— from Robert Reich's Substack
Friends,
The Republican Party no longer has anything constructive to say about anything or anyone, so what is its closing argument in the 2026 midterm elections? Hate, fear, and bigotry.
On Sunday, Trump claimed that if Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed won, he’d “invite hordes of jihadis to our shores.”
We’ve become so numbed to Trump’s bigotry that it’s necessary to remind ourselves that the president of the United States is now accusing an American citizen who’s running for the Senate of posing a danger to America because he’s Muslim.
Trump’s rants against Representative Ilhan Omar draw on the same Islamophobia. He’s launched a criminal investigation against her based on an allegation that she came to the United States fraudulently.
President Donald Trump started the trade war with Canada when he imposed new tariffs in Feb. 2025. But now, Trump's ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, is telling the country Trump could try and blame them if the GOP loses on Nov. 3.
CTV news reported Wednesday that three sources confirmed Hoekstra "delivered the message at a private business lunch hosted at his official residence in Ottawa."
There he specifically cited Michigan and Maine as possible GOP Senate losses. Those two seats are integral to the GOP remaining in control of the U.S. Senate. The business crowd was told that if those states fell to Democrats, then Trump "will not be happy and Canada could be blamed."
When asked for comment, an embassy spokesperson said the “reported comments are grossly taken out of context from a broader discussion." They refused to reveal what the broader discussion was, however.
On Long Island there are four contested races for the House of Representatives. Two are currently held by Democrats and two by Republicans. The outcome on Long Island could well determine which party has a majority in the House. If you vote Republican for the Senate and House of Representatives, you are voting against congressional roadblocks on Trump.
If you vote Republican this is the kind of country you are voting for.
In a campaign speech in Port Huron, Michigan, Donald Trump accused the Democratic nominee for Senate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed of being a terrorist and claimed that if El-Sayed and the Democrats win, “they will open the floodgates and invite hordes of jihadis to our shores, creating a nightmare of violence and terror until you cannot even have a Christmas.” Trump also told American Jews that “any Jewish person that supports this guy should be ashamed of themselves.”
As soon as former president Barack Obama described Donald Trump’s aesthetic assault on the White House as “looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory,” the current president did what he does best: seethe. Ever since Obama’s weekend joke at an Ohio rally, Trump has been complaining non-stop. On Sunday, he posted on Truth Social that Obama was “a grossly incompetent President” and accused him of “campaigning for a Muslim Brotherhood Jihadist.” The following day, he told reporters that Obama is “not a smart guy.”
At a campaign rally to shore up Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith’s fledgling re-election bid in Mississippi, Trump chewed on his grievance even more. After calling the Cheesecake Factory a “successful company,” he launched into a confusing defense of his garish White House redecoration. “A guy like Obama,” he said, “doesn’t understand the White House has to be clean, pristine, beautiful.”
His greed seems to have no limits: Trump wants to make more money off his golf courses, and you and your kids may pay for it with your lives. And one lone Republican is standing up to him.
Back in 1974, the year Richard Nixon put into place year-round daylight savings time, Louise and I were living just outside Lansing, Michigan. I remember the sun not coming up that January until nine in the morning; we drove to work in full darkness, kids stood under streetlights to catch the school bus, and eight schoolchildren were killed in traffic accidents in Florida alone.
When Nixon first flipped the switch, 79 percent of Americans supported year-round daylight savings time; by the end of 1974 that had collapsed to 42 percent support. President Gerald Ford signed the repeal that October.
— from Foreign Policy In Focus
Two years ago, Serbian students started their protests, endorsed by many citizens, in an honest, almost naive way. They declared that they wanted the end of corruption, press freedom, prosecution of the culprits behind the collapse of the Novi Sad rail station canopy, and, ultimately, another Serbia altogether. Students persistently claimed that entering politics was not their aim. But given all the issues they called in question, politics remained the name of the game. Nevertheless, they managed to stick with their grassroots methods of organization, and their influence spread.
For the last two years, students continued to act without leaders, and all decisions have been made in plenary meetings, a horizontal, non-hierarchical form of decision-making. This has been direct democracy at its best. It also represents an authentic form of political expression that transcends the impotence of the outdated options available within the existing system.
Americans overwhelmingly support taxing billionaires more. But some of those billionaires, including those who’ve seen their wealth balloon in recent years, are spending big to stop it.
Voters in California, for example, are considering a ballot initiative called Prop 40 — a one-time, 5 percent wealth tax exclusively on the state’s 200 plus-billionaires. But a few dozen billionaires are ponying up tens of millions to fight the tax and threatening to run away if they lose.
In an analysis for Tax the Ultra Rich Now (TURN), the Institute for Policy Studies identified 22 Golden State billionaires who have contributed substantial funds or been outspoken opponents of Prop 40. This group has seen their combined wealth increase 64 percent in the last 20 months. Yet you’d think from their reaction the sky was falling.
In an era when everyone carries a camera, political information travels instantly, and AI can generate convincing content, can a political candidate still run a stealth campaign? The key distinction is between hiding a candidate's existence, hiding their affiliations, and hiding what they intend to do once elected.
For someone running for a local office — school board, city council, county commission, or a local judicial position — hiding intentions can be especially important. Voters may know the candidate's name, see their yard signs, attend a meet-and-greet, and read their campaign website without ever getting a clear picture of the networks, organizations, or political objectives behind the candidacy.
In 2023, the Colorado Sentinel reported that at least $814,000 in dark money was raised to promote conservative candidates and discredit progressives.
No joke. No foolin’ around. The operation is in place to overturn the results of next Tuesday’s vote in the midterm elections.
President Donald Trump has already put the wheels in motion for a “legal” reversal of the voters’ choice in Texas, Alaska and other battleground states where the US Senate’s control is in the balance.
To understand the first step in their putsch plan, check out Episode 5 of Jim Crow Reloaded, 4 minutes exposing the mass challenge of 800,000 voters:
President Donald Trump's Justice Department was in court on Tuesday for a preliminary hearing after the department alleged that former FBI agents Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides obstructed justice. When court began, things were expected to get "spicy," one lawyer hypothesized.
The hearing began with a quick explanation that the DOJ accidentally filed a superseding indictment overnight. Floris' lawyer had already filed a motion to dismiss.
Lawfare's Anna Bower transcribed the details of the hearing in which Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui told the DOJ lawyers that it was "unusual" to charge a case with conduct like this by complaint. Bower paraphrased the judge saying, "usually it's when there's some danger of release/threat that you would do complaint first."
Faruqui told the DOJ that he has never had a situation like this in his career as a magistrate.
Barely noticed among all the talk in the election campaign about great asses, shithouse countries and commie jihadists running for the Senate was a report from The New York Times warning of “heightened levels of tension and risk” surrounding Israel’s parliamentary elections, slated for today, and America’s Nov. 3 midterms due to the countries’ war with Iran, which has “entered a new phase.” They also offered this bracing observation: “This is how countries can escalate into full-scale war, several diplomats and outside experts noted.”
How’s that for a wake-up call?
In fairness, Donald Trump has mentioned in passing that he plans to “finish the job” after the midterm elections, with CNN reporting that the president “appears to be leaning toward major action.” On Oct. 15, the outlet revealed that the U.S. is considering using the “mother of all bombs” on Iranian energy infrastructure and nuclear facilities. (They admit that such a strike would be “performative,” since it would not actually accomplish anything, but would supposedly allow Trump to declare victory.)
— from Robert Reich's Substack
Friends,
It’s easy for us to lose sight of ICE because — although ICE is making even more arrests and deporting more people than ever before — ICE is no longer announcing its dragnet sweeps, no longer boasting of how many people it’s caught, and no longer targeting specific cities like Minneapolis and Chicago but is instead spreading out all over America.
But make no mistake: ICE continues to terrorize people all over America, including many who have full legal rights to live and work here.
What’s also less understood are the economic costs — how much you and I are paying for ICE, directly in our taxpayer dollars, indirectly in an economy that’s less productive than it used to be, and in a society that’s more fearful and less just.
We’re just days out from November 3, and already millions of Americans are heading to the polls or dropping off their mail-in ballots, while threats to their freedom to vote continue making front-page news.
Since returning to office, President Donald Trump and members of his administration have desperately tried to take over our elections—a move that is both unconstitutional and has, thus far, failed. But these realities haven’t stopped him from indicating a willingness to have federal officers show up at polling places, something that has been illegal since the Civil War. He has continually railed against vote-by-mail, despite the US Supreme Court blocking his most damaging plans. And where he has failed to pass federal legislation or successfully move executive orders, he has repeatedly attacked our elections. In fact, he spread false or misleading claims about our elections on 70% of the days of his second term.
— from Tom Engelhardt's Substack
I’ve read The New York Times since I was a teenager. It was once a way to keep up on the news. It’s now a daily way to experience a living nightmare of a world.
I’m thinking, of course, of Donald Trump’s world—although it could be Vladimir Putin’s, too—and that’s just to start down an ever-lengthening grim list. This, in all honesty, is not the world that anyone should want to be on at a time when humanity has discovered at least two ways of doing this planet in, the slow-motion version known as climate change and the (more or less) instantaneous version of nuclear war. And in this strange world of ours, who honestly knows what Artificial Intelligence, or AI, might be able to do when it comes to creating a potential third pathway to ultimate destruction? (Not this old man, that’s for sure.)
— from the Columbus Free Press
Ukraine's Solartopian resistance means to bury the Trump/Putin fossil/nuke slaughter.
Our human future depends on it.
As Trump trashes Congressional sanctions, he slips billions in dirty cash to his Russian mob boss and their “nuclear renaissance.”
Together they enrich and enthrone the likes of Kushner, Witkoff, Musk, Theil and their hideous horde of tech bro trillion/billionaires.
The Trump-Putin bond pre-dates their mutual love for Jeffrey Epstein.
Jamie O'Neil's post Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid presents an honest and heartfelt message to We the People.
Yet, I can not withhold a different perspective Comment that I believe is crucial as a counter-balance (not a outright rejection of Jamie's entire message or the heartfelt sentiment) to the message conveyed in Jamie's post.
Please read Jamie's post and my Comment is as follows:
Jamie always conveys a humanistic sentiment which is crucial for our ongoing trudge toward becoming a civilized species; especially important as America and the world as a whole, in spite of a few tactical wins, has regressed significantly over the last couple decades.
The Daily Chimp for Tuesday, 27 October 2026
The 25 most-recent front page posts
Thom Hartmann | Does Conservatism Always Lead to Fascism?
What happens when “conservatives” would rather destroy their democracy than surrender power? History shows us how that road leads straight to fascism, and Trump is taking America down it.
When I was a kid I once asked my dad, who called himself an Eisenhower conservative, what “conservative” meant. He told me it wasn’t that different from liberalism but instead of favoring drastic or radical change in a society believed that such change should come gradually as the result of careful thought, debate, and incremental processes to minimize disruption to society. He quoted William F. Buckley saying, “A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling ‘Stop!’”
My dad was a naive idealist who missed entirely the direction his “conservative” movement was heading. Conservatism has always, throughout history and in every country where it’s seized a strong foothold, been the precursor to the destruction of social cohesion (look at “conservative” Macron’s France after 45 years of neoliberalism) and eventually violent fascism.
On Monday, a widely cited psychologist warned that President Donald Trump is displaying “more signs of apparent neurological decline.” According to Dr. John Garrison, the involuntary vocalizations, confusion, motor control problems,and inhibition problems Trump displayed at a string of rallies over the weekend could suggest seizure, dementia or some other neurodegenerative disease — and it’s getting worse.
While watching a recording of the rally, Garrison begins by noting “an involuntary vocalization” similar to other uncontrolled sounds Trump has been making while speaking lately. What’s more, the president simultaneously makes a number of twitching motions with his hands, arms and face that Garrison links to the vocalization, explaining, “I think this was all part of the same event, and in terms of what this event could be, we could be looking at seizure activity. We could be looking at a lesion in the brain related to having a stroke or something like that. We could be seeing effects of dementia. There are a wide variety of neurological possibilities when we're observing something like this.”
If the polls are correct, Republicans are set for a shellacking in the Nov. 3 midterms, losing the House and quite possibly the Senate, and likely some prominent governorships across the country. If that happens, there’s a good chance that online chatter about repealing the 19th Amendment will heat up once again.
For a decade now, MAGA social media users have been aggrieved at the way women vote for Democrats at higher rates then men, such as in 2024, when 53% of women voted for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump, who received 55% of the male vote. Their solution to this imbalance began in 2016 as a trolling hashtag on what was then called Twitter: #RepealThe19th, a reference to the constitutional amendment, ratified in 1920, that extended suffrage to all women in theory, but mostly white women in practice. The hashtag has faded since then, but not because of a lack of interest. The idea has morphed from a joke into a serious proposal that is making its way from fringe Christian right circles into the mainstream of the Republican Party.
— from Robert Reich's Substack
Friends,
On Saturday’s “Coffee Klatch” podcast, I said:
Democrats ought to “defund Musk” and lay “the groundwork for nationalizing” Starlink and SpaceX.
(My full Coffee Klatch argument is below.)
This seems to have set Elon Musk off. He posted to his 241,700,000 followers:
“Stealing companies is a serious crime. Prison for Reich.”
— from Laura Flanders' Substack
I’ve been thinking about art and authoritarianism, satire, and action, and two works that stick with me in these tense weeks before the November 3rd elections.
In one, a glacier cracks off Greenland and an oil baron with a dying cat calls panic “a resource.” A president eats popcorn while millions of Europeans drown, and when an exasperated climate scientist exclaims “perception is not reality. Perception is just perception. Reality is reality,” the audience can’t help itself, we laugh.
That’s Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Digger, which opened October 2nd. It was Warner Bros. last release before the company’s sale.
The other is set on election night, 2008. A rich man known only as the Big Guy watches Barack Obama win the presidency and decides his country has been stolen from him. He and his friends start to plan. That’s A.M. Homes’s The Unfolding, published in 2022 and read by many of us as an eerie forecast of January 6th.
Do I even faintly believe the times I’m living in? The simple answer is: no.
Every now and then, I try to imagine going back in time to tell my long-dead parents about the world of President Donald Trump, which just happens to still be mine as well. Of course, they simply wouldn’t have believed it, not for a single second.
To put it in the context of their time on this planet, the only equivalent I can imagine would be if Sen. Joseph McCarthy, that anticommunist nightmare-and-a-half of the 1950s, hadn’t flamed out, been censured by the Senate, and died young but somehow had made it to the White House. But even he undoubtedly would have fallen short in terms of chaos and cruelty, if judged by the standards of Trump World. A President McCarthy might have been catastrophic for America, but Trump is on another level, an apocalyptic one.
With soaring health care costs and a plunge in coverage rates, there is growing interest in Medicare for All. Polls show that a large majority of the public now favors a universal Medicare system, with even a substantial share of Republicans now backing it.
A universal Medicare system has a huge amount to recommend it. Of course, the main point is to ensure that people can get the health care that they need, but it also eliminates a vast amount of waste in the national health care system.
In addition to the $300 billion a year that we spend directly on operating the nation’s health insurance system, another $1.6 trillion is spent on administrative costs running our health care system by providers like hospitals and doctors’ offices, according to analysis by David Himmelstein, Terry Campbell, and Steffie Woolhandler. These additional costs are all the office personnel and various navigators involved in assisting patients in dealing with insurers. They found that in the United States we spend roughly 31 percent of each dollar in health care spending on administrative costs, whereas under Canada’s universal Medicare system, the cost is just 16 percent of spending.
The US Senate is considering a bill to ease the environmental permitting of infrastructure projects. It’s a blatant giveaway to the fossil fuel and data center industries that would stifle input from the communities most impacted by their expansion.
Bill proponents claim it will ease the buildout of renewable energy. However, peer reviewed studies have shown that most renewable energy projects do not face significant permitting delays, and that permitting delays under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) are mostly attributable to staff shortages and communication delays between project developers and permitting agencies—not the stringency of the permitting process itself.
Follow us
Become a fan
Subscribe