Ray Richmond

These signs show Trump's maddest threat yet might be blocked … amid the blizzard of crazy

Seizing Greenland? Seriously? This is where we’re at? It seemed like some bizarro Dr. Strangelove fantasy. And yet what was once dismissed as preposterous has exploded into a genuine diplomatic emergency.

It was the capper to another surreal week in Trump’s America, one that would have left George Orwell muttering, “Told ya.”

There is no sane reason for Trump to want to “own” Greenland, but plenty of insane ones. When asked why acquiring it by force was important to him, his response to the New York Times was, “Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success.” As if that answer made even the thinnest shred of sense.

For our president, a glacier-strewn Arctic island is simply a plaything to possess, even if it would result in blowing up our NATO alliance and releasing utter turmoil throughout Europe.

We’ve all long known that wherever Trump goes, chaos follows. It’s his brand. Everything he touches, dies. That didn’t matter so much when he was just another pathetic rich old man screaming into the ether from his Mar-a-Lago balcony. But since he assumed the presidency a second time, every move he makes has great national and international bearing. This is highly unfortunate.

Just think about all of the turmoil and madness that was being juggled over the past week alone:

That wild Greenland fantasy. Who cares if it would perhaps irreparably disrupt the world order? Little Donnie wants it, even as his sycophantic aides try to dissuade him. Their boss is drunk on the power of being the self-proclaimed “hunter and not the hunted,” permitting him whatever he wants — consequences be damned.

Having kidnapped the Venezuelan president and declared himself “acting president,” Trump vowed to steal the nation’s oil while installing a puppet proxy. No one evidently bothered to tell him that refining the oil was more expensive than it was worth. But oh well.

Threatening to attack Iran for attacking its own protesting citizens while at the same time attacking U.S. citizens for … protesting. “Only we can do that to our people!” Trump might as well have declared. The hypocrisy is stunning.

Deciding the best strategy for tamping down anger was to restrict any “investigation” into Jonathan Ross’s murder of Renee Nicole Good to a federal cover-up, excluding city officials while opting to probe the dead woman’s motives.

While pictures of citizens in Minneapolis being pulled out of their houses and cars and otherwise assaulted and terrorized played all over the media, Trump doubled down, insisting lack of respect for law enforcement was the real problem.

Classy as ever, the president flipped off and mouthed “F--- you!” twice to an auto worker at a Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan, after the worker yelled, “Pedophile protector!” as Trump walked through. The White House defended the president’s response as “appropriate and unambiguous” … while complaining about Minneapolis protesters “putting their middle finger, proudly so, at the camera.” Seriously.

On Thursday, Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to restore order in Minnesota — seemingly a precursor to cancelling November’s midterms.

Trump told Reuters there was no need for the midterms. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted he was joking. If so, this was about as amusing as an oncologist telling a patient, “You have cancer. Just kidding!”

Meanwhile, there is the looming catastrophe of doubled or tripled healthcare premiums for millions of Americans, while others on Medicaid are booted off coverage entirely.

Oh yeah, and there’s also a little thing called the Epstein files. As of the middle of January, less than 1 percent of the Epstein files mandated for release by Dec. 19 via an act of Congress have seen the light of day — less than 13,000 of an estimated document total exceeding two million.

Here’s the thing: Trump and his minions love to pile on the pandemonium. It’s not a side effect of his authoritarian rule, but the point. It isn’t just about keeping the water perpetually on boil, to hold the Epstein files forever on the backburner. It’s also about keeping the opposition off-balance.

We can never zero in on a single issue with Trump, because bedlam predominates. No one thing can be successfully addressed because the target itself is both always moving and always enmeshed in a blizzard of targets. Trump counts on everyone being shellshocked — continuously bewildered.

But something else has also been at play since Trump took office a year ago Tuesday. Since there are no effective checks on his power, given the Supreme Court’s acquiescence to his administration’s every whim, he can do whatever he wants – and has.

Cabinet members are similarly powerful and brazen. They always seem shocked by pushback, reacting with rage and astonishment. We’re seeing this in Minneapolis. People including the president and vice president declare that up is down, black is white, and cold is hot, and no one can effectively challenge them.

Equally frightening, the masked ICE monsters breaking laws and smashing heads have been imbued with something resembling complete immunity.

The only thing giving me hope is that Republicans in the Senate are, as of late this week, vowing to stop Trump from seizing Greenland — a sovereign territory part of a sovereign nation, Denmark — by force. That any Republican would oppose their king on any issue for any reason strikes me as a minor miracle. Until they cave, that is.

It would certainly help matters to take at least one Trump-created crisis off the table, leaving us with only a dozen or so others. Though I also fear that if he backs off Greenland, part of the deal might be changing its name to Trumpland.

I’m not kidding.

Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.

Two women were killed. MAGA's reactions lay bare its callous indifference to reality

Like everyone, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about Renee Nicole Good and the horrible fate that befell her in Minneapolis last Wednesday. Given what we’ve seen on video, that there is even debate over whether she deserved to die is absolutely unfathomable.

Facts:

Good was murdered (not merely “killed”) by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, in cold blood, at point blank range.
Ross purposefully stepped into the path of Good’s SUV and made sure he was (briefly) in harm’s way before firing the first shot as Good attempted to steer around him. The second and third shots were the results of pure fury.
Good was friendly and peaceful and in no way gunning to harm any ICE agent — as seen on Ross’s own cellphone recording.
By contrast, Ross was rageful and homicidal, seemingly hellbent on murdering Good for the crime of failing to follow a ludicrous order. Or because her wife was talking smack to him. Or both. His dismissing her — after blowing her away — as a “f------ bitch” speaks to a devastating lack of respect for human life.
Good was initially denied lifesaving medical aid.
Good was not a “domestic terrorist” but a woman who had just dropped her six-year-old child at school. The only terrorists were the ones she encountered, wearing masks and vests.

Almost equally terrifying were the immediate attacks on Good from Donald Trump, JD Vance, Kristi Noem, and others in positions of authority in the administration — before they knew a thing about her.

Good was reduced to a supposed subhuman, by people who dismissed her as a deserving victim in their ongoing assault on Blue America.

Furthermore, the FBI quickly announced that Minnesota state officials would not be permitted to participate in any investigation into Good’s death.

In layman’s terms, that’s called a cover-up.

Now let’s travel back to January 6, 2021, and a justifiable killing.

Ashli Babbitt was part of the mob that Trump provoked to storm the U.S. Capitol. A 35-year-old U.S. Air Force veteran, she was an increasingly radicalized adherent of the QAnon conspiracy theory, conditioned to believe the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump – because he said so.

Despite multiple warnings not to proceed, Babbitt attempted to climb through a shattered window beside a barricaded door to the House Speaker’s Lobby. At that point, she was shot in the shoulder, from inside the lobby, by U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) Lieutenant Michael Byrd.

After a USCP emergency response team administered aid, Babbitt was transported to Washington Hospital Center, where she died. Found to be carrying a pocketknife, she was the lone insurrectionist shot and killed by police.

USCP deemed the shooting “lawful and within department policy” and to have “potentially saved members of Congress and staff from serious injury and possible death.”

Almost immediately, Trump and MAGAworld seized on Babbitt’s killing as unnecessary, with Trump himself describing her, to Fox News, as “an innocent, wonderful, incredible woman.”

Unaddressed was the matter of Babbitt having attempted to smash her way into a government building with potentially murderous intent, as part of an angry mob looking to halt the certification of a presidential election.

Again: she was warned repeatedly to stop.

To those behind Trump’s Stop the Steal movement, none of this mattered at all. Babbitt was a perfect martyr for the cause, despite her death happening amid violent mayhem.

Trump jumped on the narrative that Babbitt was sacrificed for being a woman and it was up to him to protect women — which, given his professed penchant for grabbing women by the genitals, could not have been more ridiculous. Nonetheless, he insisted she died for lack of protection.

In April 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice under President Joe Biden announced following an investigation there was insufficient evidence to support a criminal prosecution of the officer who fired.

The key word here is “investigation.” A real one took place.

In early 2024, Babitt’s family filed a $30 million wrongful death lawsuit against the U.S. government. It went nowhere until last May, when the Trump administration reached an agreement to pay a $5 million settlement on the civil complaint.

Then, in August, the U.S. Air Force astonishingly confirmed it would confer full military funeral honors to Babbitt, a decision that inspired anger from those who still see the January 6 insurrection as a black eye on America’s soul.

Former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger, a member of the House January 6 Committee and an Air Force veteran, called the decision “disgusting.”

Micki Witthoeft, mother of Ashli Babbitt, speaks in Washington, D.C., last week. REUTERS/Leah Millis

So let’s compare and contrast.

Last week, in Minneapolis, a woman in her mid-30s looking to assist those targeted by ICE, who was otherwise minding her own business and looking to depart the scene once trouble started, had three bullets pumped into her face, was denied immediate medical aid, and in death was instantly denigrated and defamed as a liberal agitator who got what was coming.

Five years ago, in Washington, D.C., a woman in her mid-30s driven by conspiratorial, delusional mania was killed for, it seemed, looking to harm her perceived enemies. Her death was mourned by the same people who now vilify Good, and her family was enriched with millions of dollars and given the thanks of a grateful military, as if she were taken while defending the nation.

What’s wrong with this picture? Literally everything.

What’s the difference between Renee Nicole Good and Ashli Babbitt and the way those on the hideous right choose to view the groundless murder of one against the killing of the other while engaged in a criminal act?

Pure, unadulterated fascism, and a callous indifference to reality.

Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.

Character assassination after a killing: how Minneapolis shows Trump's contempt for us all

Renee Nicole Good is dead. She was murdered in cold blood in Minneapolis by a masked federal agent who had to know his safety was never in question.

The agent ordered Good out of her SUV. She turned the wheels away from him to go home. He was apparently offended that she didn’t immediately follow orders, so he shot her three times in the face, twice as her vehicle veered away.

That’s my take from watching several versions of the horrible incident, recorded from a variety of angles. If your eyes don’t have cataracts, it’s pretty clear Good was neither trying to ram the agent (since identified as Jonathan Ross) nor interact with him in any way. She was frightened and just wanted to get out of Dodge.

Ross stood to the side of her car, out of its path, and was barely brushed as Good attempted to flee. Yet he felt that was sufficient justification to end the life of a 37-year-old mother of three, the widow of a military veteran.

The video has been dissected like the Zapruder film. All that’s missing is a book depository and a grassy knoll.

But those trumpeting the glory of ICE and MAGA didn’t require anything close to evidence. They made their calculation as a snap judgment. Our “president” saw fit to weigh in on Truth Social some two hours after Good perished on Wednesday, claiming she “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over” Ross.

“Based on the attached clip, it is hard to believe he is alive, but he is now recovering in the hospital,” Trump wrote.

Based on the attached clip — shot seemingly from at least 50 yards away in super-slo-mo, largely blocked by trees — it was hard to believe anyone could tell a thing. Ross didn’t receive so much as a scratch and any “hospital stay” likely amounted to minutes. But, you know, facts. Who needs them?

Very shortly thereafter, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem showed up ready for her close-up in shiny lip gloss and an outrageous ten-gallon hat.

Noem declared that Ross acted completely appropriately to protect himself from vehicular assault, while Good’s actions amounted to “an act of domestic terrorism.”

Yes, before her body was cold, Good’s character was assassinated. No “It’s too early to speculate” or “We’re launching an independent investigation.” No caution or restraint. Simply immediate justification, judge and jury, the unmistakable implication being that the deceased was an activist monster who deserved her fate.

It was a blatant, revolting lie.

Make no mistake, this was an execution in broad daylight, entirely avoidable too.

It wasn’t enough that Renee Good was another liberal head in the Republican trophy case. MAGAworld had to smear her too.

Vice President JD Vance branded her a “deranged leftist,” paying for the sins of all the other resistance moms.

The Trump-adoring radio host Erick Erickson labeled her an AWFUL, which stands for “Affluent White Female Urban Liberal.”

This was mere hours after the woman’s tragic death. No longer does being a lowlife attack dog come with a time moratorium.

Minnesota ICE shooting protest A man holds up a sign as people gather at the scene of the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good. REUTERS/Tim Evans

Things picked up from there, to move at warp speed. The feds stepped up to defend the shooter and frame the narrative. We were told that based on his training, Ross acted appropriately in discharging his weapon at point-blank range on an unarmed, fearful woman who was no threat to him.

As of this writing, Ross has been neither charged nor suspended. He is instead, in all likelihood, being regularly high-fived. The public is assured that all appropriate measures are being taken and to trust things will be handled internally. What could possibly go wrong?

It wasn’t long before the FBI seized control of the “investigation” and told officials in Minnesota their assistance wouldn’t be needed. The probe would now be a solo one, to the frustration and anger of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

This is an administration closing ranks and covering its tracks. Local oversight had to be sent packing, because what if it found that Ross’s actions went beyond a justifiable use of force? That wouldn’t do at all. Therefore, a corrupt group will conduct its own corrupt inquiry, leading to a corrupt partisan judgment, months down the line.

When the federal government kills a civilian and then obstructs the state from reviewing the evidence, it’s not safeguarding the process. It’s covering its ass.

These guys have seen the same videos as the rest of us. They know Ross is guilty of overreacting with rage in the moment and must be charged with voluntary manslaughter at minimum. They’re merely pretending to believe otherwise.

You can always tell when they’re being deceptive, which, let’s face it, is basically 99.9 percent of the time. In defending the indefensible, they grow increasingly loud and forceful.

As usual, they’re taking their cues from the Trump playbook, courtesy of the president’s former lawyer and mentor, Roy Cohn:

Never apologize or admit wrongdoing, ever.
Always counterattack, and always with greater force than you received.
Manipulate the media ruthlessly.
Use fear as both shield and sword.

So that’s where we are. The obvious message is that ICE can do whatever it damn well pleases, including blowing away a white Christian mom who loved to sing and write poetry. She committed the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, which is to say, wherever ICE gathers.

As my eloquent nephew Joey Lange declared on social media this week, “We are now at the edge of an abyss. ICE is no longer playing dress-up diet fascism.”

This time, Good paid with her life. Next time, it could be any one of us.

Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.

This is what happens when we are governed without shame

One of the precepts of Alcoholics Anonymous that drives the success of the program is the idea of healthy shame. It’s all part of taking a moral inventory and making amends. Applied in a positive way, free of guilt, shame helps to keep sober alcoholics focused. It’s meant not to drag one down but to increase motivation.

I bring this up to drive home the point that the concept of shame has disappeared entirely from the Republican Party. Its inglorious death matters because shame is so crucial in holding people in line. Without it, there is no behavioral code to which to feel bound. Integrity tends to evaporate.

I was thinking about shame and its utter absence from our discourse this week when I caught a glimpse of the shameful, vile alternative White House website revising the history of the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol — an event that anyone with eyes and ears understands was instigated, fueled, and perpetuated entirely by Donald John Trump.

The creation of this propaganda site was prompted by Tuesday’s fifth anniversary of the riot. It represents a horror show of lies and reverse justice that casts the event as a Democratic fabrication, laying the deadly armed rebellion at the feet of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Pelosi’s grim expression hovers in photograph at the top of the site, which asserts:

“The Democrats masterfully reversed reality after January 6, branding peaceful patriotic protesters as ‘insurrectionists’ and framing the event as a violent coup attempt orchestrated by Trump — despite no evidence of armed rebellion or intent to overthrow the government.

“In truth, it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election, ignoring widespread irregularities, and weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters, all while Pelosi’s own security lapses invited the chaos they later exploited to seize and consolidate power.”

It continues:

“This gaslighting narrative allowed them to persecute innocent Americans, silence opposition, and distract from their own role in undermining democracy.”

There is a timeline of subheads tagged, “Ashli Babbitt Murdered in Cold Blood”; “Betrayal of the President: Mike Pence Refuses to Act” (“…in an act of cowardice and sabotage”); “Stolen Election Certified”; “Mass Arrests of Patriotic Protestors”; and “Weaponized Prosecutions Target President Trump.”

The site further maintains that the nearly 1,600 “patriotic Americans prosecuted for their presence at the Capitol” were “mere trespassers or peaceful protesters treated as insurrectionists by a weaponized Biden DOJ.”

In the main, the site casts Pelosi as the chief villain who — in video footage culled from a 2022 HBO documentary, out of context of course — is heard taking “responsibility” for the mayhem. Trump, meanwhile, is billed as nothing more sinister than a pep rally cheerleader, the angry mob as enthusiastic peaceniks.

The risk in this attempt to turn history inside-out is that it will ultimately gain traction as somehow real. You know what they say about repeating the same lie: eventually it takes on the sheen of truth, as attributed to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

But let’s return to the notion of shame. It’s simply not possible that anyone who either worked on this atrocity of a site or serves in this toxic administration believes a single word of this insane J6 narrative. At best, they may cast it as an attempt at satire, however misguided.

No, this is about flat-out shamelessness. They lie and lie and lie, and feel not a smidgen of conscience. They have no trouble sleeping at night (or in the case of Trump, during the day) because no one in the MAGA crowd will call them out on their unfettered, unapologetic, chronic dishonesty.

The lack of shame isn’t a consequence of the Trump presidency but a primary feature. Consider the shameless refusal again and again to concede the 2020 election; the shameless normalization of direct conflicts of interest and Trump’s refusal to avoid profiting from his presidency; the shameless attacks on journalists and anyone else who dares question Trump's kingly authority; the shameless demands of loyalty while practicing none himself; and the shameless unwillingness to ever admit fault, exercise remorse, or practice self-correction.

We saw this shamelessness on display yet again on Wednesday when Trump and ICE Barbie herself, Kristi Noem, wasted not a second in tossing blame at Renee Nicole Good for her own killing at the hands of an ICE agent, for the crime of trying to drive away from mayhem. Who needs investigation when accountability is so extraneous?

When most of us are shown to be spiteful or vindictive or too quick to judgment, we change course, switching on a sense of decency, righteousness, civility. Not Trump or his aides. Their loyalty test surrounds who can show themselves most heartless and wicked without backing down.

Malice is a badge of honor. It’s confused with strength, much as fear is mistaken for respect. But there is nothing respectable about shamelessness. It is simply the art of being subhuman. How the evangelical community can’t grasp this simple fact, and still by and large backs Trump, remains one of the great mysteries of our time.

The shamelessness that Trump deploys isn’t incidental but strategic. He instinctively understands that norms matter only if people care when they’re broken. By violating them so loudly and so often, he brazenly tests the country’s tolerance for cruelty and emotional carnage.

So far, the message he’s received is that the guardrails of shame don’t apply to him. There are the rules of civil society, and then there’s the Rule of Trump that states as long as you don’t acknowledge the lack of scruples, your indecency will remain permissible.

This is how a proudly deceptive administration can create a website spouting a grotesquely outrageous narrative about what went down on Jan. 6. 2021, and have it seem like business as usual. The shamelessness that’s baked in is the unrepentant signature of moral midgets.

Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.

I'm trying to work out how ordinary people can support the worst American ever

We who follow this website spent the whole of 2025 wondering how it’s possible for anyone – much less seemingly a full third of the American populace – to support a literal monster named Donald Trump.

It appears to have little to do with his policy or ideology, both of which are nonexistent. No, this is about the man, a person who utterly lacks sensitivity, compassion, empathy, ethics, integrity, decency, and depth.

He looks to have been biologically denied the gene that produces genuine humanity. When he reacts to his environment with as much cruelty and malice as possible, it’s less an active choice than an impulse.

At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, Trump is the worst human being this country has yet produced, a collection of all the worst traits a person can conceivably possess.

Presented with a choice, he will reliably take the lowest possible road. Given an opportunity to correct course and lessen damage, he will double down and ramp it up.

We saw this in his responses to the recent deaths of Rob Reiner and Tatiana Schlossberg, the daughter of Caroline Kennedy, as he went into attack mode mere hours after the passing of each.

This is a man whose loyalty to others isn’t merely conditional but nonexistent. His instinct is to kick and pummel those who are at their most vulnerable. That may be the most grievous of his sins. He has no filter. The depth of his tone-deafness is staggering.

Like all sociopaths, Trump cannot conceive of a world, even a mere situation, in which he is not at the center. This makes him not just inhuman but supremely dangerous. His reaction to a nuclear crisis is likely to be, “Screw it, I’m close to death anyway, let’s blow this little planet up.”

He’s a compulsive liar, a cheat, a thief, a con, a racist, a xenophobe, a misogynist, an egomaniac, a traitor, a narcissist, a moron, and an abuser of the populace over which he presides as the most powerful figure in the country’s history — which he is, when you factor in the impotence of Congress and the support of the Supreme Court.

It’s inconceivable to those of us with any level of insight how anyone can actively choose to support someone as morally bankrupt as this guy, much less cast a vote for him to be the leader of the purported free world.

I don’t buy the argument that Trump’s MAGA supporters are just trying to “own the libs,” or that they buy his bull—- law and order rhetoric, or fall for his lies about everything he touches being great while anything anyone else does sucks. I believe they instead rationalize whatever Trump says or does because they misperceive his cruelty as strength and his menacing tone as honesty.

I am not trying to understand these people. I gave up on that during the first Trump administration. To my mind, they’re like the people who watch Godzilla and root for the monster. There is no reasoning with them. They’re basically brainwashed, in a trance.

My scientific study of them is restricted to my friend Dave.

Dave is a guy I met at the park in Los Angeles where I walk every morning. One day, he asked if I’d like some company. He seemed earnest and friendly, so I said yes. We became walking buddies. I learned he was retired from the sheriff’s department. He had a cop’s straight-arrow bearing.

Inevitably, we talked politics. It turned out Dave is a Republican. And yes, though he’s not conventional MAGA, he voted for Trump in all three presidential elections. This alone almost made me break off our burgeoning friendship. I wasn’t interested then, and I’m not interested now, in any justification.

At the same time, I knew I had to hear Dave out. I just couldn’t figure out how a seemingly decent guy — divorced with three kids and a steady girlfriend, living an upstanding life with a nice nest egg and pension — could possibly see a single thing worth voting for in Trump.

So, I had to ask. This was back in February.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Dave replied. “I’m not a big Trump fan. He’s not a guy I would want to hang out with. He’s kind of a jackass. But I couldn’t vote for [Joe] Biden. All of that woke bul—- and supporting trans policies, forget it.”

I had so many follow-up questions, all of which started with, “But…”

I decided to portion them out over time, in the interest of maintaining a bond with a dude I found myself caring about despite this massive area of disagreement.

So whenever something comes up that I want to get Dave’s take on, I toss it out. His response is some form of, “Yeah, Trump is being an idiot. He says a lot of stupid crap. I’d rather have someone else calling the shots — but never a Democrat.”

“And you don’t care that he’s a lunatic who’s killing the government and crushing democracy?” I invariably ask.

“I think you’re overreacting,” Dave says. “The system is working. You just don’t know it.”

And that’s where we leave things, entirely unresolved.

Dave has proven to be a caring friend, demonstrably not racist. We grab breakfast once a month or so, and he usually insists on picking up the check. He has in every way shown himself to be a decent guy, just one with, to my mind, a blind spot the size of the Grand Canyon.

Has this experience changed my thinking about the civility and intellect of Trump supporters? Not even a little bit. I still dismiss them as everything horrible that’s plaguing the country.

In making a single exception, I’m left more baffled than ever.

Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.

More Epstein, a Maxwell pardon, another election (maybe): what Trump will bring us in 2026

Well, thank God that’s over, huh?

Yep, that’s the good thing about years. Even the worst ones finally end. As you read these words, this one has only hours to go. No sentient being should mourn its loss.

On the other hand, few will ever accuse 2025 of being uneventful. An utter catastrophe, yes, but never dull.

What does 2026 have in store? Since it’s an election year (fingers crossed that actually happens), the odds are good that there will be no shortage of plots, subplots, plot twists, and, of course, continued threats to our way of life.

In other words, 2026 unfortunately may look more than a bit like 2025, though hopefully with a whole lot more of the good guys winning in the end.

With that in mind, let’s peer together into the crystal ball and look to predict Things Positively Guaranteed to Happen in 2026:

The midterms will be described as “the most important election of our lifetime” despite the fact this was also said to have been true in 2024, 2022, 2020, 2018, 2016, 2014, 2012, and in every election going back to Lincoln. (Apparently, democracy has the lifespan of an iPhone battery.)
No Republican will admit he or she was wrong about anything, especially the things they were clearly wrong about.
All politicians will claim, “The stakes have never been higher.”
A politician will say, “This isn’t about left vs. right – it’s about right vs. wrong,” just before launching into the most partisan speech imaginable.
Trump will spend at least half his time obsessed with polls. When they look good, they’ll be “proof.” When they look bad, they’ll be “fake,” “rigged,” “a scam” or all three.
Every midterm House seat will be “too close to call” – especially the ones that aren’t.
Every politician will run as “an outsider,” including the incumbents.
Republicans will promise to fix problems they actively block from being fixed. They will attack liberal “elites” while being funded by billionaires who own yachts with staff.
Trump will call every Democrat a “radical socialist” or “radical left scum” while expending significant energy making the world safer for pedophiles.
All news that Trump doesn’t agree with will be dismissed as “a hoax.”
The story of endless families being booted off health insurance, unable to pay soaring premiums, will dominate several news cycles … except at Fox News and in the MAGA echo chamber, where the issue won’t exist.
Any Republican who questions anything Trump says or does will be branded a “RINO,” a “traitor,” a “backstabber,” or “disloyal” – or all four. Trump will be loyal to no one.
Speaking of which, more “missing” Epstein documents will be uncovered in an FBI evidence closet labeled, “Do Not Open Until 2125.” They will be “discovered” after a clerk is bribed with a dozen bagels w/cream cheese.
House Speaker Mike Johnson will declare every question about Epstein “a witch hunt.”
Evidence of Trump’s diminished mental capacity will expand exponentially.
A major health crisis will befall Trump but every effort will be made to cover it up and brand it as “fake.”
Everyone who is brown or Black will continue to be targeted by ICE and tossed into detention centers or shipped off to a god-forsaken hellhole without anything resembling due process, because that’s the new American way.
Trump will quietly begin to scale back tariffs but claim nothing of the sort is happening, blaming it on more media fakery.
MAGA supporters will scream about free speech while demanding bans, boycotts, and punishment.
The administration will treat expertise as corruption and ignorance as authenticity. It will treat conspiracy theories as research and research as treason.
Later in the year, Trump will pardon convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. People will express their revulsion for a few weeks before it blows over.
Every other person whom Trump pardons will have a similarly horrible criminal past. These are the people with whom our president relates best.
Many more “drug boats” will be blown up in the Caribbean and people killed, yet there will be no actual evidence of either drugs or criminality.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will accuse all people who support vaccines of suffering from vaccine-induced autism.
The right will run an ad that is literally just ominous music, a blurry photo, and the word RADICAL in caps.
Trump will ask Congress to introduce a bill declaring January 6 a national holiday: Patriots Day.
Fox polls will find that the top issue for a majority of the electorate is stamping out “drag queens and trans teens.”
As infrastructure projects kick in, Trump and Republicans will claim credit for progress put into place entirely by Joe Biden, that they vehemently opposed.
A Fox panel will include one person yelling, one person shaking their head, one person asking, “But what about the optics?”, and a chyron in all caps misspelling DEMOCRACY as “DEMOCRISY.”
A Trump supporter will refer to this being “a doggy dog world.”
A scandal will break that should end a MAGA bootlicker’s career but will instead lead to a podcast, a book deal, and an ambassadorship.
There will be endless calls for unity, healing, and civility, immediately followed by fundraising emails titled, ‘THEY’RE COMING FOR YOU!”
Every losing Republican will scream “Fraud!” and suddenly care deeply about election integrity.
Trump will declare most races where polls show candidates behind as “rigged” before the first ballot is cast.
Every winning Republican will marvel at how fraud-free their election was.
A Republican will win a race by less than a point and declare a mandate.
A TV pundit will say, “Voters sent a clear message,” and then spend the next half-hour explaining why it’s impossible to read what voters were thinking.
The 2028 presidential race will begin approximately 11 minutes after the final 2026 race is called.

Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.

Thanks to Trump, a dark fate awaits us — but it can be a GOP electoral death knell too

You know how you’ve been listening to all the chatter about the expiring of the Affordable Care Act premium subsidies on Dec. 31 with about 25 percent of your attention? Well, it may be time to engage the other 75 percent.

Brace yourself, because this thing really is about to happen, devastating a giant swath of Americans.

It isn’t just some amorphous issue afflicting the lower class. No, ladies and gentlemen, it’s about to hit home for you too. The result of this expiration isn’t going to be abstract, gradual, or theoretical. It will instead be immediate, personal, and devastating for the millions who will be losing their health insurance almost overnight and millions more whose premiums will skyrocket.

That last part is where you probably come in.

See, premiums are going to rise for a huge swath of the country, not just subsidy recipients. It’s a death spiral effect. Healthier people drop their coverage first. Sicker people remain enrolled. Insurers raise their premiums to cover the higher average costs. More people drop coverage. The cycle repeats.

Working-class families will be hit hardest and most immediately. But not far behind will be older adults not yet eligible for Medicare including early retirees, self-employed and gig workers, and people with chronic conditions.

This has happened before. When subsidies shrink, enrollment drops fast, and the financial burden falls to those who stay in out of necessity.

Thank you so much, gutless and heartless Republican Party.

I’m pretty certain this is the one issue that’s finally going to screw these people – and by these people, I mean those who so gleefully and callously chose tax cuts for those who needed it least at the expense of the other 99.99 percent.

Sometime around about the second week of January, those premiums will be starting to double or triple, and folks o’er the land will be screaming about their president, “But I trusted him! Who could ever have imagined that a man who never showed an ounce of legitimate concern for people like me would screw me?”

What’s about to go down hasn’t happened at all by accident. It’s a deliberate act of sabotage. There’s no mystery. No surprise. No honest debate about tradeoffs. It’s just a rug being pulled without a thing supplied to replace it.

Oh wait, that’s right. They’ve proposed steering big cash money into something called health savings accounts — up to a couple thousand dollars! This is a bit like tossing someone a shirt, a pair of pants, a pair of shoes, and a quarter and saying, “There. That ought to be plenty to tide you over for the next year or two.”

It’s not just a joke; it’s an insult. And it’s criminal.

As with everything Donald Trump claims, he’ll say everything is fine with health care and it’s merely the radical left scum who are making a big deal out of this medical insurance thing. All they care about is making him look bad.

See, the enhanced ACA subsidies did something Republicans spent a decade claiming was impossible: they made the marketplaces work. Enrollment hit record highs. Premiums became manageable. Middle-class families who earned too much for help under the original law were finally protected from being bankrupted by insurance costs that bore no relationship to income.

Ending those subsidies rips apart that stability almost overnight. Faced with insane bills, people won’t “shop smarter.” They’ll do what millions have always done when health insurance becomes unaffordable. They’ll simply go without and pray they stay healthy.

Except, that isn’t how life and the human body work. Illness doesn’t care whether you’re covered or not. People still get sick. They still show up at ERs. They just can’t pay.

The systemwide consequences will prove catastrophic. Hospitals shift costs to insured patients. Employer-based insurance premiums rise. Safety-net hospitals face closure. State and local governments absorb the costs. This doesn’t save anyone money — it merely shifts the costs to those who can afford it least.

Medical debt spikes. Bankruptcies rise. Credit scores tumble. Health care becomes the leading cause of financial shock. It disproportionately devastates families earning $30,000 to $75,000, older adults, and people living paycheck to paycheck – in other words, those who can least afford it.

Preventable deaths will become unpreventable. When people stay away from doctors because they can’t afford them, there is far less early cancer detection. Diabetes and heart disease go unmanaged. Care is delayed. Conditions worsen.

Under the ACA expansion, there have been measurable reductions in mortality. But it doesn’t seem as if this concerns Republicans, who believe anything that helps the populace without political prejudice equates to socialistic evil.

You’ve already heard ad infinitum about how those in red states who support President Malice will be hardest hit. Mass rural hospital closures aren’t hypothetical.

Unless the Republican-majority Congress stands up to the self-defeating cruelty of this lawless administration, the health care infrastructure that President Barack Obama fought so hard to correct will be broken by design.

Politically, the gamble is as reckless as the policy. Health care is a third rail because voters understand it personally. They may tune out ideological arguments but they don’t ignore a letter telling them their premium just doubled – or that they’re no longer covered at all.

The backlash is going to come quickly, and it should. People will be shocked into action. They’re going to take to the streets, and no one will believe it’s all Joe Biden’s fault. All they’ll understand is that they did nothing more radical than try to stay insured in a system designed to fail them.

In response, the spineless Republicans will do what they’ve always done when faced with a revolt of their own revolting creation: they’ll try to disappear. But they won’t be able to run and hide for long. Sooner rather than later, their own bill will come due.

Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.

What do you get the dictator who has everything?

Despite this being a year when everything about the executive branch has been so horrible and destructive, Christmastime instills a vibe of generosity that can’t be ignored. Even those idiots in or adjacent to the Trump administration deserve something besides our contempt. It is in this spirit of giving that I present below my own list of holiday gifts for those who have been running things — at least in theory.

Donald Trump — President

A laminated list of grudges ranked by intensity of hatred.

(Color-coded for donors, prosecutors, and cable news hosts who didn’t clap hard enough or with the proper zeal.)

Melania Trump — First Lady

An illustrated coffee table collection, “Beautiful Stone Garden Forests of North America.”

(Features a foreword by Tucker Carlson praising the beauty of the freshly pavedWhite House “Roads Garden.”)

JD Vance — Vice President

A fully reversible ideology jacket.

(Populist on the outside, venture capitalist lining on the inside. Machine-washable morals. Ethical stain resistant.)

Susie Wiles — Chief of Staff

A fire extinguisher labeled, “In Case of Vanity Fire, er, Fair, Deny, Deny, Deny.”

(Rated for journalistic/social media emergencies and sudden vendettas.)

Stephen Miller — Deputy Chief of Staff

A red pen that edits in only one direction.

(Deletes words like “asylum,” “context,” “compassionate,” and “human.”)

Karoline Leavitt — Press Secretary

A spin-doctor’s medical supply bag for holding a Make America Gucci Again hat, Trump 2028 pin, a punching bag emblazoned with “Don’t Even Go There,” a deck of liar’s poker cards, and a Trump language decoder ring.

(In camouflage colors, the outside is stitched with, “A Bag for the Scumbags.“)

Pete Hegseth — 'Secretary of War'

A giant foam finger that points to his right and reads, “It’s His Fault.”

(Also, a bonus flask engraved with, “I Need Proof – 80 Proof.”)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — Secretary of Health

An anti-vax bingo set with squares including “DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH,” “THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW,” “NATURAL IMMUNITY,” “CENSORED FOR SPEAKING TRUTH,” “THE SCIENCE ISN’T SETTLED,” “MY COUSIN HAD A BAD REACTION,” “ONE DOCTOR IN A LAB COAT SAID,” and “MAINSTREAM MEDIA WON’T COVER THIS.”

(Also, the center square is a free space that reads, “I’M JUST ASKING QUESTIONS.”)

Pam Bondi — Attorney General

A Department of Justice mission statement written in invisible ink.

(Technically, it’s still there. Practically, it’s gone.)

Todd Blanche — Deputy Attorney General

A personalized gold desk nameplate that reads, “Whatever Happens Here is Obviously Joe Biden’s Fault.”

(Also a fog machine that deploys mid-sentence.)

Kash Patel — FBI Director

A poster-size enemies list with dry-erase capability

(For updating threats in real time, contingent on cable news bookings.)

All Trump’s Friends in the Epstein Files

A customized collection that includes T-shirts reading, “I Was Just Networking,” “No Comment,” “(Redacted),” and “I Don’t Recall”; a travel neck pillow that says, “I Deny the Premise of the Question”; a monogrammed private jet logbook designed for shredding; and a 900-page hardcover memoir entitled I Barely Knew Him, explaining how you repeatedly crossed paths with the same man on multiple continents entirely by accident.

Jared Kushner — Son-In-Law/Unofficial Advisor

A giant “I (Heart) Saudi Arabia” money clip.

(Must be large enough to hold $2 billion in cash.)

Elon Musk — Former Head of DOGE

A new federal agency to destroy.

(It will be frequently renamed and woefully understaffed, and its failure will be blamed on “woke bureaucrats” within weeks.)

Mike Johnson — Speaker of the House

A pocket Bible with footnotes written by Fox News producers.

(Features selective verses highlighted for those moments when he’s briefly cornered by harassing journalists.)

Kristi Noem — Secretary of Homeland Security

A cosplay badge labeled, “Tough on Crime.”

(Pairs nicely with a press conference backdrop of razor wire.)

Tom Homan — Border Czar

A wall calendar that’s just one never-ending emergency.

(Every day is labeled “NATIONAL CRISIS!” CAVA bag full of cash optional.)

Russell Vought — Budget Director

A do-it-yourself government shutdown kit.

(Includes talking points, blame assignments, and a prewritten op-ed about “discipline.”)

Steve Bannon — Ideological Influencer

A podcast microphone that only records grievances.

(Background noise is permanently set to “apocalypse.”)

Alina Habba — Attack Lawyer

A courtroom microphone with a mute button she can’t find.

(She still insists the trial is going extremely well.)

Rudy Giuliani — Disgraced Personal Lawyer

A new purpose, campaigning in support of renaming the country, “The Donald J. Trump United States.”

(The first press conference is set for Four Seasons Total Landscaping, naturally.)

And a few administration-themed stocking stuffers for the entire group …

Burner Phones
Do-It-Yourself Non-Disclosure Agreements
Alternative Facts Notepads
Fake Nobel Peace Prize Medallions
Gold-Plated Phone Chargers
Fact-Checker Evader Glasses
Nuclear Button Belt Buckles
Matching Loyalty Oaths Written on Dissolving Paper

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.

Immense peril has Trump flailing on historic day

At long last, it’s Release Day, ladies and gentlemen.

Possibly.

As everyone in the civilized world knows, Donald Trump fought the law, and the law won (temporarily). So, he had to sign the Epstein Files Transparency Act precisely 30 days ago.

Today, that bill comes due. This means all unclassified docs and investigative materials related to one Jeffrey Epstein must be put out into the world in some form.

Perhaps.

The mainstream media has been fairly breathless all week, preparing us for the looming possibilities. We can practically taste the feloniousness, the smoking-gun evidence, the pointed fingers, the coming grand jury indictments. the empty denials. The champagne is on ice. Pop the corks and grab the flutes, fellow Americans. It’s about to be party time! Merry Christmas!

Or, you know, maybe not.

First off, we know how defiantly lukewarm this administration is when it comes to following the law — any law, especially one Trump himself had a hand in creating.

We’ve come to appreciate its unshakable rejection of truth and transparency. It has this year consistently done everything in its power (and much that isn’t) to remain unencumbered by rules that govern the rest of humanity.

And whenever this lawless gang needs a helping hand, the corrupt majority on the U.S. Supreme Court reliably grants them “temporary” carte blanche to reject any check on their authority “for now.”

Besides that, Trumpistan can still concoct half a million reasons why releasing anything Epstein-ish today would compromise:

a) an investigation
b) national security
c) victims’ identities
d) KFC’s secret recipe of eleven herbs and spices
e) child-proof packaging.

There is also the little matter of the Trump Administration having had 11 months to block out, erase, wipe clean, obscure, and otherwise make vanish all documentary evidence that ties the president and his wealthy buddies to having indulged in any illegal/immoral activity with Epstein and his imprisoned harem of girls and young women.

By the time Trump’s Department of Justice and FBI were done scrubbing this stuff, it probably barely seemed like Epstein and his one-time best pal ever so much as passed each other on the street in the same town. A sample page might read:

“Mr. Epstein (REDACTED) and Mr. (REDACTED) were seen (REDACTED) in (REDACTED) by (REDACTED) for the purpose of (REDACTED).”

Officially, the DOJ/FBI has been redacting the files “for legal reasons” (translation: to protect the guilty), because even MAGA loyalists seem to have little tolerance for underage sex trafficking and child rape — at least in theory.

But if we’re looking at this with open eyes and firing synapses, the chances that a single thing Trump doesn’t want people to see will be spotted among these approximately 300 gigabytes of data would appear agonizingly slim.

No, none of us want to believe that, just like we didn’t want to fathom that Robert Mueller and his ballyhooed investigation into 2016 Trump campaign collusion with Russia wouldn’t save us. But that didn’t, and this won’t.

It isn’t because there wasn’t/isn’t likely massive evidence of guilt in both cases. Proving it when the perpetrators appear so shamelessly good at manipulating the law to their advantage, or simply ignoring it, is unfortunately another story entirely.

What has been regularly puzzling in the case of Epstein and his merry group of high-profile, well-heeled abusers is why Trump has fought so hard to keep the pressure-washed files from public consumption. If these case files have been so dramatically altered and obscured that they’re no longer even a mild threat, what’s he so damn worried about?

One answer may be that even if Trump isn’t personally endangered by any criminal exposure, the reputational risk remains — not merely for him but for others he’s protecting. Of course, if he can get away with transferring Ghislaine Maxwell to a country club lockup and weighing a potential pardon, the only remaining risk seemingly is in pissing the guy off, not breaking the actual law.

No matter what happens to the Epstein files today or going forward, however, there has already been plenty of political damage done to the Republican cult from this undying scandal.

The President of the United States has been soiled by his clear friendship and close association with perhaps the most notorious known pedophile and child sex trafficker in American history. This is not a minor transgression, even for a man capable of brushing off felonies and immoral conduct like lint on his tie.

While Trump’s culpability may never again land him in a court of law, in the court of public opinion his stock continues to plummet.

It isn’t the revelations learned in the files that are potentially damaging so much as the ongoing month-after-month speculation over them, which is why all the continued ministrations from Trump and Company to keep the crisis alive have been so curiously, breathtakingly stupid.

Too many of his MAGA brethren still like to pretend that a man who has never told the truth in his life, even by accident, is somehow practicing honesty in claiming he did nothing and knew nothing surrounding Epstein. The chances of this are approximately zero, as those who have to this point in their lives avoided brain damage understand.

It also isn’t as if anyone actually believes that Trump, as a proud self-proclaimed pussy-grabber, is above the sort of behavior that’s being so determinedly covered up. Quite the contrary, the shock would be in establishing indisputable proof that he steered clear of an opportunity because it was (gasp) wrong.

The truth is that we can scarcely imagine the president would ever practice decency or travel a road that shunned criminality. This in itself makes whatever these Epstein files contain or doesn’t contain pretty much irrelevant.

And if nothing comes out, or comes of, this ballyhooed would-be release, fret not, all ye fans of the rule of law. Unlike Epstein himself, his legacy is never going away.

Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.

This unforgivably hateful attack shows the true emptiness in Trump's soul

We know we shouldn’t be shocked by our president’s consistently disgusting behavior, and yet still we are.

Every. Single. Time.

This time, it surrounded the tragic murders of the great and beloved filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner on Sunday.

No one seemed to know what was happening early Sunday afternoon, only that two people at the Reiners’ home in Brentwood were dead. Within hours, it would be confirmed that it was indeed the Reiners who were deceased, and soon the speculation fell on it resulting from a double homicide.

The bodies were not yet cold when the Grim Presidential Reaper himself felt compelled to weigh in early Monday morning:

“A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!”

There is just so much to unpack here, not least being the pointless and gloriously passive-aggressive kicker, “May Rob and Michele rest in peace!” But let’s acknowledge that simply shutting up so as not to intrude on a family’s grief never seems to be an option for him. Neither is allowing someone who failed to properly kiss his a-- in life to die in peace.

A lifelong vocal liberal Democrat, Rob Reiner made little secret of his disdain for Trump and all he stands for, so any semblance of class or decorum from this dude was off the table. It’s also an established fact that his wrenching insecurity won’t permit any perceived slight, real or imagined, from being immediately addressed.

With the Reiners’ son Nick having been arrested and booked on suspicion of murdering his parents, it appears that whatever issue Rob Reiner had with Trump played no role in his death. But that is naturally irrelevant to a man who has no filter and — equally to the point — no decency.

What a hopelessly appalling, wildly inappropriate, and unforgivably hateful thing to post mere hours after any person’s death, much less a figure who was so universally adored. It’s flat-out astonishing, not only for its sickening insensitivity but also the portrait of vile, malignant narcissism it paints.

But let’s back up for a moment, because the real problem isn’t with the emotional toddler who inhabits the Oval Office.

It‘s with us.

It surrounds our unreasonable expectation that Trump will at this point ever evoke a measure of empathy akin to that displayed by an actual human being. If the years have taught us anything, it’s that Trump is tragically incapable of doing so. This is meant quite literally. He completely lacks the compassion gene in much the same way he is powerless to feel shame for anything he says or does.

It was (reputedly) Albert Einstein who defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” The madness, thus, resides within ourselves.

Let’s go back into the not-so-deep past, to examine some of the recent instances in which Trump has demonstrated a driving need to sink to the occasion.

October 2017: Trump placed a call to the widow of U.S. Army Sergeant La David Johnson, a fallen soldier who died in battle in Niger. Donning his cloak of sympathy, Trump assured her that her husband “knew what he signed up for.”

It wasn’t just that it was a cold and heartless thing to say: it was totally unnecessary. All he needed to tell her was, “He was a great man, and I feel your pain,” even if he didn’t actually feel it, since he feels nothing. But even this was beyond his capacity.

September 2018: Trump disputed the official death toll from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, claiming the numbers were wildly inflated to make him look bad. Because everything, even destructive storms, are about him.

September 2019: Trump responded to a question about the death of journalist and author Cokie Roberts by responding, “I never met her” (translation: they met) and noting that “she never treated me nicely — but I would like to wish her family well.” Getting in the dig before awkwardly working to soften it with an insincere tagline is the Trump brand, merging lies and veiled hostility in a single superficial package.

September 2025: Trump gave a mind-numbingly heartless response when asked by a reporter about the death of his friend Charlie Kirk and how he was holding up less than two days after his murder.

“I think very good,” the president said energetically, adding a sprightly, “And by the way, right there, you see all the trucks? They just started construction of the new ballroom for the White House … and it’s gonna be a beauty. It’ll be an absolutely magnificent structure.”

Yes, regarding that last one, it was clear Trump had no intention of permitting sorrow to intrude on his joy at the creation of a golden monstrosity in his name. People and feelings take a back seat to bucks and buildings.

The bottom line is that this person isn’t like you and me. For him, emotions matter only in terms of how he can personally benefit from their use, taking his sensitivity cues from fellow felons.

In that sense, for Trump, Rob Reiner’s life was worthless and his death meaningless, because in his world, true mourning is for suckers.

Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.