“More federal layoffs at Eastern WA nuclear contamination site,”read the headlines this past week. This has upset locals. The newspaper, the Tri-City Herald, recently excoriated their congressman, U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Sunnyside, for not doing anything to stop it.

“Residents of Washington’s 4th Congressional District did not elect Newhouse to stand idly by as President Donald Trump dismantles the federal government,” an editorial fumed.

To which I wondered: Didn’t they?
Danny Westneat, The Seattle Times

Why spend Democratic money in red districts? For the same reason we recruit the best candidates we can and then support them with blood and sweat, and most often tears . . . to build the party.
Don Schwerin, Ag & Rural Caucus

Ten Democrats sided with the speaker’s censure of Representative Al Green. The shameful act was diminished by colleagues supporting him singing “We Shall Overcome” on the House floor.
Joan Walsh, The Nation

In assessing how past presidents dealt with catastrophic downturns, you might give Herbert Hoover an F, Franklin Roosevelt an A, and Barack Obama a C-. But no other president has gone out of his way to create a collapse.
Robert Kuttner, The American Prospect

Public lands have been described as America’s “best idea.” They are natural sanctuaries, sources of generational inspiration and for some, ancestral homelands. So, recent news coming from Washington, D.C.—possible plans to sell off our public lands and the firing of the staff needed to protect and access them—has the outdoor sports community’s attention.
Ryan Gellert, chief executive of Patagonia, writing in Time magazine

Rachel Maddow points out two surprising but mostly overlooked revelations that came from Donald Trump's Oval Office meltdown over his inability to arrange a deal with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

One is Trump revealing the last time he spoke with Vladimir Putin, something about which he is typically cagey. The second is the surprising presence in the room of a news organization that was not invited. 
Rachel Maddow, MSNBC

After Trump and Vance’s disgraceful treatment of President Zelensky on Friday, some of you might feel ashamed of America. You might even feel ashamed to be an American.

The proper locus of shame is Trump and Vance. I’m ashamed that they, along with Elon Musk, are now leading our nation. I’m also ashamed that their Republican lackeys in Congress are enabling and encouraging them. I’m ashamed that Democrats in Congress are so supine.
Robert Reich, Substack

A few days ago the New York Times had a good piece on how the former East Germany is suffering from a demographic doom loop: Young people, especially educated women, have been moving out. Those left behind are depressed; men, presumably, are frustrated; and they’re angry. One result has been strong support for the neo-Nazi Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which, of course, has been endorsed by Elon Musk and received support from JD Vance.
Paul Krugman, Substack

It may well go down in history as the most remarkable, brutal, and shocking political event ever seen on live television. But it may prove to be more than a piece of TV history. It may be the moment an entire nation was wiped off the world map.
Simon Waters, The Independent

As Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, sat seething in his office last month, watching President Trump blame diversity requirements at the Federal Aviation Administration for the deadly plane crash over the Potomac River, members of his staff warned him against publicly venting his rage.
Annie Karni, The New York Times

One of the unacknowledged advantages of the horrendous era we’ve entered is that it has revealed for all to see the putrid connections between great wealth and great power. Oligarchs are fully exposed and they are defiant. It’s like hitting the “reveal codes” key on older computers that let you see everything.
Robert Reich

What exactly is Trump doing? Trump is installing what scholars call patrimonialism. Understanding patrimonialism is essential to defeating it. In particular, it has a fatal weakness that Democrats and Trump’s other opponents should make their primary and relentless line of attack.
Jonathan Rauch, The Atlantic

After a four-year hiatus, we are once again compelled to go spelunking into the deeper caverns of Donald Trump’s brain. We climb under his ego, which interestingly makes up 87 percent of his neural tissue; we burrow beneath the nucleus accumbens, the region of the brain responsible for cheating at golf; and then, deep down at the core of the limbic system, we find something strange — my 11th grade history textbook.
David Brooks, The New York Times

He authored the Constitution to forestall a despotic president. We’ll see if those safeguards suffice.
Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect

A rapid-fire array of directives by the Trump administration has left farmers and businesses in rural America reeling.
Linda Qiu and Julie Creswell , The New York Times

Will Westmoreland, a seasoned Missouri farmer and political consultant, sits down with Skylar— a younger farmer who voted for Trump and now faces losing his farm due to Trump’s funding freeze. With kindness, empathy, and hard-earned wisdom, Will breaks down how rural communities were misled about Trump’s true plans, including his connection to Project 2025.
Will Westmoreland, YouTube

Rachel Maddow looks at growing public anger at Donald Trump's war on the U.S. government, and looks at how cuts in the federal workforce, slashed funding to the NIH for medical research, and the decimation of USAID is having a profoundly negative economic effect in places that were previously supportive of Trump. 
Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC

I want to talk today about the media’s coverage of the Trump-Vance-Musk coup. I’m not referring to coverage by the bonkers right-wing media of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and its imitators.

I’m referring to the U.S. mainstream media — The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, National Public Radio — and the mainstream media abroad, such as the BBC and The Guardian.
Robert Reich, Substack