We the People v. They the Perps
TUCSON — America is far beyond a "constitutional crisis." It faces blatant smash-and-grab plunder by grasping narcissists bent on stripping away human decency. Truculent ignorance among those who support them is breathtaking.
Donald Trump flouts every check and balance that kept a United States together for most of its 250 years. A weekend X-tweet worthy of Napoleon made that clear: "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law."
He sets the world ablaze, yet few Americans seem alarmed at distant bonfires they don't believe concern them. Europeans see the end of an 80-year Atlantic alliance. Lisbon's Correio da Manhã captured the mood: Trump treats Europe like Puerto Rico.
In Saudi Arabia, his aides are negotiating "peace" in Ukraine with Russians. Europeans are excluded. Volodymyr Zelensky rejects any agreement without his participation. "It seems the most powerful member of NATO," he said bitterly, "is Russia."
And out of the blue, Trump now suddenly demands half of all future income from Ukraine's mines and resources in exchange for nothing. By his delusional estimate, that would be a $500 billion mugging.
I asked Alan Weisman to sum up the challenge. His last book, "The World Without Us," examined how Earth would restore itself if humans weren't in the way. He crisscrossed the globe for his upcoming "Hope Dies Last." He replied:
"Given runaway climate change and accelerating species extinction that eventually must include ourselves, how do we explain presidential decrees bound to hasten both these existential threats?
"Simple: Faced with the approaching end of his own sordid, bloated life, Trump’s ultimate petulant intention is to drag the rest of us down with him."
The question echoes everywhere: What can one person do? Three things: get informed; get outraged; get involved. The hardest, by far, is the first.
Voters need to know why "breaking news" broke -- and what might come next. New technology helps inform people. It also allows demagogues to bury reality under bullshit.
The Associated Press has been a reliable source since the 1800s, in recent years covering dramatic upheaval and daily doings in a disparate world. Trump is trying to kill it. A Washington Post op-ed was headlined: "This is a perfectly fine hill for the AP to die on."
No, this is a hill on which America might die.
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Today's "media" confounds even assiduous readers, viewers and listeners. Anyone can play in a wired world. Some "legacy" stalwarts maintain quality. Some hang a brothel red light at their door. A lot sell out to vultures that slash staffs.
AP was set up as a nonprofit cooperative of American newspapers. At its peak, 1,500 or so members covered its cost with annual dues, along with subscriptions from more than 10,000 papers, broadcasters, governments around the world.
It was the skeleton and safety net of every U.S. daily, from the front page to the funnies. With domestic and foreign bureaus, each with stringer networks, its potential reach topped a billion readers. It also fed radio stations from rural America to the BBC.
In 1967, AP dropped me into an African war. I was full of fire but clueless. The New York foreign desk kept my mistakes off the wires. Human failings aside, AP was scrupulously honest and committed to seek elusive objectivity.
It still has skilled pros who risk their lives to report truth, and it calls itself a dot-org. But it has cut back hard on staff and expenses. "Donate" tabs and ads cluttering its website likely have its old guard twitching in their tombs.
Competing news (or "news") purveyors put pressure on AP to find new revenue. Some major chains have dropped it. Yet today, more than ever, America and the world beyond need what it is meant to be.
Trump banned AP from the Oval Office and Air Force One, punishment for refusing his insane edict to call the Gulf of Mexico, the name dating from the 1600s for waters of the old Spanish Main, as the Gulf of America.
A White House official told Axios, "This is about AP weaponizing language through their stylebook to push a partisan worldview in contrast with the traditional and deeply held beliefs of many Americans and many people around the world."
That is a deluded wannabe emperor's crazy talk. Like everything with Trump, it is personal. He told reporters he would continue the ban until AP adopted his preferred lexicon.
"AP has been very wrong on Trump," he said, using the royal third person. "They're doing me no favors, and I'm doing them no favors. That's the way life works."
Protest has been muted. AP is hanging tough, but its executives offered only a tepid public response. For much of the country, "AP" are just two initials in an alphabet soup that, with other new names, make up "the media."
All of this is part of a bigger crisis, developing over time.
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Americans educated after the 1970s were shortchanged on critical thinking, history, geography and civics. Foresighted conservatives infiltrated school boards to shape a pliable, dumbed-down electorate. As a result, too many voters now miss the plot.
The White House is public accommodation lent to a time-limited civil servant elected by citizens, sworn to protect them from domestic and foreign enemies. A Constitution declares that he must share power with Congress and the courts.
But Trump sees himself in his personal imperial palace. Remember Joni Mitchell? "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot." Among his lunacies is a plan to tear up the White House gardens and pour concrete so it feels more like Mar-a-Lago.
The "fourth estate" — a diverse free press — is meant to keep the three branches in check. These days, voters need more than the usual suspects. Independent reporters with earned credibility add context, a sense of place and human detail.
Before Trump, press secretaries briefed daily, facing a barrage of concerted questions when reporters smelled evasion. AP, along with big newspapers and networks, had front row seats. Presidents focused on their job, with occasional news conferences.
We laughed during Trump's first term as ludicrous truth-twisters kept Saturday Night Live writers busy. During Covid-19, Trump hogged the spotlight, spending hours each day berating reporters and misleading Americans with deadly results.
Now we have Karoline Leavitt, a Bad Barbie with the straight blonde hair Trump favors and a large cross on a gold chain. At 27, her experience includes a lost run for Congress with what the NOTUS newsletter established was $200,000 in illicit contributions.
She condescends to seasoned pros and truffles her remarks with cheap shots at the Biden administration. Asked about egg prices, she blamed Democratics for killing 100 million chickens, neglecting to add that was to thwart avian flu.
Leavitt claimed last week the U.S. Agency for International Development sent $50 million worth of condoms to Gaza, an example of Biden's folly. Trump began repeating that, doubling the figure with his typical falsehood inflation.
Nicholas Kristof did the math in a New York Times op-ed. At 3.3 cents each, $100 million would buy nearly three billion.
"For Hamas to use up that many condoms in a year, each fighter would have to have sex 325 times a day, every day," he wrote. "That might wipe out Hamas as a fighting force more effectively than Israeli bombardment."
The actual cost was zero. It was yet another lie to justify Elon Musk's overnight shutdown of USAID. Polls show Americans think foreign aid is near 40 percent of government spending. Its $40 billion annual budget is, in fact, well below 1 percent.
But the story has embedded itself deeply into Trump propaganda.
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At a Tucson farmers' market, I talked to a friendly rancher who came from Mexico years ago. Now a citizen, he raises cattle and chickens near the border. After a while, his eyes narrowed and he asked, "You didn't vote for Trump, did you?"
The conversation chilled. He was happy that Trump sealed Biden's "open border". I did not mention the obvious. He found a better life up north; screw the others. He was thrilled that Musk stopped squandered foreign aid.
I know nothing about ranching, I said, but I had spent 60 years watching USAID save lives by the millions, earning America goodwill to counter bad foreign policy.
"Yeah?" he said, "look at this." His phone was open to a page on some wacko site listing dubious USAID projects. One was a million dollars on gender rights in Colombia.
I replied that Trump's regal descent with an entourage to watch half the Super Bowl cost that much just for the plane ride and his security. The total was far higher. He turned away. I was distressed at losing my rib-eye source — and possibly my country.
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Some Democratic legislators say voters will snap awake when they see prices soar and another multi-trillion-dollar tax cut for a happy few. They predict majorities in Congress and statehouses after 2026.
By then, Musk's ferrets will have given him databases and private details of every citizen, much of it in no way related to his declared mandate. How he might use that for his own purposes is beyond imagination.
It is sensible to phase out government waste with careful study and congressional review. But abrupt small cuts across the board cause incalculable high costs — in dollars but also in lost work product and expertise that took years to accumulate.
Two examples among many:
A young muskrat fired Energy Department specialists who safeguard America's nuclear arsenal and monitor radiation abroad. When Russia launched drones at Chernobyl, they were gone. Few could be found to be urgently rehired.
Cyber experts who fortified Ukrainian intelligence were sacked, and their computer files were deleted. Brilliant people with long years of training and glowing job evaluations were packed up and sent away overnight.
Thwarting Trump is urgent. Land raped for drilling and mining at home cannot be restored. Nor can the lives of war casualties and victims of hunger or disease abroad if free-for-all power grabs he advocates transcend borders.
Talks in Munich stunned the world in 1938. Britain's prime minister appeased Hitler. "Peace in our time," he declared. A year later, Germany invaded Czechoslovakia. U.S. and European leaders have met there since the 1960s to avert new conflicts.
Vance infuriated allies with an arrogant lecture about their weak democracies. He told them to embrace the far-right. A week before tense German elections, he snubbed the chancellor but met with the AfD party leader, who echoes the Nazi past.
He said Ukraine was Europe's affair, signaling an end to U.S. military assistance. Peace negotiations between Trump and Vladimir Putin in Saudi Arabia exclude Europeans — even Ukrainians.
Pete Hegseth displayed why he belongs on his goofy Fox News weekend show, not entrusted with the nation's military might. He revealed in advance that America would cede to Russia territory it has seized, and Ukraine should forget about joining NATO.
Michael McFaul, a veteran envoy to Moscow and the region, was horrified. "Russians take anything you give them, put it in their pocket and ask for more," he said. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, gloating, declared Europe no longer matters.
As I was about to finish this piece, Trump weighed in. Ukraine started the war, he said. Zelensky had three years to negotiate with Putin. That is, to capitulate. I have watched Ukraine closely since reporting from Kyiv decades ago. This is how I see it:
Conflict flared in 2014. Barack Obama left behind a stalemate ready for brokered de-escalation. When Zelensky took office, Trump held up approved missiles for Ukraine to extort dirt on Biden. Democrats impeached him; Republicans refused to convict.
Putin saw Trump toady up to him while scorning NATO partners, and he prepared for an invasion. He might have overrun the capital had Kamala Harris not gone to Kyiv with U.S. intelligence that confirmed an impending assault. Ukraine rallied to stop it.
Zelensky says 46,000 Ukrainian combatants were killed, and 390,000 were wounded, over the last two years. U.N. experts have recorded 12,605 civilian deaths and 27,118 injuries. The actual toll, they say, is higher. The country keeps running against all odds.
In Bucha alone, Russians massacred at least 150 civilians in an onslaught of torture, rape and looting. Throughout the war, they have targeted urban centers, hospitals and infrastructure.
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Showdown in Europe reveals how badly U.S. news coverage abroad has deteriorated. Consider CNN, which claims to provide news to more people than any other source.
New management, driven by profit and politics, replaces correspondents on the ground with panels in a studio. Opposing sides argue over things many know little about. Token Republicans find excuses for whatever Trump does.
Bedrock newspapers often bury news under features and fluff, struggling to attract new readers who don't read. Hardcore reporters, like those at the AP, are dogged but often dispirited.
The Washington Post brought down Richard Nixon, pursuing his Watergate coverup until he resigned. Its new owner, Jeff Bezos, is cravenly supine before Trump who threatens reprisals against Amazon.
The New York Times is essential reading. Incisive correspondents watch "breaking" situations from when they were only canaries in coal mines. But much of the hallowed Gray Lady is fit for the bottom of canary cages.
The second tier of large dailies has been largely gutted by entrepreneurs for private purposes, vulture-fund predators and rightwing propagandists. Beyond a fortified AP, independent firsthand reporting is essential. That is why I started the Mort Report.
These dispatches rely on a lifetime of earned credibility, which enables me to write what I see without my prior AP restraints. Their purpose is not advocacy. Reporters assemble facts and fit them into pictures to help readers draw their own conclusions.
Today this is drop-dead urgent. Literally and figuratively, the world is on fire.
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