Thursday, April 09, 2026
New Economist/YouGov Poll Has Trump Job Approval At Only 38%
The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between April 3rd and 6th of a nationwide sample of 1,750 adults (including 1,560 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.2 points for adults and 3.0 points for registered voters.
Public Opinion In The United States Is Turning Against Israel (and Netanyahu)
The charts above are from a Pew Research Center survey -- done between March 23rd and 29th of a nationwide sample of 3,507 adults, with a 1.9 point margin of error.
Trump Opponents (And The World) Have Learned How To Defeat Him
Donald Trump tries to present himself as all-powerful - having the ability (through legal, economic, and military power) to force his opponents and other countries to bend to his will. But that is no longer true. He is now being defeated time after time. Robert Reich explains in this post:
Last night, 90 minutes before Trump said he’d cause the death of a “whole civilization” if Iran didn’t open the Strait of Hormuz, an Iranian official said the shipping channel would be reopened for two weeks if the United States stopped bombing Iran. The U.S. has now stopped bombing Iran.
So we’re back to the status quo before Trump began his war. Only now, Iran can credibly threaten to close the strait if it doesn’t get what it wants from Trump — thereby causing havoc to the U.S. (and world) economies. Trump’s only remaining bargaining leverage is the threat of committing war crimes.
In other words, last night’s showdown was a clear victory for Iran and a clear defeat for Trump (although he’ll frame it as a victory).
The Iran fiasco is only the latest in a host of examples revealing how to defeat Trump.
In addition to Iran, similar strategies have been used by China, Russia, Canada, Mexico, and Greenland. Inside the United States, the people of Minneapolis have used them, as have Harvard University, comedian Jimmy Kimmel, writer E. Jean Carroll, and the law firms Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, Susman Godfrey, and WilmerHale.
What’s the strategy that connects them all?
All refused to cave to Trump, despite his superior military or economic power. Instead, they’ve engaged in a kind of jujitsu in which they use Trump’s power against him, while allowing Trump to save face by claiming he’s won. Consider:
Iran knew it was no match for the superior might of the U.S. (and Israel). So it used cheap drones and missiles to close the Strait of Hormuz and incapacitate other Gulf oil installations, thereby driving up the prices of oil and gas at the pump in the U.S., which has put growing political pressure on Trump, months before a midterm election. Hence, Trump has been forced stop his war.
China knew what to do when Trump imposed a giant tariff on Chinese exports to the U.S.: It put restrictions on seven types of heavy rare earth metals and magnets, crucial to U.S. defense and tech industries. Beijing continues to use these rare earth restrictions as tactical levers in ongoing negotiations over trade, rather than demand complete surrender by Trump on his trade policies.
Russia has leveraged its vast deposits of oil and natural gas with U.S. allies. It has also demonstrated its power to intrude into U.S. elections (the Mueller Report detailed a “sweeping and systematic” campaign by Russia to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, primarily favoring Trump).
Canada and Mexico have won every tariff showdown with Trump by leveraging America’s substantial economic dependence on them for components and raw materials, but without crowing about their victories.
Greenland has leveraged public opinion globally and in the United States — overwhelmingly against an American invasion or occupation — to curb Trump’s ambitions there.
The citizens of Minneapolis and St. Paul have leveraged their asymmetric power against Trump’s ICE and Border Patrol agents by carefully organizing themselves into a force of nonviolent resistance to protect immigrants there. Their strategy showed itself to be especially effective, tragically, after Trump’s agents murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and the public outcry forced the agents to leave the Twin Cities.
Harvard University’s strategy for resisting Trump’s interference in Harvard’s academic freedom has been to leverage its influence with the federal courts in Boston and the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, to get rulings that stopped Trump (although he’s still trying).
Comedian Jimmy Kimmel turned a political crisis into a ratings victory by using the public backlash against his suspension from ABC/Disney (after ABC/Disney initially caved to Trump’s demands that he be taken off the air). Since ABC/Disney reinstated him, Kimmel has continued to target Trump, and secured his contract through 2027.
Writer E. Jean Carroll defeated Donald Trump in two civil cases by leveraging New York’s Adult Survivors Act to prove that Trump sexually abused and defamed her, ultimately securing over $88 million in damages from him — verdicts that have been upheld by federal appeals courts. Carroll’s lawyers used a civil lawsuit, requiring a lower burden of proof (”preponderance of evidence”) than criminal cases. They presented the jury with Trump’s “Access Hollywood” tape and testimony from other Trump accusers. The real jujitsu was that Trump’s continued public statements about Carroll, which the court deemed defamatory, led to her second lawsuit. His depositions, where he called her a “whack job,” were played for the jury.
The law firms Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, Susman Godfrey, and WilmerHale refused to follow Trump’s executive orders targeting law firms that had represented causes or clients that Trump opposed. The orders threatened to revoke the firms’ security clearances, access to federal buildings and officials, and government contracts tied to firm clients. But the firms didn’t back down. They leveraged constitutional arguments with the federal courts — arguing that the orders infringed on their First Amendment rights to advocate whatever causes they wished, violated the Constitution’s separation of powers because the orders would prevent the judiciary from considering challenges to executive authority, and violated their clients’ rights under the Constitution to be represented.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia agreed with the firms and blocked these orders with permanent injunctions. The Justice Department ultimately dropped its fight against these firms in March 2026 after federal appellate judges also found Trump’s orders unconstitutional.
What’s happened to the countries and organizations that have caved to Trump?
All have strengthened Trump’s leverage over them. Europe seems incapacitated, fearing Trump will leave NATO (despite a U.S. law prohibiting it) but unable to decide where to draw the line with him.
ABC continues to lose viewers and while being subject to Trump’s whims. CBS was purchased by Trump allies Larry Ellison and his son, David, and is hemorrhaging talent.
Columbia University has been wracked by dissent from both students and faculty. The Trump regime continues to make demands of it.
The National Museum of American History has lost credibility and talent.
The law firms that caved in to Trump’s executive orders have seen lawyers exit who felt the deals betrayed the firms’ values and principles. Microsoft dropped Simpson Thacher to work with Jenner & Block — a firm that fought Trump — due to Microsoft’s concerns over Simpson’s commitment to the rule of law. Students at elite law schools have also reportedly begun to shun firms that struck deals with the Trump regime.
Bottom line: There’s now a clear blueprint for how to defeat Trump, available to any country, organization, or person on which he seeks to impose his will: Reject his demands and then use your own asymmetric power — a form of jujitsu — to turn Trump’s power against him.
Which is what Iran did last night.
Wednesday, April 08, 2026
Support Remains Strong For Abortion, Marriage Equality, And Affirmative Action
These charts reflect the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between March 27th and 30th of a nationwide sample of 1,679 adults (including 1,505 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.2 points for adults and 3.0 points for registered voters.
Republicans Have Caused Enough Damage - They Should Be Voted Out Of Power
The following is part of a post by Thom Hartmann at The Hartmann Report. I wholeheartedly agree with what he has written.
Trump is tearing America apart with his threats against Iran and comment that domestically, “It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things.” He’s also succeeded in intentionally pitting Americans of different races, religions, and across the rural/urban divide against each other. . . .
While it’s worked to the advantage of the GOP, the fossil fuel and private prison industries, and the billionaire class for four decades or more, it’s extraordinarily dangerous to our nation and our children’s future.
That’s because a society can’t function when its people don’t have faith in its institutions, and it’s even more of a challenge for a democracy, a form of government which only exists “by the consent of the governed.” When people lose faith in their nation’s institutions, the result is both social and political chaos much like America is experiencing right now. . . .
Prior to Reagan’s presidency, 73% of Americans said they trusted the federal government to do the right thing “just about always” or “most of the time.” Pew found in 2024 that 85% of Americans said most elected officials “don’t care” what people like them think, and only 4% said the political system is working “extremely” or “very” well.
That’s absolutely unsustainable without radical change.
We’re also experiencing a crisis of confidence in America internationally, as nations that were formerly allies across the planet are now openly questioning whether they can ever again trust us after all the betrayals, trash-talking, and Putin-fluffing coming from Trump and his lickspittles.
Tariffs, destroying USAID, and silencing The Voice of America have devastated our soft power and credibility around the world, moving dozens of countries away from us and toward mostly China and Russia.
All of which raises the question: How did we get here and how do we get out of this mess?
Three factors that burst onto the scene in a big way in the 1960s led us to the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s, which brought us to today’s crisis.
— The first was the invention of neoliberalism in the 1940s, as I lay out in my book The Hidden History of Neoliberalism: How Reaganism Gutted America.
— This was followed by the creation of the Libertarian Party a few decades later as a lobbying vehicle against rent control by the real estate lobby.
— And, finally, in the 1980s a handful of fossil fuel billionaires jumping into politics to fund think tanks, media, and politicians who’d preach the doctrine that, as Reagan famously said, ”Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
Prior to these interventions, the New Deal consensus had brought Americans together around the idea that the purpose of government was, to quote the Constitution’s Preamble:
“[T]o form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”
Neoliberals, Libertarians, and rightwing petrobillionaires like David Koch (who ran for VP in 1980 on a ticket of shutting down pretty much all domestic spending, presaging Trump’s recent rant that the only legitimate function of government is to run the military) all began the refrain that government is essentially evil, because they all objected to paying taxes to “promote the general Welfare,” or losing profits to regulations that prevented harms to workers and average Americans.
An army of sycophants and spokesmen was mobilized from William F. Buckley to Rush Limbaugh to the “stars” of Fox “News” and its imitators. Soon, the word spread. As Limbaugh used to joke, social programs were actually evil because:
“What do you do for a man when he’s down? You kick him! Otherwise, he’ll never get up!”
Men with wealth beyond the imaginings of Midas were telling average white working Americans that it wasn’t the GOP’s tax cuts and Republicans’ destruction of unions that crushed them, but brown-skinned immigrants, women, and Black people who wanted to “steal” their jobs, invade their homes, and rape their daughters. . . .
By the end of the George W. Bush presidency (and his and Cheney’s lies that led us into bloody quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq), most Americans had decided they couldn’t believe or trust our government. Then Trump came along and, presumably on Putin’s orders, told the world that we couldn’t be trusted internationally, either.
Just like with domestic politics, our nation can’t effectively function internationally if other nations also don’t have faith in our institutions. The Reagan Revolution, Donald Trump, and the Republican Party have destroyed both our faith and the world’s faith in the institutions of America and thus put our democracy at serious peril.
Part of that peril is that Donald Trump is now threatening to turn America into an “illiberal democracy” police state with rigged elections like Russia and Hungary. And it’s Americans’ cynicism that is his main weapon.
The solution is straightforward, and it appears we’re moving quickly in that direction, just like we did in 1932 as we woke up and chose to move out of the Republican Great Depression.
First, Americans must realize that these nihilistic ideologies promoted by billionaires and massive, monopolistic corporations are grounded in lies. We’re not a society of selfish individual consumers driven primarily by greed; we’ve historically been here for each other, and that’s why our government was first formed. It worked best during the 1933-1981 New Deal era, when the Middle Class went from around 10% of us up to around two-thirds of us. And it was crippled by the Reagan Revolution, which has cut it down to around 43% of us.
Second, the Democratic Party needs to re-embrace the social and economic goals of the New Deal and Great Society that brought us Social Security, the minimum wage, Medicare, Medicaid, free and cheap college, etc., etc. Put “we, the people” first and again restrain the toxic impulses of billionaires and corporations through appropriate taxation and regulation.
And third, we must repudiated the GOP’s corrupt ideology at the polls this fall and bring into office a new generation of FDR-style progressives who are committed to undoing Reagan’s, Bush’s, Musk’s and Trump’s damage and rebuilding American institutions so they’ll once again work for the average family.
It may seem like a big lift, but more and more Americans are waking up to the Great Grift billionaires and their Republican toadies have been running on us for the past half-century. A new America is possible!
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