Do you remember the Kavanaugh hearings? The hearings we now know were corrupted by the Trump White House, who had the FBI block all credible sexual misconduct accusations against Kavanaugh instead of investigating them. Do you remember the smirk on Kavanaugh’s face, the red flash of anger in his eyes as he tried to bluster and weasel his way out of the multiple accusations that he’d sexually assaulted Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and others during high school and college?
Do you remember the freezer trucks that had to act as morgues when Covid so overwhelmed the hospitals there was no other place to put the dead bodies? Do you remember when no one could get a Covid test, despite desperately needing one? We now know Trump sent them to Putin – not the swabs you have at home but the molecular testing machines that hospitals were in dire need of to rapidly detect infections. Sent to Putin, for his personal use. The same Putin that Trump has spoken to at least 7 times since leaving office – while still possessing classified materials that should never have left the White House.
Do you remember waking every morning with a knot in the pit of your stomach, terrified to learn what the unbridled, unhinged former president had done during the night, whether we were on the verge of World War III and annihilation? Do you want to go through that again – and worse? That’s what Trump (hereafter TFG: I refuse to call him by his name except when absolutely necessary) has promised if gets back in the White House.
TFG not only wants to put immigrants in detention camps and deport them, he wants to give them serial numbers. And he’s not going after only migrants. He's threatened vengeance against everyone he considers his enemies and has promised to use the Alien Enemies Act, a dormant 1798 law that gives the government power to round up and detain noncitizens and citizens. If you think that sounds alarmingly like Hitler’s concentration camps, you’re not wrong – especially considering that the book TFG kept by his bedside was ”Mein Kampf”.
Thanks to TFG’s abortion bans, women like Amber Nicole Thurman are bleeding out in parking lots because their doctors are afraid they'll be jailed for providing the necessary medical care. States are charging women who have miscarriages with murder. 10-year old rape victims must flee to another state to get an abortion after being impregnated by their rapist.
And while TFG releases trauma-inducing statements like “I am your protector.... you will no longer be abandoned, lonely, or scared. You will no longer be in danger .... you will no longer be thinking about abortion" and says that he will act "whether the women like it or not”, what he and his cronies are truly promising is a world in which they control women completely.
IN THE LATEST HORRIFYING NEWS, TFG is stating openly that he wants to make the economy crash, and he’s preparing to set that into motion immediately if, God forbid, he were to win. This has been his fever dream since 2014, when he said on Fox “You know what solves it? When the economy crashes, when the country goes to total hell and everything is a disaster. Then you'll have a [chuckles], you know, you'll have riots to go back to where we used to be when we were great." To make this a reality he’s promised to appoint his equally morally bankrupt confederate Elon Musk as the government’s “chief efficiency officer” – who says straight-out that people will have to “suffer hardship”. The world’s richest man, who could alleviate massive amounts of suffering with a minuscule fraction of his wealth, wants to send regular hardworking Americans into dire poverty while he, TFG and their fellow oligarchs continue to line their pockets.
In fact, TFG has a stable of destruction-addicts he plans to install to remake the government, including fringe-theory devotee RFK, Jr., whom he's promised "to let go wild on health, I’m going to let him go wild on the food, I’m going to let him go wild on medicines,” and Judge Aileen Cannon, who made TFG very happy by throwing out the Classified Documents case and who's on his shortlist for United States Attorney General or Justice of the Supreme Court.
TFG’s running mate, JD Vance – who’s changed his name so many times it’s a wonder he can keep track – would be a heartbeat away from the Presidency. (And it might be a very brief heartbeat, if Vance’s billionaire backers decide he should use the 25th Amendment on TFG). Vance is such a smooth liar that if you didn't know he was lying you might think he was reasonable. But there’s nothing reasonable about a man who says women being beaten by their husbands should stay in the marriage. Who wants menstrual tracking. Who admits he’ll lie to make a point, no matter the consequences, like the multiple bomb threats that resulted from his insistence Haitians are eating their neighbors' pets. Not to mention that Vance’s benefactors are ultra-far-right billionaires who say that America should be run by a dictator.
The horrors the GOP want to inflict on us fill more than 900 pages in Project 2025. Among them:
Abortion will be illegal nationwide. Doctors and friends who try to help a woman needing reproductive healthcare will be prosecuted and jailed under TFG’s abortion bounties and bans.
The Supreme Court will outlaw contraception. And same-sex marriage. Even, as some wags have joked (but aren’t actually joking) a woman’s right to vote. The failed SAVE Act – which you can bet the GOP will try to resurrect – would have gotten them halfway there: It requires a married woman who wants to vote to have a passport or other proof of citizenship with their married name, otherwise they’ll need both an original birth certificate with the seal of state and a current form of ID, both with the exact same name on them. Roughly 90 percent of married women voters have a different name on their ID than on their birth certificate, and an estimated 34 percent of women could be turned away from the polls unless they have precisely the right documents.
Social Security and Medicare will be gone. Those programs are not “entitlements”, as the GOP loves to call them. They’re programs we paid into throughout our working lives, with the express promise that we’d get that money back later in life. That’s our money the GOP want to steal – money many of us need to stay alive.
TFG will terminate the Affordable Care Act and replace it with … “a concept of a plan”, in other words: nothing. Do you remember what it was like when insurance companies could deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions? Do you know how many people in the US have pre-existing conditions? Between 20% and 50% of non-elderly Americans! The $35 cap for insulin will be a thing of the past. Instead, people will pay hundreds of dollars and will have to ration their insulin, putting their health at risk. (The inventors of insulin must be rolling over in their graves. They wanted insulin to be free and accessible to everyone who needs it.)
Your boss will be able to cheat you out of overtime pay. Your pay will no longer be based on a 40-hour work week but on a 160-hour month – which means your boss could force you to work dangerously long hours without extra compensation and could cut your hours later in the month to avoid paying you what you’ve earned.
The agencies that keep us safe will no longer be staffed by non-partisan civil servants and experts. TFG and the GOP will replace them with loyalists who serve TFG, not the Constitution. Clean air and water (protected by the EPA), safe food and medicine (the FDA), safe banking (the FDIC), and a mostly-unmanipulated stock market (the SEC) will be a thing of the past.
Meanwhile, as the climate crisis worsens, TFG et al will dismantle the National Weather Service, NOAA, USGS and FEMA, which alert us and respond to hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires and floods. Federal-backed flood insurance and disaster funding for state and local governments will go up in smoke. Even now, in the midst of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, Republican lawmakers voted against funding FEMA – even those reps whose states are full of hurricane victims. In contrast, President Biden approved immediate help: Emergency funds for hurricane victims for food, medicine & other time-sensitive needs; grants to help cover storm damage to homes, more than a thousand search-and-rescue personnel from FEMA, seven incident management teams, 400 ambulances, 20 helicopters, 60 high-water vehicles, and 20 million meals and 40 million liters of water to distribute to those in need.
Prices will skyrocket, thanks to the tariffs TFG wants to impose: 60% on goods from China, 20% on goods from other foreign countries. Despite TFG’s incessant claims, tariffs are not paid for by foreign countries but by Americans: The elevated prices that tariffs cause are passed along to the consumer (In fact, as Lawrence O’Donnell often points out, a tariff is intended to make consumers not want to buy a product because it’s too expensive.) Economists say these tariffs will cost everyday Americans an additional $4000 a year – which is shocking when you remember that most people don’t have even $400 in emergency funds.
TFG will cease all efforts at gun safety, American manufacturing, clean energy and tackling the climate crisis and roll back the protections we’ve garnered to-date.
TFG has promised to pardon the January 6th rioters. To pull the United States out of NATO. To encourage Putin to “do whatever the hell he wants” in Ukraine – or any other country he decides to invade. Similarly, he'll give Benjamin Netanyahu free rein with regard to Gaza. Two points worth remembering: Netanyahu used to sleep in Jared Kushner's childhood bedroom. And Kushner has repeatedly stated he wants to clear the Gaza strip so he can use it as waterfront property.
After years of bemoaning the fact that he couldn’t use police and the military against American citizens, TFG is now explicitly promising to do just that. Which shouldn’t surprise us, since he’s also promised to suspend the Constitution and “be a dictator on Day 1”. Just like the strongmen he so adores.
The Supreme Court will offer us no protection. Instead of reining him in, they have given TFG immunity. He could bomb a city, or jail – or execute – a political rival, and as long as he can couch it under “official acts” he’s immune. (This is even more chilling in light of his promise to take vengeance on his perceived enemies: Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, the January 6th Commission and every person who’s ever stood against him.)
In contrast, Kamala Harris’s vision has hope, joy, progressiveness and compassion. Harris – who’s the only candidate with experience in all 3 branches of government (Vice President of the United States: Executive branch; California Senator: Legislative branch; California Attorney General: Judicial branch) – has spent her career standing up for regular people, fighting against predators, greedy corporations and fraudsters. Her platform includes:
Codify the protections of Roe v Wade into law. Defend reproductive freedom and safeguard the privacy of patients and providers.
Ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, require universal background checks and support red flag laws.
Provide real help for both renters and home buyers by offering $25,000 in downpayment assistance for first-time homebuyers; building 3 million new affordable housing units; stopping corporate landlords from using AI to rig rental prices; preventing venture capitalists and Wall Street banks from monopolizing the housing market.
Provide tax cuts for 100 million Americans, including a $6,000 tax credit for families during the first year of a child’s life, a $3600 tax credit per child for working families and extended tax cuts for workers who aren’t raising a child.
Pass the John Lewis Voting Rights and the Freedom to Vote Acts, enshrining voting rights protections and expanding vote-by-mail and early voting and the Equality Act, enshrining anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQI+ Americans in health care, housing, education and more.
Enact a billionaire minimum tax; quadruple the tax on stock buybacks and increase the tax rate on long-term capital gains to 28% for those earning a million dollars a year or more. (Note: If you’re earning less than $400,000 a year, you will not pay a penny more in taxes.)
Strengthen Social Security and Medicare by making millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share in taxes. Expand and strengthen the Affordable Care Act. Extend the $35 cap on insulin and $2,000 cap on out-of-pocket spending to all Americans and negotiate to cover more drugs and lower prices. Include home health care for seniors in Medicare coverage.
Remove medical debt from credit reports and work with states to cancel medical debt for even more Americans. Extend Medicaid postpartum coverage from two months to twelve.
Crack down on anti-competitive practices that let big corporations jack up prices and enact the first-ever federal ban on corporate price gouging on food and groceries.
Fight to raise the minimum wage, end sub-minimum wages for tipped workers and people with disabilities, establish paid family and medical leave, and eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers. Sign landmark pro-union legislation, including the PRO Act to support workers who choose to organize.
Expand the startup expense tax deduction for new businesses from $5,000 to $50,000.
Support Supreme Court Reform with term limits, enforceable ethics rules and expanding the number of justices.
Tackle the climate crisis, advance environmental justice, protect public lands and public health, increase resilience to climate disasters, lower household energy costs, create millions of new jobs, and continue working with international climate leaders to ensure people worldwide can live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis.
Bring back the bipartisan border security bill that TFG killed and sign it into law. Improve border security, provide immigrants with an earned pathway to citizenship and intercept the illicit drugs that help fuel the opioid epidemic.
Continue to work for a cease-fire, more humanitarian aid and a 2-State solution in Gaza. (Mainstream media has barely mentioned that she and President Biden moved Netanyahu from his insistence on "Not one drop" of humanitarian aid to allowing a small measure. And Harris acknowledges far more needs to be done.) Continue to work with our allies to ensure NATO is stronger than ever.
Fight to ensure no former president has immunity for crimes committed while in the White House.
Accomplishing this will require a blue House and Senate, otherwise Republicans will block every attempt at improving Americans’ lives, as they’ve been doing shamelessly for my entire lifetime.
A friend of mine recently commented "Can you imagine what the world would be like if the Nazis had won WWII?" We could be on the verge of finding out – but orders of magnitude worse this time around. We cannot let that happen.
Vote Blue up and down the ticket like your life, and millions of others, depend on it. They do.
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REMEMBER: November 5th is the last day to vote, not the first. Vote early if you can, to avoid potential obstructions and violence.
To check your registration, register, find ballot drop-off locations and more: https://iwillvote.com/
NOTES:
https://kamalaharris.com/issues/
https://www.mediamatters.org/project-2025/definitive-guide-project-2025