’s catastrophic performance at the presidential debate, Sanders published a full-throated endorsement of Biden, calling him “the most effective president in the modern history of our country.” Sanders called on Democrats to “stop the bickering and nit-picking” and rally behind their candidate.

Was this just a momentary slip up in the final stretch of a campaign, when the Vermont senator was terrified by the prospect of a Trump presidency? Far from it: Sanders has been an integral part of the Biden administration, first as chair of the Senate Budget Committee, then as chair of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Every time Biden and the Democrats threw workers and the oppressed under the bus, Sanders was there putting his leftist rubber stamp on Biden’s policies. He wrote no scathing rebukes when the Biden administration ran to Trump’s right on immigration, abandoned demands like a $15 minimum wage, ramped up fossil fuel production, and voted to break the railway strike. In fact, Sanders, with his reputation for saying it like it is, repeatedly lies about the president’s supposedly pro-labor record, claiming that “Biden wants to make it easier for workers to form unions.”

But that’s not all: Sanders, along with other progressive Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Ortez, was a Biden dead-ender, standing with him even as more and more Democrats called on him to step down. When Biden finally left the stage, Sanders praised him as “the most pro-working class president in modern American history.”

When Kamala Harris replaced Biden on the ticket, she cozied up to billionaires and made clear that she lacked even Biden’s purely rhetorical commitment to the labor movement. Yet Sanders remained a loyal cheerleader.

In a delusional search for votes from “moderate” Republicans, Harris began campaigning with the anti-Trump Republican Liz Cheney. Her father Dick Cheney was the principal architect of the Iraq War, a cynical intriguer whose company was raking in billions from forever wars that killed millions of people. The Cheneys might be the most bloodthirsty war hawks in the rogue’s gallery of U.S. imperialism. And Sanders? He stood with the war hawk — “I applaud the Cheneys for their courage in defending democracy,” allowing Donald Trump, a first-rate imperialist, to present himself as an anti-war candidate.
The Democrats Have Never Been on Our Side

The Intercept has claimed that “Bernie would have won,” given his “credibility” from “spending decades consistently fighting doggedly for the working class.” This is, unfortunately, pure amnesia, as Sanders spent the last four years defending an administration attacking the working class. And he has been plainly dishonest. Was Biden a champion of the working class, as Sanders claimed just half a year ago? Or did the Democrats abandon workers, as Sanders says now?

The Democratic Party has always been a party of the bourgeoisie, and Sanders has been part of it for almost 50 years, even while formally an independent. Despite his left-wing credentials, he has a long track record of supporting almost every U.S. imperialist intervention, while voting for trillions of dollars for weapons. Sanders is nothing but a social democratic fig leaf for a capitalist political machine. He is a carnival barker at the entrance to the graveyard of social movements.

You might also be interested in: Trump is President. Which Way Forward for the Labor Movement?

The tragedy of Sanders campaigns is that he indeed inspired millions of working-class and young people with progressive demands — and then led them into a party that could only betray them. We see Sanders channeling the movement for Palestine into working with the imperialist state as well. Across the country, leftists are rallying Democrats to support Sanders’s arms embargo measure — as if the institutions of the imperialist state could deliver an end to the genocide in Gaza. This is just a microcosm of Sanders’s role in the Democratic party, and how he works to keep outrage from developing into a serious challenge to the system.

Given the astounding failure of the Democratic Party (it’s actually kind of impressive that they managed to convince millions of workers that Donald Trump was less hostile to working people!), huge swaths of people realize we need a political alternative. Unfortunately, many will follow Sanders’s advice, and continue to try to change a party run by billionaires.

It’s not that Democrats lost their connection to working-class voters — the Democrats have never been on our side. Even in the supposed glory days of FDR, the Democratic Party was trying to save capitalism. Sanders, as a more or less official democrat, is part of the problem — even if he founded his own party, it would be a party loyal to U.S. imperialism. Workers in the United States need our own party — one completely independent of billionaires, war hawks, and all their political hacks.



Nathaniel Flakin

Nathaniel is a freelance journalist and historian from Berlin. He is on the editorial board of Left Voice and our German sister site Klasse Gegen Klasse. Nathaniel, also known by the nickname Wladek, has written a biography of Martin Monath, a Trotskyist resistance fighter in France during World War II, which has appeared in German, in English, and in French, and in Spanish. He has also written an anticapitalist guide book called Revolutionary Berlin. He is on the autism spectrum.

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Otto Fors

Otto is a college professor in the New York area.

Hey GOP! No One Voted to Cut Social Security



Let there be no doubt: Trump and the Republicans will try to cut our earned benefits. But just as a grassroots movement around the country succeeded in saving the Affordable Care Act during Trump’s first term, we can save Social Security and Medicare.

"Donald Trump ran on a promise to protect Social Security and Medicare," writes Lawson. "Based on Trump’s long record of working to cut and undermine our earned benefits, we don’t trust that promise for one second. But we plan to make him keep it."
(Photo: Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images for MoveOn)

Alex Lawson
Nov 13, 2024

Common Dreams


No one voted to cut Social Security. No one voted to cut Medicare. And no one voted for higher drug prices.

Donald Trump ran on a promise to protect Social Security and Medicare. Based on Trump’s long record of working to cut and undermine our earned benefits, we don’t trust that promise for one second. But we plan to make him keep it.

There’s a good reason Trump didn’t campaign on cutting Social Security: Ninety-two percent of Americans think that’s a terrible idea.

What will Trump do once he’s actually in the White House? During his first term, he tried to cut Social Security every single year. He appointed an unqualified crony, Andrew Saul, to head the Social Security Administration. And he surrounded himself with advisors who had long records of working to cut and privatize Social Security.

Now, Trump has a new advisor, Elon Musk. He just put Musk in charge of a commission to slash $2 trillion of federal spending. That is essentially impossible without cutting Social Security, Medicare, and/or Medicaid. Indeed, incoming Vice President JD Vance has specifically said that Musk will target Social Security.

We are never going to stop fighting to protect and expand Social Security.

Musk is the wealthiest man in the world. It’s no surprise that Musk and his fellow billionaires want to cut our earned benefits rather than pay their fair share in taxes.

Trump’s top priority is to extend the tax cuts he gave the ultra-wealthy in his first term. Then, Republicans will turn around and claim that we “can’t afford” Social Security and Medicare.

Republicans in Congress have already telegraphed what those cuts could look like. The Republican Study Committee (RSC), a caucus that counts over 80 percent of House Republicans as members, released a budget proposal earlier this year that makes massive cuts to Social Security. That includes raising the retirement age to 69, and decimating benefits for the middle class.

The RSC budget would also repeal Medicare’s power to negotiate lower drug prices. That means seniors and people with disabilities would have to turn over more of their hard-earned Social Security checks to Big Pharma.

In case anyone doubted that Republicans are serious about passing these cuts into law, House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington (who angrily chased me down the street last year after I confronted him about his support for Social Security cuts) just pledged to cut health care benefits through reconciliation—meaning that Republicans would only need 50 votes in the Senate.

Trump and Republicans will try to cut our earned benefits. But just as a grassroots movement of Americans around the country succeeded in saving the Affordable Care Act during Trump’s first term, we can save Social Security and Medicare.

Musk is the wealthiest man in the world. It’s no surprise that Musk and his fellow billionaires want to cut our earned benefits rather than pay their fair share in taxes.

Here’s how:Hold Every Republican Accountable: Republicans will have only a slim majority in both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. Every member of the House, and one-third of the Senate, is on the ballot in 2026. We will target every Republican in a competitive district with protests and billboards saying: Hands off our Social Security and Medicare!

Keep Democrats Unified: There’s nothing Republicans want more than bipartisan cover for benefit cuts. Democrats must stand united and refuse to give it to them. We are calling on every Democrat in Congress to stand strong against even one penny of cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Refuse To Go Behind Closed Doors: Republicans want to create a closed-door, fast-track commission to cut benefits without political accountability. We’ve beaten back this type of commission before, and we’re prepared to do so again. Any changes to Social Security must happen through regular Congressional order, in the light of day.

We are never going to stop fighting to protect and expand Social Security. Social Security has stood strong for nearly a century. It has survived wars, depressions, and pandemics. And with your help, it will survive Donald Trump.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Alex Lawson
Alex Lawson is the Executive Director of Social Security Works, the convening organization of the Strengthen Social Security Coalition -- a coalition made up of over 340 national and state organizations representing over 50 million Americans.
Full Bio >

New GOP senate leader is a former lobbyist who has taken aim at Social Security

Like ‘clockwork,’ the GOP’s hypocritical ‘budget hawks’ are back with a vengeance: columnist

Sen. John Thune of South Dakota speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C., 

Gage Skidmore

Jake Johnson 

 COMMON DREAMS

November 14, 2024

Senate Republicans on Wednesday elected Sen. John Thune of South Dakota—a former corporate lobbyist and close ally of Sen. Mitch McConnell—as the leader of their conference for the upcoming term, when the GOP will have a 53-seat majority.

Republican lawmakers chose Thune over Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who was favored by allies of President-elect Donald Trump.

"Senators have received angry phone calls from constituents demanding to know how their representatives plan to vote, following MAGA world's embrace of Scott," The Washington Post reported. The leadership election was conducted via secret ballot.

In a statement Wednesday, Thune said he is "extremely honored to have earned the support" of the Senate GOP conference and stressed that "this Republican team is united behind President Trump's agenda."

"Our work starts today," Thune added.

Before winning election to the Senate in 2004, Thune worked as a lobbyist for several sectors including the railroad industry. The Lever reported last year that as part of his lobbying work for the Dakota, Minnesota, and Eastern (DM&E) Railroad, Thune "helped the company procure a $230 million loan from the Federal Railroad Administration."

"In 2015, Thune reprised his advocacy for the rail industry, leading an effort to repeal an Obama administration regulation requiring improved, electronic braking systems on some hazmat trains," the outlet added. "The following year, he received the first-ever 'Railroad Achievement Award' presented by the Association of American Railroads, the industry's main lobbying group."

Thune is also "one of the biggest recipients of oil and gas money in Congress," the youth-led Sunrise Movement noted Wednesday following his election as leader of the incoming GOP Senate.

Over the course of his Senate career, Thune has received more than $1.16 million in campaign donations from the fossil fuel industry, according to the campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets.

Thune's top contributor between 2019 and 2024 was the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the right-wing pro-Israel lobbying group.

"Thune has called for taking the debt limit hostage to force cuts to Social Security."

Thune will take the reins of the Senate GOP conference as the party readies another round of tax cuts for the rich and large corporations—one of Trump's top priorities. Thune is a leading advocate of repealing the estate tax, a move that would benefit a small number of wealthy Americans.

Congress is also barreling toward another potentially damaging fight over the debt ceiling, which is set to be reinstated on January 2, 2025.

Thune has previously expressed support for leveraging the debt limit—and the threat of a catastrophic default—to secure steep cuts to federal spending and possible changes to Social Security such as raising the retirement age, which would slash benefits across the board. Social Security Works, a progressive advocacy group, voiced alarm over Thune's debt ceiling stance following his election as Senate Republican leader on Wednesday.

"Thune has called for taking the debt limit hostage to force cuts to Social Security," Nancy Altman, the group's president, said in a statement.