After a long, ugly summer and fall, the holidays are upon us.<\/p>\n
For some, it\u2019s turkey season.<\/p>\n
For others, it\u2019s eggnog season.<\/p>\n
For President Trump, it\u2019s starting to look a lot like lame-duck season.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s got less than a year before power in Congress is likely to change hands, putting a much-needed damper on his reign of terror against American institutions<\/a>, immigrants<\/a>, science and medicine<\/a>, political enemies<\/a> and free speech.<\/a> <\/p>\n (Sadly, even if the House of Representatives flips, Trump\u2019s war on good taste will continue. Am I the only one who thinks Trump, with his penchant for covering every surface with gold rococo<\/a>, is a 21st century version of the Bond villain Goldfinger, who murdered victims by slathering them in gold paint?)<\/p>\n The signs of lame duckery grow as Trump\u2019s popularity dips. His party was trounced<\/a> in the off-year elections this month. Inflation, which he promised to whip, has not abated<\/a>. Prices remain high<\/a>. Consumer confidence has plummeted<\/a>. Health insurance premiums are about to skyrocket. The Supreme Court does not appear to be looking kindly on his tariff schemes, nor on his plan to end birthright citizenship. Lower courts have defied him at almost every turn, most recently tossing out the absurd criminal indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James.<\/p>\n Now members of his own party are beginning to stand up to him. They effectively forced him<\/a> to sign the bill requiring the release of the Epstein files, something he\u2019d fought for months. During the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, Trump demanded that the Senate end the filibuster. No dice.<\/a> <\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s some signs of cracks,\u201d Bill Kristol said<\/a> in a recent conversation with Tim Miller on The Bulwark Podcast. \u201cAnd what we\u2019re seeing in Congress is that fear of Trump is starting to turn into a loathing of him.\u201d<\/p>\n Exhibit A: Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, once Trump\u2019s most fervid acolyte. <\/p>\n What a stunning breakup. Trump called Greene a \u201ctraitor\u201d for criticizing his attempts to block the Epstein files release, for accusing him of abandoning his commitment to \u201cAmerica first\u201d principles, and, in my view, for being aware enough to see that Trump\u2019s populist pose is a fraud.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I am cast aside by MAGA Inc. and replaced by Neocons, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Military Industrial War Complex, foreign leaders, and the elite donor class that can\u2019t even relate to real Americans, then many common Americans have been cast aside and replaced as well,\u201d Greene wrote in her four-page resignation letter <\/a>released late Friday.<\/p>\n Small cracks in the MAGA coalition are also appearing over Trump\u2019s expanding, potentially illegal war on drug cartels in the Caribbean. Turns out, one of the lines that a handful of Republicans won\u2019t cross for him is blowing human beings out of the water with no due process, or even reliable evidence that they are drug runners. <\/p>\n Nor is his party entirely pleased<\/a> with his desire to overthrow the Venezuelan government. His willingness to capitulate (at least so far) to Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s conditions for peace in Ukraine have enraged many Republicans. <\/a> <\/p>\n Trump\u2019s quest for the elusive Nobel Peace prize? I\u2019d have to guess that\u2019s not gonna happen. <\/p>\n The weaker Trump gets, it seems, the more extreme his rhetoric becomes. Last week, after six Democratic elected leaders with either military or intelligence experience made a public service announcement<\/a> urging members of the military to remember that they have an obligation to refuse illegal orders, Trump accused the Democrats of \u201cseditious behavior punishable by death.\u201d<\/a> <\/p>\n Our comically underqualified Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced Monday that he wants to court-martial<\/a> one of the six, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and Navy pilot who flew 39 combat missions in Operation Desert Storm and has a chestful of medals to show for it. (On X, Hegseth mocked Kelly<\/a> for having his medals out of order.)<\/p>\n Honestly, though, is there a better metaphor for the Trump era than demanding the death penalty for the \u201ccrime\u201d of speaking truth to power?<\/p>\n Trump is not just alienating congressional allies. He\u2019s also lost a chunk of voters who played a big part in returning him to office.<\/p>\n In 2024, more Latinos voted for Trump than had ever voted for any previous Republican presidential nominee, some 48%, up from 36% in 2020 and 28% in 2016.<\/p>\n Pundits held forth about a historic, potentially lasting \u201crealignment,\u201d of Latino voters, who have traditionally favored Democrats. But since then, Trump\u2019s popularity with Latinos has cratered<\/a>. Mainly, it\u2019s the faltering economy. But his mass deportations have turned off many Latino voters. Turns out they don\u2019t like the idea of being racially profiled in their own streets, nor do they like seeing photos of brown-skinned folks being flung to the ground or carried off by nameless, faceless government agents.<\/p>\n A new Pew Research poll <\/a>lays it out in stark terms: More than two-thirds of Latinos (68%) are pessimistic about their standing in America, and more than three-quarters (78%) say Trump\u2019s policies harm Latinos more than help them. In August, the Latino polling organization Equis Research found that about a third of Latinos who supported Trump last year have no plans to vote Republican<\/a> in next year\u2019s midterms.<\/p>\n That realignment sure didn\u2019t last long. Quack.<\/p>\n Bluesky: @rabcarian<\/a>
Threads: @rabcarian<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a long, ugly summer and fall, the holidays are upon us. For some, it\u2019s turkey season. For…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[7625,1752,43898,43900,43899,38195,48,52,51,47,50,49,2324,3906,43897,24696,4840,3020,1748,11466,2664],"class_list":["post-75594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-america","tag-congress","tag-crack","tag-foreign-leader","tag-greene","tag-illegal-order","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-member","tag-month","tag-more-latinos","tag-party","tag-power","tag-president-trump","tag-republicans","tag-sign","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}