Revolutionary Weather (and the Baboon in the Ruins)
Everything changed in the last few weeks. The Republicans, assumed by themselves and too many others, to be unstoppable got stopped again and again. Public opinion manifested in many ways: as an election that went hard against them, by a once-loyal Trumpist who turned on him, as a remarkable shift in Congress that saw Republicans in both houses at the very least afraid to vote against releasing the Epstein files, as elected Democrats standing up against the right and the lies, as people all over the country standing up valiantly for their neighbors against the administration's violently lawless ICE raids.
Many Republicans saw that Trump was in decline, possibly rapid decline, and that their future lay not in the slavish deference we've seen for nine years but in separating themselves from him. These changes often happen like a change of weather; the winds are coming from another direction; the cold that arrives overnight promises that winter has arrived, or the thaw that spring is coming.
Something has changed.
People looking for signs of change often assume the change that matters most, the watershed, the rubicon, the turning point will be a dramatic event. But a case can be made that the changes that matter most happen in minds and hearts, and the events follow from that. Maybe no one has ever made a better claim about that than this country's second president, who understood revolution well because he had co-led one. John Adams wrote to publisher Hezekiah Niles in 1818 that "But what do We mean by the American Revolution? Do We mean the American War? The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People." He goes on to declare that the revolution was when Americans broke with their deference and loyalty to Britain and the throne (our original #nokings moment).
It's an astonishing statement, meaning that what we call the Revolutionary War was two distinct events, and the revolution was won before the war began (from which you could argue that even had the war been lost, the end of fealty was irreversible and profound). For some, Adams says, "when Protection was withdrawn, they thought Allegiance was dissolved." More broadly, "The People of America had been educated in an habitual Affection for England as their Mother-Country; and while they Thought her a kind and tender Parent, (erroneously enough, however, for She never was Such a Mother,) no Affection could be more Sincere. But when they found her a cruel Beldam willing, like Lady Macbeth, to 'dash their Brains out,' it is no Wonder if their fillial Affections ceased and were changed into Indignation and horror." In the pre-revolutionary colonies, minds had to free themselves from fealty to the British Crown.
In our case, there are real defections from Trump and Trumpism going on now, but I think there's another kind of shift going. The confidence of the Republican Party and its supporters in their power is ebbing; ours is growing. Something changed over the last five weeks. It was manifested in the epic scale and fierce determination of the nationwide #nokings protests on October 18. The demonstrations and marches were in small towns and red counties as well as cities and blue states. But that was just a manifestation of the rejection of the cruelty and destructiveness of the Trump Administration and its nine months of mayhem. In John Adams's terms, the opposition to Trump and Trumps already existed; #nokings was just an expression of what had already happened.
It did not help the Republican cause that Trump, apparently in a rage about the huge demonstrations, tore down the East Wing of the White House in a way so abrupt and violent that no one seems to know what happened to the art, furnishings, historic fixtures, and materials that were not his property but ours. That billionaires and their corporations donated money to build the glitzy ballroom intended to replace this part of the People's House further tied the destruction to oligarchical anti-democracy. (Of course so much has happened since then that, as usual when Trump is in power, what would've been the most outrageous act of almost any other president seems almost forgotten.) But it's not clear the ballroom will ever be built; the fact that Trump is now raging and drifting in a part-wrecked structure, a building that is in some sense wounded, broken, disabled, says a lot about him and this country. He is himself a wreck, and it is a haunted house. Or maybe he's the baboon in the ruins.
On November 4, Democrats won races all across the country in a further repudiation of Trump and the Republican Party, from school boards to governorships, and Trump-endorsed Andrew Cuomo's own ship sank as Zohran Mamdani sailed to victory in the New York Mayor's race (despite, speaking of billionaires, being wildly outspent). The other shoe dropped when last Friday, November 21, Mayor-Elect Mamdani went to the White House and rather than being vanquished (or even deported as some haters proposed), he turned out to be a master snake charmer and had Trump beaming up at him in adoration – and got some real benefit for it, already serving the people before he was sworn in. As one news story put it, "Trump Backs Off Plan to Deploy National Guard to New York City." Charlotte and other North Carolina cities mounted valiant resistance to ICE deployments, following in the footsteps of Chicago and the others where those who were not under attack were not too frightened to stand with those who were and are.
A few days before Mamdani walked into the broken White House, six Democrats in Congress who are military veterans or former intelligence agents spoke up in a video, saying "This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence professionals against American citizens. Like us, you all swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Right now the threats to the Constitution aren't just coming from abroad but from right here at home. YOU CAN REFUSE ILLEGAL ORDERS. YOU MUST REFUSE ILLEGAL ORDERS. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution. We have your backs." The video marks a new directness and boldness in countering the administration, and it has provoked tantrums and threats from Trump, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Trump said it was sedition punishable by death, and one of the six, Senator Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and Navy veteran, told Rachel Maddow, "We're basically repeating the Uniform Code of Justice (in the video) and they're saying that's in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It's absurd."
Another of the major levers of change was the public discourse over the Epstein files, and the defection of four Republicans from loyalty to Trump and to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a man so subservient to Trump and his desire to keep the files under wraps at all cost that he shut down his branch of the federal government for months to protect the guilty-acting president. Underlying that was a growing wrath at the elites who benefit while the rest of us lose out from the trashing of the economy, the attacks on education, rights, public health, the environment, renewable energy. The Epstein crime ring only too perfectly signifies the intersection of people who are ruthlessly exploitative in one way in public life and in another in private life, in this case, by raping and trafficking girls and women and then working to keep them silent.
There are many theories about why Trump loyalists Nancy Mace, Lauren Boebert, and Marjorie Taylor Greene joined Congressman Thomas Massie in standing with the victims against the administration (Massie, to his credit, was one of the engineers of the maneuvers to get a vote on the files, working closely with Democrat Ro Khanna to do so; he's one of those interesting Republicans who seems genuinely principled, if not with my principles, while the rest of them seem utterly unprincipled). The short version is no one really knows, but I have the impression that something about the situation reached something authentic in the three congresswomen, and they responded with real empathy and principle. Which I hasten to add I know is not their usual way.
The unhinged Mace has spoken not just openly but obsessively about her status as a rape survivor; I wondered if Greene and Boebert were also survivors; they actually showed up to stand with the victims at their press conference earlier this fall. On the same day Mamdani brought his charm offensive to the White House, Greene suddenly resigned from Congress in a fiery speech. It was striking that she declared, in interesting language for a woman who's long aligned herself with misogynists of the right, "I refuse to be a ‘battered wife’ hoping it all goes away and gets better." She had once been a true believer, almost a cult worshipper of Trump
Her defection may mark the implosion of the strange belief that Trump and his gang of oligarchs were somehow the party that best represented the little (white) guy, the lie that has underwritten Republican success in recent decades. The withholding of SNAP benefits, the willingness to make healthcare far more expensive for those who can least afford it, the tariffs, ICE attacks, sabotage of the transition to (cheaper! jobs-creating!) renewable energy, and all the rest add up to an agenda that serves the few at the expense of the many. Greene went on, "If I am cast aside by MAGA Inc and replaced by Neocons, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Military Industrial War Complex, foreign leaders, and the elite donor class that can't even relate to real Americans, then many common Americans have been cast aside and replaced as well." Of course she served all those things in serving Trump, but apparently she has had enough of Trump (and is stepping down having made a lot of money on the market and stayed just long enough to get a nice pension).
I know I just said Marjorie Taylor Greene did a good thing, and I know that breaks some people's brains, but the world is not a tidy place. Good people (which is what we call the people we agree with) do bad things, and vice-versa. Think of John McCain's legendary thumbs-down on overturning the Affordable Care Act early in Trump's first term, of Liz Cheney turning on Trump, and yeah, all these things were anti-Trump things. Franklin Roosevelt imprisoned Japanese Americans for no good reason; Bernie Sanders voted for the invasion of Afghanistan along with every member of Congress except Barbara Lee, and so forth.
Jake Sherman at Punchbowl News reports, "MTG’s four-page note was stinging for House Republicans. Why? Because the message rang true to so many in the House GOP.In fact, a few other GOP members messaged us over the weekend saying that they, too, are considering retiring in the middle of the term." Jake Sherman adds a long quote from an unnamed Republican congressman who says, "“This entire White House team has treated ALL members like garbage. ALL. And Mike Johnson has let it happen because he wanted it to happen. That is the sentiment of nearly all...." This could bring on the end of the tiny Republican majority in the House before the midterms.
Trump was playing with fire when he made promises to release the Epstein files part of his campaign. All along, it was bizarre that QAnon and other rightwing cultism were devoted to the idea that Trump was the protector of children and banisher of corruption, when he was an amoral profiteer linked to organized crime, a longtime close friend of Epstein who had been implicated by some victims and mixed up in the modeling/trafficking business himself, a serial sexual abuser and creep with a long history of inappropriate treatment of female minors, and was by the time of last year's election a criminal who'd also been found liable in civil court for a rape.
Thomas Zimmer writes in his newsletter, "It seems undeniable now that Trump’s power has been eroding, his hold over his own movement is weaker than it has ever been since he became the standard-bearer of the political Right almost exactly a decade ago. This time, he was not able to impose his will, even though he so aggressively tried. Instead, MAGA Republicans broke with him over Epstein, even going directly and publicly against him. Not only are prominent MAGA figures actively preparing for a post-Trump future: They seem to have decided that the best way to position themselves was to signal distance from Trump, rather than to rise through sycophancy and fealty. Something has shifted in the relationship between Trump and MAGA. As hesitant as I am to write this, I believe we are now entering the twilight of the Trump era. But do not misread this moment: This is no revolt of the “moderates” on the Right that is bringing Trump down, no uprising of the decent. As Trump’s power to integrate the different factions of the MAGA coalition seems to be waning, all the energy in the struggle for control of the Right remains with the more extreme, most conspiratorial factions."
I'll say what he doesn't: will there be enough support for those factions? The Republican Party has undermined itself by abandoning all fixed principles, embracing lies and contradictions, and championing anything the wildly corrupt and inconsistent Trump wanted. Trump somehow managed to make some disparate constituencies – billionaire elites, white supremacists and antisemites, deluded populists, most of rural America, the fossil fuel and tech oligarchies – into a coalition; not much else holds it together, and he's falling apart before our eyes. The New York Times reports, "Tensions over antisemitism in the party, free speech and Israel have burst to the forefront of G.O.P. politics, and show signs of becoming a fierce point of contention in 2026 primary races and beyond." The piece quotes Lindsey Graham (yes, another very bad person) saying “I'm in the ‘Hitler Sucks Wing’ of the Republican Party. What is this Hitler sh*t?” We have always had fringe groups with extremist views; Trump represents the moment in which they aggregated into enough to take over a party and almost take over a country. That moment is ebbing.
Something deep is shifting. As I mentioned, at #nokings, people reclaimed patriotism, the flag, the Constitution for progressives. The six representatives who spoke directly to the military and intelligence employees insisted that patriotism may pit them against the administration. The Guardian reports that there's a new wave of white Christian Democrats running for office, reclaiming God and faith too (outside the Black communities in which progressive Christian candidates are more familiar). This country goes through waves of anti-elitism: in 2011, Occupy Wall Street arose from the reaction to the 2008 crash; Franklin Roosevelt won on a wave of anti-elitism. Now Trump is sundowning in more ways than one and something deep is shifting. I don't know exactly what or where it will take us. This does not mean everything is fine or anything is guaranteed; setting eyes on the destination does not mean you'll make it there.
No one knows where we go from here. A nation stable for centuries has been radically destabilized just in time for the 250th anniversary since John Adams coauthored that founding document of defiance of a king. The past is not a template for a viable future, and while the stability that ended on January 20, 2025, was better than this, it had severe flaws and injustices. Even if it didn't, it will never be January 19, 2025 again. The end of Trump will either be the beginning of a national reconstruction/recovery project, or the point at which this country falls apart. How we go forward is improvisational, which is to say it's up to us.
It always was.
p.s In a city with a history of segregation and violence, this image of solidarity moves me deeply. And yeah, Indivisible is doing essential work and I'll try to donate again before the year is out.
I know that John Adams quote (the short part I quoted first) from one of the books that most influenced me, Jonathan Schell's highly recommended Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People (2003). Memory of the passage made me go look up the letter and quote it at greater length.
