On Wednesday, the US seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. When asked why the US seized the ship, Trump claimed there was “a very good reason,” but did not appear to know what that reason was. When asked what would happen to the oil on the tanker, Trump replied, “We keep it, I guess.”
[Sidebar: No, the US doesn’t “keep” the oil. It can file a civil forfeiture action in federal court, sell the oil pursuant to a court order, and deposit the proceeds into a designated account in the US Treasury, such as a terrorism victims’ fund. See Congress.gov, Enforcement of Economic Sanctions: An Overview.]
Trump has no idea about the justification, consequences, or details of the most significant US seizure of an oil tanker in US history. He either isn’t interested in the details or is incapable of comprehending them. Neither option is reassuring.
Trump appears to be dazed and confused about the substantive aspects of the presidency, and has been for every day of his two terms. At this point, Trump’s only interest in the presidency is continuing the grift that is making his family obscenely wealthy by monetizing US relationships, prestige, and resources.
Meanwhile, Americans are suffering under Trump’s heartless leadership—and they aren’t willing to take it anymore. The tide is turning, which is a statement of fact that should boost our confidence and optimism about Democratic prospects heading into 2026.
The lesson we should learn from our change in fortunes is that we must work harder, do more, and motivate more Americans to join us. We have no guarantees about the future, save one: If we give up, we will lose everything. But if we continue the fight, we preserve our ability to shape the future. The choice is ours.
On Wednesday, the political reporting outlet Bolts released an annual report on election outcomes. The news was encouraging: Democrats flipped 21% of GOP-held legislative seats up for election in 2025, while Republicans failed to flip a single Democratic-held legislative seat. See Bolts, In 2025, Democrats Flipped 21 Percent of GOP-Held Legislative Seats | Bolts
Per Bolts,
According to Bolts’ analysis, Democrats gained 25 state Senate and House seats that were held by the GOP, out of the 118 that were resolved this year in regular or special elections.
Meanwhile, Republicans failed to flip any legislative seats this year, losing ground even in New Jersey, where they had high hopes, and failing to gain several districts in New York State that Trump carried last year.
The reason for the trend in state legislative races is clear: Trump is single-handedly trashing the economy by pursuing self-defeating tariffs. On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve Chair, Jerome Powell, acknowledged that inflation is higher than otherwise expected because of Trump’s tariffs. See Reuters, Fed’s Powell says inflation overshoot caused by Trump tariffs.
Per Reuters, Powell said,
It’s really tariffs that are causing most of the inflation overshoot.
Everyone understands the inflationary effect of tariffs, except Trump. Indeed, he continues to falsely claim that foreign countries are paying tariffs when, in fact, US retailers pay tariffs on the goods they import, which are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. But deep in his bones, even Trump doesn’t believe his own arguments. So, he has taken to urging American consumers to cut back on purchases to control costs.
At Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania on Tuesday, he blamed Americans for purchasing too many goods. As described by Politico:
Trump stirred up fresh concerns Tuesday at a Pennsylvania rally that was supposed to focus on easing Americans’ anxieties over pocketbook pressures. Instead, he veered off script, at one point urging austerity amid the holiday shopping season by resurfacing a line from earlier this year that American kids should be happy with “two or three” dolls.
As described by NJ.com, Trump is The Grinch who stole Christmas, telling parents to beat inflation by buying fewer toys for their children.
Per NJ.com, Here’s why Trump is telling parents to buy fewer toys for their children. Trump said,
You can give up certain products. You can give up pencils. Every child can get 37 pencils. They only need one or two. They don’t need that many, but you always need steel. . . .You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter. Two or three is nice. You don’t need 37 dolls.
Even Trump’s enablers and handlers have been forced to acknowledge the cruel and clueless nature of Trump’s messaging. See Politico, ‘Never going to be pitch perfect’: Trump loyalists see an imperfect messenger. (“One former Trump senior adviser said, “[U]nfortunately I just don’t think Trump is temperamentally capable of reversing himself and saying, ‘Yes, affordability is a concern.’ He’s stubborn.”)
Not to be outdone by Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson is resisting extending Obamacare premium subsidies by offering a smokescreen of supposed “solutions” to the high cost of healthcare that all come down to consumers saving more of their paychecks to pay for healthcare out of their pockets. See The New Republic, Mike Johnson Finally Reveals GOP’s Health Care Plan—and It’s Rough | The New Republic.
Per The New Republic, Johnson told his fellow Republicans at a caucus luncheon that they should pick a handful of ten proposals from a slide deck, which included health savings accounts, allowing doctors to own hospitals, and “fixing Obamacare.”
Mike Johnson’s proposals to the GOP caucus went over like a lead balloon. As a result, Republicans are again circulating a discharge petition to circumvent Mike Johnson’s ability to keep legislation from reaching the House floor. In the most current petition, vulnerable Republicans are proposing a two-year extension of ACA premium subsidies (with additional eligibility requirements added). See The Hill, Republicans launch discharge petition revolt against leaders on ObamaCare.
Per The Hill, vulnerable Republicans understand that the electorate will blame Republicans for increases in ACA premiums, despite Mike Johnson’s contention to the contrary:
Republican centrists have been imploring leadership for weeks to hold a vote to extend the subsidies.
While conservatives appear intent on letting the subsidies expire and pointing fingers at Democrats, centrists warn that Americans will blame Republicans for spiking health care costs and their party’s thin majority will be lost.
There are 22 million people whose monthly premiums are set to increase significantly if the subsidies expire.
As Trump is trying to gaslight American consumers about inflation, he is doing his best to dissuade tourists from visiting America. Trump is demanding that foreign tourists seeking a standard visa waiver to visit the US for 90 days or less provide five years of social media history and intrusive data about family members. See NYTimes, U.S. Plans to Scrutinize 5 Years of Social Media History for Foreign Tourists. (Behind paywall.)
Per the Times,
The change would affect visitors eligible for the visa waiver program, which allows people from 42 countries to travel to the United States for up to 90 days without a visa as long as they first obtain electronic travel authorization.
In a document filed on Tuesday in the Federal Register, C.B.P. said it plans to require applicants to provide a long list of personal data including social media, email addresses from the last decade, and the names, birth dates, places of residence and birthplaces of parents, spouses, siblings and children.
Europeans are increasingly privacy-conscious and have enacted strong protections against the collection and recording of personal data. They will hate Trump’s new data collection efforts.
Tourism to the US has declined over the last nine months under Trump’s anti-immigrant policies, tariffs, and xenophobia. See The Independent, US is the only country facing tourism decline as Trump policies to cost $29 billion in visitor revenue.
Per The Independent,
[T]he U.S. is expected to be the only one out of 184 countries to see foreign visitor spending fall in 2025, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.
For comparison, while US tourism revenue decreased by $29 billion in 2025, tourism revenue in Mexico increased by $281 billion in 2025.
The $29 billion hit to tourism in 2025 comes before Trump imposes intrusive, offensive data collection practices on foreign visitors. We should expect the hit to tourism to get worse—which will further exacerbate economic anxieties. The decline in tourist dollars is not abstract. It is affecting destinations that provide a significant source of income for local residents. See Travel and Tour World, Grand Canyon Joins Bryce Canyon, Crater Lake, Yellowstone, and Yosemite in Tourism Freefall – American Natural Icons Are Struggling to Survive as Canada Ditches US and Trade War Escalates.
Trump’s increasing militarization of anti-immigration efforts is undoubtedly partly to blame for feelings that tourists are unwelcome or, even worse, subject to arrest, detention, and immediate deportation. Trump’s fixation on using the US military as a Praetorian Guard is shocking to Americans—and must be more so to foreign tourists considering a visit to the US.
For example, on Wednesday, US District Court Judge Charles Breyer ruled (again) that Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to California violated federal statutes and the Constitution. See Talking Points Memo, Judge Blocks Federalization of California National Guard, Saying It’s Become ‘National Police Force’.
Per TPM,
Judge Charles Breyer, a Clinton appointee, wrote that there is no feasible reason to justify the continued use of the troops months after the June protest that prompted their mobilization. . . . “That is shocking,” he wrote. “Adopting Defendants’ interpretation of Section 12406 would permit a president to create a perpetual police force comprised of state troops . . . .
Trump wants the world to believe the US is a police state—which is the point of the intrusive social media interrogation for a visa waiver.
In short, nearly everything Trump does is undermining the US economy—even as he tells voters that “there is nothing to see here, move along.” Americans shop for groceries, and they know that Trump is lying to them. They also know that Trump is in charge of the economy and promised that prices would drop on “day one” of his second term.
So, I end where I began: “Trump is single-handedly trashing the economy.” Voters aren’t going to forget that they elected him to reduce prices, and they intuitively understand that tariffs cause prices to increase.
Democrats managed to seize the affordability narrative in the November 4 and December 9 elections. We can do it again as Trump continues to make life more difficult and more expensive by increasing the cost of healthcare premiums.
We cannot take satisfaction from the fact that Trump is causing widespread economic suffering among Americans. But we should leverage that fact to extract every ounce of political advantage we can.
Concluding Thoughts
Despite the failures and struggles of Trump and the MAGA movement, Democrats are quick to point out that the Democratic message has failed to gain purchase in the minds of the electorate. That criticism is self-evidently true because it is repeated so often by Democrats themselves.
While I don’t mean to make excuses for anyone, it is not a fair characterization to say that Democrats are not trying to improve their messaging. November 4 and December 9 demonstrate that Democrats have seized control of the narrative in the hearts and minds of the electorate.
We must also recognize that Democrats still honor and respect dedication to the truth as a necessary virtue to the continued existence of democracy. Republicans operate under no such constraint. It is easier to create snappy messages when the truth does not matter.
For example, Trump repeatedly promised to “bring down prices on day one” of his administration. That claim was an intentional falsehood that Kamala Harris refused to adopt in her commitments to voters.
Moreover, as the minority party, most Democratic messaging is necessarily reactive and oppositional. So, as Republicans attempted to pass the Big Ugly Bill, Democrats offered the following amendments, which give a clear picture of Democratic priorities:
Protect Social Security and Medicare.
Preserve Medicaid funding under the Affordable Care Act
Remove onerous eligibility restrictions for Medicaid recipients
Protect SNAP (food assistance) benefits from cuts
Restore funding for Affordable Care Act subsidies
Block tax cuts for corporations earning over $1 billion annually
Increase child tax credits for low- and middle-income families
Prevent reductions in housing assistance programs
Guarantee funding for veterans’ healthcare services
Maintain federal support for climate change research and renewable energy programs
Restore cuts to research for science and medicine
My point is that Democrats have a vision and a message. It takes a bit of attention and effort to identify the vision and message, a situation that needs improvement. But let’s not exacerbate the inaccurate perception that Democrats don’t have an agenda or a vision. They do.
But if Democratic faithful repeat the falsehood that their party’s only platform is “We aren’t as bad as Trump,” people may believe that misrepresentation of the situation.
Let’s be part of the solution, not part of the problem. We must convince persuadable independents and unhappy Republicans that there is a reason to vote for Democratic candidates. We saw those reasons during the fight over the Big Ugly Bill, the October shutdown, and the current fight over ACA subsidies.
There is more, but it is late, and I need to hit “send” on this newsletter. You get the point!
Talk to you tomorrow!
Pro-democracy protest photos
West Lebanon, NH
Snellville, GA
On Black Friday, a small group of Indivisible Gwinnett members held a sign-waving at the corner of a very busy intersection in Snellville, GA’s main shopping area. The response by passing motorists was totally positive. The photo below is of just two of our participants.
Daily Dose of Perspective
IC 443, also known as the Jellyfish Nebula, is a supernova remnant located 5,000 light-years from Earth. The nebula is significantly larger than the portion shown below, but much of the nebula requires a specialized filter (Oxegyn-III) to capture the full extent of the nebula. The blue traces on the right side of the nebula hint at the gases that are beyond the unaided visual spectrum.
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