Two stories dominated the political headlines this week: Texas Democrats fleeing the state to halt the Republican-dominated legislature's efforts to redraw their U.S. House district lines to hand Republicans five more safe seats, and Donald Trump letting incredibly high tariffs begin against over 90 countries worldwide.

We'll get to them in a moment, but what's more interesting is the dog that didn't bark today. Russia was supposed to have a "10-day deadline" to end its invasion of Ukraine, and steep tariffs were supposed to be slapped on them if Vladimir Putin hadn't manage to do so by today. However, nary a headline is talking about the tariffs that were supposed to appear, because once again Putin played Trump like a violin.

For Putin, stalling is the name of the game. The longer the war drags on the better, he figures, since Russian ground troops continue to make very incremental progress against the Ukrainian troops defending their homeland from Russia's invasion. And to date, Trump has refused to do anything more than bluster and threaten Putin. He has not even bothered to update the sanctions regime that Joe Biden put in place (even though the head of the Ukrainian presidential office penned a helpful list of non-tariff things that Trump could be doing this week), and so far Trump has not actually instituted tariffs on Russia, even while he is slapping incredibly high tariffs on some of America's staunchest allies.

Trump did threaten to hike the already-high 25 percent tariff on India to 50 percent, for contributing to the Russian war effort by buying Russian oil, but he notably didn't say a word about China, who also buys a bunch of Russian oil. And he didn't even threaten an actual number for levying a tariff on Russia itself. Trump drew a line in the sand -- and Putin essentially ignored it (because he knows what a paper tiger Trump is, with him).

What Putin did dangle in front of Trump to get him to back down was the prospect of a one-on-one meeting between the two leaders. Trump tried to act tough while accepting Putin's proposal, saying that Putin would also have to meet (either face-to-face or in a trilateral meeting with Trump and Putin) with Ukraine's leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump started from a strong position, stating that Putin would have to meet with Zelenskyy before Trump would meet with Putin, but then he just chucked the entire idea out the window when Putin refused to do so. So now, as things stand (as of this writing), Trump and Putin will be meeting in Alaska next Friday. Here's hoping Trump doesn't offer to hand Alaska back to Russia in this meeting, but at this point it wouldn't exactly surprise us.

Putin is reportedly going to offer Trump a limited ceasefire, which would only apply to missile and drone attacks. This "air truce" would actually benefit Russia more than Ukraine, since Ukraine has been having a good deal of success in using the drones and missiles they have to attack deep within Russian territory, on things like oil refineries, rail lines, and military bases (including their spectacular attack which destroyed many Russian long-range bombers).

Putin's move is a shrewd one, because he knows what animates Trump. Trump's never been a fan of sitting through intelligence briefings, he prefers to form his picture of the rest of the world through watching cable television instead. In the two major conflicts raging, Trump has admitted as much in both Israel's war in Gaza (where Trump mentioned the starving people in Gaza that he had seen on television), and in Ukraine (where the images of Russian missile attacks on Ukrainian cities has been upsetting Trump). Putin is essentially offering Trump the chance to not see such images on his television screen.

Zelenskyy, of course, would have to agree to any such truce. And Trump (being Trump) is fully capable of just facing the cameras and announcing an air truce without ever bothering to run the idea by Zelenskyy, which would certainly be embarrassing.

Or Putin could just try to keep stalling. Dangling "an end to the war" in front of Trump, he could stave off both tariffs and further sanctions on Russia by agreeing to continue talks... for the next three months or so.... This tactic certainly seems to be working for China, after all, on the tariff front.

Which brings us to the rest of the world and the new tariffs we just imposed. At this point, Trump just does not care even bothering to offer justifications for his tariffs (and the rates he chooses), it is all now just a product of his whim. Switzerland now has a 39 percent tariff for its goods to enter the United States. Why? Nobody knows. Maybe somebody overcharged Trump for a fancy watch at some point? It's as plausible a reason as any other, really.

Trump just wants to force every country on Earth to pay homage to his megalomania, at heart. If he can get some pie-in-the-sky promise from a country that they'll buy a whole bunch of U.S. stuff and invest a whole bunch of money in the American economy, he's happy. These promises will likely be impossible to enforce, but he doesn't care, as long as they properly bend the knee. And these handshake agreements are not trade deals -- often times they are not even formally written down, which leads to confusion and disagreements about what was actually agreed to (as Japan is already finding out).

All of these tariffs, for however long they last, are going to have a direct impact on the American economy, of course. Trump's insistence that other countries' governments pay the tariffs, or perhaps the producers of goods in those countries, is just wildly wrong.

Chalk it all up to "Trump math," we suppose. Trump has a very casual understanding of numbers in general, and he seems to actually be proud of his numerical and economic illiteracy.

American consumers, however, don't like in a fantasyland, they live in the world where price increases take money out of their wallets. Prices have already been going up, and when the full impact of this week's tariffs hits the supply chains, they're going to go up even faster and even further.

Not satisfied at this, Trump is rolling out new tariffs, on semiconductors and computer chips. This will raise the price of anything consumers buy with a computer in it, which covers pretty much everything from cars to toasters.

Meanwhile, the fallout from the bad jobs report Trump just got continues. Many have weighed in on both how petulant and how destructive this move is, pointing out that if the rest of the world starts to have serious doubts about the economic numbers the American government produces then the American economy will suffer some rather drastic impacts (such as the cost of borrowing money going way up for the government, just for starters).

But two metaphors caught our eye this week, on the "petulant" theme. The first hearkens back to Trump's choice for how to solve the horrible numbers which were appearing on a day-to-day basis during the COVID pandemic: Don't test! If you stop all the testing, then you stop all the bad news about infection rates, and -- Hey, presto! -- problem solved. Here is one take on that from the Washington Post [emphasis in original]:

Here's a life hack for readers who are trying to lose weight and are discouraged by the numbers on the scale: Take a hammer to the thing. If that seems too destructive, donate it to the Salvation Army and, if you must keep a scale in the house, buy a new model that tops out at 150 pounds.

The secret behind this hack is psychology. It's hard to eat less than your body wants, which is why people who try to lose weight often fail and feel miserable. But if no working scale is available, you can't fail: Eat as much as you like; the numbers will never climb.

Sound crazy? It is. But the president has just used a version of this trick to deal with a sagging American jobs market.

This one's even better, from the New York Times this week:

Imagine a group of 5-year-olds playing a board game. The rules are clear, the goal is fair, and one child edges ahead -- until, suddenly, another child starts losing. That's when the trouble begins. "He cheated!" the losing child yells. "I'm the winner anyway!" he declares. And then, like clockwork, he flips the board. In the world of kindergarten conflict resolution, we expect this kind of behavior. We chalk it up to development. We teach better sportsmanship.

What do we do when the president of the United States behaves this way? On Friday, President Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics -- the nation's workaday scorekeeper of employment, wages and productivity. Why? Because the data didn't make Mr. Trump look good. The statistics were inconvenient. So the president didn't just challenge the findings; he fired the statistician. That's not governing. That’s board flipping.

For over a century, the integrity of U.S. economic data has rested on a fragile but vital precept: independence. Agencies like the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis operate under the executive branch, but their mandates are to serve the truth, not the administration. Their job is to report what is, not what the White House wishes were true.

Those days may soon be gone. What was interesting was seeing what certainly appears to be someone trying to be a job applicant for the position. The Heritage Institute's Stephen Moore had a meeting in the White House this week where he came prepared with giant charts (since he knows Trump likes visual aids so much). These charts were all designed to show that Donald Trump's economy (in his first term) was so wildly better than anything Joe Biden managed to do, which somehow was supposed to prove that the B.L.S. jobs report was indeed somehow faked. Mostly, the charts were just designed to make Trump happy.

Trump was so impressed by the presentation he called White House reporters into the Oval Office so they could hear the same presentation. Trump had fun waving the giant charts around for the cameras.

So it wouldn't surprise us in the least if this guy is suddenly named to run the B.L.S. Originally, Trump had said he would announce his pick this week, but as of this writing there has been no such announcement.

Let's see, what else has been going on? An official government web page displaying the text of the U.S. Constitution suddenly deleted a few sections from the document recently. And oddly enough, the redaction dealt with the right of habeas corpus, which Trump doesn't seem to like. One more thing down the memory hole, folks!

The quack who is running the nation's health department just yanked all funding for mRNA-based vaccines, because he is a big believer of conspiracy theories about them. While doing so, he lied through his teeth about them, which is about par for the course for him. Also, that campaign promise Trump made about making in-vitro fertilization "free" to all Americans (whether through Obamacare or through making private insurance companies cover all the costs) is going nowhere, because Trump was just lying to America's women.

A statue honoring Confederate soldiers will apparently be moved back to Arlington National Cemetery, even though it and the descriptions on it are highly offensive. Because the only people whose opinions matter to our Secretary of Defense are White people.

Another hapless Republican tried to hold a town hall meeting this week, and he was resoundingly booed and heckled by his own constituents. Republicans are avoiding holding such events, and they brush aside the anger by saying it is all somehow "paid outside agitators," but the anger out there is real and it's growing.

And last but not least, NASA wants to speed up the deployment of a nuclear reactor on the moon. Because, what with all the botched landings of moon probes over the last couple of years, what could possibly go wrong with that?

We saved this news for the awards section, because this week it is pretty obvious what group deserves a collective Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award.

Democratic legislators in Texas are in the midst of a protest against the Republicans in their state jamming through a mid-decade redrawing of the Texas lines for its House of Representatives districts. This is all being done because Donald Trump pushed them to do it (as he said this week, he feels that Republicans are "entitled" to five more seats, just because). Trump and plenty of other Republicans are getting very, very nervous at the prospects of their wildly unpopular policies (especially on the economy) dragging down their chances of hanging onto control of the House in next year's midterm congressional elections.

So they decided not just to flip the playing board over, but to pick up a big Sharpie and redraw the board to make it much easier for them to win.

Democrats, since government has now been reduced to elementary-school levels of conduct, decided to take their ball and go home. Or rather, go to Illinois. Or Massachusetts. Or any blue state that was not named "Texas."

By doing so, they have denied the legislature a quorum -- the minimum number of members that must be present to do any business whatsoever. And they intend to stay out of the state until the special session the governor called ends.

Does this have any chance of success? Maybe, but then again maybe not. Democrats used this exact same tactic twice before in the past few decades, but in each case they merely delayed the redistricting rather than killing it. Eventually, enough of them got tired of living in some hotel room in another state and returned to Texas. The legislature scraped together a quorum, and the redistricting was passed.

That could happen again. While the special session is limited in time, what is unlimited is the governor's ability to just keep calling more special sessions until the Democrats return.

The last two times this happened, the governor tried to threaten the lawmakers with arrest and forcible return to the state, only to be halted by the legal reality that Texas police officers do not have any jurisdiction outside the borders of Texas. In any other state, they are merely citizens, not law enforcement officers with the power to arrest people.

So this time around, the governor went beyond merely threatening the Democrats with arrest by Texas troopers. He is suing them in court, hoping to get multiple judges to agree with him that because Democrats are not behaving, they have "abandoned their office" and he can go ahead and call for special elections to replace them.

Republicans also previously instituted a $500-per-day fine for being absent from the legislature, which adds up quickly (it is levied on every single member who is absent, and over 50 of them have flown the coop this time around). So other Democrats are chipping in to cover the costs of the fines. Now the state's governor and attorney general are trying to redefine this as "bribery" somehow, which is just absolutely laughable when you consider all the grifting they let Donald Trump get away with without batting an eyelid.

Senator John Cornyn, who is facing a primary challenge for his seat next year from the Texas attorney general, took this notion and ran with it -- straight to the F.B.I. He demanded that the F.B.I. help locate and return the absent Democrats. He justifies this by darkly hinting at the "bribery" notion.

Any upstanding head of the F.B.I. -- together with any upstanding United States attorney general -- would ignore such a patently partisan bit of idiocy, since the Democrats have actually broken no criminal law, state or federal. But with the weaponization of Trump's Justice Department, it is not outside the realm of possibility of the F.B.I. trying to at least intimidate the Democrats. Or maybe they'll send ICE after them (who knows, these days, right?).

In any case, for effectively grinding the Republicans' mid-decade redistricting to flip five more House seats to their column to an absolute halt, every Democratic legislator who is part of this protest deserves their own Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award. This may be a very long haul, so they had to be prepared to live away from their loved ones for an indeterminate amount of time. They also have to endure the inevitable bomb threats at the Illinois hotel they have settled in. They are worthy of a profile in courage award, but since we don't hand those out a MIDOTW award will have to do.

And a group Honorable Mention award also goes to every Democrat everywhere who is supporting this stand by the Texas Democrats. This includes the donors who have offered to pay the fines for the legislators, Democrats in Congress who are denouncing the entire underhanded plot, Democratic governors (most notably from California, New York, and Illinois) who are making plans to retaliate by gerrymandering an equal number of Democratic districts in response, to the anonymous person or persons who bankrolled planes to fly over Democratic state capitols trailing banners that said: "MESS WITH TEXAS", to all the rank-and-file Democrats out there who are cheering the Texas Democrats on.

[You can congratulate the Texas Democrats via their individual legislative contact pages, if you'd like to let any of them know you appreciate their efforts.]

We had some slim pickings this week for the Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week this week, so we'll have to settle for handing one of the Cuomo brothers (Andrew) a (Dis-)Honorable Mention for saying in a closed meeting with donors that he'd work with Donald Trump if elected New York City mayor, while giving the other one (Chris) the actual MDDOTW award for falling for a deepfake A.I. video purportedly showing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the House floor speaking of the controversy over a jeans ad by actress Sydney Sweeney. Here's the key sentence from the news story about this:

[Chris] Cuomo was convinced that [Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez actually spoke about masturbation, "slave daddy oppressors" and [Sydney] Sweeney's breasts in the House chamber, as the fabricated video suggests.

A.O.C. was quick to respond on social media, in her usual scathing fashion:

This is a deepfake dude. Please use your critical thinking skills. At this point you're just reposting Facebook memes and calling it journalism.

Cuomo then delivered a non-apology apology, saying that the video "really does sound like you," to which A.O.C. responded:

I'm going to assume you were trying to reply to me and burped this tweet into the ether instead. You seem to struggle with knowing how to write an apology. Do you need help? Maybe you should call someone.

We have to agree with George Takei on this one. In response to the whole fracas, Takei posted on Facebook: "Just take the L, dude."

And while you're at it, you can have another Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week award, too.

[Contact Chris Cuomo via on his social media contact page, to let him know what you think of his actions.]

Volume 807 (8/8/25)

Another mixed bag of a week. Enjoy, and as always, use responsibly.

   A sales tax on you

This is basic Messaging 101, folks. Democrats need to say some version of this each and every time the subject of tariffs comes up.

"Donald Trump got elected to bring prices down. That was probably the biggest reason a whole lot of people voted for him. He was going to tame inflation. He was going to get the price of groceries -- a word he apparently spent over 75 years of his life not understanding -- to go back down again. Even now, he insists that prices are "down -- way down." So what I want to ask you is: Have you noticed prices going down? Because I sure haven't. The reality for American shoppers is that every time they get to the grocery store checkout, they get some rather rude sticker-shock. Prices are up, and Trump's trade war is going to send them even higher. Tariffs are just a fancy way of saying 'sales tax' -- that's a tax that you pay, not some foreign government. You pay it at the grocery store, you pay it while back-to-school shopping for your kids, you pay it when you go buy a pair of new shoes. You pay it. As I'm sure all of you have noticed. So whenever Trump says the word 'tariff' what that really means is a sales tax -- on you."

   Been to the grocery store lately?

Democrats need to tap into the stress that already exists out there over rising prices. And there's one excellent way to do so, since it is impossible to ignore how much it costs to go grocery shopping these days.

"Trump claims prices on everything are down. But then again, he obviously hasn't been to a grocery store lately. I have -- and I can tell you, prices are still going up on all sorts of things. Trump hasn't had to buy a pound of coffee recently, obviously. Or a pound of ground beef, for that matter. And a whole lot of both of those products come from Brazil, which means the prices are soon going to reflect Trump's whopping 50 percent tariff on the country as a big fat sales tax for you. I don't know about you, but it seems like buying a cartload of groceries these days is like a hundred bucks more than it cost to buy the same products right before Trump took office. And that's even before all his new sales taxes get added in to the mix."

   Roll over, Donnie!

So far, it's been a pretty safe bet that Trump is just never going to get tough on Putin.

"So Putin and Trump are going to have a summit next week. Putin has so far just blatantly ignored all of Trump's 'deadlines' to end his invasion of Ukraine, and Trump has done precisely nothing to punish Putin in any way whatsoever. So why should we expect anything different this time? Putin will play Trump just like a fiddle, Trump will roll over for Putin like a good little doggie, and no further sanctions or tariffs will be announced as a result. It's downright embarrassing and disgraceful the way Putin leads Trump around by the nose. Ronald Reagan certainly would have had some choice words to describe it, that's for sure."

   This is where we are as a country

Didn't even cause a blip in the media....

"So did you hear about the Republican in Congress whose ex-girlfriend went to the police with evidence that he had threatened 'to release nude images and videos of them having sex,' complete with text messages from him that backed her story up? No? You didn't hear about that? Boy, that really says something, doesn't it? That this sort of sexual scandal, complete with revenge porn, could break and the news considers it not a big enough deal to run with. Welcome to Donald Trump's America, folks. This is where we are as a country -- where such heinous behavior by an elected member of Congress isn't even considered newsworthy."

   Release the tapes!

This is a fun slogan, just to keep the pot stirred during the summer congressional break.

"The Trump administration is apparently 'weighing the release of an audio recording of the Justice Department's recent interview' with Jeffrey Epstein's partner in sex-trafficking crimes, Ghislaine Maxwell. So sure, I say 'release the tapes!' It's not releasing the full Epstein files -- which Congress will be voting on when they return -- but it certainly would prove how Maxwell is desperately trying to say whatever Trump wants her to say to get a pardon. She's already managed to get moved to a cushy 'Club Fed' minimum-security prison, so obviously she didn't have anything to say implicating Trump, but go ahead -- sure, release those tapes!"

   Seven years? Seriously?

Trump was caught in a rather huge lie about Epstein, so point it out!

"Donald Trump says that he found out that Jeffrey Epstein hired away people working for him at his Florida resort, and then immediately kicked him out of the club, calling him 'persona non grata.' But when you look at the timeline, that story just isn't believable at all. Epstein hired the underage girl in question away from Trump's spa in the summer of 2000. Epstein, however, would remain a member of Trump's club until 2007 -- a full seven years later. This was also a whole year after Epstein was indicted on state prostitution charges in Florida, mind you. So if Trump got so angry at Epstein from hiring underage women away from him, why did he let him stay a member of his club for seven more years? Maybe somebody should ask Trump that."

   Women servicemembers left on their own

Trump rescinded a rule for the Veterans Administration which will have some pretty dire consequences for women servicemembers. Senator Patty Murray issued a scathing condemnation of this which deserves its own talking point this week.

[Donald] Trump and Secretary Collins are ripping away necessary health care from pregnant veterans whose lives and health are in danger, or who were raped -- it's unspeakably cruel and a grotesque assault on women who have put their lives on the line to keep us safe. The bottom line is, Republicans don't care if your health is in danger, if you're a veteran, or if you've been raped -- they want abortion outlawed everywhere, in every circumstance, for everyone.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Cross-posted at: Democratic Underground