This week, our democracy turned 250 years old and celebrated with its back turned to its president. He couldn’t make himself relevant to our anniversary with even his fireworks display or his Great State Fair because he has done nothing, at home or abroad, to further the cause of freedom.

At home, Mr. Trump attacks the institutions that protect our freedoms and deploys his troops to round people up. He regularly coerces businesses, bully’s universities, attacks journalists, and undermines judges. Lying to America, he says he targets dangerous criminals to make us safe. In fact, his troops are on our streets taking nurses, farm workers, day care center employees, drivers, restaurant employees. They are taking men and women who entered the country legally and regularly showed up for court hearings to determine validity of their requests for asylum. Ten thousand people a week are now being captured, held in private prisons, shipped around in shackles on leased buses and chartered jets, and removed to any country that our tax dollars pay to take them. The only relationship between any of this and our long commitment to human freedom or dignity is a negative one.

Nor is Mr. Trump concerned with unalienable rights. He has perverted the U.S. Justice Department to such an extent that the government has lost the presumption of regularity - the idea that when the Department goes to court it tells the truth. Grand juries across America have refused to return indictments as the Americans who sit on those juries now regularly determine the government’s desire to indict runs counter any evidence they present. When jurors have indicted, we have now learned, the Justice Department misled them. Even the most basic rights like citizenship mean nothing to Mr. Trump. Thankfully, by a 5-4 vote, his Executive Order stripping citizenship from millions born here was ruled unconstitutional.

His antipathy to human freedom and dignity is not limited to his domestic agenda. Americans paid for and developed an enormous defense capacity. It was an effort we sustained over generations to keep us safe and to further the cause of freedom in the world. In Mr. Trump’s hands, that power is squandered.

Instead of earning global respect for deploying forces in the service of freedom, we now earn global dread for deployments merely in the service of destruction or coercion. He has ordered our military illegally to kill fisherman in the Caribbean and Pacific without trial or declaration of war. He ordered them to capture the President of Venezuela so he could be charged for crimes in U.S. Courts. At the time, Trump said the United States would run Venezuela. But as that beleaguered country struggles to recover from a devastating earthquake, neither Venezuelans nor anyone else in the world, sees any benefit from being “run” by America.

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Then there is Iran. In that catastrophic failure, America’s armed forces achieved what no enemy every could - we empowered Iran to block the most important commercial waterway in the world. And the Commander-in-Chief’s wanton use of Patriot missiles dangerously drew down stockpiles and emboldened the enemies of the very freedoms we celebrate on the Fourth of July.

And Russia. Which knows that Donald Trump has no interest in protecting Ukraine. Even without direct American help, Europe has been able to purchase U.S. Patriot missiles and deliver them to Ukraine. Now, because of the folly in Iran, we no longer have sufficient numbers to Patriots to sell. Russia knows that, and according to the New York Times, this week it “launched 68 missiles and 351 drones into Ukraine, according to Ukraine’s Air Force. None of the 23 ballistic missiles were intercepted.” The only defense against those 23 ballistic missiles are Patriots. Freedom in Europe suffers when America fails. Meanwhile, in Asia, this week, an emboldened China test fired new long-range, submarine launched ballistic missiles.

The ideas of freedom, human dignity, and unalienable rights have not merely been celebrated by Americans, we have fought and died for them throughout our history - at Lexington, Gettysburg, Iwo Jima, and the beaches of Normandy. We struggled over generations to live up to them. On Blair Mountain, at Seneca Falls, on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, in front of the Stonewall bar, at Standing Rock. This July 4, we celebrated the 250th year of holding these values dear and, for many, that meant celebrating without celebrating Trump.

Now in fairness, not every American ignored Donald Trump this Fourth of July. Many Americans still follow him on his dark road. I spoke with one of them this week. He said that Democrats are communists who want to take control of the private sector. He told me that doctors are wrong to prescribe pills when living right is what makes us healthy. He told me Mexicans work hard but some are criminals, and that’s who we are rounding up. What I heard in there was that we still have a lot of work to do in our long fight for freedom, human dignity, and those unalienable rights.

On our great birthday, I celebrated our resolve to continue that fight.

I’ve written elsewhere that the American character is wedded to the idea of freedom not because Thomas Jefferson penned those beautify words 250 years ago, but because Americans have, ever since, struggled and bled to make them true.

My friend, has fought for decades to open up our economy to every American. She designs, implements and defends programs that make business opportunities available to everyone.

We talked about Chief Justice John Roberts and others who say racial discrimination is a thing of the past. She wasn’t having it.

I always want to ask them was well okay if the problem got fixed can you tell me when that happened? Because I missed the memo. I have worked on probably 100 statistical and anecdotal studies of minority and women businesses all across the country with all kinds of organizations- federally funded contracts, federal agencies, states, local agencies. What we see everywhere is that without some type of affirmative intervention in a marketplace that still is infected with the continuing effects of discrimination, the dollars go to very large firms and firms owned by white males. One of the most aggravating and frustrating things about having these conversations with people is that you want more competition for your work. if you’re the city of Chicago, you don’t want the same five guys passing around the contracts all the time. It doesn’t serve the public. It doesn’t serve the taxpayers.

Just because the Trump administration claims there are no racial barriers in the United States doesn’t make it so. The examples are all around us. How do you vote when your polling place moved, and no one told you? How does your company bid on a job if you don’t know the process for bidding? How does a child learn when she comes to school hungry and no food is provided?

We talked about the historic about-face of the Justice Department. Colette talked about a recent case that hadn’t received a lot of attention,

The Justice Department under President Biden was in the process of negotiating a consent decree with the state of Louisiana about what’s called Cancer Alley. There are refineries that ring the Gulf of Mexico and in poor black communities where [higher than average] cancer rates been proven using the type of statistical analysis that I’ve been using in my own work for decades. [The government] was on the verge of a consent decree then Pam Bondi comes in that’s it.

So those people are going to be sicker. And I want somebody to tell me why sicker citizens is something we want. How does that fit into both our constitutional heritage as we approach the fourth? Also just from a practical standpoint, sick people cost money and sick people aren’t productive. So, they are both ignoring the Constitution, engaging in discrimination.

Colette spoke of the rhetoric that makes everyone think the problems they face are just their own and nothing bigger. She explained how that keeps people from organizing and building the coalitions we need to gain our share of the wealth and power being horded by folks at the top.

She also talked about her dad, a Tuskegee Airman, and her grandfather, an organizer of anti-lynching efforts in South Carolina in the early 1900s. She told me they saw what our country was, but also what it could be, and were willing to die to get us there.

I’m inspired by that. Looking at the autocrat’s festival on the National Mall, the one that is attracting almost no Americans, and thinking about the millions who will celebrate elsewhere around the country, I too see what our country is and what it can be.

For the sacrifices of so many before now, for the work of so many in our own time, and for the yet-to-be-realized idea of a truly multiracial, multi-faith democracy where all are welcome fully to contribute and fully to participate there really is a lot to celebrate on this Fourth of July.

I began by describing the way Republicans and some Democrats are reacting to the results of the recent primary in New York, both saying the party is nominating people too far to the left to win. I knew John would want to set them straight and he did.

There’s an interesting thing that happens when progressives start to do well in primaries. Initially it was unimaginable that an immigrant from Africa who was Muslim and who was 33 years old could be elected mayor of New York City. And whoop, there you go. Mamdani is elected mayor of New York City.

Then there’s, okay well that happened because he’s got a remarkable personality or something. He’s a great communicator whatever, but it can’t it can’t be replicated. It can’t happen again. And then, of course, you saw in all sorts of special elections over the last year, and now in these primary elections, people who Mamdani has backed have won a bunch of races.

You say, oh, well, okay, then that can only happen in New York. But then Chris Rabb won down in Philadelphia.

John is not handwringing about primary results. Nor is he fooled that the results in these elections are a sign of a takeover of the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party is a great big party. It’s a national party and you will have folks who come from different perspectives in different places.

It’s very funny to me that many of the people who say, oh, the party’s going off the rails, or it’s going to extremes or say that we’ve got to get back to the FDR, to the progressive coalition.

But if you remember the FDR coalition, it included radical folks from New York City, as well as some pretty nasty folks from, you know, some southern states. It included prairie populists from out in the Midwest. It was a very ideologically diverse party.

John provided some history going back to the founding of the Republican Party in Ripon, Wisconsin. He talked about the kind of politics that worked in America when there were two big tent parties. He described the mode of evolution that contributed to the growth of both parties and to social progress in the United States.

Then he contrasted that with the present moment where we no longer have two big tent parties. Today’s GOP is a smaller, ideological or perhaps personalists party. So, when Democrats look to compromise, John explains,

it’s compromising with extremism on the other side. It’s not compromising with the old Republican Party. It’s compromising with people who are taking very, very extreme stances, often stances that are at odds with, a fair distribution of our resources that are wrongheaded on issues of foreign policy and are very troubling as regards democracy.

As a man who writes about politics and cares passionately about America’s future, it’s no surprise that he is a fan of Thomas Paine. I asked him why Paine is still relevant on our 250th birthday.

If you read Common Sense, which I really recommend as a good activity for July 4th, it is an argument against monarchy. It’s an argument against oligarchy. It’s basically saying there’s a better way to do things.

If you read his American crisis, which is what the pamphlet that that Washington had read to the troops, it’s an argument for a patriotism that that can be difficult and demanding and challenging, but you do it because you want to achieve great things.

And if you read his pamphlet, less known Agrarian Justice, which was written in the 1790s, you find you he argued for something, that you might call Social Security. He said that we should tax wealthy people and make sure that we had a country where older people could get the care they needed, younger people could get access to education.

And why did he argue for that? because he said that’s how you achieve democracy when people have, at least some level of security so that then they can go into the great debates about the future of this country, not, in the worst of circumstances, but with a place at the table.

John sees evolution in our big political parties and in our national politics. And he sees the political fights along, brutal as they often are, as the necessary struggle to build a more just nation.

Give a listen, and as always, let us know what you think.

I know, we get pretty vocal when we show up at a congressional town meeting to hear from folks in power who want to shove a data center or an ICE detention camp down our throats. But, Americans are not the grumpy, miserable, angry people they tell us we are.

It’s true we don’t like it when our government’s decisions raise prices on everything. When our representatives give big breaks to people who are already so rich they can buy multiple private jets and then tell us can’t help with the price of food or keep local hospitals open. I get that we don’t like it when our government pays to fly negotiators to foreign countries to make deals that benefit the negotiators personally and do nothing for the rest of us. And I’ve seen grown man scream when they watch a speech telling us we have a peace deal with Iran at the same time we are bombing Iran. Yes, we can get pretty worked up about that sort of thing. But America is only grumpy and miserable when we think about what our government is doing to us.

When we, instead, think about each other we have a lot of fun. Consider the joy that was so evident across the country this weekend during Pride parades. Millions of Americans, happy to be there. Celebrating each other and our great diversity. Everyone was welcome. You didn’t have to be gay. You could show up covered in a headscarf or barely covered at all. No judgment, just the joy of all being together. The joy of knowing that we can all be together. Church congregations marched. Corporations sponsored floats. Everyone, the marchers and the crowds beside the march sharing the pride of living in a place where we can be who we are, where we can love who we love. Two million in New York. A million in Chicago. Add in Seattle and elsewhere… big happy, cheering crowds.

It isn’t just the parades. This week I accompanied a foreign visitor to walk around the grounds of the new Obama Center. What did we find? In addition to new parkland, gardens, and play areas, we found ourselves among a crush of visitors bursting with happiness and pride in our nation. Happy to celebrate the idea that America is still making progress. Proud to be in a place where we can be who we are. A place where individual identities are celebrated for making our collective nation more interesting, more resilient, and far stronger.

There is a legitimacy to the joy and pride Americans feel when we gather to celebrate each other that cannot be faked. For fake, just wander over to the small and petty party on the national mall. Billed as the Great American State Fair, this slapdash effort looks more Potemkin than anything you would actually see 50 states or six territories.

Instead of massive happy crowds, visitors can experience the profound solitude of standing on the empty grass. They can stand beneath Trump’s triumphal arch, marvel at its chipped paint and shoddy workmanship and ask, was this a middle school art project. The entertainment? Mostly cancelled. The rodeo? One visitor described it as low energy. Who ever heard of a low energy rodeo?

Then there’s the FOX coverage of the fair. Commentators sit at a booth in front of a largely empty space and tell us turnout is great.

Here’s the thing about the real America. Those FOX commentators would be welcomed at a Pride Parade like every is welcome. And when they report that turnout is great and people are happy, they will experience something wonderful and new- the truth.

Today Susan began by discussing some of the SCOTUS rulings. At one point, after noting that Alito got upset when Justice Sotomayor read her dissent from the bench Susan couldn’t have been clearer:

Alito responded from the bench because we know he’s incredibly thin skinned. He gives speeches at all of these ultra conservative groups where he just bitches nonstop about the fact that he should be above reproach.

Nobody should dare question him and how aggrieved and oppressed he is as a rich white conservative man in America. And he clearly did not care for the fact that a fellow justice was willing to call him on his BS.

I’d say, just when you think it can’t get worse… but with Trump in the White House it will always get worse. It took 250 years to get a president this bad and Supreme Court thinks we should give him more power?

This session made one thing absolutely clear: SCOTUS thinks of itself as our supreme legislative body rather than as a court of law. They prefer laws that Congress did not pass. They dislike laws Congress did pass. So, they abuse their power to write their own.

Democrats, should they take back power in Congress will accomplish nothing unless they first rein in SCOTUS’ overreach. John Roberts has no high ground to stand on to complain when a new Congress expands the court, sends some of them to senior status, creates exceptions about what they can rule on, etc. After all, Roberts has allowed all sorts of important institutions to be transformed this cycle. Why should SCOTUS be any different?

Towards the end of our conversation, we talked about the upcoming 4th of July holiday. I’m optimistic. Americans aren’t celebrating just the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. We are celebrating the generations-long struggle to live up to it. That struggle, more than the words themselves, is what forged the determination to be free into the American character. We are far stronger that Donald Trump, John Roberts, or the MAGA Congress.

Join us every Tuesdays 12 pm eastern / 11am Central time.

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Donald Trump and John Roberts deliver so much bad news so fast that keeping up becomes so all-consuming there’s no time to think about the extent of the damage they are doing. That’s part of the autocratic playbook.

I’m not going to fall for it. Instead, I’d like to stop and consider the damage SCOTUS has done this term in just two of its decisions. They cover very different topics but suffer the same flaws. Together, the decisions in Callais and Mullin v. Doe, damage the rule of law, damage American society, and further cement this court’s terrible reputation.

Callais overturned the Voting Rights Act, but that is not what the court said. In its opinion, the voting rights act remains the law of the land. The court was merely clarifying the standards to be used in its application. But a funny thing happened. A three-judge panel, including two Trump appointees, then applied those new standards to Alabama’s proposed Congressional maps and found them in violation of the Act. They further found the maps were expressly drawn to weaken Black voters’ power in the state. The Supreme Court quickly heard an appeal to the lower court’s ruling and overturned it. Never mind what they said in their fig leaf of an opinion, in their view the law no longer considers the outcome of map making decisions to see if they illegally discriminate on the basis of race and they no longer consider the factual record that maps were enacted for specifically racially discriminatory purposes. For this court, apparently, Black Americans have no safeguards in political map-making which the white man was bound to respect.

Mullin v. Doe ended Temporary Protected Status for at least 350,000 people. In this case the court expanded Executive Branch powers by declaring they had no power to enforce the procedural obligations of the law. This is in keeping with the court’s wildly expansive view of executive power, a view that leaves that branch largely unaccountable and unchecked. Then it ignored a lower court determination that found “the decision to end Haiti’s TPS designation was motivated, at least in part, by racial animus.”

In both cases lower courts had established the facts. In the TPS case, the Trump administration itself has said that Haiti remains highly dangerous. To get to their desired outcomes, the court ignored the factual record, ignored precedent, ignored the plain intentions of Congress.

In both cases SCOTUS found that no amount of racial animus, nor any real impact of racially motivated decisions, is relevant to the law. Very oddly, for any court, they have effectively told us that neither motive nor outcome matter.

You really cannot just make racially discriminatory law without undermining the entire edifice of the rule of law for everyone. To apply the principles SCOTUS uses in these two cases to another context makes the point. A man on trial for murder can now say, “judge, everybody knows I hated the victim, and I hate his race, and I know everybody’s seen the picture of me standing over his dead body, but according to the Supreme Court my motives and the outcome of any decision I made is not relevant. Heck, you can’t do anything about it so I don’t even need to pay for a pardon.”

This is what the Roberts courts has done.

Edwin hosts "It's The Democracy Stupid" on Lincoln Square & a weekly radio show on WCPT820AM/ Heartland Signal. He is the former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times, a former Chicago Alderman, HUD Regional Administrator and teacher in Chicago's public schools.

We talked about the loss of a shared sense of who we are as Americans. We mused about whether the draft was a good idea, and what might replace as a way to bring us together. Tom described the ways narcissism plagues are politics and society.

With J.D. Vance and others on the right talking about western culture, Tom and I reviewed major Naval battles in the history of the west and the consequences. What we concluded was that Vance et al have no clue what western civilization is.

For fun, before you listen to this fabulous conversation, take this quick poll.

Tom explains the answer, and what these Naval battles were about. Give a listen and tell us what you think!

A year ago, she and her research partner, Alyssa Bowen, published a Primer on the Authoritarian Infrastructure in the U.S. I wondered whether, a year later, she thought that infrastructure had grown. The discussion that followed was fabulous.

Lisa describes the history of building autocratic infrastructure from the 1970s to the present and wanted to make sure I understood what it really was, telling me,

Some people call it conservative. There’s nothing conservative about it. It’s radical, and reactionary. It is a deep and wide effort to regress American society. It is not conservative. It conserves nothing. It destroys things.

Things like civil liberties.

I always learn something when I talk with Lisa. This time she shocked me with the origin story of how the right wing embraced “originalism” as a form of understanding the Constitution.

…part of that also was the creation of the Federalist Society in 1982. Its first meeting was about Roe v. Wade, was attacking Roe v. Wade. But the precursor to the Federalist Society was this so-called originalism, which was really targeting Brown v. Board of Education and trying to claim that the Supreme Court never should have issued an order desegregating the schools because there were segregated schools in D.C. immediately after the Civil War.

You will want to hear every word. And after you do, let us know what you think.

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Russia appears on the verge of an important victory in Donbas in eastern Ukraine, but the cost is enormous. Crimea, that large diamond-shaped peninsula into the Black Sea that for a time was the southernmost part of Ukraine before being annexed by Russia, is under siege. Ukraine has successfully destroyed most of the infrastructure that would carry fuel to the region. Russia is desperate to hold Crimea; Russians living in Crimea are desperate to leave. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s capability to damage energy infrastructure in Russia itself has grown. Their attacks have been so successful that Russia may have to limit energy exports to meet domestic demand - a huge economic loss for Putin.

Hardliners in Russia are urging the use of tactical nuclear weapons. There are reports, whether true or Russian war propaganda, that some are arguing to target London.

Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s brilliant and dangerous foreign minister wants to know if the agreement Trump and Putin made in Anchorage died in Evian at the recent G7 meeting. Whether he is actually worried that Donald Trump is switching sides, or whether he is simply reminding Trump that he’s watching, is unknown.

There are also reports that Europe is making contingency plans because they no longer believe they can count on the United States if Russia expands the war to pressure them to abandon Ukraine.

Ukraine, Russia, and Europe have all learned one shared lesson in this terrible war: Donald Trump cannot be trusted.

Under Trump, the United States no longer provides credible, clear, and strategic international leadership. As a result, the possibility of an expanded war in Europe grows every day. Should that happen, it would be a catastrophe far greater than anything since the Second World War.

And if calamity comes are we prepared?

No, we are not.

By confusing the ability to coerce with the hard work of diplomacy, in the course of a single year and a half, Donald Trump has squandered the global political capital that presidents of both parties have accumulated on our behalf.

America is more isolated than it has been in more than a century. He has alienated our allies, and pushed our trading partners into new alliances not with us but with China. His foreign policy negotiators - J.D. Vance, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and Marco Rubio - have not a single success to point to anywhere in the world. The Board of Peace that was supposed to rebuild Gaza? A failure. Russia and Ukraine? Trump doesn’t even know what side to be on. Venezuela? What even was that? Our trade imbalance? Barely changed in a year. What we stand for in the world? JD Vance traveled to Europe to tell them they aren’t white enough.

As utterly inept Trump is at foreign policy, he is even worse as Commander in Chief. He boasts of ending wars. But he started them - in Venezuela, in Iran, and against small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. And even despite having the most powerful military on the planet, he has not won any of these wars. His Defense Secretary, peacock Pete, seems to delight in blowing things up and hectoring reporters. Yet of strategic successes he has delivered not one.

How are we safer after spending hundreds of billions of dollars, losing 13 American lives, and injuring hundreds of others? Trump cannot say. No one can say, because we are not safer.

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Foreign policy and war-fighting both rely on intelligence. Here too, Trump has put Americans at risk. This time, however, we are at risk not simply because of incompetence, but because Trump has perverted America’s intelligence capabilities, firing capable leaders, installing dupes, and turning the entire apparatus inward to target his domestic challengers. Instead of warning us about Iran’s capabilities to withstand our initial aerial assault, our intelligence assets were busy looking for ways to indict the Southern Poverty Law Center. Instead of assessing Russia’s intentions and capabilities to expand the Ukraine war, they are looking at Gavin Newsom’s wife. Trump’s first appointment as Director of National Intelligence personally oversaw a domestic operation to seize voting records in Georgia. His new DNI has zero experience with intelligence, but he does have a track record of abusing government power to go after the President’s enemies list. He has been on the job just one week and is already firing staffers he thinks are not compliant.

Leaders around the world see these failures and this incompetence and they know - they know our biggest threat is to ourselves.

On cue, as I write this the National Mall in our nation’s capital, fencing has been erected to strictly control movement of Americans. Armed troops are patrolling. Loudspeakers are warning visitors not to loiter. The threat is real indeed. And it is here.

Edwin hosts "It's The Democracy Stupid" on Lincoln Square & a weekly radio show on WCPT820AM/ Heartland Signal. He is the former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times, a former Chicago Alderman, HUD Regional Administrator and teacher in Chicago's public schools.

With SCOTUS still sitting on the birthright citizenship case, Adam made the stunning point that Trump has already won.

This is the second time it’s gone up to the Supreme Court. The first time they didn’t challenge it on the merits. They challenged universal injunctions, nationwide injunctions. And they and they won.

It was a huge victory. This strategy is to find some sort of scholar or fringe activist who will rubber stamp some sort of policy objective that they want and turn it into an executive order. And maybe they’ll win something along the way.

But the news is not all bad. In fact, as Adam says, the antibodies to the autocratic virus are growing every day.

As Adam described what the courts have done to stop the many of the abuses of the Trump administration, he took time to remind me that the process is sometimes as important as the result. I listened carefully and came away thinking that our courts are where Trump’s lies go to die.

And, indeed, judges are becoming more assertive with the Department of Justice to demand and even to command honest representations in their courtrooms. Adam explained,

Look at what happened with the Broadview Six that this is the Trump Justice Department is not entitled to the same presumption of regularity that was given to prior justice departments because we’re in a new era.

We’re in a new time where the face of the head of state is now of the justice department. And we’ll see what happens.

There’s been a similar motion in the case of Don Lemon over in the Twin Cities. What happened in Chicago might be just the beginning of the kind of accountability for the warping of the grand jury processes in criminal cases.

As ever with Adam, we talked about specific cases. And with this Supreme Court session there are plenty important ones to cover.

On the end of TPS for Haitians and others, Adam described the court’s refusal to see racism no matter how plain it is,

The real jaw-dropper with the Haitian TPS challenge was, of course, they were saying that Trump has a long history of very racist statements about the Haitian community, saying that they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats, saying they’re poisoning the blood of the people.

And you had Justice Kagan really laying it out. I’m just giving two examples of a page of long itemization of racist statements.

And you had Justice Alito claiming that there was a race neutral explanation- Trump just hates the TPS program.

If this isn’t racial discrimination in the eyes of the court, what could be?

This echoed a previous conversation Adam and I had when the Callais decision came out earlier this session. Then, we talked about the voting districts in Alabama and the pretzel the Court made of itself to make sure blatantly discriminatory maps are imposed in that state. As Adam said, “we’re in a very dark place when such a blatant racial discrimination is characterized as race neutral by the highest court in the land.”

During this conversation Margaret- who served in Iraq- talked about what it’s like for military personnel to hear elected officials say crazy things. She worries about the impact on our soldiers when they support actions that are clearly illegal. Then she pointed out that as Commander in Chief when Trump supports illegal actions, he actually has authority to order them, which puts every soldier in a terrible position.

Unfortunately, the cohesion inside the military that might provide support for healthy decision-making is being by Pete Hegseth's interference in the military promotion lists. Margaret explained how damaging this is.

Just imagine a workplace, and that is probably one of the most important workplaces in America, where your boss is sending this message to people that whatever you do, if you’re black, if you’re a woman, if you’re a religious minority, you’re always going to have this monkey on your shoulder telling you that you’re not really supposed to be here. And [everyone is] always going to second guess when you get promoted because it’s DEI.

Hegseth’s leadership hasn’t just undermined military cohesion; it undermines everything from logistics to planning to procurement. Here’s what Marget said,

Watch these briefings where it’s him and General Kane. Hegseth doesn’t know anything. He doesn’t know the strategy. He doesn’t know the assets. He doesn’t know the next steps. He doesn’t know the logistics that go into a military operation.

He just knows culture wars. That’s all he knows because he knows soundbites, because that’s what he’s that’s what he specialized in. He was a weekend news host.

He’s probably in panic mode on any given day. And so he retreats to what he knows best, which is sound bites, making inflammatory remarks based on culture and pop knowledge.

Margaret is kinder than I am. I had harsher words for Mr. Hegseth in this discussion.

We talked about the War Powers Act. She reminded me that it passed with large bipartisan support in order to protect our soldiers. On this she was passionate.

Those [soldiers] are people. Those are fathers and mothers and sons and daughters and brothers and sisters. Those are parents who did not see their kids open up their Easter baskets Easter morning. Those are parents who are missing. Those are kids who are missing summer vacations with their extended families. Those are boyfriends and girlfriends who haven’t seen each other in months. There’s a very real human cost [to deployment] And that was what Congress foresaw back in the 70s, which is that those people matter.

Of course, the GOP Congress today refused to act on their war power, allowing Donald Trump to send our soldiers on lengthy deployments, one after the other, in search of world changing victories that (see above) his administration lacks the strategic know-how to accomplish. It is cruel.

Margaret talked about the illegal killings in the Caribbean and Pacific. She has a warning for those involved.

We are over 200 people killed in the Caribbean. This is not going away. This is something that Congress will be looking at. These are offenses that do not have statutes of limitations. So as soon as there is a new administration, maybe even before that, when Congress changes hands, there are people who are going to be subpoenaed to testify and they’re going to be asked, why did you pull the trigger?

In fact, Margaret made the point that Congress has the power to check all the abuses in the military and in the national security agencies but seems unwilling to use it. I pointed out that this particular Congress is not merely unwilling to do its job, but is all in with the Trump agenda.

That’s why we need a new Congress, and one that works. That critical topic was at the heart of the conversation below with Maya Hornburg of the Brennan Center. I hope you will watch both videos and let me know what you think.

Edwin hosts “It’s The Democracy Stupid” on Lincoln Square & a weekly radio show on WCPT820AM/ Heartland Signal. He is the former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times, a former Chicago Alderman, HUD Regional Administrator and teacher in Chicago’s public schools

We talked about our broken Congress, and Maya wasted no time in explaining that, even though Americans have always complained about Congress, something changed beginning in the 1970s that fundamentally broke the institution.

In 1976, the Supreme Court and the Buckley v. Vallejo decision rules that spending limits are unconstitutional in campaigns. And as a result, money starts flooding campaigns… Things start to change in terms of money distorting pathways to power, even within Congress, not to mention running for office.

She tells the story of Congressman Henry Waxman who understood the implications of that decision and decided to raise what’s called a leadership PAC. That allowed him to raise funds not for his own election, but to spread it around Congress. She credits this with winning him an important committee chair. And, she notes, most members of Congress now raise leadership PACs.

In addition to money, Maya explained how the jurisdiction of Congressional committees is hopelessly dated.

The last time that committee jurisdictional lines were redrawn in the House was the1970s. So completely outdated. You shouldn’t be surprised that when Mark Zuckerberg comes in to testify, half of the Senate is there. And we know-- you’ve worked in organizations, I’ve worked in organizations— When everyone is in charge of something, no one is in charge of something.

So you need a tech committee if you want to regulate tech. You need generally committee jurisdictions that align with the modern American economy.

We talked about Congressional staffing, the size of Congress, proportional representation, and more. We even talked about how Congress can regain its Article I powers whether they are threatened by an expansive executive branch or an overreaching Supreme Court.

Here’s a prediction: the next Congress is going to rely on Maya’s work to revise its rules, redraw committee jurisdictions, and re-balance the power relationship between leadership and committee chairs- all changes aimed at restoring Congress’ role in our democracy.

As always, give a listen and let us know what you think.

This interview is from my radio show on WCPT@820/ Heartland Signal on June 20, 2026.

Here’s what makes America exceptional: While others might fall to a would-be dictator who gains control of their government, we will not. What we celebrate on July 4 is not the declaration that all are created equal, but the years of struggle since then that taught us to believe it.

The long struggle for freedom and equality in America has many heroes. Back in 1921, poor white miners in West Virginia’s Logan County protested for safer working conditions and livable wages. The local government promptly jailed their police chief whose crime was sympathy for the workers. Ten thousand miners then marched towards the jail. President Warren Harding sent armed federal troops to stop them. In the battle that followed, 16 miners were killed many others were wounded. The strikers were forced to give up their weapons and go home. And yet… their battle inspired a movement that eventually prevailed.

Back in the 1780s, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John and implored him not to forget the ladies as he joined efforts to draft our constitution. It would take another century and a half and the sustained efforts of suffragettes before women would be allowed to vote.

But of all our struggles, the long, painful fight for freedom and equality for Black Americans is the one that most explains the American character, that speaks to the best in us, and every day reminds us of what we yet may aspire to be.

The first casualty of the revolutionary war was Black - Crispus Attucks was shot down by frightened British soldiers in what became known as the Boston Massacre. Outrage at that shooting helped push colonists to rebellion in the name of freedom.

But, for some among the founders, the freedom they sought was the freedom to hold other men in captivity. Our nation, a nation dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal, and chattel slavery - an institution that denies this claim - were born together. That they could not survive together was known even to the founders. Four score and seven years later the nation was at war to decide which would endure.

When the Civil War ended, Americans elected Blacks to congress. But Jim Crow, the terror of armed vigilantes sometimes wearing white robes, and the economic oppression of share cropping, stood in the way.

From the Civil War to the passage and signing of the Voting Rights Act, Black Americans tirelessly reminded the nation what we stood for.

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Frederick Douglass. George Washington Carver. Mary Church Terrell. Booker T Washington. W.E.B. Du Bois. Ida B. Wells. Langston Hughes. Zora Neale Hurston. A. Philip Randolph. Paul Robeson. Marion Anderson. Jackie Robinson. Dorothy Height. Vernon Johns. Martin Luther King jr. Rosa Parks. Fannie Lou Hamer.

We should never forget these names because during an entire century when America was happy to be done with legalized slavery but willing to continue the brutality, oppression, and inequality, these people taught us about our better selves.

The story of Black freedom is not just a history of overcoming oppression. It is also a record of contribution to America’s wealth, to our scientific leadership, to our artistic brilliance. So many overcame so much to deliver immense benefits to everyone else. And as this history unfolded, it informed our most profound understanding of who we are.

The struggle for Black equality in America was never just a fight for Black America; it was a fight for us all. It was Jacob wrestling with the angel to become he should be.

I am a white Jewish American. But this is my history, too. It is all of our history. It is, no matter what Donald Trump and his ethno-nationalist government attempt to do, the unerasable heritage of American freedom.

Lots of nations began by breaking free of oppressive empires. Why are freedom and equality held more firmly in America than in all those colonies that won their independence in the last hundred years? It’s not because of a promise in our call for independence.

Paradoxically, we are more free because so many Americans were not free and yet believed in that promise of freedom, and for generations fought and died to make us believe it too. There has not been one day since our founding that some Americans have not fought to be treated as equals. Not one day where some Americans have failed to demand the freedom that was promised.

The long fight for civil rights did at least as much for the idea that all men are created equal as did the writing of that proposition in a political manifesto in 1776. Not the Civil War, but the epic struggle that followed finally wedded the idea of freedom to the idea of America.

That idea kindled the fires that led to women’s suffrage, to workers’ rights, to marriage equality. Fealty to it drove Americans into the streets in Chicago and in Minneapolis when ICE agents arrived armed and determined to take our neighbors and friends and to tell us we could do nothing about it.

I am a proud American because this is who we are. The Obama Presidential Center, which opened this week in Chicago, tells this story - the story of those who kept faith with the idea equality, and whose efforts over time forever forged the idea freedom into the very concept of America.

In this perilous moment, take heart. Remember who you are, who we are.

Edwin hosts "It's The Democracy Stupid" on Lincoln Square & a weekly radio show on WCPT820AM/ Heartland Signal. He is the former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times, a former Chicago Alderman, HUD Regional Administrator and teacher in Chicago's public schools.

We talked on my radio show on WCPT820 this week. It was a conversation that stayed with me long after.

Gillian’s been tracking the 50-90 ICE flights conducted every day. I was surprised to learn that most of those flights are domestic.

The rate of those shuffle flights between the detention centers has been way higher under Trump’s second term than the regular removals. Removals have about doubled, but the shuffle flights have almost tripled.

And what we hear from migrants, from immigration attorneys and rights groups is that they’re using the shuffle flights to wear people down basically to torture them to make their court cases harder to file every time you’re moved to a different federal district, you have to start your court case all over again, you have to get a new lawyer. You have to get your documents moved and you have to do it from a detention Center. You’re farther away from your family.

The entire time that you’re being transported you are not in the ICE locator system. So you have no way of telling your family, hey, I’m going to be transferred to Arizona tomorrow. There’s no way to know that. So people will just disappear from the locator system.

Gillian described the way third country deportations work. Turns out, the ability to send people to countries they’ve never been to before was originally a humanitarian policy Congress created years ago so that deportees who were not safe in their home countries could be sent somewhere safe. Instead, the Trump administration uses third country deportations to create a chain deportation- send a migrant to a third country and then let that third country send them back to their home countries where their lives are in in jeopardy.

She also told me that ICE flight attendants were told that, in the event of an evacuation they were to save themselves and let the prisoners die.

This is an important topic, and one we don’t hear enough about. Give a listen, and let us know what you think. You can also visit Gillian’s website for more information and follow her on Blue Sky.

We talked about the tumbling down of Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center before launching into the Iran War. Amanda explained to me why Pete Hegseth is the reason fascists lose wars. She said,

The problem with these people who have these kind of authoritarian ideologies is they never succumb to evidence because they think that thinking is for wimps and strategy is for wimps and that just more woke nonsense. If you point out to them how many times their ideology fails, they just brush it aside and they say, well, the problem is we didn’t hit them hard enough.

We talked about Hegseth purge of Black and female leaders in our military, and that led to a discussion of his exclusion of Mormons from the Department’s list of Christian religions. She reminded me that “another rule of authoritarians is that once they define the in group and the out group, the in group keeps getting smaller.”

That lead to a conversation about Turning Point USA’s latest gathering- an effort to shore up support among young women. Amanda noted that

the Christian right for a long time has been pushing the idea of complementarianism and female submission and sort of this idea that men and women are different, but they complement each other. They’re not unequal, is how they would argue. When you actually look at the details, of course they’re unequal.

But she said this gathering was a bit different. There was not pretending at complementary roles. Instead, conference goers were told that witch burning was okay, that women love themselves too much, and were left with the notion that men should not have to pick up their underwear.

We talked about the future. What Dems should do when they win. High on this list was reforming the Supreme Court.

Give a listen, and, as always, let us know what you think.

During the wee hours of the morning, in compliance with court orders and having run out their capacity for delay, the government removed the illegal graffiti from the Kennedy Center.

Unlike their cruel ICE invasions in our cities, they performed this removal in secret, having built a set of screens to save the man himself the public humiliation of seeing his name come down like a Saddam statue.

What do we do with the pile of letters:

Mr Odd Jut Plan

Darn Dump Jolt

Darn Dolt Jump

PM Don Jut Lard

Told Rand Jump

I’m pretty good with anagrams but cannot find a really useful repurposing of these letters. When they spell Donald J. Trump they aren’t good either, so we should throw them away.

The stooges that Trump installed on the Kennedy Center Board changed the institution’s bylaws to say that the board must strip all funding from the Kennedy Center unless Trump’s name stays on the building. That sure sounds like trustee malfeasance. What’s next? A directive that any money donated to that institution go instead to a new Trump grift masquerading as an arts organization?

That is, after all, what happened with the money Congress appropriated to celebrate our 250^th birthday. They set up an organization called American 250. It was bipartisan and meant to bring us together. Forget that. Trump set up Freedom 250 and transferred the money. The result?

He built his claw on the White House lawn. He will have his MMA match there. Tickets are being sold at exorbitant prices to ass kissers and oligarchs. The event is not open to the American public. It will be streamed on Paramount Plus- the network owned by his media ally the Ellisons, and it requires a paid subscription.

So, there you have it. Donald Trump’s idea of a celebration of our great anniversary is an event not open to the public, where funds are diverted to his friends and allies, and to companies where he is a shareholder. They will be shown in images linked to our national monuments, as if they are the real America.

What do we get? We get to see gold painted horses outside the Lincoln memorial.

All of his spectacle and all of his gold paint cannot hide the truth.

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Start with Iran, where a deal, now, is finally taking shape. That deal reflects the reality that Donald Trump lost his war. Iran will be far better off than before it began. The entire world will be worse off because of it. And America has not only lost the trust of its allies and friends, it has also lost the credibility to check its adversaries.

Next up is Europe where Donald Trump switched sides in the Ukraine war, promising to impose a Russian peace on day one, but forgetting that Ukraine has a say in its own future. Shouting, “you don’t have the cards,” Trump tried to bully Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to fall in line. He didn’t. Now, with help from Europe Ukraine is pushing back against Russia and winning.

Setting aside, for a moment, that Trump chose a cruel dictatorship over an inchoate democracy, that he chose a military aggressor over a country trying to preserve its borders, that he chose to abandon the idea of an international rules based order, Trump’s decisions mean the free world has moved on without us. It means America is, at this moment, irrelevant to the progress of freedom.

But as he also proved in Iran, we are not irrelevant when it comes to wanton destruction, and the empowerment of bad actors around the world.

One reason he got all of this so catastrophically wrong is that our entire national security apparatus has turned inward as he deploys it against Americans who stand against him. Remember that last September he directed his government to “investigate, prosecute, and disrupt” a wide range of organizations he accused of being ANTIFA. The first fruits of that directive include the corrupt indictments of James Comey and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

This week, instead of protecting us from real threats, Kash Patel’s agents raided the offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, they chased down its board members, they confiscated phones and laptops. The organization encourages people to register to vote, but in Trump’s America that’s a crime.

This week I actually read the prospectus for the IPO of Space X. I recommend it to anyone heading the beach. It is a great science fiction read. The company aims “to build the systems and technologies necessary to make life multi-planetary, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars.”

Its value is based on three pillars. Space, connectivity, and AI. The company’s AI platform is Grok. About that, they say, “Grok’s deep integration with X enables freshness, relevance, and contextual awareness that we believe is a competitive differentiator. This direct, real-time access to the information and human discourse on X enhances Grok’s truth-seeking capabilities by grounding outputs in up-to-date knowledge and diverse viewpoints.”

Have you been on X lately? The world’s money men have just bet trillions on an AI system trained on billions of hate-filled and pornographic posts. This is their idea of truth. This is the consciousness they want to take to the stars.

Meanwhile back on planet earth, where prices continue to climb, where the world no longer benefits from steadying influence of our great democracy, where a mad man celebrates our great birthday in a publicly funded, private party that desecrates our national monuments, it’s a nice first step to see his name in the trash pile.

Edwin hosts "It's The Democracy Stupid" on Lincoln Square & a weekly radio show on WCPT820AM/ Heartland Signal. He is the former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times, a former Chicago Alderman, HUD Regional Administrator and teacher in Chicago's public schools.

Ezra Levin, the organization’s co-founder and co-executive director is passionate about what Americans can do together, and realistic about what we will fail to do individually.

We talk from time to time about his work, the arc of American history, and the current state of our political parties. This week, Ezra emphasized that political impact has to be “locally led,” because there’s no one in Washington “calling the shots on everything that’s going on.” He goes on to argue that “if we’re just waiting for somebody somewhere to save the day, I think we lose.

I couldn’t agree more. Not a knock on Sen Chuck Schumer to say that if you are waiting around for him to save the democracy you are failing in your job as a citizen. The response to this dangerous moment is up to us, not to any one person, and certainly not up to any political party.

And, by the way, organizations like the Democratic National Committee exist to raise money, to organize debates, to build infrastructure. Party organizations aren’t designed to lead this fight; they are, however, very important tools we can use to win the fight. That’s why Ezra says, “the only solution to rising authoritarianism is massive engagement in the democratic process.”

Towards the end of the conversation, we talk about the transformation happening in both political parties. The GOP is walking away from the idea of democracy in its complete fealty to Mr. Trump. Dems are engaged in a move from the let’s make a deal politics of a former era to the get-shit-done politics of the moment, while simultaneously managing a generation transition.

As always, give a listen and let us know what you think.

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This week we spent little time on the crybaby in the White House (okay, Joe did call him that). A few minutes on the feckless handling of the Iran war. And a few more on his ill health.

We talked about important and interesting evolution of both political parties. On the Dem side, there is passion for outsider candidates along with a generational shift, while the GOP is transforming itself into a cheerleading team for one guy.

We shared a concern that ICE will be in full force in New York after the World Cup ends, and there for the purpose of inciting a violent reaction. “Trump wants troops on the street,” Joe told me.

We also agreed that if a judge tells Trump he cannot throw his corrupt birthday party cage match- you know, the one where he uses the monuments of our democracy to brand a private company where he’s an investor- he will throw the party anyway.

Then Joe told me the Republicans will confirm Todd Blanche as our next A.G. Will that cost some Senators their jobs? We’ll see.

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I once swore an oath “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Now fidelity to that oath means defending our Constitution and our way of life against others who, in bad faith, swore the same oath.

Chief among them, of course, is Donald Trump. Instead of supporting and defending our Constitution, his actions have repeatedly, consistently, and wantonly undermined it. That is the recurring finding of federal judges appointed by presidents of both political parties. Trump violated the constitution when ordered the military onto American streets. He did it when he flew people to a foreign dungeon without any due process. He did it when he imposed ubiquitous new tariff taxes on all Americans. The Constitution does not give the President the power to do these things. Every eighth grader knows that. And federal judges ordered him to stop. In the case of his summary deportation, he was stopped by a nine to zero vote of the Supreme Court.

Every person who serves in the federal government takes the same oath as I did. But in Trump’s administration there’s another oath- to the man himself. And on his behalf his Justice Department has been found by courts to have engaged in vindictive prosecution, and to have engaged in prosecutorial misconduct to punish his enemies.

None of this is news. But it is on my mind today.

Every American, not just those who swore an oath to the constitution, knows this is a perilous moment. Our democracy has been downgraded by scholars, and most of us can feel that it is not working as it should.

We sense that our Congress does not represent us, but, instead, is beholden to monied interests and to partisan mapmakers. We know that Trump and his oligarchs are piling up their own wealth even as they shift the burden of taxation onto the rest of us. We see shocking decisions from a Supreme Court that upend years of progress towards a more just society. Americans, no matter their politics, were revolted by the crooked deal that the President and his nominee for Attorney General made to cheat taxpayers out of $2 billion to create a slush fund for vigilantes and to forever shield Donald Trump and his family from accountability for the money he’s taken as President.

Not just Americans, but the entire world watches in horror as Donald Trump uses America’s military power without consultation, without strategy, and without purpose. Trump is widely seen and understood to be a man who embraces the use of force as an end in itself.

And, as he uses the coercive power of the Executive Branch to transform America into a nation bound together by fealty to a leader, where faith is dictated by the government and where social order is determined by race, the entire world is holding its breath.

Today is the 82nd anniversary of D-Day. The bloody day that American and our allies stormed the beaches of Normandy. In his general orders for the day, General Eisenhower told the soldiers they fought for “the elimination of the Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.”

In Normandy today, Pete Hegseth had a different message. He told those gathered to honor the those who died to protect freedom in the world, that Europeans didn’t learn the lesson of D-day, because if they had, they would repel the invaders landing on their beaches today. He was telling them that World War II was fought not for freedom but to keep Europe white. Just so, earlier in the week John Roberts cleared the way for Alabama to impose political maps not to allow free people to make their voices heard, but to ensure that political power is held by white Alabamans.

Around the world, and even here at home, people are asking whether the idea of America is dead.

It is a fair question, but we are brave enough to answer?

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As we enter the midterm election season- a time of choosing among Americans- we are heirs not only to the brave soldiers who fought and died at Normandy, but of the founders who gave us our great promise, and of the nameless Americans who fought and died to be included in that promise. General Eisenhower wrote, “the eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.” And so they are today.

To paraphrase the rest of Ike’s general orders on D-Day, the Trump administration and his allies on the Supreme Court are powerful. But this is 2026. Much has happened in the last year. The good people of America, including federal judges who honor their oaths, have inflicted upon Mr. Trump great defeats. In election after election, Americans came together to send his foot soldiers down. In courtrooms everywhere we have slowed his aggression. And across our land we have learned to organize, to stand up, to fight back. Ike said, “the tide has turned,” and so it has.

America is an idea and a promise that is very hard to kill. As long as families seek a better life, as long as people want to be free, as long as there are individuals whose prayers are unwelcome by their governments, America offers hope. Alone among nations, we were founded on the idea that all are created equal, and all have rights no government may take. On this continent women and men fought to be included in that promise, and won the right to vote, to serve in the military, to fully participate in our democracy and with that the obligation fully to contribute to our society. Those contributions made us the most prosperous, creative, dynamic place on earth. And we are not about to let one man and the handful of terrible people who stand with him skim off the top.

Today, on this great anniversary, I can say with confidence that we will defeat Trump and his MAGA movement. And when we do, there will be both accountability and a return to our mission to be worthy of America’s promise.

Edwin hosts "It's The Democracy Stupid" on Lincoln Square & a weekly radio show on WCPT820AM/ Heartland Signal. He is the former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times, a former Chicago Alderman, HUD Regional Administrator and teacher in Chicago's public schools.

Several years ago, a friend from China became a U.S. Citizen. To honor that event, I asked her to take me the best Chinese restaurant she could find in Chicago before her naturalization ceremony, and I promised to take her to an American restaurant that was just as good after she took the oath of allegiance. She found a superb restaurant. A week later, I took her back to the very same restaurant. At first, she was confused. She reminded me that I promised to take her to an American restaurant. I told her that this is an American restaurant, and it is who we are. She thought about that for a minute and then got it. It’s a lesson Donald Trump never learned.

Donald Trump’s homage to America celebrates the values of those Americans who developed the system of chattel slavery, deployed systematic violence, forced removals, and cultural erasure upon native populations, and exploited the labor of workers from farms to trucks to factories. It is an America whose highest values are to own and control.

Our actual history, the one Trump is eager to erase from schools, libraries, websites, monuments, and memory, is one long, and mostly successful, rejection of those values.

I’m aware that accusing a President of misreading America, undermining our values, and attempting to replace our freedom with his will, requires evidence. But that evidence is already in record. , , , and many others (even sometimes, me) have made the case. A year into Trump’s second term it is obvious to most Americans.

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While Trump does his Triumph of the Will thing in front of a carefully cast audience, millions and millions of the rest of us will be celebrating the promise of the Declaration of Independence, whose anniversary this is. In keeping with that promise, people will come in all sizes, shapes, colors, and with all varieties of faith and political notions. We will show up as we are, not as props for a spectacle.

I don’t use the word multiculturalism to describe the idea that there are many, and different ways to be Americans, because that feels defensive- as if there’s one true American culture and it tolerates others. That’s not right. American culture itself is a fabulous multitude. (Don’t take my word for it. Read Walt Whitman.)

Trump is correct that America is protestant and white. But is also Baptist and Black. America is indigenous, and immigrant, Moslem and atheist. We come small, medium, large, and extra-large. We are every imaginable human thing, and then we invent ourselves anew. We do not need permission to celebrate all that is unique and beautiful amongst our people. And no matter how hard Trump tries to hide the amazing contributions of people he would control, we see them.

Just as Donald Trump’s 250th anniversary political rally at the White House rejects the fundamental essence of our country and rejects the mission our founders undertook to create a more perfect union where everyone is equal, free, and protected, his government undermines the foundations the framers built to achieve that mission. From the outset, our Constitution separated powers and established the rule of law. In just one year, Trump has eroded the separation of powers and politicized the law. He has turned the powerful government he controls- the one we built- against us. In one executive order after the next, and in the acts of his party in Congress, Trump seeks to replace freedom and the rule of law with coercion and rule by power.

But Americans are up to the task of defending our mission, and when Trump is gone, we will resume the task of furthering it.

John Kennedy told us we choose to go the moon not because it is easy but because it is hard. The framers said nearly the same thing 250 years ago, but their mission was even more bold- a republic if you can keep it.

Mr. Trump poses a great challenge to America. It is a challenge we are willing to accept, unwilling to ignore, and determined to win. And that is something to celebrate as we approach our 250^th.

Edwin hosts "It's The Democracy Stupid" on Lincoln Square & a weekly radio show on WCPT820AM/ Heartland Signal. He is the former CEO of the Chicago Sun-Times, a former Chicago Alderman, HUD Regional Administrator and teacher in Chicago's public schools.

Lincoln Square

How to Stop a Lawless Supreme Court | It's The Democracy, Stupid with Edwin Eisendrath & Talking Points Memo's Kate Riga

The right-wing Supreme Court has been on a tear in recent years, reversing landmark laws and protections for the American people. They overturned Roe with the Dobbs decision in 2022 and most recently dismantled the Voting Rights Act with its Callais decision…

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a month ago · 181 likes · 17 comments · Edwin Eisendrath