With his party facing electoral disaster, President Donald Trump delivered a lengthy, muddled “midterm convention” speech in which he begged his supporters to vote in November — and preposterously claimed that he will send $5,000 checks to every adult citizen in the U.S. if Republicans hold onto Congress.

It’s not the first time in his second term Trump has claimed Americans will receive free money from his administration, even though a president doesn’t have the authority to send out such payments without congressional authorization. The promise seemed to be an act of desperation.

“If the Republicans win, you win with us, and you get $5,000, it will be called the Trump dividend,” Trump said Wednesday night at the Republican Party’s “midterm convention” ahead of November’s elections.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the president’s proposal, essentially a voter bribe that would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, if not more than $1 trillion. Not that Congress would ever approve it.

The president’s party typically does badly in midterm elections, and Republicans face considerable obstacles in their quest to hold the House and Senate, thanks especially to stubborn inflation worsened by Trump’s tariffs and his war in Iran, which has driven record-high gas prices.

Trump acknowledged the historical pattern on Wednesday. His promise to pay Republican voters, delivered during a nearly two-hour rambling speech, seemed like an effort to beat the polls and defy history.

I’m still waiting for my tariff rebate and my DOGE check.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied Missouri Republicans’ attempt to jam through a new gerrymander that would leave Democrats with only one House seat to their seven.

Minutes later, U.S. District Judge Stephen Clark — a Trump appointee — handed down a temporary restraining order requiring Missouri to use the new maximal Republican gerrymander. The state is now under contradictory orders; an appeal of Clark’s ruling could come as soon as tonight.

“We have a very clear Missouri Supreme Court decision and the state today says that decision is valid and in effect,” Chuck Hatfield, counsel for People Not Politicians, told reporters Tuesday evening. “Judge Clark has not overruled that decision, in fact I don’t know that he can; he doesn’t have the authority to overturn the Missouri Supreme Court decision.”

“An individual federal district judge does not have the authority to overrule a decision of the state Supreme Court,” he added. “The U.S. Supreme Court certainly does, absolutely.”

Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins (R) had to exert extra effort to try to muscle the new map through: The state allows citizens to put legislation up for a statewide vote before it can be implemented if they obtain enough signatures to back a ballot measure. The group People Not Politicians did just that, submitting the thousands of required signatures back in December. Hoskins was then supposed to verify the signatures; if the group had collected enough valid ones, the legislation creating the new map would be frozen until voters got the chance to vote it up or down.

Hoskins, though, tried to avoid that vote by dragging his feet, waiting to reject the petition until the last possible day — August 4, the date of the Missouri primaries, which were held under Republicans’ new 7-1 gerrymandered map. State Attorney General Catherine Hanaway (R) said publicly during a radio interview earlier this year that “delay works in our favor.” Hoskins declared the petition insufficient, saying that the citizen referendum process did not apply to maps passed by the legislature.

People Not Politicians kept fighting in court, last week notching a major victory as the Missouri Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the referendum process does cover redistricting, and that the new map should have never been implemented.

Hoskins then lobbed an emergency appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to intercede so Missouri could use the maximal Republican gerrymander — which was drawn in the first place after the Court’s Callais decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act and made racial discrimination in redistricting all but impossible to prove. Many other states, mostly in the South, have similarly rushed to eliminate their Democratic, majority-Black districts to artificially bolster Republicans’ seat tally.

Hoskins’ application for a stay, filed Friday, was denied by Justice Brett Kavanaugh (who oversees cases from that region of the country) on Tuesday. That order, if it stands, clears the way for Missouri’s general election to be held under its 2022 map, and its citizens to decide then whether they want future elections to be governed by the 7-1 gerrymander.

The Supreme Court did not immediately publish any explanation to accompany the rejection of the stay request. The Court will likely weigh in again before the election, given Judge Clark’s last-minute order pushing in the opposite direction.

This is effing crazy.

Where were you on Thursday, September 8, 1966?  I was about to turn 14 and it was the first week of Grade 8 for me, but I was allowed to watch TV on a school night to watch the first aired episode of a new series: Star Trek.  It was broadcast on WSPD Channel 13 in Toledo, and I saw it in black and white because we wouldn’t get a color TV for another two years.

I was a steady watcher of the series, noting the multi-cultural cast and themes about exploring new life and new civilizations — at least new to us — and invoking the Prime Directive, which fore-swore interference with the natural evolution of another world.  But I wasn’t surprised that it only lasted three seasons, and when it was cancelled in June 1969 — a month before Apollo 11 landed on the moon — I didn’t think we’d miss it.

But of course I was wrong.  It came back as an animated series for Saturday morning cartoons on September 8, 1973 with many of the original cast doing the voices for two seasons.  Thanks to syndication, including WKBD Channel 50 from Detroit, Star Trek was on every afternoon in 1974, it lived on, spawning new series like tribbles:  The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, Discovery, Short Treks, Picard, Lower Decks, Prodigy, Strange New Worlds, and Starfleet Academy for a total of 967 episodes over 52 years.  And then there are the movies: fourteen in all (as of this writing) covering the original cast and evolving to those from The Next Generation and beyond.

A lot has been written about the messages of Star Trek, but I go back to what Gene Roddenberry came up with back when he proposed the series: to show a future where exploration was for seeking knowledge, not conquest; friendship and cooperation, not domination.  It was heady in the 1960’s, but it’s still a lesson for us sixty years later.  And while there’s plenty of room for parody — Galaxy Quest and my own spoof Chewie, Get Us Out of Here — it’s undeniable that the concept of peace and understanding still inspires and sells tickets.

Live long and prosper.

Having grown up in a union town that was near a large city that relied on union labor, I’ve come to the conclusion that most of the people who most hate unions are folks who think that it is unconscionable that workers should have the same rights as the managers and the owners of the company. How dare they demand a living wage and safe working conditions. Who do they think they are?

Yeah, yeah; in every large group there are bad apples and examples of bad faith and extremism. Welcome to the human race. The Republicans hold the unions up as the boogeyman of the Western world and label them as thugs… and give tax breaks to the corporations because they know that if they don’t, the corporations will kneecap them. Not literally; they’ll just stop giving them money, which, in corporate circles, is thuggery. The people who whine about “class warfare” always turn out to be the ones who are winning the war.

Perhaps one of the reasons that union membership is down is that unions have accomplished a lot of what they set out to do 100 years ago. Factories are safer, working hours are reasonable, wages are better than the minimum, and pensions provide some security. The unions have learned, however awkwardly, to accept that they have been successful, but they also know that if some people had their way in the world, they would turn back to clock to 1911, put children to work, take away the healthcare, and demand more production. After all, it works for the Chinese, and look how they’re doing.

By the way, not all union workers are Democrats; they certainly weren’t where I grew up. A lot of them are hardcore Republicans or conservatives — including police officers — who don’t care about the politics; they just want to be treated fairly. And a lot of people who are not union members are working under union contracts; in most places there is no requirement to join a union to benefit from their efforts. So while actual union membership may be down to 15% in certain industries, the number of people who are part of the union is far greater. That includes public sector jobs as well as private. So the next time someone feels the urge to union-bash, be sure you’re not peeing in your own campfire.

Since the pandemic, and perhaps as a result of so many people leaving the workforce due to business shutdowns, workers in jobs and businesses that have traditionally been non-union such as the service industry, are organizing.  Starbucks, which tries to give the appearance of a small-town operation, is seeing their workers organize, and there’s talk of workers in the fast-food chains doing the same.  They’re running into resistance from the corporate headquarters (hello, Amazon), but the tide is turning.  Fifteen dollars an hour sounds like a lot, but annualized it’s a little over $31,000 before taxes, and in this economy, that’s not much to raise a family on or live in a decent place.  In large urban areas like Miami, it’s still minimum.  No wonder they’re starting to look for the union label.  Unions are making their strength felt now in ways that most Americans will feel it: wait until the new TV season doesn’t show up and the best streaming is dubbed movies from Norway.

Full disclosure: I am a dues-paying member of a union of sorts; I belong to the Dramatists Guild. It provides services for writers and lyricists and makes sure that when our works are produced, we have a fair contract and get paid our royalties. The joke among us is that we don’t go on strike; we just get writers’ block.

Well, at least he doesn’t drink. Recently, the president of the United States decided that the key to a come-from-behind-the-polls victory in the upcoming midterm elections would be his active participation on the campaign trail. So, he decided to pack up his 32 percent approval rating, and his big bag of lies and fantasies, and take his act on the road.

This, as Politico points out, was not greeted with universal acclaim by the imperiled members of his own party.

Some battleground Republicans have relayed to Trump’s political team that they don’t want him to visit their districts ahead of November, according to four Republican operatives involved in the conversations, granted anonymity, like others in this article, to candidly discuss private strategy and conversations.  And top GOP pollsters have advised some vulnerable Republican incumbents and candidates to not talk about Trump on the campaign trail, or at least limit their direct references to the president, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter.

“We’ve told them he cannot come,” said a senior Republican involved in a competitive House GOP race in a district where Trump won by double digits in 2024. “Candidly, he would not be helpful here … I do not believe they would send him without our okay. And if they did, we probably wouldn’t campaign with him.”

That’s pretty cold, you ask me. The president’s in town. Hide the candidate behind the couch!

This puts Republican incumbents in the position that we veteran scribes call the ol’ Double-Fck, as some anonymous soul whispered to Politico.

“Some of the guidance has been, ‘You’re fucked if you mention him too much, and you’re also fucked if you don’t stay in his good graces.’ So that is the problem,” one House Republican in a competitive race said of internal conversations they’d had with pollsters and operatives. 

Of course, the entire party is running around with its hair on fire anyway. The House of Representatives simply cancelled the last two weeks of its legislative calendar, ostensibly so that Speaker Moses and his crew could go out into the country and save their phony-baloney jobs. Instead, the president will be roaming the landscape saying god knows what. Texas GOP senatorial candidate Ken Paxton already has been blessed by the president’s endorsement, which came with the observation that Paxton is ugly and dresses funny. Thanks, chief.

As it happens, 160 years ago this fall, another unpopular president looked a midterm catastrophe in the face and determined that the only way out was to travel the country himself and make his case to The People. What resulted was one catastrophe atop another, a wreck on a wreck, as the railroad men call it. Sometimes, a Rose Garden strategy makes the most sense. Of course, the president doesn’t have a Rose Garden anymore, so he’s, well, fcked in that regard, too.

The honeymoon was over, if it ever started, for President Andrew Johnson, the Tennessee tailor who assumed the office when Abraham Lincoln was murdered by John Wilkes Booth. He was appalled by a Republican Congress bent on enfranchising the former slaves in the South at the expense of the former white supremacist governments.  He vetoed civil rights bills. He doled out mass pardons to former Confederate officials, which laid the groundwork for the re-establishment of white supremacy that would reach its apotheosis in the Jim Crow laws passed two decades later. Gradually, he’d alienated Congress, his own Cabinet, and virtually everyone who mattered in Washington. When he vetoed an extension of the Freedmen’s Bureau, Congress overrode his veto.

So, as the 1866 midterms loomed ahead, looking more and more like the edge of a cliff, Johnson decided on a road trip. He would travel by train and by steamboat west to Chicago, south to St. Louis, and back up to Washington. He would stop along the way and make speeches to rally support. It became known as the Swing Around the Circle.

Johnson’s advisors were horrified. They begged him to write a stump speech and to stick to it. When this president went off script, trouble followed. (Here is where we ask: Remind you of anyone we know?) In addition, and probably in whispers, his staff prayed fervently that the president would stay off the sauce before public appearances, since he had not lived down the fact that he’d drunk himself sockless at President Lincoln’s second inaugural.

The trip started off successfully. Johnson’s traveling party included Admiral David Farragut and William Seward, as well as Ulysses S. Grant. He stuck fairly closely to his script, notwithstanding his occasional comparison of himself to Jesus Christ. Reviews of his performances up and down the East Coast ranged from complimentary to rapturous. Then, alas, the tour headed to the Midwest, into the heartland of Radical Republicanism, and the train sailed off the cliff.

It happened in Cleveland on September 4, 1866. The crowd was heavily larded with hecklers from his political opposition, and Johnson couldn’t resist rising to the bait. Fortunately for our purposes, and for posterity, a transcript of the event exists. From the Miller Center for the American Presidency:

THE PRESIDENT: I was going to say, my countrymen, a short time since I was elected and placed upon the ticket. There was a platform proclaimed and adopted. Notwithstanding the subsidized gang of hirelings and traducers, I have discharged all my duties and fulfilled all my pledges, and I say here, tonight, that if my predecessor had lived the vials of wrath would have been poured out upon him.

CROWD: “Never.” “Three cheers for the Congress of the United States!”

THE PRESIDENT: I came here as I was passing along, and have been called upon for the purpose of exchanging views and ascertaining, if we could, who was wrong.

CROWD: [Cries of…] “It’s you.”

This is called “getting off to a flying stop.”

THE PRESIDENT: That was my object in appearing before you to-night, and I want to say that I have lived among the American people, and have represented them in some public capacity for the last twenty-five years; and where is the man or woman who can place his finger upon one single act of mine deviating from any pledge of mine, or in violation of the Constitution of the country.

[Cheers.]

Who can come and place his finger on one pledge I ever violated, or one principle I ever proved false to?

CROWD MEMBER: “How about New Orleans?”

ANOTHER CROWD MEMBER: “Hang Jeff. Davis, Hang Jeff. Davis. Why don’t you hang him?”

CROWD: [Cries…] “Give us the opportunity. Have you not got the court? Have you not the attorney general?“

CROWD MEMBER: “Who is your chief justice, who has refused to sit upon the trial?”

[Cheers.]

(The mention of New Orleans refers to a white riot by former Confederate soldiers, who’d attacked the Louisiana Constitutional Convention back in July, killing dozens of delegates, mostly freed Black men. Why Jefferson Davis wasn’t hanged remains a good question.)

THE PRESIDENT: If I was disposed to play the orator and deal in declamation to-night, I would imitate one of the ancient tragedies, and would take William H. Seward and bring him before you and point you to the hacks and scars upon his person.

CROWD MEMBER: “God bless him.”

THE PRESIDENT: I would exhibit the bloody garments saturated with gore from his gushing wounds. Then I would ask you, why not hang Thad. Stevens and Wendall Phillips? I tell you, my countrymen, I have been fighting the South, and they have been whipped and crushed, and they acknowledge their defeat and accept the terms of the conditions; and now, as I go around the circle, having fought traitors at the South, I am prepared to fight traitors at the North.

[Cheers.]

God willing, with your help, we will do it.

CROWD: [Cries of…] “We won’t.”

That set the tone for the rest of the tour. Local officials in cities large and small, including the governor of Illinois, ran away from participating in the president’s appearances. Johnson’s speeches were constantly interrupted with chants for Grant. A stop in St. Louis at which Johnson was visibly hammered ended in a riot and a stop in Indianapolis ended in gunfire. At one point, Johnson nearly stumbled off the platform, raising further concerns that The Thirst was upon him again. Finally, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a temporary viewing stand collapsed into a dry canal bed, killing 13 people. Johnson’s train plowed on, which turned into the final political calamity of the disastrous exercise.

The Republicans won the 1866 midterms in a landslide. Political power passed to the Congress for most of the rest of the 19th Century. Now, 160 years later, an unpopular president is hitting the road, taking his case to The People, which is not always a good idea, but when you don’t have a Rose Garden anymore, what in hell do you have left?

Doonesbury — Bought and paid for.