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If today’s newsletter doesn’t make any sense — OK, even less sense than usual — blame baseball. From roughly 11 p.m. Monday night to nearly 3 a.m. on Tuesday, I drifted in but mostly out of a fitful sleep as I joined millions of other wildly entertained Americans and Canadians in watching the second-longest World Series game in history, finally won by the Los Angeles Dodgers over the Toronto Blue Jays on (what else?) a Freddie Freeman home run in the 18th inning. It was both a night of escape in these troubled times, and a reminder that everything ends...eventually. If someone forwarded you this email, sign up for free here. A dictator needs to shut down his legislature. Trump is almost there A lot of language that never used to be part of America’s political discourse has come into vogue since Jan. 20. Like “Rubicon,” that ancient Roman river that’s come to symbolize a divide between democracy and dictatorship, and has been crossed more times lately than the Hudson on a busy Monday-morning rush hour. Or this one: “Reichstag Fire.” On Feb. 27, 1933, less than a month after Adolf Hitler was named Germany’s chancellor, an alleged arson fire destroyed much of the nation’s legislative building in Berlin, the Reichstag. A Dutch Communist was blamed for the blaze, which sparked the ruling Nazis to implement the Reichstag Fire Decree — expelling leftist lawmakers and sending political foes to newly created concentration camps. The now-Nazi-dominated Reichstag soon passed the Enabling Act giving dictatorial powers to Hitler, and so “Reichstag Fire” has come to symbolize a crisis — real or manufactured — used to justify tyrannical rule. What’s interesting is that the Nazi regime never abolished the Reichstag. It continued to meet — rarely, and as a ceremonial rubber stamp — until Hitler died inside his bunker in 1945. That’s typical under strongman rule to this day. For example, Russia’s Duma continues to meet and pass laws — but only the ones that Vladimir Putin tells them to enact. Is any of this starting to sound familiar? In Washington, the House of Representatives has met for only 12 days over the last three months, even as the nation confronts of wave of crises either linked to, or overlapping with, the shutdown of the federal government that began when Congress couldn’t approve a budget bill by the Oct. 1 deadline. After passing its own dead-on-arrival spending plan on Sept. 19, House Speaker Mike Johnson — in a measured tone meant to mask the increasing insanity of what he’s saying — keeps find one excuse after another to shut down the branch once dubbed, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, as “the People’s House.” The Louisiana Republican has insisted — without any historical precedent — that there’s no point in the House conducting business as long as the gridlocked Senate refuses to pass the lower chamber’s bill to keep the government open. Many cynics have honed in on an alternate explanation — that Johnson is using the shutdown as an excuse not to swear in Democratic Arizona Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva. She would be the 218th vote to force likely passage of a measure to open up the government’s files on the late millionaire sex-fiend Jeffrey Epstein, including its likely references to President Donald Trump. The cynics are right. The resistance among Trump and his allies to any reopening of the Epstein case is surely a motivation for Johnson’s obstruction — but I also can’t help but wonder whether the flap over the Grijalva swearing-in is also a cover for something that is much more deeply disturbing. The virtual disappearance of the House for most of three months, and the nagging fears that the body isn’t returning anytime soon (or...ever?) is looking more and more essential to the authoritarian project of a movement that pleaded for a “red Caesar” to crush “woke” liberalism with unchecked executive power. For the Founders who mapped out the American Experiment here in Philadelphia in 1787, the House was central to their vision of what democracy looks like. The idea was based on smaller districts and every-two-years elections that would closely bond its members to the people. It was, in other words, supposed to be the antidote to Western civilization’s monarchy problem. For Trump, the absence of a functional Congress — despite the need to keep the world’s largest military, essential services like air traffic control, and definitely not-essential services like a masked secret police force running through the shutdown — makes it easier for him to run the country by fiat. This is not a completely new problem. Over the course of my lifetime, I’ve watched Congress grow from a body fiercely committed to its own power and independence — especially in the early 1970s when the House and Senate went after Richard Nixon’s crimes and passed a War Powers Act aimed at restraining future Vietnams — to only caring about the fate of their party, and its president. These “lawmakers” aren’t troubled when Trump no longer rules by law but by executive order. I’m pretty sure there’s a word for a would-be strongman who rules by dictate. “I’m the speaker and I’m the president,” Trump has reportedly said in private conversations, according to inside sources blabbing to the New York Times. And in the supposed Speaker of the House, Trump has found the perfect vessel for his ambitions. Johnson — a soft-spoken true believer who acts like he just emerged from a Manchurian cave whenever he’s asked a question he doesn’t want to answer, which is pretty much all of them — seems to love the trappings and the attention of the job, even as he cedes all of the job’s actual power to the president. This supposed budget impasse isn’t only preventing the House from opening up the Epstein can of worms, but from doing any real oversight of a president who seems to have two or three Nixonian Watergates every week, including his family’s shady crypto deals and even drone consulting work. And that 1973 Wars Powers Act? Trump and his “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth are blowing up boats and murdering persons unknown off the coasts of Latin America, and the castrati up on Capitol Hill are not going to do a gosh-darned thing about it. With Congress sidelined, Trump — in an extreme flouting of the Constitution — is issuing dictates (that word again) on who’s not getting our tax dollars, including 40 million Americans who depend on food aid to feed their families, and who is. The latter category seems to include the over-the-top drive to recruit 10,000 new masked goons for ICE, and — quite tellingly — supporting the troops. Earlier this month, Trump announced that, unlike other federal employees, active-duty soldiers would get paid, at least for now, with $8 billion that the regime “found” by killing off research and development projects that had been authorized by Congress. Adding some icing on that cake, the president then claimed that an “anonymous” donor — quickly outed as right-wing billionaire Timothy Mellon — had donated another $130 million toward a few more hours of military paychecks. It’s probably worth noting that both of these moves are almost certainly illegal — in blatant violation of the “antideficiency” laws that Congress has been passing since 1870 to prevent an administration from spending money without authorization. Trump is clearly banking on popular political support for the troops, but also the neutering of Congress, a Justice Department that works for him and not the citizenry, and a corrupt and compliant Supreme Court will all lead to nobody stopping him. But what’s even scarier is that Trump surely hopes that by paying the troops, he is also buying their loyalty, which he will surely need as his abuses of power continue to mount. If you study tyrants beginning with Benito Mussolini and Hitler all the way through Putin, you know that strongman rule depends on many things, but especially a rubber-stamp legislature-in-name-only and a faithful military. So, yes, the House’s endless summer is about Epstein, but it’s about more than Epstein. With Speaker Johnson in Trump’s back pocket, the touring ex-Talking Head David Byrne isn’t the only performer “Burning Down the House” this autumn. Yo, do this! Ask me anything Question: Will there be a breaking point where any — any at all — Republicans in Congress finally say out loud what we all can see and what they supposedly say behind closed doors: that [Trump] is breaking law after law, is under water in polls on every issue, is unfit to lead and that this has to stop? — MollyG (@mgishere@bsky.social) via Bluesky Answer: Molly, we have seen a small amount of this on a handful of issues. Most notably, Sens. Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have spoken out against the Pentagon’s campaign of blowing up boats that may or may not be carrying drugs in the Caribbean, and this week we saw Sen. Josh Hawley opine that it’s outrageous to allow food aid for 42 million Americans to lapse because of the government shutdown. But these criticisms make news because they are so rare. Trump’s brand of authoritarianism has both purged the GOP of its free thinkers and also cowed many elites, even in journalism or on college campuses. So it’s just unrealistic to expect elected Republicans to buck their self-interest and stop supporting Trump, no matter how crazy and lawless he gets. We need to not wait on the GOP but rather build an opposition that is bigger and stronger. What you’re saying about... I received a batch of thoughtful responses to last week’s question about the future of the “No Kings” movement, especially from folks who joined the 7 million protesters on Oct. 18. Most agreed that the rallies are essential for building unity and keeping hope alive. Kierstyn Zollo of the Bucks County Indivisible movement wrote “we are gradually building an audience of people who are learning through these interactions with the rallies if they are capable and willing to participate in collective actions.” Opinions were more mixed about a future escalation, such as a general strike, and whether “No Kings” is making a difference. Evan Meyer, who was a student at Kent State around the time of the 1970 shooting of antiwar protesters there, wrote that “I fear there is a solid core of no-nothing, racist voters who have now come out of their holes and are voting.” 📮 This week’s question: The New York mayoral election is finally almost here, and the young, left-wing Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani continues to divide the party. Do you think Mamdani is a breath of fresh air and that the Democrats need more candidates like him? Or do you worry that Democrats moving too far to the left will doom America to continued MAGA rule? Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “Mamdani future” in the subject line. Backstory on Graham Platner, that tattoo, and a flawed debate If you spend too much time on the internet, you know the meme about the Milkshake Duck. If you don’t, it goes something like this: An adorable duck goes viral on the web for drinking milkshakes. Two days later, you see a post: “I regret to inform you that the Milkshake Duck is a racist.” If that Milkshake Duck — and its commentary on what it means to be famous for 15 minutes in America — ever ran for the U.S. Senate, it would be Maine’s Democratic populist Graham Platner. With GOP Sen. Susan Collins increasingly unpopular in a state that went for Kamala Harris in 2024, Platner — 41, a once unknown oyster farmer and an Iraq War veteran — was first out of the gate in the Democratic Senate primary, and despite of (or maybe because of) his lack of experience he made a huge splash. Endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders and a bevy of labor unions and sharing a top adviser with New York’s Zohran Mamdani, Platner has burnished his leftist cred with calls for taxes on billionaires, affordable housing, and an end to militarism. You could almost hear the milkshake machines humming. Sure enough, right as the Democratic centrist elite recruited its dream candidate, 78-year-old Gov. Janet Mills, unfortunate and arguably sexist or racist social media posts from Platner’s past suddenly resurfaced. They were ugly but seemingly not bad or recent enough to derail his momentum. Then came news of the tattoo — a skull-and-bones symbol that is essentially the German Totenkopf, worn by Nazi paramilitaries. Platner has insisted that he only recently learned the history of a tattoo he got in Iraq in 2007 — a claim that’s been undercut by an acquaintance. Some say all of this raises too many questions about who Platner really is, but others have said: Not so fast. Many supporters say there shouldn’t be a purity test for a candidate who’s actually doing the thing Democrats claim they want: Reconnecting with the white blue-collar voter. “That is something really interesting — who is deemed authentic and who can credibly speak as a voice of the people?" Amanda Litman of the group Run for Something told The Intercept. “This particular type of brawly white dude with tattoos who can speak the visual language of what we associate with the working class.” Look, I’m not sure how this all plays out with Platner, beyond knowing that my fantasy that there’s still time to recruit a true working-class man or woman with progressive policies and no Nazi tattoos is unrealistic. I do know this: the thousands of Americans who bravely protested for “No Kings” in small towns across Trump Country this month proves there are many working-class folks fighting to save our country the right way. The idea that you can’t win an election without something like a Nazi tattoo to reach a certain working-class voter is a notion I find deeply offensive. What I wrote on this date in 2010 It’s almost hard to believe now, but exactly 15 years ago U.S. liberals were jacked up not for the pending midterm election — one in which GOPers fueled by Tea Party ultraconservatism would retake Congress, with disastrous effect — but for this bizarre rally on the National Mall featuring the detached irony of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. I was apoplectic and (since I was also promoting my book on the Tea Party) wrote an op-ed slamming the event in the Los Angeles Times. I wrote: “Ultimately, it will be those kids at home who learn the history of whether 2010 was just an autumn of harmless entertainment or the throes of a nation amusing itself to death.” As I often say, how did that work out? Read the rest: “MLK wasn’t worried about the sitter — Attytood does the LA Times.” Recommended Inquirer reading
