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Will Corrupt Regime And Falling Innovation Signal The End Of American Greatness?

Will Corrupt Regime And Falling Innovation Signal The End Of American Greatness?

Bribery, inflation, plagues, crumbling trade links, stalled innovation — all these negatives helped bring down the once-mighty Roman Empire. But Rome needed centuries of bad leadership to collapse.

Donald Trump seems to be undoing American greatness at warp speed. Sure, the United States possesses strengths that will maintain an aura of power for some time to come. But Trump has turbocharged the kind of destructive governance that could undo us.

Start with bribery, gifts that buy special deals and access. Witness the bags of money going into the Trump family's crypto schemes. Also, Qatar's handing Trump a $400 million jetliner for his eventual personal use. A smaller but astounding act of submission was Amazon's $40 million "investment" in a Melania documentary, most of which goes to her. Grab some Tums as companies needing government favors hand over millions for a White House ballroom, bearing Trump's name.

Such a blatant grift recalls the Emperor Commodus (180-192 A.D.), who turned his palace into a marketplace for selling political payoffs or protection. Consulships and governorships were hawked openly. Roman historian Cassius Dio described Commodus' court as a "shop for offices."

Trump is supercharging inflation, thanks in part to his price-raising trade wars and his spending — the highest peacetime spending outside pandemic disruptions. Add in his tax cuts, which drain the money to pay for the spending, and debt as a percent of GDP is at or near 100 percent.

High tariffs on China led that country — the American farmer's biggest customer — to go elsewhere for corn, wheat, and soybeans. China has already turned to Brazil and Argentina for these commodities.

Trump's response is to call for funneling $12 billion to the suffering farmers. But that's a one-time handout. His unhinged trade policies are fraying long-nurtured trading relationships that could hurt American agriculture for years.

Plagues are not hard to imagine, given Trump's choice of lunatic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead Health and Human Services. A lawyer who made money suing drug companies, RFK Jr. is determined to sow distrust in vaccine safety and seems to be succeeding.

Take the measles vaccine. Lacking serious scientific evidence, RFK Jr. falsely claims that the vaccine may cause autism in children. That has convinced a growing number of parents to withhold measles shots from their children. This rise in "vaccine hesitancy" is behind several measles outbreaks. Before that, the United States enjoyed official measles-free status. It's about to lose that.

Ancient Rome lacked the medical advances we enjoy today but offers examples of what that means. The Antonine Plague (A.D. 165-180), believed to largely be measles, killed as many as 10 million people across the empire.

Kennedy has overseen mass layoffs and buyouts at HHS, and his ignorant attacks on medical expertise have set off resignations of leading scientists. HHS had been a crown jewel of public health and medical research.

Which brings us to stalled innovation.

Especially jarring is the resignation of the top drug regulator Richard Pazdur — the fourth to bail — one month after he was appointed to the FDA. Such turmoil has reportedly made investors wary of backing cutting-edge treatments.

The National Institutes of Health is funding fewer grants. But so is the National Science Foundation, and in areas such as computer science, engineering, math, and physics. No surprise that top researchers are fleeing the U.S. for institutions in other countries.

Commodus, again. He dismissed senior scientific advisers and replaced them with entertainers. Domitian (A.D. 81-96) executed senators considered too educated.

To distract us from governmental chaos, Trump is building gilded ballrooms and staging colossal spectacles, seen in videos of missile attacks on boats that may or may not be carrying drugs.

Wherever he is, Caligula must be enjoying the show.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Trump's 'War On Drugs' Is Either Personal Lunacy -- Or Political Distraction

Trump's 'War On Drugs' Is Either Personal Lunacy -- Or Political Distraction

Since President Richard Nixon declared a "War on Drugs" in 1971, federal, state and local governments have spent an estimated $1 trillion fighting it — and losing. Donald Trump now seems fully engaged in that futile conflict, adding his own twisted brand of violence.

It's not enough to bomb boats "suspected" of ferrying drugs to the United States. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the military, after the initial strike, to "kill" survivors clinging to life rafts on the waters below.

Shocked lawmakers, both Republican and Democratic, are calling such actions "war crimes." The law of war authorizes the use of deadly force against enemy combatants. But once they're no longer a threat, the obligation is to care for the wounded.

That's beside the matter of whether the targets were, in fact, drug boats. Some may be, but the U.S. military is fully capable of stopping, boarding and interviewing the crew of a little vessel sailing through the Caribbean or Pacific.

And even if the boats are carrying drugs, there's no easy way of knowing how many of their passengers were traffickers and how many were the traffickers' hostages. Drug gangs are known to threaten innocents and their children to force participation in the ferrying business.

How well has this "war" been working out? Not well.

Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, has killed more Americans than the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan combined. And lined up behind it are still more vicious street drugs.

In 2023, about 110,000 Americans died from drug overdoses, nearly 10 times the number in 1999. The death toll fell in 2024, due mostly to the availability of naloxone, which can reverse overdoses. But it was still seven times the drug-related fatalities of a quarter century prior.

This is counting deaths from both opioids and stimulants, the category for cocaine. Deadly synthetic opioids such as fentanyl are now often added to the cocaine. A recent CDC report found that nearly 80% of cocaine-related deaths involved drugs with opioids mixed in, especially fentanyl.

You can't stop fentanyl from entering this or any other country. Fentanyl the size of a pencil eraser can kill dozens of people. How hard is it to hide that tiny amount sewn in a teddy bear's nose? Not hard at all.

A kilogram of fentanyl contains up to half a million potentially lethal doses. A kilogram is only 2.2 pounds. A quart of milk weighs about that.

In fiscal 2025, the Coast Guard seized almost 510,000 pounds of cocaine. That was the most in its history but a fraction of the cocaine that got past our borders — drugs arriving by land, sea and air.

Go ahead and keep trying to prevent these drugs from coming in, but let's not pretend that this bombing of unidentified boats is anything more than another Trump performance. Perhaps it's another way to divert attention from the Epstein files.

If this were really about punishing drug lords, Trump wouldn't have just issued a full pardon to Honduran ex-President Juan Orlando Hernandez. Convicted last year of partnering with traffickers, Hernandez is credited with helping flood the U.S. with hundreds of thousands of kilograms of cocaine.

A Drug Enforcement Administration agent, who worked on the Hernandez case but was not allowed to comment publicly, called the pardon "lunacy."

That show of inconsistency was so crashing, you can't help but suspect Trump's motive was to even further distract the public from the investigation into the sex trafficking of underaged girls. It was piled right onto the macabre videos of the U.S. military dropping bombs on small boats.

That would seem the best explanation for these bizarre Trump orders — short of lunacy, that is.

This Deviant Presidency: How Low Can Sexual Exploitation Go?

This Deviant Presidency: How Low Can Sexual Exploitation Go?

The central scandal in the Epstein sex abuse ring targeting children is not the sex. It's the children.

What powerful men do with grown-up women — that is, females 18 or older — bothers me little. I never cared much about Donald Trump's assignation with porn star Stormy Daniels. Other Trump critics tried to pile on another layer of immorality by noting that Trump was cheating on a wife who had just given birth. I wouldn't go there.

That was between Melania and Donald. One assumes that the third Mrs. Trump knew what she was getting into. I doubt I'm going on a limb to assume that what attracted Melania to Donald was not his winning personality. She made her deal, as was her right.

Trump has just given in to the inevitable. When it became clear that the House would vote to release the Epstein files, and the Senate would follow, he ran to the front of the parade. Trump is undoubtedly plotting ways to keep information he doesn't want disclosed out of the public's eye. His reluctance to release files on a pedophile ring in which his name appears repeatedly is understandable.

As the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) famously complained in 1993, deviance has been defined down so that behavior that was once deemed intolerable is now accepted as normal. One of his examples of deviancy being defined downward was sexual exploitation.

How far downward we've come.

William J. Bennett was a conservative moral-mouth of the 1990s. He went into full fire-and-brimstone mode after Bill Clinton was caught having a fling with a White House intern. Bennett milked the moment with a book grandly titled The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals. (On a roll, he followed with his pious The Book of Virtues.)

About adultery, Bennett wrote, "One reason society needs to uphold high public standards in this realm is because sex — when engaged in capriciously, without restraint, and against those in positions of relative weakness — can be exploitative and harmful."

Come 2016, Trump is running for president, and his adulterous escapades were public. A 1990 tabloid headline attributed to Trump's mistress Marla Maples (but actually planted by Trump while he was married to Ivana Trump) went, "Best Sex I've Ever Had."

Without a blush, Bennett argued that conservatives who refused to back Trump "suffer from a terrible case of moral superiority and put their own vanity and taste above the interest of the country."

Clinton's tryst with Monica Lewinsky was vulgar and inappropriate, but she was not a child. Monica was a 22-year-old college grad, and consent was mutual.

What happened on Epstein's island was not technically adultery — sexual relations between at least one married person and another adult. When one is a minor, the legal term is statutory rape.

Some of Trump's fiercest defenders are now attempting to downplay Epstein's crimes, thus diving below the second circle of hell that Dante reserved for mere philanderers.

Megyn Kelly tried to sanitize Epstein's disgrace by saying on her show, "He was into the barely legal type. Like, he liked 15-year-old girls." She goes on: "And I realize this is disgusting. I'm definitely not trying to make an excuse for this. I'm just giving you facts, that he wasn't into, like, eight-year-olds."

To which we can add five-year-olds. Epstein was not into five-year-olds, and that's a fact, we think. However, one of the girls, Jena-Lisa Jones, was 14 and still in junior high.

The American public, including a large chunk of MAGA, deserves credit for finally drawing a moral line that they wouldn't let even Trump cross. The story's not over until the Justice Department releases all the files, victim names redacted. We're waiting.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.


I Was Wrong: Democrats Won A Dunkirk Victory In Shutdown Defeat

I Was Wrong: Democrats Won A Dunkirk Victory In Shutdown Defeat

In 1940, Winston Churchill ordered the evacuation of 338,000 troops facing annihilation on the beaches of Dunkirk. Churchill called the successful operation "a miracle of deliverance." Historians portray it as a perfect example of victory in defeat.

Democrats raging at eight members of their caucus for ending the government shutdown might take a few lessons from the master of morale and strategy. What some hotheads framed as "capitulation" is, in the long run, the wisest plan.

Right after Dunkirk, Churchill famously said, "Wars are not won by evacuations." That is so, but stopping a potential disaster lets your side fight another day. Ending the shutdown prevented negative outcomes that had begun chugging the Democrats' way.

Shutdowns almost always bite the party that starts them. The record for this is so strong that I thought Democrats had erred from Day One.

I was wrong. Democrats effectively used the headlines to highlight the issue sure to haunt Republicans come the midterms: the soaring cost of health care.

Democrats prevailed in the recent elections, partly on threats to their health coverage, partly on rising food prices, tariff chaos and in-your-face corruption. But at a certain point, the news started turning from the fight to extend the Obamacare subsidies to flights being canceled and the poor losing food assistance.

With Thanksgiving approaching, the sight of family members sitting on suitcases in airports is not optimal. As many more Americans feel shutdown pain at the personal level, Democrats are harder pressed to avoid blame, even if the public liked certain items they were fighting for.

Now some firebrands just want a fight. But their contention that reopening the government caused a loss of leverage is based on illusion. Democrats never held meaningful leverage because they don't have the votes. Republicans control the White House, the House, and the Senate.

To quote Barack Obama, "Elections have consequences."

The election of Trump and a mostly pliant Republican Congress created such consequences as attacks on Obamacare and, more ominously, our democratic institutions. Democrats can offer a prettier set of consequences, but they can only deliver them if they retake control.

The Democrats' winning message should be, elect us and we will restore health care security. Even the temporary loss of it will hit home. As another great American, Joni Mitchell, sang, "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone?"

Now, if the shutdown worked in avoiding even some pain, that would be an argument in favor. But it wasn't.

Speaking for Democrats who voted to reopen the government, Maine Sen. Angus King, an independent, posed the right question: "Does the shutdown further the goal of achieving some needed support for the extension of the tax credits?" (He's referring to credits that were temporarily increased during the pandemic, making coverage cheaper for millions.)

These senators come from the swing states of Nevada, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and Maine. They are key to Democrats obtaining and keeping a majority in Congress. Without them, Democrats have no hope of obtaining real power. And without real power, their politics are just performance.

As noted, the shutdown did succeed in putting the specter of lost health coverage front and center. That mission has been accomplished. Trump's now railing that Obamacare is a "scam" to get the insurance companies filthy rich. Democrats should thank him for calling this revered benefit a "scam."

Assessing the dire situation at Dunkirk, Churchill chose not to make a heroic yet suicidal stand. But he followed closely with his immortal "We shall fight on the beaches" speech — a rally to the nation for continued resistance.

The midterms are the beaches that Democrats should be storming.

Trump crypto

Lame Duck Trump Isn't Fretting Over Polls -- He's Too Busy Cashing Out

Donald Trump's approval numbers continue to crater. Even Republicans have cooled on the president's performance. But the president shows no sign of noticing, nor is he changing his ways. Even his gaslighting has gone wan. He's failed to make Americans believe that prices are going down when they're clearly not.

What gives? Why isn't he trying to win back the public's love? Perhaps because he no longer cares. The only infrastructure he seems interested in building is his family fortune.

Trump charmed farmers into supporting him twice. He's bankrupting them with his trade-war antics. Many farmers have finally turned on him, but so what? Trump's not running again. He no longer needs their affection or their votes.

This ability to seduce then abandon goes way back. In 1995, Trump was a near-broke developer whose Atlantic City casinos were going under. He needed suckers to bail him out and found them through an initial public offering of Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts stock. Rubes buying into his spinner-of-gold act poured $140 million into his empty coffers. In 2004, burdened by debt and never turning a profit, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts filed for bankruptcy. For every $10 that his marks invested at that stock sale, they had $1 left.

"People don't understand this company" was his explanation.

The presidency offered new and powerful tools to get people to hand over their money. Days after returning to office, Trump's regulators dropped the fraud case against crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun. The Chinese-born speculator, target of an FBI investigation, fixed his problem by "investing" more than $40 million on $TRUMP coins — a crypto meme coin with no fundamental value.

Last month, Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao. The Chinese-born Canadian had spent four months in prison for failing to prevent his crypto exchange, Binance, from laundering money. Zhao made his woes go away by having Binance facilitate a $2 billion purchase of World Liberty Financial stablecoin. World Liberty was founded by Trump's sons, Eric and Donald Jr.

Asked about the pardon of Zhao, Trump said, "I don't know who he is."

By June, Trump and family had already taken in about $1 billion in crypto ventures alone, according to Forbes' calculations. That included profits from $100 million of World Liberty cryptocurrency tokens that a murky entity based in the United Arab Emirates said it was buying.

You enrich me and I'll get you off whatever hook you're hanging from. How better to embolden financial lawbreakers than a president saying, in effect, I've got your back — for a fee?

Being blatant about corruption is part of the mob boss' business model. Trump is telling those needing government favors that he's not shy about granting them, appearances be damned. Not only does he hand out pardons without blushing, he's been firing the regulators whose job it was to police wrongdoing.

Trump's agenda for a second term appears to be not giving a damn. He doesn't even care about the Republican Party, which just felt the sting of an unhappy electorate. Trump probably figures that Democrats will soon take control of at least the House in the midterms, so he might as well use the months left with a servile Republican Congress to increase his fortune.

He could also turn attention freed from the nation's concerns to immortalizing himself. Start by leveling an entire wing of the White House for a banquet hall that administration officials are already calling "The President Donald J. Trump Ballroom."

Asked about the naming, Trump said, "I won't get into that now."

It hardly needs mentioning that rich donors needing inside deals are paying for the ballroom.

Trump does care about numbers, but his job approval doesn't seem to be among them.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.


Too Old? Janet Mills Happens To Be A Lot Younger Than Bernie Sanders

Too Old? Janet Mills Happens To Be A Lot Younger Than Bernie Sanders

So Democrat Janet Mills, governor of Maine, is running against Susan Collins, the state's Republican senator since 1997. An established political figure would be running against another established political figure, yet the current reportage for Mills tends to start off with "77-year-old Janet Mills." Collins happens to be 72.

The Democratic Party is grappling with tensions between its senior leaders and younger challengers who want to replace them — worth a conversation. But to hear the lefties complain that Democratic powerbrokers are too old doesn't quite mesh with their worship of 84-year-old Bernie Sanders, senator from Vermont.

When Sanders ran for reelection last year at age 83, his fan club never raised the age objection. Should Mills win and decide to run for another six years, she would be about the same age as Sanders is now. Another consideration: Maine has the highest share of population 65 and up.

Ageism seems to start at a younger age for women than it does for men. That would make it a form of sexism, too. Would it not?

Mills has announced that if elected, she would serve for only one term. That's undoubtedly to address many Democrats' pain and anger over Biden's running for a second term as his aides hid obvious cognitive decline.

A senator who has slowed down but is experienced and has a good staff can do the job. A president should be able to run on all cylinders.

Mills recently gained national celebrity when she executed a cutting talk-back to Donald Trump at a White House meeting. Speaking before a group of senators, Trump asked: "Is Maine here? The governor of Maine?"

"Yeah," Gov. Janet Mills answered from across the room. "I'm here."

Referring to his executive order banning transgender girls and women from participating in girls' and women's sports, Trump asked, "Are you not going to comply with that?"

Mills parried with, "I'm complying with the state and federal laws."

To which Trump threatened, "You better comply. Otherwise, you're not getting any federal funding."

Mills returned the lob with Yankee directness, "I'll see you in court."

That was a brilliant defense of a state's power to set social policy — even though it came off as a defense of less-than-brilliant policy.

Mills may be treading dangerously on the matter of transgender athletes in sports. No, biological men should not be allowed to compete against biological women. Maine should change its laws to reflect the unfairness of letting athletes with male musculature take part in women's events. It would make athletic competitions a pointless activity for most girls.

The issue is not about how anyone "identifies." If a boy says he's a girl and wears a dress, that's no business of mine. But that doesn't make him physically a girl. Contrary to some claims, hormonal treatments cannot radically change the muscle structure from male to female.

And that reality has shown up on the playing field. In Maine, a transgender girl (that is, someone born male) reportedly took first place in a student girls' track competition. The year before, he placed fifth in a boys' competition.

A similar story has played out in professional tennis. As tennis star Martina Navratilova complained, "women's tennis is not for failed male athletes."

Mills would do well to carefully position herself as a defender of Maine law but advocate changing it.

Mills faces a crowded primary in which she seems the strongest candidate to defeat Collins. "Our Senate race was just upgraded to a Toss-Up!" she just posted on X. "This is the most important race in the country and I'm the only Maine Democrat to win statewide in 20 years."

Years can matter.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Donald Trump's 'Love' Is Still Driving American Farmers Into Ruin

Donald Trump's 'Love' Is Still Driving American Farmers Into Ruin

At a 2018 press conference in New York City, Trump said of American farmers, "I love them, and they voted for me, and they love me. ... And they said, 'We don't care if we get hurt, he's doing the right thing.'"

During his 2025 joint address to Congress, Trump said, "Our new trade policy will also be great for the American farmer — I love the farmer."

Hardly any sector has suffered from Trump's trade wars more than agriculture. Soybeans were hardest hit.

Before the first trade war in the first Trump administration, China was the biggest foreign market for U.S. soybeans, taking about 30 percent of total production. Soybean exports to China fell from $12.3 billion in 2017 to $3.1 billion in 2018.

Joe Biden came into office, and exports rose in 2022 to a record $16.4 billion. But farmers didn't vote for Biden's successor in 2024. They voted again for Trump, even though he campaigned with a promise for Trade War II, singling out China.

And come "Liberation Day" on April 2, he launched it with heightened ferocity. China retaliated, targeting U.S. agricultural products. This year, just as American soybean farmers anticipate a bumper crop, exports to China are down to about zero.

Other American farm products have also suffered greatly. They include corn, beef, tree nuts, and pork.

The political mystery endures. "It's somewhat understandable that Trump appealed to rural voters in 2016. After all, he kept saying he loved farmers. The first trade war undoubtedly took them by surprise, though he did bail them out with $23 billion in aid, courtesy of the American taxpayer.

But why did they vote for him a second time? Trump received an even larger percentage of their support while promising another trade war. Almost 78 percent of voters in farming-dependent counties supported him in 2024. The reasons were probably part cultural — rural Americans tend to be more socially conservative — and Trump's inflation argument also hit home. Under Biden, prices were rising for fertilizer, fuel, and equipment.

But even if this latest trade war ended tomorrow, growers of commodity crops like soybeans would still face lasting damage. They've spent decades cultivating buyers for their products in China and elsewhere. China is looking for new suppliers, and once those relationships are cemented, it will be hard to win them back.

China has turned to Brazil and Argentina for soybeans — Australia for beef. It's investing in port projects in Peru and Brazil to ensure a reliable supply of farm products from South America. Trump is talking about another big bailout of farmers, but once replaced, Americans have lost long term. No magic wand can bring their export markets back to their former glory.

The trade war has also further raised the farmers' prices, especially for fertilizer. Much of it comes from trade-war target Canada.

One doubts that other business interests would have been as accommodating to Trump's ruinous policies as farmers were after getting whacked the first time around.

Heartland grumbling has turned into louder protest. But no matter. Trump is presumably not running again for president. He no longer needs their vote — or rural scenery for campaign backdrops. And he certainly doesn't yearn for their love. He's a city boy, and the company he favors hails from crypto, tech, and Wall Street.

How did Trump pull it off, abusing farmers while convincing them, like battered wives, that he still loved them? That took considerable talent, reminiscent of his much-quoted remark, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters."

Thing is, people on Fifth Avenue are doing just fine. It's the farmers who are bleeding.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.


With Assault On Universities, Trump Is Wrecking American Power And Prosperity

With Assault On Universities, Trump Is Wrecking American Power And Prosperity

In the course of three days, six U.S.-based scientists have won Nobel Prizes. Every one of them studied or now works at America's public universities. Five were affiliated with or educated by California's system for higher education.

President Donald Trump's assault on universities, both public and private, targets the engines of American greatness. He pinned much of it on the colleges' failure to defend free speech and stop unruly student behavior, some degenerating into antisemitism. Point taken.

But it's mainly taken the form of shaking down universities. For his gentler audience, Trump frames it as "saving" taxpayer money. To quote the president: We will cut funding by X$ and thereby save Y$."

Over in the biology department, immunologists Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell are sharing the Nobel Prize in medicine with Shimon Sakaguchi. Brunkow studied at the University of Washington and Princeton. Ramsdell got both his bachelor's degree and doctorate from the University of California, first at San Diego, then at Los Angeles. Sakaguchi teaches at Japan's Osaka University.

As for physics, three scientists, one British, one French and one American, shared the Nobel Prize. All three, however, are now associated with UC campuses at Berkeley or Santa Barbara. The American, John Martinis, earned all his degrees at Berkeley. They won the Nobel for having discovered — bear with me — "macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in an electric circuit."

And one of the three scientists just awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry is Omar Yaghi, who occupies a chair in chemistry at Berkeley. Born in Amman, Jordan, Yaghi obtained his undergraduate degree at the State University of New York's Albany campus. His Ph.D. came from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Our colleges and universities should be sources of American pride as well as power. They are a reason why, if California were its own country, it would have the world's fourth-largest economy. To think that Trump is threatening its public universities with layoffs, budget cuts, and loss of federal grants. He's trying to freeze about $584 million in grants at UCLA alone. That's in addition to his attempted $1 billion shakedown over unrest at the UCLA campus.

With an economy larger than Japan's, small wonder there's a move in California to take over federal funding for scientific research with its own. Specifically, state lawmakers talk about putting a $23 billion bond measure on the 2026 ballot to replace lost federal dollars. If voters passed it, that would give California the wherewithal to make grants and loans to its own universities and research companies.

California would in effect be bypassing the National Institutes of Health. The NIH is the world's biggest funder of medical research. And who did Trump put in charge of the NIH? Health Secretary Bobby Kennedy Jr., an anti-vax ignoramus (excuse me, "skeptic") who is, mentally, many cards short of a full deck.

At least 24 University of California and California State University campuses have lost NIH training grants. UC already runs six academic health centers. If California taxpayers take over that funding, universities in other states should not expect to receive a dime of it.

That said, other states share these concerns. Washington and Oregon have joined California in setting up a coalition to review scientific data and make recommendations on vaccines. An alliance with similar goals, though probably less money, is being set up on the East Coast. Harvard and Yale do have impressive endowments.

What the great universities in the Trump-voting heartland are going to do, I can't guess.

In sum, many of the smartest people in the country are being sat on by the political dunces. How dumb can America get? Trump is testing us for an answer.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Is Kennedy Profiting From White House Attack On Tylenol? Is Trump?

Is Kennedy Profiting From White House Attack On Tylenol? Is Trump?

On Monday, Donald Trump issued an ignorant warning to pregnant women whose doctors prescribe Tylenol, a brand name for acetaminophen. "Don't take Tylenol. Don't take it," he said. "Fight like hell not to take it." And when in pain, "Tough it out."

The idea that Tylenol use in pregnancy may cause autism has been shot down by researchers studying millions of children. Trump's contention that this over-the-counter painkiller can cause the disorder did serve one purpose. It gave him gobs of attention over what would have been an otherwise unremarkable White House event.

Come Tuesday, Donald Trump is at the United Nations again setting off big headlines as he delivered one of his grievance-linked tirades before the General Assembly. Used to the president's unhinged performances, the attendees quickly moved on. If ever there was a time to "tough it out" while in pain, Trump delivered it to his U.N. audience.

But the attack on Tylenol is dangerous. Medical authorities hold that expectant mothers should treat fever and pain, and Tylenol is one of the safest remedies to do so. Not doing so poses risks to both the mother and fetus, including preterm births.

Trump knew to cover his rear end by adding that women should take Tylenol in cases of "extremely high fever." But what is a pregnant woman to do if she has a fever that the president recommends she "tough out" but she is not sure whether the fever is "extremely" high or just a bit high?

Alternatively, she could listen to doctors. But thousands of Americans died from COVID because they listened to MAGA rather than medical experts who urged them to get vaccinated. And back then, the Department of Health was staffed by serious scientists — and not the collection of quacks Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has replaced many of them with.

Trump has breathed new life into the prospects for trial lawyers who chase after companies for fat settlements. (The lawyers collect up to 40 percent of the award.) They already lost a 2023 class-action lawsuit claiming that Tylenol taken during pregnancy causes autism and ADHD.

A federal judge threw out the case, writing that the lawyers "permitted cherry-picking, allowed a results-driven analysis, and obscured the complexities, inconsistencies, and weaknesses in the underlying data."

About 20 law firms participated in the suit.

Kennedy remains in on the take. He will continue receiving contingency fees from Wisner Baum for referring cases. He gets 10 percent of the award whether the plaintiff wins or settles.

Wisner Baum is currently suing Merck, maker of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil, for allegedly not warning consumers of its risks. Kennedy insists he is not currently receiving referral fees on the case, but critics say he could still collect because the agreement exists.

Autism is a serious concern. It is a brain development disorder that affects social interactions and is marked by repetitive and other unusual behaviors. It is unclear whether the "autism epidemic" reflects more screening for the condition or involves other factors including age of the mother, genetics and environment. No link has been found to vaccines.

More on Trump's bizarre statements about Tylenol and pregnancy: "There's no downside. Don't take it. You'll be uncomfortable. It won't be as easy, maybe. But don't take it if you're pregnant. Don't take Tylenol, and don't give it to the baby after the baby is born."

OK, women under the influence of MAGA. You've been challenged to undergo unnecessary suffering in service to the fumes wafting through Trump's brain. Or perhaps there's an ulterior motive in his promotion of these BS health claims. The link may not be autism but money.



Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Trump Is Trying To Make Us Forget The Epstein Scandal -- So Don't

Trump Is Trying To Make Us Forget The Epstein Scandal -- So Don't

"Never again will the immense power of the state be weaponized to persecute political opponents," Donald Trump declared at his 2025 inauguration. Hold that thought.

Trump is now using the immense power of the state to distract from a scandal that could bring him down. That is, his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, a fiend who sexually trafficked girls young enough to be in junior high.

Watch how Trump uses the power of the state to change the subject. Note how his weaponizing of government to go after foes — or just attract attention — escalates into sheer spectacle.

It's no longer just insulting celebrities. No, he needs the big guns to force attention away from deeper questions about his close dealings with Epstein. He needs to send the National Guard into cities that didn't want them, bomb boats that may or may not be carrying drug smugglers and send immigrants who may or may not be undocumented to third-country dungeons.

News channels have jumped all over FCC Chairman Brendan Carr's mafioso threats against news media that don't do Trump's bidding. He apparently intimidated ABC/Walt Disney into firing Jimmy Kimmel after the late-night comedian made comments at odds with state-sanctioned opinion. Carr used to make fiery defenses of free speech.

This is a serious story, but critics shouldn't let Trump lead them astray from the story that undoubtedly terrifies him: his relationship with the predator who provided rich men with underage sexual partners.

Ignore Carr. He is a toady, a hollow man barren of principle. And did Attorney General Pam Bondi claim that the state could investigate businesses that refused to print memorial vigil posters for Charlie Kirk? Yes, but not gonna happen.

The burning question isn't whether Trump knew Epstein, liked Epstein or even partied with him. We know he did all those things, but those activities are not necessarily criminal.

The question is whether he participated in the sexual abuse of minors. Proof that Trump availed himself of Epstein's young adolescents has yet to be produced. But evidence that he may have is piling up.

Many questions could be answered in the release of all the Epstein files. Trump used to call for that, but when the possibility drew near, he invented a new story: The files are part of a Democratic hoax.

That didn't get much traction. Recent polls show at least 80 percent of the public — including independents and many Republicans — wants all the documents released.

Another hint that Trump may have been deeply involved is his treatment of Ghislaine Maxwell, who recruited and groomed Epstein's victims. Convicted of the sex trafficking of minors, among the most serious federal crimes, Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Why was she summarily moved to a low-security facility that offered Pilates?

Upon Maxwell's arrest in 2020, Trump responded, "I wish her well, frankly." He clearly wants her on his side.

How can Trump explain the affectionate birthday letter he sent to Epstein? It contained typewritten text, a drawn outline of a naked woman and the signature "Donald" written in a way that resembled pubic hair. The letter was reported by The Wall Street Journal, a conservative Murdoch-controlled publication that treads carefully.

We can expect Trump's diversions to become ever more flamboyant as information dribbles out about Epstein's clientele. There's no accounting for the elastic moral standards of Trump's most slavish devotees, but even some of them might have trouble with the sexual abuse of 14 year-olds.

Countering the immense power of the state to distract the public is not easy. But we must. We should ask what ought to concern us more, comedians or sex traffickers of young teens. You choose.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

A Shrinking World Market For That Would-Be Trillionaire's Vehicles

A Shrinking World Market For That Would-Be Trillionaire's Vehicles

The Tesla board has offered to make Elon Musk the planet's first trillionaire if he meets certain milestones in rocketing the automaker to new glory.

Did Musk show true brilliance the first time around? Yes, he did. Tesla's stock price rose 700 percent in 2020, making it more valuable than Toyota, Volkswagen, General Motors and Ford combined.

But there's another question. Who is going to buy his Teslas now?

Musk has burned many a bridge since he built up the company to a world force. Tesla was once the great green energy hope, offering an elegant way to replace planet-warming fossil fuels with cleaner electric power. Recall that the Obama administration extended the company a $465 million federal loan because Teslas had made electric vehicles cool.

But then Musk spent over a quarter-billion dollars getting Donald Trump elected in 2024, angering his environmentalist consumers. As head of the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk gleefully went after environmental funding, including grants to universities and services tied to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Overnight, Teslas became uncool. Some Teslas were torched, showrooms attacked and even charging stations set on fire. Embarrassed Tesla owners put stickers on their vehicles with slogans like, "I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy."

(No excuse for the vandalism. Many Tesla owners had bought the EVs as a badge of environmental activism. In any case, harming private property to make a political point is criminal, whatever the motive.)

Tesla is on track to mark its second consecutive year of falling revenues here and elsewhere. European sales have fallen by 40% and more, reflecting Musk's ties to the much-disliked Trump.

In one of Tesla's biggest foreign markets, Germany, sales in the first seven months of this year crashed by more than 55%. Musk tried to insert himself into that country's election by endorsing the far-far right Alternative for Germany party as "the best hope for Germany." (Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned his remarks as "disgusting.") Musk also provided an ugly visual by raising his arm in what looked like a Nazi salute. In this country, Teslas were painted with swastikas and the words "Nazi cars."

Meanwhile, Tesla no longer dominates the EV show in this country. Chevrolet's Equinox EV now competes with Tesla's Model Y. Cadillac's Optiq crossover has entered the EV market big time. And Ford is converting a Kentucky assembly plant to build affordable midsize electric pickups.

The Chinese EV maker, BYD Co., has just passed Tesla in European sales. BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen are also showcasing their new models.

Tesla is hard at work trying to launch a robotaxi service. But so are other companies.

Because Musk has done so much for MAGA, it's possible that members of that EV-bashing movement might buy Teslas in a show of solidarity. But Musk is no longer one with the Great Leader.

He's had run-ins with Trump, most notably his bashing of the "One Big Beautiful Bill." Two obvious reasons for Musk's discontent: It ended subsidies to buy electric vehicles and slowed the expansion of charging stations. Consumers have until the end of this month to make use of the $7,500 new clean vehicle tax credit.

And so who is going to buy Musk's cars now? Probably not the defenders of all that Trump does and says. Not the environmentalists who despise Musk. Not the 280,000 federal workers his DOGE fired. Or their families. And not many of the EV shoppers who today have more choices.

Musk may have drawn warm applause from investors when he promised to devote "maniacal" attention to Tesla going forward. It's a good guess, however, that the audience of actual buyers was sitting on its hands.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Is Blue America Starting To Separate From Red America?

Is Blue America Starting To Separate From Red America?

It started quietly enough. MAGA Republicans put lunatic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services. He's forced top scientists to leave and slashed research in cancer, autoimmune diseases and other health threats. Thanks to him, getting the updated COVID vaccine is harder for many and confusing for everyone.

In response, Democratic-run states now talk of setting up their own "agency" to bypass the MAGA mess in Washington. Health officials from five New England states (New Hampshire opted out), New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania recently met to discuss putting together their own vaccine recommendations to bypass the federal government.

This could be the start of something bigger.

Not long ago, the right wing did most of the hollering about a national parting of ways. There was constant braying that Blue America is the land of crime, lax morals and bums freeloading off the hardworking MAGA heartland. A few years ago, the chair of the Texas Republican Party Allen West suggested forming a new union of "law-abiding states," by which he meant conservative ones. (That the big cities in Texas are Democratic might pose complications.)

Others on the right have toyed with actual secession talk. Some went so far as to make an implied threat, arguing that the Democratic states depend on the conservative farm belt for food. That's not true, however.

It happens that California is by far America's biggest producer of farm products — fruits, vegetables and nuts. Oregon and Washington are not slackers in that regard. The swing states of the upper Midwest might have to choose sides. Do Wisconsin and the other dairy powers want to antagonize customers in their biggest markets for cheese, butter and milk?

Heartland agriculture, meanwhile, is dominated by commodity crops, such as corn, soybeans, and wheat. These are major exports — and so good luck in Trump's trade war.

Blue America going its own way is not new. When California approved a rule in 2022 that would phase out the sale of new gas cars by 2035, 11 states joined it. They accounted for 40 percent of the U.S. auto market.

Want to hear an argument for secession? Listen to Eric's recent harangue on South Park: "If liberals are such lazy moochers, then tell me, why are 95 percent of the poorest counties in our country Republican? Why are eight of 10 poorest states Republican? Why are red states the welfare states that always take more from the federal government than they pay in? I think we all know who the lazy moochers are ... "

As for crime, there's been much commentary of late on the murder rates in Republican-run states after Trump sent National Guard troops to quell "unrest" only in Democratic areas. In one of his mocking tweets, California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote, "Alabama has 3X the homicide rate of California."

As for running the nation's — or half the nation's — medical care establishment, Democratic states are well positioned. They are already home to the world's top four universities for medical research: Harvard, Johns Hopkins, University of California San Francisco and Stanford. Number five, the University of Pennsylvania, is in a swing state.

Fingers crossed here for no national breakup, but if it happens, let it be peaceful. There can be trade agreements and mutual defense treaties. There may be some complications involving the various "blue dots," the Democratic districts around Omaha and the Texas big cities. It can all be worked out.

MAGA may object to "progressive values." No problem. Blue America feels the same about MAGA values. Again, no problem. Good people in both places — and bad people. Let's see how this all progresses.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.


Russian oil

Did America's Enemies Write Trump's Backward Energy Policy?

President Donald Trump's energy policy is utterly screwed up — if you assume that advancing America's interests, and not pleasing his fossil fuel friends, is the objective.

This came to the fore when trade adviser Peter Navarro hollered at India for buying Russian oil. Navarro called the purchases "opportunistic and deeply corrosive" of efforts to isolate Russia and curb Vladimir Putin's war machine. Oh, is Trump isolating Putin? Could fool us.

Navarro is right that Russia's oil wealth is funding Putin's savage attacks on Ukraine. If so, then wouldn't it be in our interests to speed the move away from fossil fuels? That's the path Western Europe took shortly after the Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine.

On the contrary, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum is now demanding that projects "related to wind and solar energy facilities" go through new layers of political review. In other words, slow or kill them.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright has canceled a federal loan guarantee to build an $11 billion transmission line through the Heartland. The Grain Belt Express was to send electricity generated by Kansas wind farms across four states. The states involved — Kansas, Missouri, Illinois and Indiana — had all approved the project. For reasons easy to guess, Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley sided with Trump against the venture.

Invenergy, the Grain Belt Express developer, called Hawley's opposition "bizarre." Writing on X, the company accused Hawley of being against an infrastructure project "aligned with the President's energy dominance agenda."

As though Trump has an energy dominance agenda, as opposed to a slogan. Does even Trump believe that, well into the 21st century, fossil fuels are the golden-brick road to energy dominance? If he does, that would be most concerning of all.

Trump clearly hasn't read China's plan for "energy dominance."

China now dominates in electric vehicles, solar, wind and batteries. Electricity now accounts for 30 percent of its energy consumption versus only 20 percent in the U.S. The Financial Times reports that China is on its way to becoming the first "electrostate."

Electric vehicles represent both the present and future of transport. Trump is actively handing the EV market to China. He started by pushing Republicans to kill federal tax credits incentivizing Americans to buy or lease electric vehicles. (They end on October 1.)

Ford CEO Jim Farley recently called China's rise in the EV market the "most humbling experience" of his career. "Their cost, their quality of their vehicles is far superior to what I see in the West."

Also gone are tax credits for wind and solar power. As a result, dozens of EV or clean energy projects — investments totaling $27 billion — have been canceled.

Over half of Iowa's electricity now comes from wind power. And on sunny and windy days in Texas, wind and solar power can supply over 60 percent of the ERCOT grid's fuel mix. (ERCOT manages about 90 percent of the electricity flow in Texas.)

Trump's tariff mania, meanwhile, has thrown wrenches in the ability of both green and fossil fuel energy producers to plan their investments. Interestingly, it is hurting oil more than clean energy. Since April 2, when Trump launched his trade war "Liberation Day," S&P's main index for oil stocks has fallen four percent. By contrast, the S&P index tracking clean energy companies is up about 18 percent.

Trump continues to bellow about the "energy dominance" thing, by which he's clearly shown he means helping fossil fuels and hurting the green alternatives. He also goes on about cheaper gas, which is not what the oil business wants for obvious reasons.

Want to defang Putin and save the heating planet from environmental collapse? Trump is totally off that case. Only America's enemies could craft a more damaging energy policy.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

migrants border fence

How Trump's Immigration Cruelties May Finally Force Real Reform

It's with some discomfort that I consider the possibility that Trump's radical immigration agenda will lead to better immigration policies. The discomfort comes from the cruelty involved: the roughing up of good people who've been quietly working, the celebrations of brutal incarceration, the racially tinged rhetoric.

Hope comes in the form of changed perspective. Outside of agriculture, the existence of an illegal workforce is no longer openly tolerated. The chaos at the border is stopped. And a resulting labor shortage may force leaders to adopt a rational immigration program that legally admits the workers we need. Such changes would include legalizing the status of many otherwise law-abiding migrants now working without papers.

Politicians from both parties have for decades blocked reform. We can start with George W. Bush, who subscribed to a Republican cheap-labor agenda. (A supportive cry from The Wall Street Journal was "Let there be open borders!") In 2004, Bush called for a temporary worker program that would "match willing foreign workers with willing employers when no Americans can be found to fill the job." Little mention was made about what those willing employers were willing to pay their workers.

In 2013, serious immigration reform cleared the Senate in a bipartisan vote. It offered a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants, while requiring employers to check a national database for the right of new hires to work in this country. It was known as E-Verify.

The president at the time was Barack Obama. He pursued a muscular deportation program that removed illegal-migrant criminals. Obama clearly wanted to reassure the public that the bill wouldn't be just another amnesty without beefed-up enforcement. House Republicans brushed off the new policy while members of Obama's own party condemned him as "deporter in chief."

Joe Biden seemed blind to the awful situation on the border. It was political malpractice to believe that the sight of caravans of migrants charging over the border wouldn't alarm the American public. Never mind the need for labor. Toward the end of his term, Biden recognized the political damage the chaos was doing his party and fixed the problem. Calm came over the border before Trump became president again, but it was too late for Biden to get the credit he could have claimed.

But solving that problem without serious immigration reform has created new problems. For one thing, many undocumented workers pay into a Social Security system that will not provide them benefits. These contributions boost the program's trust fund by billions of dollars a year, according to estimates, extending the fund's solvency.

Trump's aggressive deportation campaign has already resulted in a labor shortage and hurt consumer spending, according to the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Immigrants' spending power in 2023 is believed to have approached $300 billion.

Then there's inflation. The construction workforce is heavily made up of immigrants, many undocumented. Losing these workers will hit the supply of housing, already too expensive for many Americans. That could cut economic growth by 0.4 percent.

Donald Trump could continue his campaign to replace solid government statistics with phony economic numbers more to his liking. But there's no hiding the cost of things from ordinary Americans.

Who knows? Trump might force acceptance of higher immigration numbers. Recent history suggests that he still exerts mind control over many Republicans who formerly stood in the way of legally admitting more immigrants, let alone fixing the status of the undocumented.

Add the trade war to a reduced workforce and you have higher inflation flashing in neon. Trump was happy to employ undocumented workers at his various businesses, so he may be open to letting some currently illegal workers stay. After all, he's full of surprises.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on The Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Is A Mass Tragedy Ahead For America's Unvaccinated Children?

Is A Mass Tragedy Ahead For America's Unvaccinated Children?

In 2008, Madeline "Kara" Neumann, age 11, died of diabetic ketoacidosis in Wisconsin. Her parents treated her symptoms with prayer instead of medical care. The day before she died, Kara could no longer talk while suffering terrible stomach pains. Yet her adults still wouldn't take her to a doctor. A Wisconsin jury convicted the mother of reckless homicide.

This is one of several famous cases involving parents charged with murder for denying their children medical treatment that could have saved their lives. Past examples have generally pitted the right to hold certain religious beliefs against the obligation to protect children. The judgments almost always went against the caregivers — and the idea that parents have the right to do with their children as they wish.

When a child dies of starvation in a slum because the parents were cruel or just crazy — no religious excuse given — they get dragged off in handcuffs. Not so when children die of measles because parents denied them a two-second jab-in-the-arm, explaining that they don't believe in vaccines.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the crackpot Trump put in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services, covers his rear by insisting that he's not stopping anyone from taking vaccines. He and fellow "skeptics" are just calling for "vaccine transparency and safety" while undermining the public's trust in both.

"Bobby" has rolled back government support for mRNA vaccine research, canceling 22 projects for tools to fight respiratory viruses such as COVID and the flu. No new projects will be started. This technology could be used to treat or cure cancer and other diseases.

Kennedy has no scientific background and evidently suffers from his own mental confusion. He's said batso things like Lyme disease is "highly likely a militarily engineered bioweapon."'

He has never openly promoted violence against vaccine scientists. More cleverly, he's telling unstable people to question whether widely used vaccines could hurt them. He has linked life-preserving vaccines to autism in children — and hired a vaccine foe who practiced medicine in Maryland without a license to study the matter.

His department is no longer recommending the COVID vaccine for healthy young children. How many children may die as a result? We already know that from September 2023 through August 2024, about 152 children died from COVID. How many more perished without the disease being reported we cannot know.

The lunatic who attacked a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention building, killing a police officer, claimed that the COVID vaccine had made him sick. Where did he get that idea? It seems no coincidence that this assault took place in the summer of 2025. Can you envision the medical researchers having to barricade themselves in their offices?

Has the public become so dazed by political chaos that it's not up in arms over government actions that could cost millions of lives? During the pandemic, nearly a quarter-million Americans talked out of taking the COVID vaccine died unnecessarily from the disease.

This is more harmful than the religious beliefs that miracles can cure anything. They skirt rather than fight science. Kennedy and company distort it, putting a scientific veneer on dangerous misinformation. And they are backed by a creepy pack of influencers.

What grown-ups do with their lives is not the great concern here. Rather we should find shock in having a government actively promoting ignorance at the cost of children's lives. Parents who do not protect their charges belong behind bars. Never mind their claiming good intentions. That's what child abusers do while insisting they were just disciplining unruly kids.

It may take a mass tragedy to move responsibility where it belongs. We seem headed for one.


Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

To Win, Democrats Must Offer Pragmatic And Progressive Governance

To Win, Democrats Must Offer Pragmatic And Progressive Governance

The Democratic Party's low approval ratings have sent a stern message to its members. But what is it? Is it a failure to loudly fight an unpopular president on every matter? Is it anger over the party's previous obsession with boutique causes — transgender rights, for instance — while downplaying broad economic concerns? Or is it the lack of an alternative vision in the form of nuts-and-bolts legislating that contrasts with Trump's toxic conflict? How on earth did Democrats lose the working class to the party that's slashing its health benefits?

My vote goes to the last theory. Rather than rely on a mirror image of MAGA extremism and push solutions for things voters don't much care about, Democrats should offer a calm vision of stability.

There was a reason "No Drama Obama" got elected president twice despite having "Hussein" as a middle name. The fringe left sulked over Bill Clinton's "triangulating" — that is, adopting parts of opposing platforms to appeal to a wider audience. But that's why Clinton won two terms and left office with higher approval ratings than the sainted Republican Ronald Reagan.

'Tis better to triangulate than lose nearly all power to the other party. Republicans control the presidency and both Houses of Congress. Democrats would most effectively "fight back" by choosing the right direction and tone.

The recent intraparty throat-grabbing over the bipartisan policing legislation provides a clear contrast. It started when Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey tore into fellow Democrats for supporting it. He hotly called them "complicit" with the Trump policy agenda.

"I say we stand, I say we fight," he bellowed. "I say we reject this. When will we stand and fight this president?"

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Nevada Democrat, fought back. The policing bills, though not perfect, do useful things, such as maintain mental health services for law enforcement officers. They promote recruiting police in the officers' home communities.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota joined Cortez Masto in supporting the package and in trying to stop Booker from hanging a soft-on-crime-sounding position around the party's neck. She further noted that Booker failed to show up at the committee meeting where he could have tried to modify the legislation. Only after it was on the full Senate floor did Booker take the stage to condemn it.

Booker responded angrily to the implication that he was a showboater. "Don't question my integrity," he shouted back.

It's a good guess that Booker plans to run for president in 2026. Toward that end, he's auditioning to become champion of the Democratic "resistance" toward Trump. One recalls his 25-hour tirade on the Senate floor as an impressive act of endurance. But things Democrats say to the far-left bleachers can come to haunt them in a general election. Just ask Kamala Harris.

Democrats wanting their party to take back power should promise relief to a public wearied by daily Trumpian chaos. Both Cortez Masto and Klobuchar represent purple states that determine the outcome of national elections. They must appeal to independents and others wary of radical politics from all sides. Booker's New Jersey is reliably Democrat.

Look at Roy Cooper for guidance. The Democrat is the popular former governor of nearly red North Carolina. Cooper is now running for a U.S. Senate seat and polling ahead of his likely Republican opponent.

Cooper championed Medicaid expansion, raised teacher pay and pushed for planting a million urban trees, an environmental policy that doesn't threaten anyone's livelihood.

It's not just Democrats. Polls also show strong disapproval of Trump. Voters don't need reasons to dislike him. What they need is a pragmatic governance and policies that don't scare them. That's what Democrats must offer.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

Why That Sydney Sweeney 'Great Jeans' Ad Is Pure Genius

Why That Sydney Sweeney 'Great Jeans' Ad Is Pure Genius

How nice to have the Sydney Sweeney "great genes" controversy. It is happily of no consequence, which is just what we need for escape from unhinged behavior spilling out of Washington.

Donald Trump's sending nuclear subs toward Russia, a likely distraction from his tangle with Jeffrey Epstein, is something I don't want to think about. Not far behind is his firing the keeper of labor statistics over the less-than-stellar employment numbers she had to report.

Trump's top economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, was on the Sunday talk shows defending that action. "It's the President's highest priority that the data be trusted," he said.

Talk about numbers, Hassett co-wrote a book titled "Dow 36,000." Published in 1999, it predicted the index, then averaging just over 11,000, would approach 40,000 in 10 short years. The Dow didn't reach even 30,000 until 2020.

The polemics over Sweeney's genes have gotten much press, but the heated commentary has yet to hit a homer. It centers on an ad towering over Times Square that has the blonde-haired blue-eyed actress saying: "Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue."

The wordplay is on "genes" and "jeans," leading some to accuse the American Eagle ad of treading on the disgraced area of eugenics. That is the Nazi-associated concept of selective breeding to improve humankind. Sayantani DasGupta, a Columbia University professor, produced a critical video that rightly calls eugenics "the pseudoscientific and immoral notion that we can improve the human race." However, she adds more questionably that "a woman of color would not have been hired for this advertisement." She posted the video on TikTok, of course.

Let's discuss. Genes determine such physical characteristics as height, hair, face structure and skin color. If Sydney Sweeney can thank good genes for her good looks, so could Naomi Campbell. She was the ebony-skinned supermodel of the 1990s. Campbell represented such top fashion brands as Versace, Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Prada, and Burberry.

Salma Hayek, the part-Mexican, part-Lebanese warm-complexioned beauty, is also a possessor of good genes. In addition to her Hollywood roles, Hayek became a spokeswoman for Revlon and an ambassador for Cartier. As to DasGupta's point, the American Eagle ad would have been more interesting had it featured a dark-skinned woman speaking the same words.

There's no doubt that the creators behind the ad campaign for American Eagle knew full well that the genes message would make a stir and get people talking about the product. The advertising agency was cleverly trolling Columbia professors and the social media hordes with some cultural bauble they would surely jump on.

People magazine dutifully reported that some women criticized the ad for also "catering to the male gaze." It shows Sweeney buttoning up her jeans.

These feminists need not strain their necks looking up at the Times Square billboard. They could look down at street level and note all the women and girls catering to the male gaze via their cleavage and the butt cracks outlined in stretchy shorts. But we don't want to "body shame," do we.

The genes-jeans controversy is so bush league that Trump waited a long time to pipe in about it. That didn't hold back Sen. Ted Cruz. He made a fool of himself on Fox News accusing "the Democrats" of saying that "beautiful women are no longer acceptable in our society."

The many Democrats working for American Eagle or invested in its stock must be thrilled by what these dimwits are doing for sales figures. And thanks from the rest of us for diverting our gaze, however temporarily, from the lunacy that's overtaken our politics.

Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.