Monday marks the start of a week of planned chaos. Trump is panicking, running from the Epstein files and his cratering approval ratings. His answer is to incite chaos, sow confusion, and offer distraction to the easily distracted press. We must be the anchor in the storm. Look past the noise and confusion. See the arc of history bending to our will. Slowly, painfully, fitfully, but bending, nonetheless.
Trump controls the pulleys and rigging of spectacle—the military, the Oval Office, executive orders, shouted press briefings in the rotor wash of Marine One, a vanity social media platform, and a White House press corps fighting for scraps of disinformation to broadcast to an anxious world. It is all for show. Sound and fury signifying nothing.
We must remain steadfast. We must not amplify the chaos. Do not credit speculation or hearsay designed to generate fear-based revenue for tech giants and social media billionaires. Maintain perspective. With our hard work, America will emerge from this challenging period and return to the rule of law and the constitutional republic that has endured for over two centuries.
Yes, Trump is creating hardship for millions of Americans. He is curtailing liberties and marginalizing the vulnerable. He is corrupt beyond measure. But he will not defeat us. The power of the presidency is ours; it derives from the consent of the governed.
We can and will reclaim it.
Remember that truth as we navigate through the artificial fog of the coming week. We have the momentum as we head toward the 2026 elections, the first measurement point that will grade Trump’s disastrous second term.
Four mass shootings start the week.
Four mass shootings occurred on Sunday, September 27-28, 2025.
Guns are a plague upon America’s soul. The senseless massacres will not stop until we control guns. There will always be madmen and zealots who abuse the easy access to guns in America to kill and injure their enemies, real and imagined.
Trump ignored the problem of guns when he addressed one of the mass shootings (in Michigan). He blamed animosity toward Christians. (“This appears to be yet another targeted attack on Christians in the United States of America.”)
See Fox News re Michigan mass shooting.
See BBC re Southport, North Carolina mass shooting.
See KNOE8, Bourbon Street shooting leaves 1 dead, 3 injured
See KSAT, Texas: 2 killed, 5 injured in shooting at Lucky Eagle Casino.
In any other country, each of these stories would dominate the headlines for weeks. Sadly, in the US, none of them will be front-page stories on Monday. Indeed, the latter three stories were mostly absent from the national press.
Guns kill people. We must control guns.
The “shutdown” is about a constitutional crisis, not “Which party will get the blame?”
Democratic leaders are scheduled to meet with Trump on Monday. The Guardian, Trump to meet with US congressional leaders in last-ditch effort to avoid shutdown. He cancelled the last meeting because he said Democratic demands (obey the Constitution, reduce healthcare premiums) were “ridiculous.” The demands by Democrats haven’t changed, so it is unclear why Trump wants to meet.
The current spending authority expires on Tuesday.
The political press is missing the point by obsessing over which party will be “blamed” for the shutdown. See Politico, Republicans’ shutdown blame game is fracturing.
The real story is that Trump is violating the Constitution every day by refusing to spend funds appropriated by Congress—a course of conduct that makes any proposed budget meaningless.
The Democrats have one point of leverage: the Senate filibuster. If they do not use that leverage to force Trump to obey the Constitution, passing a new budget is a silly waste of time.
The concept of political “blame” has no relevance to demanding that Trump faithfully execute the laws passed by Congress—including appropriations bills. Any analysis of the upcoming shutdown that includes “which party will get the blame” is the type of “horse-race” political reporting that helped normalize Trump and propel us into our present constitutional crisis.
Trump will crash Hegseth’s meeting with 800+ military officers on Tuesday
When Trump realized that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth would use 800+ admirals and generals as extras in a video starring Hegseth, Trump couldn’t stand it. Trump announced that he will crash the event. See HuffPo, Trump To Attend Hegseth’s Opaque Meeting With Pentagon’s Top Generals.
Trump’s attendance is most likely motivated by his vanity. In Trumpworld, no one is permitted to occupy a spotlight that Trump believes rightfully belongs to him. Remember when Trump took over Dr. Anthony Fauci’s daily briefings on Covid and ended up suggesting that people inject bleach to fight the virus?
Trump’s last-minute plan to attend the meeting has incited a frenzy of baseless speculation about Trump’s “real” reason for meeting with 800 senior officers in the military. I will not repeat or link to those stories because they are wildly irresponsible. Suffice it to say that the stories all end with some version of “and then Trump imposes martial law.”
That claim is ridiculous.
Look, Trump couldn’t even fire a comedian from his late-night show with the help of an FCC Chair doing his best impression of Michael Corleone in The Godfather.
Why did Trump fail? Because tens of millions of people rose to protest Trump’s move. The American people would be significantly more passionate about an attempt to impose martial law than about their right to listen to jokes from the comedian of their choice.
More to the point, if Trump ordered the generals and admirals to impose martial law, he would have a global mutiny on his hands. Many senior officers would refuse to follow those illegal orders, as would hundreds of thousands of enlisted personnel and officers. The illegal command to impose martial law would fracture leadership and destroy unit cohesion and “good military order” within the ranks. The military brass understands this fact—and has undoubtedly communicated it in blunt terms to Trump’s henchmen.
We must be more disciplined and steely-eyed when Trump rattles sabers. The saber-rattling is reprehensible, period. But we must distinguish between the saber-rattling and the reality of Trump’s follow-through.
For example, Trump seems to be second-guessing his deployment of 200 National Guard troops to Portland, Oregon. See 11Alive, Trump seemed to cool on Portland military plan before moving forward.
Although the deployment went forward despite Trump’s hesitation, he seemed to acknowledge that what he was “seeing on TV” was different than what he was being told by his staff.
Per 11Alive, Trump said on Sunday,
Trump referenced a weekend conversation with Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, and he alluded to being told by Kotek that the reality in Portland is different from what’s being portrayed to him.
“I spoke to the governor, she was very nice,” Trump said. “But I said, ‘Well wait a minute, am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening? My people tell me different.’ They are literally attacking and there are fires all over the place…it looks like terrible.”
The initial response to the deployment was to mock Trump by showing Portland as the peaceful, beautiful city that it is, rather than the war-ravaged city described to Trump by staff. We should continue to mock Trump for deploying 200 National Guard Troops to a city that is at peace.
If Trump declares martial law on Tuesday during his meeting with the generals and admirals, I will issue a full and abject apology and then head for the barricades.
In the meantime, we have a democracy to save; standing around speculating about things that are unlikely to happen isn’t helping us achieve our goal. In fact, it is counterproductive.
Clarence Thomas suggests that the right to same-sex marriage is at risk
In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the Supreme Court revoked a constitutionally recognized right—the right to reproductive choice. The legal reasoning in Dobbs suggested that the Court’s recognition of the right to same-sex marriage was in peril. Justice Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion to assure nervous Americans that said, “Don’t worry, nobody is thinking of revoking the right to same sex marriage.”
Justice Kavanaugh wrote,
“Overruling Roe does not mean the overruling of [other precedents], and does not threaten or cast doubt on those precedents.”
Despite Kavanaugh’s assurance, Justice Thomas suggested over the weekend that the Supreme Court might reverse Obergefell, the case establishing the right to same-sex marriage. See The Guardian, Clarence Thomas says precedent might not determine cases on upcoming supreme court docket.
The Supreme Court has before it a petition for certiorari that challenges the holding in Obergefell. On cue, Justice Thomas said,
I don’t think that … any of these cases that have been decided are the gospel.” . . . And I do give perspective to the precedent. But … the precedent should be respectful of our legal tradition, and our country and our laws, and be based on something – not just something somebody dreamt up and others went along with.
It certainly sounds like Thomas is suggesting that Obergefell will be overruled. I hope I am wrong, but the reasoning in Dobbs rescinding the right to reproductive liberty applies directly to the right to same sex marriage recognized in Obergefell.
On the one hand, highly respected commentators have stated that the Roberts Court is unlikely to overturn Obergefell. See The 19th, Supreme Court isn’t likely to overturn marriage equality. (“The Supreme Court is unlikely to take up [Kim Davis’s] case, they say. And even if they did, the justices probably wouldn’t rule in her favor.”)
On the other hand, the Supreme Court landscape has undergone significant changes over the past few weeks. As Josh Marshall points out, last week the Supreme Court recognized a Trump legal theory (pocket rescissions) that was “comical.” See Talking Points Memo, It’s Completely Trump’s Supreme Court Now, And He Knows It.
The Roberts Court has completely surrendered to Trump. Will the Court overrule Obergefell? The answer to that question depends on what Trump wants—because whatever he wants, the odds are 90%+ that the Court will grant Trump the relief he seeks.
Concluding Thoughts
Readers of the newsletter were out in force over the weekend! Keep up the good work. When enough of us raise our voices, we protect democracy for all of us!
Photos of Protests and Rallies
Four photos below: Portland, Oregon
Below: Canvassing for Prop 50 in Lake Tahoe, CA
Below: Berkeley, CA
Below: St. Paul Visibility Brigade
Below, Chicago
Below, N Montpelier, VT—a powerful, evocative photo.
Below, Downtown Portland, OR
Daily Dose of Perspective
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