Marshall Herskovitz

Opinion | The America We Knew Is Rapidly Slipping Away

Friedman says it all here. Let all the cowards take note: you allowed this to happen. If the American people don't rise up, and soon, there will be no America to save.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/o...

4) stronger action. If things continue as they are, with Texas openly stealing House seats, this community will have the power to institute a general strike, which is the only thing that can really stop Trump's agenda. No amount of National Guard or Marines can force millions back to work.

3) is taking away. Research, healthcare, universities. We can't replace the government, but we can also refuse to be helpless in the face of tyranny.

The creation of a national community of resistance - a community that accomplishes things instead of just protesting - will inevitably lead to--

2) working together to defend those unjustly fired and investigated. But it must be much bigger. We need thousands of points of resistance, so many that the DOJ can't go after them all. We need the majority of billionaires - who voted for Harris - to fund at least a portion of what the government--

1) Here's what could be a huge piece: call it a national community, people organizing to defend those attacked by the government, to repair the damage done by lost funding, to protect institutions under attack. Even now we are seeing local communities organizing against ICE attacks, law firms--

Trump's firing of BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer should alarm every American We cannot allow the erosion of one of our nation’s most vital democratic safeguards: truthful, unbiased data.

Trump's firing of BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer should alarm every American
open.substack.com/pub/contrari...

FEMA to Deny Grants to States and Cities That Boycott Israeli Companies

Free speech absolutists of a year ago are now all in on the federal government letting Americans die based on their political beliefs.

Funny, I don't remember Biden denying FEMA funds to states that banned abortion. How foolish of Dems to follow the Constitution.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/u...

A Fight Over a West Point Job Reveals Two Visions of America Under Trump

Must-read piece. My Republican friends, you are choosing the freak Laura Loomer over the patriot Jen Easterly. Such titanic nihilism cannot be explained by any of the multitude of left wing and establishment sins.

Your choice of darkness is your own.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/u...

Texas Pushes Redistricting Into an Era of ‘Maximum Warfare’

The mask is off: Republicans no longer even pay lip service to the will of the people. They are taking us down a very dark road. No matter which party "wins" in a gerrymandering war, American democracy will be left on the brink of death.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/02/u...

Ex-CIA Whistleblower: "The NSA Audited The 2024 Election, Kamala Harris Won" Math doesn’t lie—people do. A buried NSA‑authorized audit paved the way for this unelected illegitimate regime.

This should be a Five Alarm Fire on every G'ddamned media outlet in the world.

I very rarely post a link to someone else's newsletter...as I have my own. This, however...is a MUST see.

open.substack.com/pub/thiswill...

Will everyone quit and roll over? The law firms, media companies, universities, government employees. Will you all cling to what you have and hope you can just ride it out, Republic be damned? Shame on all of you who don’t stand up, just remember we will never forget.

Firing the BLS Commissioner — the wonk in charge of the statisticians who track economic reality — is an authoritarian four alarm fire.

It will also backfire: You can't bend economic reality, but you can break the trust of markets. And biased data yields worse policy.

Vaccination Coverage and Exemptions among Kindergartners View national and state-level school vaccination coverage and exemption estimates.

1/5 🧵Vaccine exemptions increased in 36 states and Washington, DC, with 17 states reporting exemptions exceeding 5%-- the threshold needed for herd immunity.
www.cdc.gov/schoolvaxvi...

Unnoticed Whistle-Blower Document Alarms Justice Department Veterans

Only @nytimes.com would describe the DOJ Inspector General sitting on a whistleblower document until the day after Bove's confirmation as "strangely silent."

How about criminally complicit?

Unnoticed Whistle-Blower Document Alarms Justice Department Veterans www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/u...

Start your morning with two minutes of the testimony of Samuel Garcia, an average American who drove 3 hours to speak truth to power to the Texas legislature. Let’s decide that we are all Samuel Garcia. Get in their faces and make them listen. Mr. Garcia is a great American.

Dropped cases against LA protesters reveal false claims from federal agents Revealed: records show border patrol gave inaccurate testimony about people it jailed. Prosecutors now face ‘embarrassing’ dismissals

Be assured there will be no further admission of mistakes by this DOJ.

Trump, Bondi, and Noem would rather put an innocent Latino person through the fear, danger, pain, and cost of incarceration and trial than admit their agents lied.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Oregon lawmakers vote to block rising corporate ownership of medical clinics Backers say SB 951 will close a loophole that has allowed health care decisions to be increasingly driven by profit motives.

good news recently in Oregon www.opb.org/article/2025...

ICE Took Half Their Work Force. What Do They Do Now?

For all its issues, there are some things the Times does better than anybody and this article is one of them. Gift Link

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/u...

Cartel family members entered U.S. in deal with Trump admin, Mexican security chief confirms Video showed the family members walking across the border from Tijuana with their suitcases to waiting U.S. agents.

Trump isn't getting rid of cartels, he's giving them visas to live in the USA.
Mexico’s security chief confirmed that 17 family members of cartel leaders entered the US in a deal between the "former" head of the Sinaloa Cartel and the Trump regime.
www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...

Private equity is the ultimate expression of neoliberalism: profit by making life unlivable for people.

This is why neoliberalism is the enemy and not capitalism. Under capitalism there can still be such a thing as a public good. Under neoliberalism anything that can be commoditized will be.

Rasmus Jarlov on Twitter writes: "There is nothing to celebrate. Moving from average tariffs of less than 2% on trade between the USA and Europe to 15% under today’s deal will inevitably lead to inflation. Almost everything will become more expensive in both Europe and the USA, and we will all be worse off. The economic illiteracy in the White House is doing serious damage to the West." Stylish Skunk replies: "I have a feeling you have 0 idea what you're talking about. In fact I know you do." Rasmus Jarlov responds: "Of course. I am former minister of trade in Denmark and you are an anonymous Twitter profile. You probably know a lot more than me. For sure."

lol

Opinion | The Elite Panic at the Heart of Liberal Attacks on Mamdani

Strongly against racializing Dem opposition to Mamdani. I oppose him because he's a socialist, and not a Bernie-style Democratic Socialist but the real thing. "Seize the means of production" is a dangerous, authoritarian idea. Capitalism needs reform, not destruction.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/o...

YouTube video by The Tom Lehrer Wisdom Channel Tom Lehrer - Wernher von Braun - with intro

Rest in Peace Tom Lehrer. One of the great satirists of all time.

youtu.be/TjDEsGZLbio?...

If you haven’t seen this film please find it. It’s on Prime and likely other platforms.
It will remind you there was a time when we had a common purpose and weren’t driven by hate. Pierce Brosnan is astonishing.

4) protecting CBS against Trump's blackmail? Or, after two generations of neoliberalism, was he not aware that some corporate leaders - like the brothers Warner - once did the right thing in the face of tyranny, even if it kept them from getting richer than they already were?

3) pull out until 1940. So it shouldn't be a surprise that Paramount caved to Trump.

But the real questions should go to David Ellison, founder/CEO of Skydance. A billionaire many times over, did it ever occur to him to cancel the planned merger with Paramount as a way of--

2) in 1934, the first movie studio to do so, because they saw what was coming. Paramount on the other hand - and to its everlasting shame - fired its Jewish employees in Germany in 1933 to appease the Nazis, hired a Nazi to run operations, and didn't--

1) Skydance, Paramount, and the death of CBS - a thread:

Students of WWII know that getting corporations to stop doing business with Hitler was difficult right up to the start of the war. But a few had the courage to stop long before. Warner Bros stopped all the way back--

We should’ve learned in 2020 that Trump will repeat a lie over and over and over for years until people start to believe it. The only defense is to rebut that lie every single time it’s uttered. He and his minions had more staying power; we got tired and they didn’t. We can’t let that happen again.

A fifth of California homes are investor-owned as state’s affordability crisis deepens – report New figures show that the Golden state’s rate of investor-owned homes is 19%, with mountain regions up to 83%

Investors now own 20% of private homes. They don't care about housing shortages, don't care if young people can ever afford to buy a home.

They only care about profit.

Profit at the expense of the public good is how neoliberalism has poisoned America.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...