Youth Advocacy
Youth Advocacy
Weekly Review and Announcements
The core purpose of this blog is to look past the daily noise and media distractions designed to overwhelm us, focusing instead on the underlying systemic trends to help us understand this regime on a deeper level.
📈 What Is Trump Doing? — Jonathon Lemire breaks down how a chaotic, ego-driven strategy is alienating voters, alienating the press, and causing Republicans to panic about a potential midterm "Blue Wave" overriding the Senate.
Source | The Atlantic⚖️ The Party of Projection — A flawed Senate attack on Special Counsel Jack Smith by Eric Schmitt and Katie Britt completely backfires, showcasing the frantic lengths to which Congressional Republicans will go to deflect their own ethical failures.
Source | The Independent📜 Democrats Need to Get Serious About Amending the Constitution — Pete Buttigieg lays out a multi-point plan for critical structural reform post-election, reminding us that repairing our democracy requires fixing systemic constitutional crises that run deeper than Trump alone.
Source | The Atlantic🗽 The Defiance of Hope — Heather Cox Richardson contrasts the transactional, isolationist, and authoritarian UN address delivered by Donald Trump with Secretary-General António Guterres’ inspiring vision of international equality and multipolar interdependence.
Source | Letters from an American🏰 Mad King Ludwig — Timothy Noah compares Trump's rapid cognitive decline and malignant narcissism to a historical king building elaborate monuments to himself while his party prepares to cut ties for their own political survival.
Source | The New Republic🛑 Break Things and Walk Away — Andrew Exum details how the Trump administration is following the traditional GOP playbook by intentionally driving up national debt and starting a foreign crisis in Iran, only to leave the cleanup to a future administration.
Source | The Atlantic📉 Lenders Don’t Trust the United States Anymore — David Frum provides a sobering look at how a lack of transparency and systemic corruption under the current regime has severely degraded the international financial credit trust of the United States.
Source | The Atlantic
🗳️ Voter Advocate Announcement: For those actively dedicating their time to ensuring fair elections and protecting turnout, a free musical collection of original protest anthems is available for immediate download. Organizers and volunteers can access this gift directly through the Anthems Compilation Page to share with their grassroots networks.
Visual Stories
Our featured visual narrative this week centers on a collective call for democratic resilience, taking a direct stand against systemic overreach through the power of music. You are invited to watch the free YouTube video presentation for "November Light," created on Canva and streaming now on the Communities of Trust YouTube Channel. Let this track serve as an anchor for your grassroots advocacy work this week.
🖋️ Articles and Commentary
What Is Trump Doing?
What Will Feed His Insatiable Ego?
Jonathon Lemire of The Atlantic brings us an in-depth article about Trump’s flailing presidency. He begins by pointing to the disastrous arrival of Communist China’s leader, Xi Jinping. Trump had a new granite helipad installed for the event (est. cost at $5 million), but there were not press cameras to cover the spectacle. Why? Trump had kicked CNN, MSNOW, and Politico out of the White House, and the other news services refused to cover Trump in solidarity. As Lemire points out: “At the risk of understatement, Trump has never been one to think all that many moves ahead. But his impulsive decision to ban media outlets spawned unintended consequences that derailed his own plans.”
In fact, says the journalist, this has been a theme of this presidency. Loading a scatter gun with unilateral actions that wind up exploding in his face. The litany of failed policies would take up all the bytes I wish to dedicate to this review. But, suffice it to say—as Lemire points out— the bottom line is that the majority of citizens do not think this regime has their interests at heart.
Republicans are increasingly worried about a Blue Wave overcoming not only the House, but also the Senate. And Trump is not helping. He has no plans to campaign in swing states, only deeply red states. Why? What is the strategy? Or, as Lemire says, “What is Trump doing?”
According to Lemire, Trump is only going places where he feels assured of a receptive audience. Here’s how the journalist puts it: “For any president, even an unpopular one, his most valuable resource is his time—and heading to those deep-red states comes at the expense of a potential stop in a swing district (though the stop in southern Oklahoma does bleed into a Texas media market). The answer might be surprisingly simple: ego.”
Trump’s strategy (if you can call it that) has become increasingly easy to track; “What will feed his insatiable ego?”
Viral slow zoom on Katie Britt says it all as she realizes Jack Smith gotcha moment is going up in flames
The Party of Projection
The Republicans are the Party of Projection, and nothing exemplifies this further than their attempt to paint Jack Smith with the worst traits of themselves.
This is one of those events that everyone needs to share. For even more depth into the situation, I recommend the commentary by Heather Cox Richardson on her “Letters from an American” feed for September 30, 2026.
The emphasis of both articles is on the kangaroo court by Senate Republicans yesterday attempting to paint Special Counsel Jack Smith with their own worst traits: projection.
Smith is especially a target of Trump—and thus Republicans—because Smith’s investigation found Trump guilty of both attempting to turn over the 2020 election and retention of classified documents. Trump and Republicans know that the evidence is overwhelming and will eventually see the light of day. In the meantime, it is their intent to make it as opaque as possible. Neither Trump nor his lackeys wants this information to come before voters—especially before the midterms. Which is why, Cox Richardson points out, it is interesting that Republicans would choose to drag out this information at this time.
It is obvious though that these Republican hacks thought they had irrefutable evidence that Smith had colluded with Fanny Willis at an Atlanta Hawks game in Atlanta, Georgia. Senator Eric Schmitt (R-MO) launched his attack based upon information provided to him by Senator Katie Britt (R-AL). With the evidence they believed they had, they attacked Smith. At one point, Schmitt called him a “total dirtbag.”
Cox Richardson’s point in her column is that a citizen of the United States could not bring such charges or make these statements in court without facing prison. However—due to a ruling by Trump’s sycophantic Supreme Court—members of Congress and the president are protected from crimes like these (unless they include evidence of treason).
After attacking Smith and calling him a “dirtbag,” it became apparent that the evidence they received from Senator Britt was grossly flawed. The Republican Senators accused Smith of colluding with Willis at an Atlanta Hawks game when, in fact, Smith was at a game in Maryland with the Iowa Blackhawks. The look on Britt’s face is priceless when she realizes how badly she failed in her sloppy investigation. However, Schmitt simply dug in and continued his name-calling and full-throated bullying.
This event needs to go viral. It truly shows the extent that Republicans are willing to go to in order to protect themselves and their president. Perjury, defamation of character, and treason are but a few of the charges that come to my mind. But the primary point is this: Republicans are projecting their own guilt upon others. They simply cannot understand how other people are not as immoral as they are. It’s not in their conscience; they have sacrificed all their core beliefs to support a president who has no core beliefs. This is the party of projection. And they project upon others the worst aspects of themselves.
We are mere weeks away from the midterms. We have the opportunity ahead to cast out this Party of Projection and clean both Congress and the executive branch of traitors. Then, we can start the hard work of cleaning out Trump’s Supreme Court.
Perhaps, in a future Democratic administration, Jack Smith can return as Attorney General of the United States. He certainly has proven himself worthy of such an honor.
Buttigieg: Democrats Need to Get Serious About Amending the Constitution
Pete Buttigieg
Pete Buttigieg is possibly one of the sharpest intellects in politics today. In this article, he reminds us of the serious work Democrats need to undertake post-election, both in midterms but also in 2028.
In this interview with The Atlantic’s Editor-in-Chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, Buttigieg lays out a multi-point plan for fixing government so that what happened with the Trump Regime would not occur again. He reminds us that this problem is deeper than Trump and won’t just go away with his removal. We have a constitutional crisis that needs to be addressed.
Here are just some of his suggestions:
- Tax the wealthy
- Prevent the wealthy and corporations from buying elections
- End the Iran War
- Use the windfall from all the above actions to provide health care to all Americans
- Protect voting rights of all Americans
- Create a humane and functional immigration system
This is just a partial list of Buttigieg’s immediate suggestions.
What I didn’t see—and wish I had, but was perhaps prohibited because of the time constraints of The Atlantic’s forum—was how we must and how we are going to claw back the Trump fortune. David Frum, and other prominent journalists, have pointed out autocrats who are allowed to keep their fortunes, return to power in a relatively short period of time. Examples would be the Marcos family in the Philippines, the Shinawatra family of Thailand, the Fujimori family of Peru, and the Kenyatta family of Kenya.
It is quite obvious that Putin is banking on the Trump family’s return to power by the way they are paying for events (like Donald Trump Jr’s wedding in the Bahamas) and bankrolling their real estate projects in hotels and golf courses around the world.
The Atlantic’s October Cover: Anne Applebaum on the “Empire of Grift” and the Revolution in American Foreign Policy
A Tool of Private Gain
The cover of October’s The Atlantic should shock readers; it is meant to. Politicians sitting around a table selling off pieces of the world. Although you cannot see the faces of the people around the table, you can see they are all male. What Anne Applebaum, staff writer at The Atlantic, says they wish to convey in this cover art is how, “far-right ideologues have transformed American foreign policy into a tool of private gain and antidemocratic reaction.”
She emphasizes that we no longer have diplomats at the bargaining table promoting peace; instead, “far-right ideologues have transformed American foreign policy into a tool of private gain and antidemocratic reaction.”
We should all be alarmed at the way that international relations—and often, internal politics—have become the tools of small, hard-core, conservative groups interested only in furthering their own goals, embedding their own power, and expanding their own fortunes.
Pete Buttigieg points out that future elections must target the processes that have given these people power and authority. Predominantly, tax breaks and unlimited campaign donations, which are used to buy politicians who will favor laws that favor their personal and corporate interests. That system must be dismantled. If we don’t begin doing it in this upcoming election, we may well miss our chance. One more cycle of this kleptocracy could make it a forever form of government requiring nothing less than a revolution to overturn it. Of course, that could happen sooner than we think if Trump and Mike Johnson refuse to seat new congressional winners after the November midterms.
Letters From An American
The Defiance of Hope
The United Nations was presented with two opposing world views on September 22, at its annual gathering. One belonged to a deteriorating octogenarian narcissist who can barely put sentences together—even when reading from a teleprompter. The other from a masterful statesman who seeks a world of peace and sustainability.
If you want to be depressed, read the narcissist’s view of the world (Trump); if you want to be inspired, read the statesman’s version (United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres).
Trump presented a rambling discourse on how great he is and how the United States is making the world bend its knee to his power. He told the U.N., “To the victor belong the spoils.” He spoke of annihilating Iran if they don’t give him the peace deal he wants and of taking over the Western Hemisphere. (Iran walked out of the first part of his speech, and Cuba walked out of the second.)
Guterres spoke of two paths the world could pursue, one of “transactionalism and mistrust” and one of interdependence; “A world in which multiple centres of influence coexist within a common framework of international law and shared rules.”
Guterres goes on to say, “Equality is not a dream, it is a decision.” And calls for defiance of the world of Trump and his authoritarian counterparts; “In the face of a global catastrophe more than 80 years ago,” Guterres said, “…the United Nations was created as an act of defiance. The defiance of people who refuse to surrender the future to fear. The defiance against the self-defeating notion that might makes right. The defiance of countries that know our futures are bound together.
“The defiance of hope.”
The upcoming midterm elections are a shibboleth of which world the United States will decide to pursue: Trump and the Republicans’ vision of world dominance and destruction or Guterres’ vision of equality and interdependence. Will this election be our “defiance of hope?”
Why Trump May Not Serve Out His Presidency
Mad King Ludwig
This article by Timothy Noah of The New Republic provides a list of reasons that Trump will not finish his second term. Primarily, Noah focuses on his mental health. In addition to his obvious cognitive decline, there is his diagnosis for Malignant Narcissism. The two diseases bring to mind the lead one author to refer to Trump as, “Mad King Ludwig.” King Ludwig remains one of Europe’s most fascinating and eccentric monarchs. He constructed a “fairy tale kingdom,” and borrowed massive foreign funds to build it.
His similarities to Trump are legendary. Here is how a group of 225 mental health professionals have diagnosed Trump’s decline: “a dramatic decline in verbal fluency, tangential thinking, diminished vocabulary, overuse of superlatives, and filler words.”
Noah believes that Trump is fast approaching the point where even Republicans will not be able to support him and politically survive. When that point is reached, they will cut bait and do ask what politicians repeatedly ask, “What’s in this for me?”
The journalist goes on to quote Maggie Haberman, co-author of Regime and New York Times reporter, who said last month that, “Trump spends 70 percent of his time playing Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, gilding this, redecorating that, and building ever more elaborate monuments to himself.”
Personally, I hope that Trump lives long enough to see his regime dismantled, his fortune clawed back, and his name removed from every item to which it is attached.
Noah goes on to quote Thomas B. Edsall, who wrote in The New York Times that, “no action to remove Trump from the White House will happen until he does something so threatening and damaging that drumming him out of the White House becomes an inescapable necessity.”
Noah’s final paragraph is chilling and deserves being read in its entirety: “Trump’s behavior will grow more erratic. Already, Trump’s children are frantically stuffing their pockets with cash as if this bonanza could end tomorrow. If the midterms are as catastrophic for Republicans as political professionals expect, Trump’s political sway over his party will weaken dramatically, along with his ability to do mischief. Everything we know about Trump tells us he will not take that well. He’ll deny the midterm results as he denied the 2020 election, and will probably attempt some chicanery to keep newly elected Democratic House and Senate members from being seated. I believe he will fail. But whether he succeeds or fails, anything Trump does to further subvert democracy will drive his approval ratings down further, and drive further upward the public’s conviction that he’s lost his marbles.”
Trump Could Leave the Iran Mess to His Successor
Break Things and Walk Away
Look at the playbook: “Break Things and Walk Away.”
The GOP repeatedly starts wars, plunges the U.S. into debt, then leaves the next administration to clean up their mess. Meanwhile, they use their terms out of office to blame the Democrats for the messes they created. Both Bushes did it, Trump 0I did it with Afghanistan, and there’s little doubt that Trump II will do it again with his new forever war in Iran.
In this article by Andrew Exum, we are warned of this recurring cycle of “break and walk away,” and what to expect. Trump is bored with this war, and he doesn’t look like he is interested in solving it. Exum tells us that, rather than facing the political and economic consequences of cleaning the mess he created, he will leave that to another administration.
Is this cowardly? Yes. Is this irresponsible? Yes? Is this classic Donald Trump? Yes again. Look at the number of businesses he’s broken and walked away from, look at the number of marriages he’s broken and walked away from, look at the number of tariffs, treaties, and people he’s broken and walked away from. If there is one thing we can expect from this regime, it is that they will break things and walk away.
Lenders Don’t Trust the United States Anymore
More Break Things and Walk Away
David Frum’s analysis of upcoming financial hardships for the U.S. post-Trump is sobering. His major point being that, “Low interest rates are a factor of trust x transparency.” In this regime, under Trump and the Republicans, we have neither: “Trustworthy borrowers with solid finances and honest leadership pay less. Distrusted borrowers with disordered finances and corrupt leaders pay more. In times past, the United States would have headed that first list. Under President Trump, the United States has tumbled onto the second one.”
Of course, Trump isn’t solely to blame for the plight of the USA’s credit rating, but Republicans, “the party of fiscal responsibility,” have been anything but responsible.
But Frum digs deeper; it’s not just fiscal stability markets want; indeed, many nations have a greater debt-to-GDP ratio than the US’s, but Republicans—and especially Trump—have increasingly threatened to default: “Trump has speculated about refusing to pay some or all of the country’s public debt. In a CNN town hall in 2023, Trump urged congressional Republicans to “do a default” to force “massive” spending cuts on the Biden administration.”
Here is the culmination of Frum’s article: “A 2006 study found that the more corrupt a country was rated by the nonprofit Transparency International, the more it paid for its debt. Within the United States, more corrupt states pay higher interest rates than more honest states. In August 2024, a Trump-campaign social-media account posted an anti-immigration warning: “Import the third world … Become the third world.” Yet Trump’s multibillion-dollar self-enrichment schemes, perversion of presidential pardons, attacks on the independence of the Federal Reserve, and costly vanity projects throughout Washington all make the United States look more like Pakistan, Nigeria, or the Philippines than a consolidated democracy.”
In essence, lack of transparency x corruption = higher interest rates.
LowT x highC = IR.
This regime’s current endeavors to shut down the free press will not increase transparency.
This will be another mess the Republicans leave the next administration to clean up. “Break things and walk away…”
From motorcycles to booze, US ban on $1 billion worth of Canadian imports goes into effect
He’s Still At It
I’m sure most of us are moving from, “He’s at it again…” to, “He’s still at it…”
The bankruptcy king in the White House is not satisfied with ruining the economy by going to war with Iraq. He must also continue his tariff war against the United States’ greatest friend, trading partner, ally, and neighbor: Canada.
According to Regime authors, Maggie Haberman and Jonathon Swan, Trump likes to use tariffs because they give him a “sense of power.” It certainly gets him massive amounts of attention—the fire that makes his narcissistic engine run. He loves creating disturbance. One begins to wonder if he loves being hated as well. Nearly every policy of this regime is costing the lowly, sycophantic Republicans at the polls. The graft, the sinking economy, the skyrocketing price of energy, the war in Iran, and… of course, these tariff wars. Perhaps most threatened by these tariffs (as well as his immigration policies) are farmers and ranchers in the U.S. Previously, a hard-core demographic of Trump support, but now, even they are counting the cost of their allegiance to this egocentric madman.
Yes, he’s still at it and he’s likely to be “at it” until we impeach him. So let’s make sure we have our voting plans ready AND fail-safe. Remind those you know that “staying home” is not an option; it is a vote for this pedophile and his sycophants.
Vote, vote, VOTE! So one day we will be able to wake up and not have to say, “Is he still at it?”
