Gloria, your latest piece reads less like commentary and more like the next chapter of an American political thriller. The problem is: the plot is real.
From Germany, the whole thing looks beyond absurd. Speaker Mike Johnson, the SAVE Act, the hostage-taking by the ultra-right inside the GOP, the procedural games, the whole rotten circus. I keep asking: what kind of democracy builds rules loose enough for a small faction to squeeze an entire House of Representatives by the throat and still call the outcome governance?
Our kindergartens run with more civic sense than this.
Then the ICE story at the polling place. An election worker confronted in public. At a polling place. During the democratic process. I lack the polite language for this. In German terms, this crosses a line so bright it glows.
And of course Trump keeps the Iran war alive. War feeds oil, arms, power, leverage, spectacle, family profit, donor profit, industry profit. Every drone, every missile, every new “reason” to keep the fire warm creates winners. The winners wear suits. The bill lands with people, air, water, soil, bodies.
A ceasefire under Trump already reads like stagecraft. A pause in the show, not an end to the machinery.
Your essay also names the billionaire capture underneath it all. This is where the American story stops looking foreign to me. Germany has lived its own version since the 1990s and early 2000s: American libertarian ideas pushed into a communitarian constitutional order, sold through consultants, finance, tech, and political vanity. Clinton sold Schröder a logic Germany’s Basic Law was never built to carry. BlackRock, Vanguard, Meta, Google, and the rest of the capital giants learned how to draw money out of public systems while calling the process modernization.
In the U.S., districts get redrawn. In Germany, social insurance gets captured.
Different tools. Same appetite.
And the Koch network sits behind so much of this like a new machine-room aristocracy: less Al Capone with a cigar, more billionaire priesthood pulling civic life apart while pretending to fund freedom.
So yes, I have a rage in my throat over this. Because the pattern is the point. Piece by piece, law becomes leverage. Procedure becomes ransom. Courts become sandbags. Elections become terrain. Public systems become prey.
Your essay lands there. Not in the headline. In the architecture.
On the silver lining: SCOTUS not backing Trump with E. Jean.
Though I fear they will hand him Humphrey's Executor v. United States as a 250th birthday gift which would be the ultimate assault on your own Social Security or what’s left of it. Watch out for that decision for us, please.
Jay — that decision you're bracing for? It already came down this morning, same cycle as Carroll. In Trump v. Slaughter the Court overturned Humphrey's Executor — the 1935 precedent that let Congress shield independent-agency commissioners from being fired at will. 6-3, and Roberts: "if anything more is left of Humphrey's, the Court overrules it."
So watch what one docket did. Carroll stands — final, unappealable, the jury's finding that he abused and defamed her now permanent fact. That's a real loss for him, and it counts. But while everyone watched him take it, the same Court handed him control over two dozen independent agencies — FTC, FCC, NLRB, SEC — the power to purge commissioners and install loyalists across the bodies that regulate labor, discrimination, recalls, plane crashes. One was the loss they could afford. The other was the renovation.
You called the language before they used it. The friendly press already singing it as a "blow to the deep state" — theft dressed as reform. They walled off the Fed as a "unique" exception, but Kagan named the lie: it rests on the same foundation as everything they just demolished. A courtesy, not a principle. Courtesies get withdrawn.
Yes, I saw it just after I wrote my answer. It’s the ultimate Squeeze-“We the People”-Machine they now unleashed. That would have been indeed a blow for them. It was long to be expected and yet, it feels like several in the general public are either so brainwashed and or dumb they have no idea whatsoever this means for you people,
I so appreciate this concise, people-oriented, plain language but so literate, exegis on the turns of this week! Please continue!
And Mary…they’ve put her in the garden, to keep her from being real. No actual reality here, just a shrine that gets rained on, moldy & needs to be hosed off a couple times a year…
Mary. I have been obsessed with her since I wrote about her last December. Do you know how few and how wildly different books are about her? Her existence? It’s as if she gave birth and became vividly unimportant. Wild guess here but do you think it just might have something to do with MALE authors?
On my last: that has already happened: BREAKING: The Supreme Court, 6-3, overrules Humphrey's Executor, giving the president broad firing powers over the leadership of federal agencies and limiting Congress's power to limit presidential firings. In a 5-4 decision, however, the court said the Federal Reserve is likely different.
Here’s my thought: let’s put ipecac in the coffee of Mike Johnson and friends which will inspire them to join the rest of us in vomiting over the condition of our once great nation.
Just as the school systems and textbooks in this country need to be discarded and written anew, our political system must be also. Guvmt by billionaire is absurd.
Crystal-Lee, Gloria Horton-Young -- She who S-T-I-R-S the storm!
Say their names: Keith Porter, Jr.; Renee Nicole Good; Alex Pretti.
All martyred on an ICE serial-murder-spree.
In 2017, having won, Trump was already on the attack against our voting, electoral system. The Orange-Beast has had 9-years since then to become red with the rage of a wounded boar, and Orange-Donald always chooses methods of terror.
Thank you dearly for putting this all together so clearly, so well, and for saying their names!
AND SCOTUS ruled in E. Jean's favor!!!!
🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷
Don't mess with brilliant women.
You are still the Queen!
🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷
Yes. They did. It’s a bloody miracle. I’m still reeling from gleeful laughter.
Gloria, your latest piece reads less like commentary and more like the next chapter of an American political thriller. The problem is: the plot is real.
From Germany, the whole thing looks beyond absurd. Speaker Mike Johnson, the SAVE Act, the hostage-taking by the ultra-right inside the GOP, the procedural games, the whole rotten circus. I keep asking: what kind of democracy builds rules loose enough for a small faction to squeeze an entire House of Representatives by the throat and still call the outcome governance?
Our kindergartens run with more civic sense than this.
Then the ICE story at the polling place. An election worker confronted in public. At a polling place. During the democratic process. I lack the polite language for this. In German terms, this crosses a line so bright it glows.
And of course Trump keeps the Iran war alive. War feeds oil, arms, power, leverage, spectacle, family profit, donor profit, industry profit. Every drone, every missile, every new “reason” to keep the fire warm creates winners. The winners wear suits. The bill lands with people, air, water, soil, bodies.
A ceasefire under Trump already reads like stagecraft. A pause in the show, not an end to the machinery.
Your essay also names the billionaire capture underneath it all. This is where the American story stops looking foreign to me. Germany has lived its own version since the 1990s and early 2000s: American libertarian ideas pushed into a communitarian constitutional order, sold through consultants, finance, tech, and political vanity. Clinton sold Schröder a logic Germany’s Basic Law was never built to carry. BlackRock, Vanguard, Meta, Google, and the rest of the capital giants learned how to draw money out of public systems while calling the process modernization.
In the U.S., districts get redrawn. In Germany, social insurance gets captured.
Different tools. Same appetite.
And the Koch network sits behind so much of this like a new machine-room aristocracy: less Al Capone with a cigar, more billionaire priesthood pulling civic life apart while pretending to fund freedom.
So yes, I have a rage in my throat over this. Because the pattern is the point. Piece by piece, law becomes leverage. Procedure becomes ransom. Courts become sandbags. Elections become terrain. Public systems become prey.
Your essay lands there. Not in the headline. In the architecture.
On the silver lining: SCOTUS not backing Trump with E. Jean.
Though I fear they will hand him Humphrey's Executor v. United States as a 250th birthday gift which would be the ultimate assault on your own Social Security or what’s left of it. Watch out for that decision for us, please.
Jay — that decision you're bracing for? It already came down this morning, same cycle as Carroll. In Trump v. Slaughter the Court overturned Humphrey's Executor — the 1935 precedent that let Congress shield independent-agency commissioners from being fired at will. 6-3, and Roberts: "if anything more is left of Humphrey's, the Court overrules it."
So watch what one docket did. Carroll stands — final, unappealable, the jury's finding that he abused and defamed her now permanent fact. That's a real loss for him, and it counts. But while everyone watched him take it, the same Court handed him control over two dozen independent agencies — FTC, FCC, NLRB, SEC — the power to purge commissioners and install loyalists across the bodies that regulate labor, discrimination, recalls, plane crashes. One was the loss they could afford. The other was the renovation.
You called the language before they used it. The friendly press already singing it as a "blow to the deep state" — theft dressed as reform. They walled off the Fed as a "unique" exception, but Kagan named the lie: it rests on the same foundation as everything they just demolished. A courtesy, not a principle. Courtesies get withdrawn.
Yes, I saw it just after I wrote my answer. It’s the ultimate Squeeze-“We the People”-Machine they now unleashed. That would have been indeed a blow for them. It was long to be expected and yet, it feels like several in the general public are either so brainwashed and or dumb they have no idea whatsoever this means for you people,
Brilliantly dissected.
Thank you, Veronica!
Thank you so much, Veronica.
The most recent ICE sighting that I know of around here was in West Oakland a week ago. It’s been quiet but things can change so quickly.
I knew a bit about most of that but it’s very helpful to see them together. Thanks.
Crossing my fingers for Talarico, Ossoff and Sherrod Brown.
Thanks for the update and I am all in for them as well.
I have my fingers, toes, and eyes crossed for everyone in the RESISTACE. LET'S DO IT. END THE ORANGE HELIUM BALLOON!!!!
Well said!
Crossing mine for nothing but BLUE!!!!
Gloria - you did it again; called them out, and thank God somebody's doing it! But, without denying you any more sleep - do you have a theory on Mary?
Yes. I’m researching currently. There’s a book waiting to be written. 🩷
I so appreciate this concise, people-oriented, plain language but so literate, exegis on the turns of this week! Please continue!
And Mary…they’ve put her in the garden, to keep her from being real. No actual reality here, just a shrine that gets rained on, moldy & needs to be hosed off a couple times a year…
Mary. I have been obsessed with her since I wrote about her last December. Do you know how few and how wildly different books are about her? Her existence? It’s as if she gave birth and became vividly unimportant. Wild guess here but do you think it just might have something to do with MALE authors?
🎶…when will we ever learn?…
Clearly I have to wait for the tumultuous news each day from the Supreme Court to round out the mayhem. 🤷♀️
On my last: that has already happened: BREAKING: The Supreme Court, 6-3, overrules Humphrey's Executor, giving the president broad firing powers over the leadership of federal agencies and limiting Congress's power to limit presidential firings. In a 5-4 decision, however, the court said the Federal Reserve is likely different.
Here’s my thought: let’s put ipecac in the coffee of Mike Johnson and friends which will inspire them to join the rest of us in vomiting over the condition of our once great nation.
Just as the school systems and textbooks in this country need to be discarded and written anew, our political system must be also. Guvmt by billionaire is absurd.
Thank you for the sordid tale and the glimmer. Powerful watching.
Crystal-Lee, Gloria Horton-Young -- She who S-T-I-R-S the storm!
Say their names: Keith Porter, Jr.; Renee Nicole Good; Alex Pretti.
All martyred on an ICE serial-murder-spree.
In 2017, having won, Trump was already on the attack against our voting, electoral system. The Orange-Beast has had 9-years since then to become red with the rage of a wounded boar, and Orange-Donald always chooses methods of terror.
Thank you dearly for putting this all together so clearly, so well, and for saying their names!