Let’s talk about the moment Donald Trump blinked. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t a tweetstorm or a rally rant. When the tariff threats that had the world on edge—125% on China, 25% on Canada’s autos, a global trade war in the making—suddenly softened. A “pause,” he called it. A complete turnaround from the chest-thumping of the past week. And the reason? Mark Carney and a slow, deliberate financial maneuver that most people didn’t even notice: the coordinated Treasury bond slow bleed.
Dean Blundell, Substack

Chris Murphy, the junior senator from Connecticut, has tirelessly argued—on television, on TikTok, on The New Yorker Radio Hour—that unless the Democratic Party broadens its coalition with a primarily populist economic message and takes risks to oppose the destruction of democratic institutions, it will fail to mobilize popular support, continue to lose elections, and squander (as in Hungary, Turkey, and beyond) democracy itself.
David Remnick, The New Yorker

Last week, we glimpsed regenerative grazing on the bottom ground made lush by grazing management. This week, we shift from pasture management to cattle management and wildlife.
Don Schwerin, chair, Ag & Rural Caucus

Last month in Washington D.C., Seattle’s U.S. House representatives, Pramila Jayapal and Adam Smith, sat down for a frank talk. The subject: Smith’s loud criticisms of the far-left wing of the Democratic Party, which he casts as largely to blame for Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
Jim Brunner and Daniel Beekman, Seattle Times

We’re building a community that is going to be part of a broader solidarity movement. And all of the pieces of this movement need to be supported. In the coming months everyone will be forced to choose a side, like it or not. Stand with the Bulwark community. We want you with us.
Jonathan V Last, The Bulwark

Politicians and government agencies routinely put up signs to advertise who gets the credit for public works projects. Variations on “your tax dollars at work” have been in use for a century.

But there may be no more audacious signs than the two that went up recently down in Seattle’s Sodo neighborhood. These big MAGA-red boards welcome passersby to a completely alternate reality.
Danny Westneat, Seattle Times

Allan Savory moved managed grazing into popular view in his 2013 TED talk on “how to green the desert.” With quiet passion, Savory argued from his experience in Africa that livestock grazing could reverse desertification. And even more, livestock could slow climate change. The secret in the sauce was rotational grazing and holistic management.
Don Schwerin, Ag & Rural Caucus, Washington State Democrats

I’ve been spending some time recently with top Democrats as they think about how to rebuild after the 2024 loss. And in the 20-some years I’ve been covering politics, I have never heard Democrats so confused: about who they are — aside from their opposition to Donald Trump — as well as how and why they lost.
Ezra Klein Show, transcript published in The New York Times.

I’ve never been much of a Chuck Schumer fan. Like all of New York’s Democratic senators since the financial deregulation of the 1970s and ’80s and the extirpation of Rockefeller Republicanism, Schumer has cultivated Wall Street as a major source of campaign contributions.
Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect

“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