Wow. I’m so honored you took the time to write me a four-page fundraising letter with SO MANY boldface words and underlines and asterisks*** and an occasional word in bold AND italics. Also, I want to thank you for saying “over, please” and “next page, please,” because I wouldn’t have known to turn the page when the wording ends mid-sentence.

Can I call you Mike? I figure I can since you called me “my friend,” not once but twice.

It was a pleasure to read everything. I see that you have a real warrior vocabulary, sir! Like “slashing,” “Woke insanity,” “persecute,” “crush,” “laser focused,” “assault,” “slamming,” “vicious,” “sabotaged,” “hate,” “disastrous,” “crisis,” “indoctrination,” and “Witch Hunt.” You got help from Pete Hegseth, right? Or was it AI?

And, oh my gosh, Speaker Johnson. I didn’t know that the Democrats are “obsessed” with winning back control of Congress! Sorry, Lord, but dang them! Once you became Speaker, I thought they were supposed to sit down, shut up, and vote for the Trump Agenda by acclamation! How unpatriotic.***

And thank you so much for mentioning God six times and pointing out the threat of Socialism and Communism seven times! Where are Senator McCarthy and Roy Cohn when we need them??? Those were the good old days.

(keep reading, please)

And thanks for reminding us that this whole mess we’re in is Joe Biden’s fault. That man….I’m so mad at him.***

I learned so much from this letter, especially that, as you say, “our country’s entire system of government is rooted in biblical principles.” Gosh, don’t you think we need to fix our textbooks? And thank you for reminding me that you are a “steadfast Christian man of God.” Where would we be without you to protect our First Amendment? Wait. Is there a First Amendment in the Bible? Does it say anything about mail-in ballots? I wonder.

From the looks of it, we need to circle the wagons fast to protect ourselves from the villains you warn us about: “Pelosi’s billionaire pals,” “fashionable elites,” and “Big Government bureaucrats”! It’s a conspiracy! (Didn’t you forget George Soros?)

And I am so glad you DIDN’T mention inflation, the cost of gasoline and food, the Iran war, tariffs, domestic goon squads, vanity construction projects, the hot planet, Todd Blanche, Kash Patel, and President Trump’s stock trades! Good for you. Oh. Maybe I shouldn’t have put those in bold.

Also, I like your big Sharpie signature. It’s bold. Like you.

The check is in the mail, sir.

For America,

Paul

The irrepressible Steve Schmidt explains why far better than I can (see below), though I will attempt to summarize. Donald Trump is panicking. He knows the mid-term elections are lost, and he’s terrified of far-reaching Democratic committee investigations and potentially a third impeachment. Trump is reaching for the only playbook he knows: cut a deal. From all appearances, Kushner is offering compromise on the Democrats’ legislative agenda in return for soft-pedaling investigations of Trump and the executive branch. The President will promise to share credit with Democrats on bills to make life better for the average American if Jeffries eliminates or slow-walks efforts to seek accountability for Trump-inspired corruption and lawlessness. The President wants to neutralize congressmen like Jamie Raskin (Judiciary Committee), Rosa DeLauro (Appropriations), Maxine Waters (Financial Services), Ro Khanna (Cyber, IT, and Innovation Subcommittee), Robert Garcia (Oversight), and Jim McGovern (Rules). No other explanation makes sense.

Jeffries is a supremely cautious man (see The New Yorker profile, May 18, 2026). By meeting Kushner, he has signaled a willingness to compromise with the most volatile, self-interested, and untrustworthy president in our history. It was an extraordinary blunder.

The Warning with Steve Schmidt

No answers, no speaker

What should the Democratic Party stand for in the midterm elections of 2026…

Read more

9 days ago · 421 likes · 66 comments · Steve Schmidt

Political corruption is now fully out in the open. No FBI stings required. No outrage. No ethical violations. No consequences. All brought to you by the Supreme Court of the United States.

Worshiping at the twin altars of unbridled executive power and the freedom of money to speak, the Court has just ushered the nation into a jungle free-for-all. Power and money rule as never before. You pay, you play. You don’t pay, you walk.

Let’s look first at the core meaning of the court’s ruling on Temporary Protected Status for immigrant refugees such as Haitians. Openly racist intent is now permissible so long as a benign-sounding administrative justification can be provided for sending Haitian home to violence and disarray. Presidential whim reigns.

In the Slaughter case, allowing the President to fire board members of independent regulatory bodies at will (with the possible exception of the Federal Reserve), sober, arms-length regulation of vast areas of the economy now yields to Presidential fiat. If he doesn’t like the way a commissioner is behaving toward a favored corporate donor, the commissioner is yanked. No questions asked. The Court has thus locked in a new American spoils system: loyalty to the President replaces loyalty to fairness, common sense, safety, and prudence.

These freshly neutered independent boards regulate labor rights, investments, energy, housing, trade, product safety, and fair use of the airwaves by broadcasters — in short, they manage all the boundaries that Congress sought to erect against unrestrained manipulation by powerful interests. Any notion of a legitimate role for the federal government in protecting consumers, workers, travelers, viewers, or voters from corporate greed and money-driven manipulation is cut off at the knees.

Beginning today, it is every man for himself and every corporation for itself, guaranteeing that the rich will grow richer and more politically powerful and the poor will become more destitute and increasingly voiceless. The grip that oligarchs currently hold on Congress will only tighten. The grotesque king-making role of today’s billionaires will expand.

Taken together, the court’s recent rulings and its earlier grant to the President of immunity from prosecution in nearly all cases, are an open invitation to corruption on a scale never seen in this country, even in the first Gilded Age. The concept of an expert-led civil service system, which the Progressive Era created a century ago, is suddenly dissolved.

Moneyed interests can openly curry favor with the President via campaign or ballroom donations in return for the removal of commissioners and board members of agencies who are inclined to regulate those interests.

Naively, the Supreme Court only sees bribery when an official is caught taking a bag of cash in return for a stated promise to seek favorable treatment for the bagman. In the infamous Citizens United decision of 2010, the court declared that corporate donations are a form of free speech. It effectively narrowed political corruption to an explicit quid pro quo. In doing so, the Court created a vast open marketplace of implicit corruption, where campaign donations and other gifts come with implied (or expressed) desires for favorable treatment by government regulators or investigators. Money talks, bullshit walks.

All of this imminent upheaval occurs in the name of a theory of American governance holding that the President may execute the laws not “faithfully,” as the Constitution requires, from the perch of a co-equal branch of government, but indiscriminately, all-powerfully, without any restraint — a theory that on its face violates the reason America was born as a government of laws. Who subscribes to this theory? Five justices who earlier served as lawyers in the Executive Branch, plus Amy Coney Barrett.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said it best in her dissent in the Slaughter case. This new theory of an all-powerful executive “promises to unleash only chaos.”

But I think of Connecticut as a small, wealthy, Democratic-leaning state that has never produced a U.S. President — unless you consider George W. Bush a Yankee instead of a Texan. (Bush was born in New Haven and left around age two).

Having finished Murphy’s book, my view of this 52-year-old Democrat has evolved. The doggedness is still there. But I now see him as incredibly well-informed across a broad range of serious domestic issues and able to cut to the heart of national problems, from the onslaught of technology to the epidemic of loneliness and alienation. Most importantly, Murphy is willing to tell his own party how wrongheaded it is. This is Political Courage 101.

If you think of Murphy as a moderate, think again. He understands why Bernie Sanders almost won the 2016 Presidential nomination and why, had he won, we might not have been subjected to the brutish and destructive presidency of Donald Trump.

Murphy is probably best known for work on gun control. He represented Newtown in the U.S. House when 20 kids and six adults were shot to death at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Today, some see him as presidential material, although you don’t frequently see his name among the major possible candidates.

Read this book, and you will be reminded that our problems as a nation go far beyond Donald Trump. Murphy addresses the dangers of social media and artificial intelligence, the buying of political power by billionaires, the crisis of social disconnection, the corrosive nature of income inequality, and the various cults that have taken hold in America: the cults of corporate and personal profit, rampant overconsumption, technology worship, college elitism, and political corruption.

But you will also learn that surprisingly pragmatic legislative actions might help put us on a better path — if we have the right leadership and a willingness to seek common solutions for the common good. Thus, the title of the book. We have lost the very idea of a “common good” in America, and Murphy shows that more people than you think — including some Republican officeholders — want to change that. In other words, if we emerge from the Trump era with democracy intact — a big if — there is hope.

The common good, as Murphy defines it, is an “ancient idea that what matters most is that we belong to one another as well as to ourselves.”

Murphy had plenty of help thinking about all of this from a Harvard professor or two and from little-known people in the nonprofit world who analyze big-picture social and political connections. Among the prescriptions Murphy offers are giving workers a greater sense of power and value by lifting the minimum wage, restricting non-compete agreements, streamlining the ability of workers to unionize, and, yes, instituting an industrial policy with a mix of carefully targeted tariffs and domestic incentives to shore up U.S. manufacturing.

He also argues for creating a new sense of “belonging” by supporting locally owned commerce, raising the corporate tax rate, and pursuing antitrust actions more vigorously. To boost the concept of citizenship, he would require six months of national service for every young American; raise public-sector salaries; and stop turning over schools, hospitals, and prisons to for-profit companies.

He would like the United States to join many other developed countries in guaranteeing some form of tuition-free, post-high school education, and he would curtail the number of jobs where a college degree is a prerequisite. He favors a public option for health insurance (i.e., “Medicare for all who want it”). He also favors greater regulation of artificial intelligence and data-center construction, and holding social media companies liable for harms they knowingly impose.

And finally, Murphy would require public disclosure of all election spending and would push for a constitutional amendment to allow Congress to regulate money in politics.

These reforms may sound hopelessly impractical or politically implausible. But the beauty of Murphy’s book is that he makes the case for each with such elegant simplicity that you can easily picture a future national leader — one with excellent communication skills, to be sure — leading us toward these goals by sheer persuasiveness and determination. Franklin Roosevelt comes to mind.

“There is an unmistakable appetite,” Murphy writes, “for a politics that not only directly confronts concentrated power, consumerism over citizenship, and government corruption but also offers solutions with real — not incremental — impact on the work of restoring dignity and meaning to American life.”

I hope Murphy will run for President. He deserves a platform. Even if he doesn’t make it, he will have shown us a smarter way forward and a new reason to hope.

If it is bold enough, Iran has an interesting card to play in its war with the United States and Israel. It can insist on a return to the nuclear treaty signed in 2015 with the U.S. and nearly every other world power.

Donald Trump will be apoplectic, but he badly needs something akin to the 2015 deal, especially its provisions on verification and monitoring.

Imagine Tehran saying to Trump that it is willing, once again, to forgo a nuclear weapons program for more than a decade, carry out atomic research for peaceful purposes, and accept permanent monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency. In return, Tehran would demand an end to nuclear-related international sanctions and could seek a U.S. promise to donate $200 million to the International Committee of the Red Cross. That’s roughly $100,000 for every civilian Iranian death in the current war to date, or about the cost of two U.S. F-15 fighter jets. Two.

Trump, of course, condemned the 2015 deal as an Obama debacle and pulled the U.S. out of the treaty in 2018. And yet, the strongest elements of the 2015 deal appear to solve Trump’s current need: monitoring and verification that Iran has ended its atom bomb ambitions. Every other nation that signed the 2015 deal or approved it in the UN Security Council — the UK, France, Germany, China, Russia, and the entire European Union — will find this option hugely attractive and no doubt lobby Trump to sign on. Israel, which opposed the 2015 deal, won’t. Saudi Arabia opposed the Obama treaty, too, but may have second thoughts.

If Iran offers the world this sort of status quo ante — a return to the calm and free navigation that existed before the irrational storm unleashed by Trump — the U.S. would be further isolated. So why would Trump agree? He won’t. He is incapable of accepting any deal bearing Obama’s signature, regardless of its attractiveness.

Yet opportunity lurks beneath the surface. As the world knows, Trump is capable of flagrant and long-winded deception to paint his world as victorious at every turn. Privately, Iran should convey to the Vance-Kushner team — the Frick and Frack of American diplomacy — that it is willing to re-word the 2015 treaty with a few Trumpian flourishes and call it something entirely new. Trump has forced himself to come up with an agreement that is verifiable, and the blueprint is right there in the 2015 treaty.

Obama assigned three cabinet members as negotiators in sealing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, agreement in 2015: Secretary of State John Kerry, a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, a nuclear physicist from MIT; and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, head of the Office of Management and Budget in two administrations. Lew also happens to be Jewish. These are not real estate developers. After two years of talks, they produced an agreement but it did not go into effect until 2016, when international inspectors confirmed that Iran was using nuclear material solely for peaceful purposes. That was a major milestone.

The agreement was a mixed bag. It had strong elements and weaker ones. Iran would reduce its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98 percent and cut its centrifuge capability by two-thirds. It was permitted to keep a small amount of uranium under monitoring. Iran could also pursue transparent research on peaceful uses of nuclear material. Tehran was barred from enriching uranium-235 to a weapons-grade level and from separating plutonium. However, the deal had sunset provisions. After eight years, Iran could conduct research on advanced centrifuges and after 15 years, it could increase its production of nuclear fuel. Whatever its long-term plans, they would be subject to permanent international monitoring. The deal also allowed Iran to eventually import and export ballistic missiles.

Obama understood the tradeoffs. Presciently, in 2015, he said: “Put simply, no deal means a greater chance of more war in the Middle East.” And here we are. Obama also argued that the deal gave future Presidents a stronger basis for restraining Iran beyond the sunset dates. We’ll never know.

When Trump pulled the plug in 2018, he created the very mess that he now seeks to clean up, albeit with vastly more creative incompetence. Iran took entirely predictable steps. It accelerated uranium enrichment to a higher level of purity, enlarged its uranium stockpile, introduced advanced centrifuges, and curtailed inspections. According to the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, Trump, by ending the Obama deal, shortened the time required by Iran to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon from more than one year to one week or less. When Trump realized he badly needed verification and transparency, just as Obama did, he entered new talks with Iran last year, only to lose patience and unleash his War Department’s bombers and cruise missiles.

If Trump could win from Iran the same verification and monitoring provisions negotiated by Obama, plus restrictions on ballistic missiles, he should grab it. In return, he would end sanctions and allow Iran to continue nuclear research for peaceful purposes, even with sunset provisions. This is the core of the Obama deal. Let a future President work on extending the life of the Iran nuclear agreement. It cannot be anyone as demented or inept as Donald Trump.

Robert Mueller was certainly well intentioned in his pursuit of the Trump-Russia investigation, but it is worth recalling a momentous error he and his team of hot-shot lawyers made when it came to possible violations of U.S. campaign finance laws.

Amid inexplicable legal hand-wringing, Mueller chose to let the Trump campaign, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort off the hook for violations related to their June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan with emissaries of Russia.

The error is momentous for two reasons. It continued a pattern of wrist-slaps and shrugs by numerous regulators who, over the lifetime of Donald Trump, have investigated his efforts to skirt the law and never held him accountable, most notably the New Jersey Casino Control Commission. Secondly, it set a precedent that opened the door to future efforts by foreign governments to influence American elections.

How did this happen?

Federal law bars spending by foreign nationals in U.S. elections. The law reads: “A foreign national shall not, directly or indirectly, make a contribution or a donation of money or other thing of value, or expressly or impliedly promise to make a contribution or a donation, in connection with any Federal, State, or local election.” Further, Americans are barred from soliciting such foreign assistance. The law: “No person shall knowingly solicit, accept, or receive from a foreign national any contribution or donation” that is prohibited or “provide substantial assistance” in the making of a banned expenditure.

Donald Trump Jr. and his campaign associates decided to meet at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer, known to have Russian government connections, who was promising sensitive information damaging to Hillary Clinton. At first, Don Jr. claimed, in a statement reportedly drafted by his father, that the meeting was about adoptions. Later, he acknowledged its true topic was “opposition research.” Trump Jr. and Kushner worked for the campaign. Manafort was its manager.

Famously, the candidate himself publicly solicited Russia’s assistance the following month. “Russia, if you’re listening…” Moscow quickly complied. A group linked to the Russian government began releasing hacked e-mails from the Democratic National Committee via WikiLeaks. Donald Sr. and Jr. talked up the leaked e-mails and provided links. According to a later New York Times analysis, Trump Sr. and 18 of his associates had at least 140 contacts with Russian nationals and WikiLeaks, or their intermediaries, during the 2016 campaign.

Among the Mueller report’s various excuses for not bringing charges were doubts that the Trump Tower participants knew they might be violating the law and that the alleged dirt on Hilary Clinton represented a “thing of value.” Did the repeated contacts between Russia and the campaign (including Manafort’s many prior contacts) meet the “substantial assistance” test — including Trump’s Sr. public solicitation? Dubiously, Mueller thought not. Most incredibly, the Mueller report pulled back from a decision to prosecute because there was no prior legal decision showing that “uncompensated research” could be deemed something of value. In short, Mueller decided against charges because there was no precedent, despite the clarity of federal law and the obvious high value the Trump campaign placed on receiving damaging information on their opponent.

Mueller’s response showed weak-kneed judgment then and remains today a colossal missed opportunity to reign in Trump family lawlessness. The Mueller report quotes Don Jr. responding to an intermediary in conversations with the Russians: “If it’s what you say, I love it.” Mueller, though, could not get beyond the cloud of doubt he saw in the message’s first clause.

Mueller could have charged individuals or the Trump campaign, or both, and the evidence of solicitation and value would have been compelling. He chose to prosecute neither the individuals nor the entity.

Accountability has to start somewhere, but Robert Mueller was too cautious and timid to make the case. Look where that left us.

Democrats won’t revitalize their sclerotic party until they face the truth: the Democratic Party brand is hopelessly tarnished in the eyes of the American electorate. Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan put it this way last year: American voters view her party as “weak and woke.” To which I would add, “wobbly.”

If ever there was a time for Democrats to send new energy, young blood, and fresh ideas to Washington, it is now. Yet in Massachusetts, one Democratic U.S. Senator who will be 80 before November wants voters to reward him for his long service by sending him back to the Senate until he’s 86 years old. His name is Ed Markey, and he’s held elective office for 53 years.

Time to pass the torch? Not according to Senator Markey.

Interestingly, Markey has a formidable challenger in the Democratic primary this September, a 47-year-old six-term congressman, Seth Moulton. The race ordinarily would not register on anyone’s radar outside Massachusetts, but the Markey-Moulton contest has genuine national importance.

It is a test of whether Democrats truly understand their weakness as a party, whether they see the importance of fresh ideas and new blood, and whether they understand that the electorate at large is tired of watching geriatric politicians cling to power (including ineffective party leaders like Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, who is 75).

As Moulton acknowledges, Markey is a good man. He has a progressive voting record and spearheaded efforts to combat climate change. But his record, in hindsight, may not be as pure as today’s Democrats might wish to believe. Markey supported the Iraq war, a vote he regrets. And he voted to create the sprawling Department of Homeland Security, which today is a bloated, inept, and corrupt bureaucracy trampling on the legal rights of Americans and the human rights of asylum seekers.

Elections should never be about the past. They should never be rewards. They are about the future. Today, Massachusetts voters should be asking themselves: who will take the most energy, the most political courage, the most incorruptibility, the most independent thinking, and the freshest ideas to Washington? If they do, Moulton stands a far better chance in 2026 than Rep. Joe Kennedy III did in 2020, when he failed to make the case for change and lost badly in the primary against Markey.

Another element of the Moulton-Markey race that has national implications is the question of whether Democrats should proudly wear the progressive label or lean toward more moderate positions. Moulton is perceived as a moderate in one of the nation’s most progressive states (its other U.S. senator is Elizabeth Warren, age 76), while Markey’s progressive chops rival those of Bernie Sanders.

But is Moulton really a namby-pamby middle-of-the roader? Hardly. He has stated flatly that the United States is “losing the war” with Iran. He should know. He opposed the war in Iraq but did his duty, serving four tours there as an infantry platoon leader in the U.S. Marines. He is demanding full accountability for members of the Trump Administration who have broken the law and believes the President’s pardon power must be reformed so that it can never be used corruptly. He is one of Washington’s strongest promoters of high-speed rail. He demanded that Israel send humanitarian aid to Gaza. He sought to stop the unauthorized attack on Venezuela. He wants the federal immigration portfolio to return to the Department of Justice, where it was before 9/11. What’s more, he will say all of this on Fox News as one of the Democrats’ most effective spokesmen.

More importantly, Moulton isn’t afraid to say that the Democratic Party needs an ideas overhaul. He believes Democrats lost the White House in 2024 because they failed to articulate an alternative to Donald Trump’s brutal immigration platform, failed to acknowledge the real damage that inflation was doing to Americans’ pocketbooks, and papered over Joe Biden’s obvious frailty and incapacity. Moulton saw Biden’s mental decline and was the third U.S. Representative to call for his withdrawal from the race. Moulton will not vote to return Schumer to a leadership position.

No, Seth Moulton is not a dream candidate. Those who are wary of him see an opportunist. He flamed out in a brief run for President in 2020. He blundered in trying to unseat Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker in 2018. But he has also put in the hard work on the ground required to bring new voices into the party. His Serve America Political Action Committee has helped finance the campaigns of many military and national security veterans, including Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, both moderates who were elected to the U.S. House and are now the governors of New Jersey and Virginia, respectively.

The reason Moulton is able to take a Democratic message onto Fox News is that his principles are clear, and he is willing to step outside perceived party boundaries. He is a change agent. Yes, Moulton is ambitious. But as Emerson, a son of Massachusetts, wrote: “Without ambition one starts nothing. Without work one finishes nothing. The prize will not be sent to you. You have to win it.”

When the history of this time is written, observers stepping back to examine the forest will find that American society experienced a systematic devaluation of human life.

Perhaps historians will also find the corollary to this wave of inhumanity — what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil.” While covering the trial of Adolf Eichmann for The New Yorker, Arendt concluded that, far from being a monster, Eichmann acted out of a bland, unquestioning shallowness. He simply went along with the plan, never examining what he was doing in any depth.

Are we, too, simply going along?

Are we going along with the glorification of violence in politics, the killing of people on the open seas because we think they might be hauling drugs, helping pay for the random raining of bombs on Gaza’s Palestinians, the killing and beating of protesters in Minneapolis, the brutality of immigration raids that tear families apart, the torpedoing of a naval vessel thousands of miles from the front lines without any warning that it must remain apart from the hostilities, the precision targeting of an enemy naval installation without equal precision in avoiding the girls’ school next door, the government’s indiscriminate use of loaded language like “domestic terrorists,” the video promotion of harsh foreign prisons as a warning to migrants, the demonization of federal judges whose rulings disfavor the regime?

At their core, all of these normalize violence and diminish the value we place on human beings. The less we value them, the easier it is to move people aside without due legal process or simply “eliminate” them and claim an airtight justification that doubles as evidence.

It is not enough for authoritarians to rally citizens to a cause by magnifying the concept of an enemy of the state. The enemy doesn’t deserve mercy, doesn’t deserve to draw a breath. This is where we are.

And if this is also where we are headed — a continuing shrug at inhumane acts and a tacit acceptance of feeble justifications offered by the regime — the United States will have fully reverted to the days of billy clubs at the blood-stained Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Soon, we will need to reclaim our soul and redefine what we mean by human rights. We will need to create our own Truth and Reconciliation Commission, just as Chile did in 1990 and South Africa did in 1996 to right national wrongs. We will need our own Desmond Tutu. We will need forgiveness as well as truth.

As Arendt argued, failing to think for ourselves allows inhumane acts to flourish. Evil, she wrote in 1964, “can overgrow and lay waste the whole world precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the surface. It is ‘thought-defying.’”

Let’s see.

Today, the President of the United States unleashed an unprecedented diatribe against the six members of the Court who voted to block his sweeping tariffs, labeling the justices “unpatriotic” and “disloyal to the Constitution.” He darkly accused the court of being “swayed by foreign interests.” He called the Democrats on the Supreme Court a “disgrace to the nation” and “fools.” He characterized Justices Barrett and Gorsuch as “an embarrassment to their families.” The ever-independent-minded Vice President chimed in with: “This is lawlessness from the Court, plain and simple.”

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. And Supreme Court rulings are lawless.

It seems entirely reasonable to ask whether Chief Justice John Roberts will follow through on the new ethics guidelines and publicly defend the stature of the Supreme Court and the integrity its members against the ravings of off-the-rails politicians bent on undermining the legitimacy of the judicial branch.

It would be welcome — but shocking — if Roberts issued a clear, calm, and forceful defense of his fellow justices and the court itself in the mold of the videotaped statement that Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell posted recently calling out White House intimidation.

Don’t count on it. Even though Roberts has indirectly scolded the President in the past for demanding the impeachment of a federal judge whose ruling he disliked, the Chief Justice has shown himself to be exceedingly cautious on such matters. On Tuesday, Roberts is expected to attend the President’s State of the Union address.

The President’s distaste for judges who cross him is well documented. And a few times, Roberts has carefully wagged a finger. In his 2024 year-end report on the nation’s judiciary, the Chief Justice chided unnamed politicians who had “raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings.” He also warned against violence, intimidation, and disinformation related to the federal courts and federal judges.

With remarkable timing, the administrative body that Roberts chairs, the Judicial Conference of the United States, just days ago issued its new ethics guidelines. They refer specifically to the Chief Justice’s 2024 report and the four areas of “illegitimate activity” that threaten the independence of judges: violence, intimidation, disinformation, and “threats to defy lawfully entered judgments.”

The guidelines were written by the judicial conference’s Committee on Codes of Conduct. All its members are appointed by Roberts.

Now what?

Does the Chief Justice have the courage of his convictions? Is he prepared to defend the nation’s judiciary against the gutter tactics of the head of the Executive Branch — tactics that further shake public confidence in the rule of law?

There is no doubt that John Roberts is capable of carefully but clearly pushing back against the smearing of Supreme Court justices and the dangerous attacks on the court as an institution. It is not enough to rebuke the President in 21 pages of legal reasoning on tariffs.

A greater threat exists to the stature of our system of justice, to the legitimacy of those who sit in judgment on the bench, and to an institution at the core of our democratic values. If ever there was a time to act, it is now. Apart from Roberts’s new authority to act under ethics guidelines, it would be a simple act of civic integrity and personal courage.

Thanks to the trenchant work of the ever-prescient New York Times, we now learn, in the second month of 2026, that Donald Trump is fostering an American cult of personality. Who knew?

The Feb. 15 news analysis by Peter Baker doesn’t report evidence that such a cult exists or probe the collective mindset of Trump followers. It looks only at the leader, concluding that Trump is “fostering” — merely encouraging — one.

It’s only been eleven years since Trump announced his candidacy for president with a classic cult-engendering propaganda blitz that grotesquely exaggerated external threats (migrant rapists and Chinese rip-offs), offered grandiose remedies (Mexico will pay for the wall), and painted himself in religious terms (“I will be the greatest jobs president that God ever created.”)

It has only been ten years since he declared in his nomination acceptance speech that “nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.”

It has been nine years since he announced at his first inaugural the creation of “a movement” (America First) to end “American carnage.”

It has been seven years since the publication of Steven Hassan’s book “The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How The President Uses Mind Control.”

And it has been five years since the sacking of the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump fanatics whose actions were, shall we say, fostered by the President.

In the last two years, a cottage industry has emerged among academics who conduct research among Trump loyalists to understand his control over his flock in empirical terms. Even before, historians began to take a serious look at the parallels between Trumpism and the cult of Adolph Hitler. Those parallels keep mounting. As Peter Hayes, a Northwestern professor who is an expert on the Nazi Party, put it last year, Trump “shows, like Hitler, absolute certainty about his own genius coupled with ruthless determination to remove any impediments to achieving his objectives.”

Sarcasm aside, Baker’s work in the Times has been intelligent and authoritative. One has to wonder, though, why the Times has been afraid to call a cult a cult. I don’t recall any Times investigation that explored in depth how the Trump propaganda machine works to create such blind loyalty at the grassroots level, how the “fostering” has already succeeded.

Indeed, Baker’s piece is full of caveats. It takes care to avoid any conclusion that a Trump cult even exists. He writes that Trump’s self-aggrandizement “comes closer” to building a cult than at any time in U.S. history and that Trump “might be heading down a dangerous path.” The analysis twice couches its central theme — the fostering of a cult — as a mere “notion.”

Only at the end of the article does Baker quote two academics who have studied the Trump phenomenon as saying that his movement “qualifies” as a cult of personality. Then, another caveat: there is “no settled definition” of a personality cult.

If so, I would prefer to go with abductive reasoning — forming a conclusion from known information. This is the origin of the “duck test”: “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”

The known information includes demands for absolute loyalty, the exploitation of patriotic imagery, relentless media manipulation, creating or exaggerating external threats, controlling the arts, mounting government-sponsored demonstrations (Jan. 6, 2021), creating adulatory parades and heroic imagery, and claiming religious motivation and divine endorsement.

It is all there in front of our eyes. How do we expect people to refuse to drink the Kool-Aid if we can’t call a cult a cult?

I make no personal comparison between Trump and Jim Jones, whose Peoples Temple followers died en masse at his command in 1978. I think it’s worth recalling, however, that Jones was a fixture in California politics, served as chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority, and rubbed elbows with governors and mayors before he moved his cult to Guyana.

No one stopped him.

I am all for hopping on the bandwagon of awarding meaningless prizes to salve wounded egos. Day care directors do it all the time to bring peace to the sandbox. Everyone wins.

Gianni Infantino, head of the world soccer federation FIFA, did it when he gave Donald Trump FIFA’s Peace Prize — from one infantino to another. María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader, did it when she handed over her own glittering Nobel Peace Prize to a beaming Trump in the Oval Office.

So what would be the cost of a public declaration that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election? It’s all upside.

Everyone can see that the president was profoundly wounded by Joe Biden’s victory. He whines about it every day. Though Trump has privately acknowledged his loss, his “big lie” — ‘history has never seen anything bigger,’ he would say — has mushroomed into a mammoth obsession. Trump is now using it to justify the looming blitzkrieg of “election integrity” sabotage designed to intimidate voters who intend to oppose him in this year’s mid-term elections.

If Trump is finally acknowledged to have won, what will change? Governmentally, almost nothing. The clock cannot be turned back. The Constitution doesn’t permit do-overs. And Trump has already reversed or neutered almost everything Biden achieved by executive or administrative order during his four years in office. Besides, he’s now president. Is he complaining because he wanted to win earlier?

So, I’m for buying billboard space and prime-time ads to show the world Donald’s long-overdue and richly deserved Certificate of Electoral Victory. And no booing at the Super Bowl! Deliver unto Caesar another royal fig leaf. Let the trumpets blow a fanfare and the confetti rain. Let us cheer and be of good cheer. Let another inane gesture throw a spotlight — the world’s biggest Klieg — on the empty absurdity of the infant king.

More Americans will be attracted to a message spotlighting “abuse of power” in carrying out Trump’s agenda than one targeting the agenda itself or the man who sets it. Kristi Noem, Pete Hegseth, Kash Patel, Robert Kennedy Jr., and Pam Bondi are not directly shielded by the same cult-created armor that Donald Trump enjoys, yet their credentials as clumsy zealots are impeccable.

Democratic leaders know that impeaching Trump for a third time, however justified, would be an act of political futility equal in magnitude only to the President’s level of madness. The concept of “abuse of power,” on the other hand, has legs. Storm-trooper tactics, overt acts of extortion, sickening personal smears, and murderous gunfire on American streets are flagrant violations of the rules of the political game. Such abusive tactics are more widely viewed as un-American. They even tap into the deep well of mistrust in the federal government that goes back to the Bay of Pigs and Watergate.

For a year, the hosts of late-night talk and comedy shows have found richness in ridicule through parodies of Trump, but their freshest and most pungent work of late has featured members of the Cabinet, particularly Noem and Hegseth. It is a target-rich environment that makes Tina Fey’s parody of Sarah Palin look like a warm-up act.

Many Americans, including the near-solid bloc of Republican officeholders, still have no quarrel with the broad strokes of Trumpism. Increasingly, though, they are embarrassed by the buffoonish swagger and appalling political judgment of Trump’s senior henchmen. Sympathetic elected officials are starting to feel the questioning stares of an alarmed electorate and see the political peril ahead if they continue to remain silent. These are the cracks Democrats must exploit boldly.

In a Congressional body that is controlled by Republicans, is the impeachment of Kristi Noem, which Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called for on Tuesday, even remotely possible? Not really. But that hardly matters. Politics in America is largely theater, and the Democrats see that raising the curtain on their own public investigation, drawing up their own articles of impeachment, and marshaling their own team of prosecutors ready to take the case to the Senate, if and when they regain power, will attract serious attention.

Beyond “abuse of power” lies a foundational element of democracy that more and more Americans are hungering for: accountability. By placing a stake in the ground on Cabinet impeachments, the Democrats are saying loudly that the rule of law is essential but only survives when rule-breakers are held to account. If members of the U.S. military, the National Guard, and second-level Trump-appointed bureaucrats take notice and begin to wonder whether there might be risks for themselves in obeying orders that abuse their power, all the better.

Articles of impeachment are typically sent to the House floor by the Judiciary Committee, which consists of 25 Republicans, led by the charming Rep. Jim Jordan, and 19 Democrats, led by the veteran Rep. Jamie Raskin. Apart from Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who has been a vocal critic of Trump and will likely lose his seat as a result, there are not really any easy Republican votes available to the Democrats. Another path would be to bring an impeachment resolution directly to the House floor. Forcing an up-or-down vote on the fitness for office of Kristi Noem would be attractive politically, but House rules make it nearly impossible for the minority to force such a vote.

What is left for the Democrats is to investigate, lay the groundwork, build the case, and marshal the resources necessary to seek justice for the grotesque wrongs committed in Donald Trump’s name. Maybe, just maybe, the cracks in Republican ranks will widen. A vote here, a vote there. In a closely divided House, it’s not impossible to imagine a crack becoming a fissure and a fissure a rupture and a rupture an earthquake.

There is nothing like an ugly external threat to fuse nations together in a potent coalition.

Today’s threat to Europe is the United States, and the Europeans are responding. As a consequence of Russo-American attacks, Europe is already shedding its reliance on NATO, defending itself militarily and economically, and shielding the liberal Western ideas that a corrupt U.S. regime is shockingly abandoning.

Despite its internal political tensions, the 27 members of the European Union are taking concrete steps to create their own unified defense structure, outside of NATO, and to forge fresh global alliances. It will take time, but the transformation is under way.

There is great irony here. As the U.S. abandons Ukraine, threatens Greenland, and sabotages NATO, it also sows the seeds for a much more potent Europe. The EU and UK are facing the reality that after 75 years of partnership in the Atlantic Alliance, they can no longer trust the United States. Europe today is on the path to becoming a fourth pillar of global power alongside Russia, China, and the United States — and the only one that doesn’t parade its imperialistic designs.

To be sure, Europe has miles to go before it can fully defend itself, and its internal politics present significant barriers. Donald Trump’s personal fixations will not make the way forward easier. His two prime obsessions related to Europe are a perceived dilution of white, Christian power and Europe’s insistence on placing guardrails around social media titans owned by Trump’s billionaire promoters.

Under the radar, Europe is taking steps to go it alone militarily:

• The EU has created a permanent defense structure of its own that cooperates with NATO but is not integrated into NATO’s U.S.-led command structure. Its priorities include homegrown air and missile defenses, long-range artillery systems, missiles, drones, and electronic warfare capabilities.

• European defense spending is expanding rapidly. In recent days, the Financial Times published this headline: “European defense stocks surge as Greenland tensions mount.” The nations stepping up include Germany, which has avoided serious military outlays for decades.

• Europe is coordinating closely with Ukraine to shore up Kyiv’s ability to defend itself against Russia. Denmark has struck deals to obtain some of Ukraine’s groundbreaking military hardware and technology.

• The EU is moving to supplant NATO’s ground-based air-defense system with a non-U.S. version, and President Macron of France has called for developing a European intermediate-range ballistic missile system. (It turns out that de Gaulle was right to not fully trust the U.S. Although a NATO member, France has not accepted U.S. command of its military since 1966 and has developed its own nuclear force.)

• Europe is creating a constellation of satellites capable of fulfilling its military needs without the U.S. Eutelsat, the France-based rival to Elon Musk’s Starlink, recently won contracts from the French military. The UK is one of Eutelsat’s largest investors.

• Sweden is spending heavily on drones and enhancing its cruise missile capabilities.

• Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the nations on NATO’s eastern border, from Finland to Romania, have more than doubled their commitment to a “tripwire” force meant to deter Russia.

Where will this leave NATO? If Europe succeeds in building its own defense structure, NATO will rightfully wither. Although Europeans might privately wish to expel the U.S. from the alliance for loathsome behavior, that will not happen. NATO has no expulsion mechanism, and Europe can ill-afford to jettison the nuclear element of NATO’s deterrence umbrella. Moreover, although U.S. law prevents the President from withdrawing from NATO without the consent of Congress, that statute has never been tested, and the Supreme Court defers to the Executive Branch in matters of foreign policy.

There will be no shooting war over Greenland. And Europe won’t heed recent calls to close U.S. military bases. The battles are being waged politically, through trade and other tit-for-tat power games, including Europe’s recent trade pact with South America’s Mercosur bloc and Trump’s snap tariffs on Danish allies that have sent symbolic reinforcements to Greenland. Tighter EU restrictions on market access by U.S. companies may result.

A propaganda war is also under way. The U.S. insists on warming relations with ultranationalist and neo-Nazi political parties in Europe, sanctioning European bureaucrats who enforce technology regulations, and issuing personal attacks on leaders like the mayor of London.

Europe has been wise to avoid taking the bait. Its diplomats are probably trying to craft a clever response on Greenland that allows the five-year-old in the White House to declare “I win!” while maintaining Greenland’s sovereignty and buying time until the next manufactured crisis.

In the long run, the American assault on Europe has a good chance of backfiring. Europeans are appalled that we are nakedly strong-arming their leaders, executing protesters in American cities, and threatening to seize Greenland for reasons that are absurd. The divide between Europe and America may sideline the internal tensions fanned by right-wing political leaders. And the expansion of EU defense spending is helping drive economic growth on the Continent. If Kyiv can curb corruption and protectionist practices related to grain sales, Ukraine might be admitted to the EU, raising the possibility that it would supply arms Europe needs.

The preamble to the NATO charter explains that the alliance exists to protect “democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.” Those foundational words have been kicked to the gutter by the United States. Europe understands that it is now the keeper of that flame and is acting accordingly.

Washington is a city where the thirst for retaining power is unquenchable and the bipartisan obsession with campaign cash is immutable. Today’s Republican officeholders cling to Donald Trump because, despite his madness, he delivers votes from slavish worshippers as well as money from a billionaire brotherhood.

Democrats have no such maniacal intermediary — fortunately. Yet they are equally subservient to the money-driven political playbook. If Democratic officeholders spent half the time working together to craft a winning strategy to save democracy as they spend in the personal pursuit of election-cycle campaign funding, we would already have a New Democratic Party and know who its leaders are. That party does not yet exist.

The Democrats’ old guard regularly denounces the Trump horror show, as they should. What they really need to say to the American people — loudly, repeatedly, and in unison — is that we may not have mid-term elections, that the party must and will change to repel fascism, and that a new generation of leaders will focus on new solutions to the big problems Americans really care about.

Democrats are not a team. There is no evidence they are trying to craft a bold, new, unified message to America, one that can serve as an alternative to the hate-filled ideology of Trumpism. Instead, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and too many Democratic governors aiming for higher office are doing what they’ve always done. They’re working the phones and the cocktail party circuit to raise money for themselves and sitting members of Congress who might endorse them. The formula is simple: raise money, stay in power.

To be sure, successful campaigns for Congress, Senate, and governorships require huge sums. In 2024, a Congressional candidate in a “toss-up” race needed to raise nearly $11,000 a day for two years. A typical freshman needed $3,300 a day.

You’ve probably witnessed this fundraising onslaught. I certainly have. Every month, scores of texts and emails from Democratic officeholders, political action committees, and candidates land in my digital in-boxes. Suddenly, I have lots of friends. “Hey, Paul,” the messages begin. Or, “Can I introduce myself?” Or something catchy, like “No! Hell no!” Each one explains why I should “chip in” with a donation.

It’s my own fault. I vote the Democrat line, and I’ve given money to Democratic candidates. All of that is public record at the Federal Election Commission and voter rolls. They have my name, address, email, and phone number. They probably know my shoe size.

This frantic pursuit of campaign funds is a time and energy sinkhole. It might explain why Democratic leaders don’t seem interested in creating a unified communications strategy that can break through the hourly Trump propaganda tsunami. Is “affordability” really all they’ve got?

Maybe big Democratic Party donors should take charge, get on a conference call, and do what Schumer & Co. have failed to do. People like Michael Bloomberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Reid Hoffman, Jim Simons, Stephen Mandel, the Pritzkers, Wendy Schmidt, Seth Klarman, Laurene Powell Jobs, and Steven Spielberg. These aren’t small minds, but they’re not thinking big enough to meet the moment.

Can someone explain to them that the America that allowed them to become wealthy beyond all imagination is dying before their eyes? Can someone point out that they have the collective leverage to open the door to a younger, smarter, more energetic party leadership — not in 2028 but now?

It is pointless to focus single-mindedly on having the resources to go into battle when you don’t have a strategy or blueprint for rallying the American people to your side. If a fresh, stirring, forward-looking set of ideas emerges from the Democrats, the cash floodgates will open. I, for one, am putting my checkbook away until I see a message or a messenger I can believe in.

The human instinct for self-preservation has made political courage a contradiction in terms. It is a quality so rare today that when an exemplar surfaces, his act must cross a great ocean of civic exhaustion to be seen and heard and taken to heart.

On Friday, Jerome H. Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, crossed that ocean of weary indifference with a strength of character that deserves more attention and respect than it has received.

Months ago, Powell established his willingness to resist the bullying of the President of the United States, who is desperate for lower interest rates to ignite politically favorable economic growth. But when the Department of Justice threatened a criminal indictment of him for allegedly lying to Congress about a government renovation project, Powell asserted himself as few other sitting government officials have.

He could have said nothing and let his lawyers speak for him in court. He could have had his PR team issue a written denial of culpability. Instead, Powell stood and allowed all of us to see his face and hear his voice. He posted a video statement on the Fed website in which he pulled no punches. Powell directly confronted the man who wants to illegally fire him, labeling the Department of Justice action as a “pretext” in the President’s ongoing effort to keep the Fed from fulfilling its legal mandate through objective analysis instead of political whim.

“This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions,” Powell declared, “or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation…Public service sometimes requires standing firm in the face of threats. I will continue to do the job the Senate confirmed me to do, with integrity and a commitment to serving the American people.”

That word “integrity.” I knew I’d heard it before.

Of course, Powell is a wealthy man of 72, a former captain of capitalism in the world of private equity who is serving his second four-year term atop the Fed. He can afford to stand his ground and would likely win any legal quarrel at the Supreme Court. Even Justice Alito has signaled his belief that the Fed is special and its independence from politics deserves protection.

I would like to think that Powell’s dauntlessness emerges more from a deep conviction that government service is a public trust. His words over the years suggest that he takes that trust seriously. Jay Powell studied politics at Princeton and law at Georgetown. He is a lawyer and a Republican. He worked as an investment banker before serving in the Treasury Department under President George H. W. Bush. He was a visiting scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington and served on a Nature Conservancy board. President Obama nominated him to the Fed board in 2016, and President Trump himself elevated Powell to the chairmanship.

As Fed chairman, Powell understands the financial dangers to a nation when its central bank is subject to political interference. A president’s short-term need to spark economic growth during his term in office through a premature policy of low interest rates invariably leads to long-term inflation. It is a stubborn condition to correct. Moreover, when the Fed loses credibility among domestic investors, higher long-term interest rates may result, to the detriment of every consumer. Further, a politicized Fed is likely to tarnish the U.S. dollar and cause the international investment community to take their money elsewhere.

Powell knows the law and knows the value of the rule of law. In the video, he looks every American in the eye and speaks truth to power: “No one—certainly not the chair of the Federal Reserve—is above the law. But this unprecedented action should be seen in the broader context of the administration’s threats and ongoing pressure. This new threat is not about my testimony last June or about the renovation of the Federal Reserve buildings…The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President.”

In that moment, Powell led by example and stood with people like Liz Cheney, Mike Pence, Brad Raffensperger, Rusty Bowers, Janet Mills, Michael Luttig, and Renee Nicole Good. If only there were many more such names.

A U.S. senator who wrote about political courage once said: “Our everyday life is becoming so saturated with the tremendous power of mass communications that any unpopular or unorthodox course arouses a storm of protests…Our political life is becoming so expensive, so mechanized and so dominated by professional politicians and public relations men that the idealist who dreams of independent statesmanship is rudely awakened by the necessities of election and accomplishment... And thus, in the days ahead, only the very courageous will be able to take the hard and unpopular decisions necessary for our survival.”

That was John Kennedy in 1956. The sharp contrast between political expediency and idealism is unchanged. But the stakes today are far higher than they were 70 years ago. Fear dominates our national culture, making examples of political courage even more precious. Watch Jerome Powell. To see his tenacious incorruptibility is to feel hope.

There are 10 specific actions that should be taken immediately:

1. Governor Andy Beshear of the Democratic Governors Association should call an emergency meeting of every Democratic governor, and invite any Republican who remains loyal to the country over their seditious party.

2. The governors should make a joint statement and enter into a series of interstate compacts that increase their collective power to oppose the Trump fascists. They should issue a statement of principles, a set of commitments to the American people, and a set of demands towards MAGA.

3. The governors should coordinate calling their legislatures into special emergency sessions to pass a series of resolutions that express loyalty to the Constitution, and lay out the case against MAGA and its assault against the American people.
   Each state and each legislative body should assert its sovereignty and power in defense of the US Constitution with concrete measures. This includes the full use of every legal power and authority at their disposal from hearings, subpoenas, investigations and full use of the states’ pension funds in the name of preserving American liberty.

4. The Democratic Senate minority should replace Schumer and his leadership team immediately. This isn’t just a pragmatic imperative. It is a moral one. At this point, the line between collaboration and appeasement is thin and broken. Chuck Schumer serves the cause of MAGA as diligently as does Lindsey Graham and Markwayne Mullin.

5. House Democrats should seek to topple the Mike Johnson speakership by cutting whatever deal needs to be cut to make Thomas Massie or Adam Kinzinger the Speaker of the House until the November elections, when a Democratic majority takes command. This is possible. The MAGA majority is down to five seats. Republicans know that they will lose the majority in November. This is the Titanic strategy. All that is required is helping a few Republicans into the early lifeboats. The people who got into early lifeboats on the Titanic had long and happy lives. The ones who didn’t were fished out of the North Atlantic frozen solid and mostly buried in Halifax. It’s a compelling tale when properly presented.

6. The Congress must be prepared to use its full Constitutional powers, including the power of inherent contempt and the purse to make the madness stop. This won’t happen until the MAGA majority is deposed.

7. MAGA opposition groups should coordinate boycotts of Hilton Hotels, which has punished a hotel franchisee who refused to serve ICE agents by kicking him out of the Hilton franchise. Pain is always the best teacher, and an example must be set. Hilton is an easy target.

8. Opposition groups should begin organizing an athlete boycott of the Olympic opening ceremonies, which will include a parade past Trump, which will be reminiscent of the march past Hitler in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. No moral person will participate in the parade. No decent nation will dip their flag to the American fascist behind the desecrated Seal of the President of the United States.

9. Opposition groups should urge boycotts of World Cup games in the United States, and urge teams to refuse to play in American stadiums. The matches can take place in Mexico and Canada. Foreign tourists should be asked to stand with the American people by refusing to travel to the United States. Don’t come.

10. Opposition groups should begin the process of coordinating national strikes and peaceful civil disobedience campaigns that will bring the United States to a complete standstill until the insanity ceases.