\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t“Flood the zone with shit.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tThat’s how Steve Bannon once described Donald Trump\u2019s attention-overload strategy. It’s designed to overwhelm your senses, so the latest outrage erases your ability to remember the avalanche of outrages past. The “shit” part matters as well \u2014 because the goal is to make politics seem so dirty and indecent that no sane person would ever get involved in the political arena. This cedes the civic ground to hyper-partisan sociopaths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tThat\u2019s exactly why combating the memory hole is essential as voters head to the polls. The 2026 midterm elections are the only structural opportunity to put guardrails on this runaway train of a president who seems hell bent on destroying our democratic norms, dividing the American people, and alienating our allies while emboldening our enemies. The result is a tsunami of sleaze: unprecedented corruption, rising costs, and governmental chaos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tBut the voters who most need to remember are the ones most likely to forget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tIndependents are the largest block of American voters, and they decide who wins elections. They\u2019re fed up with both parties and tend to be fiscally responsible, socially tolerant-to-libertarian, and strong on national security. This election, their number-one issue is affordability. They voted for Trump in 2024 but now his approval rating among independents is a pathetic, record-low 22 percent<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tHere\u2019s the catch: independents are also the voters least likely to pay attention to politics on a regular basis. That\u2019s why they are so susceptible to the trap set by the Trump team: sliding from healthy skepticism into the corrosive cynicism that says all parties and politicians are equally corrupt. While no party has a monopoly on virtue or vice, Donald Trump\u2019s reign is in a heated feces class by itself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tBelow is a reminder of Trump\u2019s second term low-lights. You\u2019ve probably forgotten most of these amid the doomscroll of our daily lives. But the damage doesn\u2019t disappear because our attention drifts. Share it with your independent friends and neighbors who may have quietly voted for Trump in 2024. It\u2019s a timely reminder that Trump\u2019s billionaire cabinet<\/a> and his democracy-deforming presidency is an insult to their wallet, their health, their government, their safety, and their values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\tYour Wallet<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\tTrump promised that \u201cwhen I win, I will immediately bring prices down, starting on Day One.\u201d He promised gas below $2 a gallon<\/a>. But, of course, prices did not come down. Instead, Trump now calls the affordability crisis a \u201c hoax<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tGas now averages $4.28 a gallon<\/a>, up 38 percent since his inauguration, and diesel is $6.28, up 69 percent. The main cause is the $47 billion war with Iran<\/a> he launched without offering the American people a reason or an exit strategy, let alone getting congressional approval. So much for no new wars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tTrump\u2019s tariff obsession is costing American households more than $1,000 a year<\/a>. And Trump has inexplicably aimed some of his harshest tariffs at America\u2019s closest democratic allies and trading partners, including the European Union and Canada. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tHealth care costs are also spiking because of Trump\u2019s actions. After the longest government shutdown in American history, enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits were allowed to expire in the Trump-Republican budget. As a result, in 2027, premium payments are expected to more than double, from $888 to $1,904 a year<\/a>, and as many as 5 million people may drop coverage<\/a>. The Congressional Budget Office projects that Trump\u2019s budget will add <\/a>roughly 10 million Americans to the uninsured<\/a> over a decade. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tFood aid for kids wasn\u2019t spared in the GOP budget either. ProPublica found that more than 770,000 children<\/a> in 12 states lost SNAP benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tBut surely all these cuts will help get America\u2019s debt and deficit under control, right? Wrong. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tTrump\u2019s \u201cOne Big Beautiful Bill\u201d adds an estimated $3.4 trillion to deficits<\/a>. For all the chaos unleashed by the DOGE cuts that threw career civil servants and programs into the \u201cwood chipper,” less than $1.5 billion in savings<\/a> have been verified and government spending actually increased<\/a>. This year\u2019s $2 trillion deficit is the highest ever outside a war or recession<\/a>. <\/a>The U.S. national debt just hit a record $40 trillion. <\/a>Moody\u2019s downgraded America\u2019s credit rating<\/a> from its top AAA grade. As Trump assaults the independence<\/a> of the Federal Reserve, America is careening toward a fiscal cliff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tAll this has happened while the Trump administration has taken ownership stakes in some 30 private companies<\/a>, from 10 percent of Intel to 15 percent of rare-earth miner MP Materials, a \u201cgolden share\u201d in U.S. Steel, and a stake in a magnet maker backed by Don Jr.\u2019s venture capital firm. Conservatives used to call that socialism or crony capitalism. Now it\u2019s business as usual in the GOP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\tYour Health<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\tIn 2024, many independent voters were swayed by independent candidate <\/strong>Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2019s endorsement of Trump as part of the \u201cMake America Healthy Again\u201d movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tBut once in office, the Trump administration that promised to take on pesticides actually sided with the company that makes Roundup<\/a> at the Supreme Court against cancer lawsuits and won. Yep, that happened. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tOn Day One, Trump withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accords<\/a>, while banning any mention of climate change<\/a> from U.S. government websites \u2014 because ignoring a problem always makes it better. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tThat\u2019s not all: the Trump\u2019s administration rolled back limits on \u201cforever chemicals\u201d in drinking water<\/a> and on mercury and arsenic from power plants<\/a>. It also eliminated the Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s research office<\/a>. You can\u2019t make America healthy while making our water and air dirtier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tDuring his confirmation hearings, Kennedy promised the Senate that he was not an anti-vaxxer, despite boatloads of evidence to the contrary. But he turned around and fired the CDC\u2019s vaccine advisory panel<\/a> and replaced it with hand-picked successors. Then he fired the new CDC director after just 29 days<\/a>. She testified that she was ousted for refusing to preapprove the new panel\u2019s vaccine recommendations without reviewing the evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tKennedy\u2019s founding MAHA report seemed to have been written with AI<\/a>, and <\/a>cited studies that do not exist. <\/a>He then canceled nearly $500 million in mRNA vaccine research<\/a>. Meanwhile, measles has come roaring back under his watch. Once considered an eradicated disease, the U.S. has recorded more than 4,400 confirmed cases so far this year<\/a>, nearly double last year\u2019s total \u2014 with 96 percent of this year\u2019s cases among people who were unvaccinated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\tYour Government<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\tIn his last inaugural address<\/a>, Trump pledged to restore competence to the federal government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tThat\u2019s the punchline. The Trump administration has consistently chosen loyalty over expertise. In addition to an anti-vaxxer with no medical experience running the health department, we\u2019ve got a self-styled Secretary of War who was a <\/strong>Fox News weekend host with no experience running a large organization who is now in charge of the world\u2019s largest military. FBI Director Kash Patel is a conspiracy theorist who one senator credibly called the \u201cleast qualified and most partisan FBI director in our nation\u2019s history.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tPersonnel is policy and the pattern runs all the way down the ranks. At Homeland Security, the job of safeguarding elections went to Heather Honey, an activist whose faulty voter-data claims<\/a> Trump cited in trying to overturn the 2020 results. The DHS terrorism-prevention hub went to Thomas Fugate, a 22-year-old<\/a> Heritage Foundation intern a year out of college with no national security experience. FEMA put disaster response in the hands of Gregg Phillips, an election denier who claimed he had been teleported to a Waffle House<\/a> 50 miles away. He was r<\/a>emoved from the post<\/a> only after months of embarrassing headlines. The White House hired \u201cStop the Steal\u201d lawyer Kurt Olsen to reinvestigate the 2020 election, then ordered the nation\u2019s spy agencies to share intelligence with him<\/a>. Trump nominated Paul Ingrassia to run the office that protects federal whistleblowers until texts surfaced in which he admitted to \u201ca Nazi streak.\u201d When Republican senators sank the nomination, Trump simply moved him to the General Services Administration<\/a>, where he is now acting general counsel<\/a> overseeing more than 100 government lawyers. These are not \u201cthe very best people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tThe problem isn\u2019t just incompetence, it\u2019s corruption. On her first day in office, former Attorney General Pam Bondi <\/a>disbanded the task force<\/a> pursuing Russian oligarchs and told prosecutors to deprioritize foreign bribery cases<\/a>. Five days later, Trump froze enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act<\/a>. By spring, the department slashed its Public Integrity Section<\/a>, the unit created after Watergate to prosecute corrupt officials, and scrapped its crypto enforcement team<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tThis has unleashed a wave of corruption and presidential self-enrichment without precedent in U.S. history. <\/a>His net worth has increased by billions this term<\/a>, compounded by frenetic stock trading. The Trump family made at least $2.3 billion from crypto ventures while investors lost a combined $2.3 billion, in an industry his administration regulates. He pardoned the founder of Binance<\/a> after a UAE fund used the family\u2019s stablecoin to buy a $2 billion stake in that company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tTrump even tried to shake down $230 million in taxpayer dollars from his own Justice Department<\/a>. The White House asked the Pentagon for a record $620 million loan<\/a> to a company Donald Trump Jr.\u2019s venture firm had invested in three months earlier. Despite that windfall, a Putin-allied oligarch helped pay for Trump Jr.\u2019s wedding celebrations<\/a>. The administration accepted a luxury 747 from Qatar<\/a>, with ownership slated to pass to Trump\u2019s library. All this makes the case of Trump\u2019s border czar, who was recorded in an FBI sting accepting $50,000 in cash in a takeout bag<\/a>, seem like a sin of small ambition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tAs I\u2019ve written before in Rolling Stone<\/em>, presidential pardons are being sold<\/a>. A nursing-home owner whose collapsed chain left grieving families with tens of millions in unpaid judgments spent more than $1 million on lobbyists and then received a full pardon<\/a>. This month, The New York Times<\/em> reported<\/a> that a billionaire banker\u2019s family hired Trump\u2019s former lawyer Alina Habba under a contract worth more than $50 million. Trump pardoned him weeks after she started. The dizzying full list includes pardons of corrupt partisan cronies and several violent drug dealers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tThe one promise Trump kept was \u201cI will be your retribution.\u201d The January 6 pardons were just the start. A Pulitzer Prize-winning Reuters analysis documented at least 470 targets of retribution<\/a> in Trump\u2019s first 10 months alone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\tYour Safety<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\tIn his inaugural address<\/a>, Trump said his success would be measured by the wars America ends and, most importantly, the ones it never gets into. But the president who petulantly demands a Nobel Peace Prize has ordered military strikes on at least seven countries<\/a> in his second term, including Venezuela, Yemen, and Iran. He even threatened to seize Greenland<\/a> from our ally Denmark at a NATO conference. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tAt the same time, Pete Hegseth is purging the U.S. military leadership with a political agenda, boasting to troops<\/a> that he had fired 10 percent of the military\u2019s generals and admirals, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the top uniformed officers of the Army, Navy and Air Force. Five weeks into the war with Iran, he fired the Army\u2019s chief of staff<\/a>. Defenestrating decades of military expertise during a war does not make America safer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tWhile Trump bragged that he could end Russia\u2019s war on Ukraine in a day, he has not only failed to deliver peace but seems intent on rewarding the aggressor. The United States shamefully voted with Russia and North Korea<\/a> against a UN resolution condemning the Russian invasion. Then Trump and JD Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, and days later the administration paused all military aid<\/a>. Putin got a blood red-carpet welcome in Alaska<\/a>, while Trump keeps on insisting that it is \u201c time for Ukraine to get a new president<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tWhile Russia has been struggling on the battlefront, this month Trump threw Putin a lifeline<\/a> by listing sanctions on the sale of diesel which The Economist<\/em> described as \u201cscandalous\u201d and \u201cshameful for America<\/a>,\u201d explaining: \u201cPutin terrorises his own people, kills Ukrainian civilians, and is helping Iran fight America. Mr Trump\u2019s repeated acts of indulgence towards him, supposedly in pursuit of peace, undermine deterrence, hastening further crimes.\u201d Six Republican senators, including Mitch McConnell, joined six Democrats in calling it \u201ca gift to our adversary and a betrayal of our allies.\u201d Trump responded by <\/a>waiving every Russian provision<\/a> of a new sanctions law named for the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, finding a way to betray an ally beyond the grave. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tTrump\u2019s team often sold his softness on Russia with a promise to be tough on China in return. But the long-promised toughness never arrived. He also announced that he would ignore the bipartisan law banning the CCP-controlled TikTok<\/a> that the Supreme Court had unanimously upheld. Trump cut sanctions<\/a> put in place to punish China for the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. and suspended Radio Free Asia<\/a>, which for decades brought uncensored news to Chinese audiences. China has benefitted economically<\/a> from Trump\u2019s tariff wars with U.S. allies, and despite arguing that the AI race requires no guardrails on development as a way to block China\u2019s advances, Trump let Nvidia and AMD sell advanced AI chips to China in exchange for a 15 percent cut of the revenue<\/a>. The administration blocked Taiwan\u2019s president from a New York stopover<\/a> after Beijing objected and Trump called a pending $14 billion arms package for Taiwan \u201ca very good negotiating chip.\u201d<\/a> And amid increasing cyber-attacks, especially from China, Trump has inexplicably cut America\u2019s cyber-defenses<\/a> when we need to be ramping them up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tAt home, \u201claw and order\u201d has too often meant order without law. Trump sent National Guard troops into American cities, and the courts repeatedly blocked him. The government deported a Maryland man to a Salvadoran prison in violation of a court order, called it an \u201cadministrative error,\u201d and then resisted a Supreme Court order to facilitate his return<\/a>. In Minneapolis this January, federal agents <\/a>shot and killed two U.S. citizens<\/a> in 17 days: Renee Good, a mother of three, and Alex Pretti, an intensive-care nurse at the Minneapolis VA. When federal prosecutors in Minnesota began investigating the killings, Washington told them to stop<\/a> and the Trump Justice Department cut off access to the evidence<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tBut perhaps the most dangerous violation of basic safety occurred on day one of this term, when Trump legitimized political violence by pardoning roughly 1,500 of his followers<\/a> <\/a>charged in the January 6 attack on the Capitol, including some convicted of assaulting police officers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\tYour Values<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\tCharacter is the single most important quality in a president. But Trump\u2019s contempt for the truth, evidenced in his singular impulse to lie all the time, has translated into a sustained assault on the basic values of our democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tEvery patriot ought to flinch when confronted with the photos of a wrecking ball being taken to the East Wing of the White House. Trump did the demolition without the independent reviews, congressional approval and public comment<\/a> required for even minor changes to historic buildings in Washington. He does not believe that rules apply to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tBut that was just the start: His administration gutted the U.S. Institute of Peace, fired its board and seized its building, bolting Trump\u2019s name onto the facade<\/a> while the legal fight was still underway. Trump purged the Kennedy Center board and his lackeys voted to rename it the \u201cTrump-Kennedy Center,\u201d<\/a> attaching his name to a living memorial to a slain president. Blocked by the courts, now he is threatening to tear the Kennedy Center down<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tThe narcissistic impulse extends to Trump putting his face on our money as well. <\/a>One-dollar coins bearing his likeness<\/a> are now in circulation, and the Treasury has prepared a $250 bill<\/a> with his portrait. Nearly every country that isn\u2019t a monarchy<\/a> declines to put its sitting leader on its money. The U.S. is in the ugly company of a rogue’s gallery of regimes including Marcos, Assad, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, and Mobutu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tSpeaking of ugly company, let\u2019s talk about Trump\u2019s longtime friend, Jeffrey Epstein. Trump promised to release the Epstein files as a candidate. But as president, he spent months fighting it. His team even summoned a Republican congresswoman to the White House Situation Room<\/a> to pressure her to drop her support for releasing the files. The Trump Justice Department then withheld or redacted some 200,000 pages<\/a>, which a federal judge found likely violated the law<\/a>. Once Trump had the power to deliver the truth to the victims of a convicted child sex trafficker he used to pal around with, he tried to bury it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tThat tracks with his promise to \u201cbring back free speech to America.\u201d Out of the gate, the White House barred the Associated Press from the Oval Office<\/a> for refusing to say \u201cGulf of America.\u201d It kept the ban in place after a federal judge called it unconstitutional retaliation. He has since tried to ban<\/a> CNN, Politico<\/em>, and MS NOW from the White House, while repeatedly suggesting negative coverage of him and his administration should be illegal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tAt the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth demanded that reporters pledge not to publish even unclassified information without approval, and <\/a>nearly the entire press corps, Fox News included, walked out<\/a> rather than sign. In just one chapter of Trump\u2019s war on media<\/a>, hours after Trump\u2019s hyper-partisan FCC chairman warned ABC that \u201cwe can do this the easy way or the hard way,\u201d <\/a>Jimmy Kimmel was briefly pulled off the air<\/a>. Even Ted Cruz called it \u201cdangerous as hell.\u201d<\/a> Trump sued The New York Times<\/em> for $15 billion, and a Bush-appointed judge threw it out<\/a>. He issued executive orders punishing law firms that had represented his opponents, and three federal judges struck them down as unconstitutional<\/a>. The United States has now fallen to a record-low 64th<\/a> in the World Press Freedom Index. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tBut perhaps the weirdest window into Trump\u2019s twisted psyche comes in the form of the 80-year old\u2019s unhinged late night social media revenge benders, where he posted 2,249 times in the first four months of this year<\/a>. One night, he posted more than 160 times<\/a>, including a post branding Sen. Mark Kelly, a Navy combat veteran and astronaut, a \u201ctraitor\u201d who deserved death. His account also shared a <\/a>video <\/a>depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes<\/a>. Amid a feud with Pope Leo<\/a>, he posted AI images of himself as a Christ-like figure<\/a>. Finally, after millions of Americans joined peaceful \u201cNo Kings\u201d protests, he posted an AI video of himself in a crown<\/a>, flying a jet labeled \u201cKing Trump\u201d and dumping feces on the marchers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tIf an aged family member behaved this way, you\u2019d schedule an intervention. If a CEO did, the board would remove them. The presidency deserves to be held to at least the standard of conduct we expect in daily life, and patriots of every party should insist on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\tThe Choice<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\tThis is nowhere near a complete list of Trump\u2019s assaults on American democracy. This election has provided a constant stream of insults to the integrity of the office, from Trump\u2019s call for red states to do a mid-decade redistricting<\/a> so Republicans could hold onto Congress, to his endorsement<\/a> of buffoonishly corrupt Texas AG Ken Paxton over conservative incumbent Jon Cornyn, to using $22 million taxpayer dollars for campaign ads<\/a>, to his absurdly propagandistic videos at rallies about how \u201c God Made Trump<\/a>,\u201d to ogling “asses” on the campaign trail<\/a> to his latest gambit of offering a bribe of $5,000 for each vote<\/a> \u2014 are all just signs of how deep the rot has gotten a decade into the Trump era. This year\u2019s midterms are the only chance we have to restore some basic guardrails on this unhinged president and redeem our country\u2019s once-respected leadership in the free world. The question for independent voters is whether you will now hold Trump to the same standard you\u2019d apply to any other president, regardless of party. You don\u2019t have to join a team. You just have to remember the damage Trump has done over the past two years back in office and vote. Don\u2019t let the memory hole win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An open letter to independents about what Trump promised, what he delivered, and what you need to remember before you 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Unhinged Second Term: 100 Actions You May Have Forgotten","mt_seo_description":"Donald Trump's second term has been flooded with abhorrent actions, but it's important not to be memory-holed ahead of the midterm 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