Commentary by K.E. Bell

It certainly appears the coverup is unfolding right before our eyes. First, on February 21, Attorney General Pam Bondi said she had the Epstein client list on her desk, then she said there is no such list.

Next, according to a Bloomberg report in March, FBI Director Kash Patel ordered up to 1,000 FBI agents to scour the Epstein files and redact Donald Trump’s name because he was a private citizen when the Epstein case was opened. 

The public face of the coverup kicked into high gear when in July Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, President Trump’s former personal attorney, met with convicted Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, seemingly to ensure she wouldn’t expose Trump or the other high-powered men surrounding Epstein. Apparently satisfied with that meeting, he ordered Maxwell’s move to a minimum-security prison.  

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson then chipped in with a stall tactic when he kept Congress out of session for 54 days using the government shutdown as an excuse. This conveniently avoided securing the final vote on the discharge petition that would require a vote to release the Epstein files.

Johnson brought the House back into session around the same time the Democrats caved on the 43-day government shutdown, which was the longest in US history. Their capitulation was horrible for the country, but it shined more light on the suspected coverup. It gave Johnson no choice but to finally seat Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva, who did indeed provide the final vote to move the discharge petition forward to the House floor, which in turn spurred all House Republicans but one to vote with the Democrats to release the Epstein files. 

Now, the Department of Justice has violated the law, thus keeping the Epstein files from coming to light.

The Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA) required the DOJ to release all of the files by December 19. Instead, the DOJ released a small percentage of the files, many heavily redacted. A 119-page record of New York grand jury testimony consists of only the title of the document with the rest of the pages blacked out entirely.

The EFTA permits redactions only for victim privacy, child sexual abuse material, and ongoing investigations, the last of which must be narrowly tailored. It also requires “a written justification published in the Federal Register and submitted to Congress” for all redactions. The DOJ redacted its brains out and provided no justification.

What the Department of Justice calls compliance I call a “f*** you” to the rule of law. 

For its part, the DOJ says the complete files will come out in the coming weeks. If you believe that I have an abandoned island to sell you.

The problem is that the criminals are in charge of the Justice Department. The DOJ is not going to arrest itself. That means there is likely no accountability while Trump is in office. But the statute of limitations runs five years, and these brazen criminals are acting like they will never face justice for their actions. 

Congress his little recourse, but it should do everything it can. While the EFTA is a law, there are no penalties for breaking it. Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY), who introduced the EFTA, have suggested filing inherent contempt charges against Pam Bondi. They should do that and more. They should introduce articles of impeachment as well for Bondi, Patel, and Blanche. That effort almost certainly wouldn’t be successful, but it would apply more pressure and keep the lawbreaking in the public spotlight.

Justice will likely have to wait. The DOJ has plenty of reason not to release the Epstein files, both for the embarrassment and the culpability of those involved. 

Blanche continues to say the DOJ is not covering for Trump. Bondi speaks of absolute transparency while breaking the law by withholding the files. Patel told Congress that there is nobody else worth charging for sex trafficking. Releasing the files in full could very well prove they’re all wrong and/or lying, and Patel would be especially vulnerable because he could be brought up on charges for lying to Congress. 

It's very likely that there is more than just Trump to protect. Epstein ran in elite circles with heads of state, high-powered politicians from the US and abroad, celebrities, and even intelligence officials, again at home and abroad. The latest drop of files shows there were 10 coconspirators, and yet Patel and Bondi (or the incredibly weak Merrick Garland for that matter) haven’t found occasion to charge any of them.

Even before the Trump era, it became apparent that justice doesn’t apply to these types of people, and that’s only supercharged in the age of cash for pardons. The DOJ seems intent on protecting them too, unless they’re Democrats. 

What’s lost here is justice for the girls, now women, victimized by Epstein. The coverup protects rapists and pedophiles while marginalizing the 14-, 15-, and 16-year-old girls whose lives he ruined. 

I can’t imagine a form of “justice” more disgusting, and I can’t wait for these sick people complicit in the coverup to get their justice. It will just have to wait.

Bell is contributing pundit for The Hustings, where he writes for the left column.

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WEDNESDAY 12/24/25

Commentary by Stephen Macaulay

“First and foremost, I’m a real estate person. And that’s what I love the most.”

“I look at the real estate. I’m always looking at the real estate. I don’t know, I’ll never get it out of my blood.”

“I love people that are in the real estate business. I have a little bit of a proclivity for it.”

That, it goes without saying, are quotes from President Donald Trump about what is evidently something dear to his heart. 

So, it is probably not a stretch to claim that he probably has a better understanding of real estate than any president since George Washington who, as you may recall from Schoolhouse Rock, was a land surveyor at age 17.

But this knowledge of real estate and his recently announced “Warrior Dividend” seem to be at odds with one another — but in keeping with his modus operandi, which is to go for the glitz and skip the reality on the ground.

The checks for $1,776 to US military service members makes great TV.

But because not even Donald Trump can manifest money out of thin air, it had to come from somewhere. (No, not from the tariffs.)

The funds are coming from the Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) defense appropriation, part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. There are $2.9 billion appropriated for BAH. The Warrior Dividend checks are going to take $2.6 billion.

According to the most recent Consumer Price Index, shelter (a.k.a., housing) increased 3%. Household furnishings are up 4.6%.

So, for our military living off-base (like all other Americans), costs are rising. They need supplemental assistance, which is the point of the BAH. But now only 10% of the BAH funds are still in place.

While some might argue that it is just as well to give the military personnel the money and let them decide what to do with it, presumably the BAH was written into the bill because there was a very specific determination made that it was necessary to help out with housing allowances.

But that doesn’t make good TV.

And Donald Trump knows that.

He doesn’t seem to know that there are a lot of Americans that are facing rising costs in many areas of their daily lives and it doesn’t matter how many times he claims that gasoline is under $2 a gallon in some places (places, evidently, only he knows about) and that reduced energy costs will cut the prices of things like groceries (the latest 

Consumer Price Index shows an 11.3% increase in fuel oil and 9.1% increase in natural gas), the price of food has gone up 2.6%.

But it is all about performance for Donald Trump. While housing costs go up (and let’s not lose sight of the fact that the total effective tariff on Canadian softwood lumber — which is used to build things like houses — is approximately 45%) he has overseen the demolition of the perfectly good East Wing of the White House so that he can have an ornate 90,000-square foot ballroom built. Is that something the US needed? 

Many Americans have their “ballroom” experiences in VFW and Eagles Clubs halls and the folks that run them are wondering about affording the paint to brighten up the place — and know that paint prices have risen by as much as 7%.

On the subject of performance, there is the newly named “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”

The building, originally established by Dwight Eisenhower in 1958 as the “National Cultural Center,” was renamed, through an act of Congress, to the “John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts” after the assassination of the 35^th president.

Kennedy, among other less noble things, was known to be a patron of the arts. He championed the establishment of the National Endowment for the Arts. Trump’s 2026 budget includes its elimination.

What has Donald Trump done to deserve having his name attached to the center that has had people like Mikhail Baryshnikov and Twyla Tharp appear on its stage, beside his repeatedly performing the goofy grandpa dance that he often does in public venues?

(Some may protest: “But it was the center’s board of trustees who made the change!”, don’t kid yourself: he stacked the board so it is like he did it himself.)

In his televised presentation the other evening Donald Trump continued to insist that things are what they aren’t (nor what they can be, like the 600% reduction in prescription drug costs).

He proclaimed: “Many families will be saving between $11,000 and $20,000 dollars a year,” but he didn’t explain who these families are, nor how this will be achieved — and given that the median household income in the US is presently $83,730, it is hard to imagine how many — if any — are going to have savings on the order of 13% to 24%, especially given what is going on in the economy.

But it sounds good and makes good TV.

Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings, writing primarily for the right column.

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TUESDAY 12/23/25

Commentary by Stephen Macaulay

The Business Roundtable is an organization consisting of CEOs of more than 200 US-based companies. One of its objectives is to “develop and advocate directly for policies to promote a thriving US economy and expand opportunities for all Americans.”

Or to put it another way: the Business Roundtable is all about improving conditions for businesses to make money, which is, after all, the role of a business.

Each quarter the Business Roundtable releases a “CEO Economic Outlook Index,” which provides an indication of what CEOs think about in terms of hiring and capital spending — things they directly control -- and sales, which they can’t control but must plan for, for the next six months.

Last week it released its numbers for Q4 2025, and while there was improvement in outlook, the index “remains below the historic average.” But really by just a smidge. The average is 83 and this quarter’s number is 80.

Chuck Robbins, chair and CEO of Cisco, and the Business Roundtable chair, said that CEOs are “approaching the first half of 2026,” but that “they are starting to see opportunities for growth.”

Which sounds rather cautious, certainly not bullish. 

Realize that Robbins’ day job at Cisco probably has something to do with this carefully worded, PR-massaged statement. After all, he certainly wants to keep the fortunes of the digital communications tech firm he heads going in the right direction (i.e., up).

But Business Roundtable CEO Joshua Bolten doesn’t have direct connection with shareholders so his statements can be more to the point.

And so there’s this: “Notably this quarter, more CEOs plan to reduce employment than increase it for the third quarter in a row — the lowest three-quarter average since the Great Recession”

Now a bit of chronology is in order. Three quarters in a row mean three quarters during which time Donald Trump has owned the economy.

And realize that the Great Recession began during the watch of George W. Bush, so this “lowest three-quarter average” can’t be blamed on “Biden,” as Trump likes to utter with a sneer of contempt (did you ever notice that past presidents seemed to have at least a cordial relationship with their predecessors . . . before Trump?)

Bolten went on to say, “CEOs’ softening hiring plans reflect an uncertain economic environment in which AI is driving sizeable capex growth and productivity gains while tariff volatility is increasing costs, particularly for tariff-exposed companies, including small businesses. We continue to urge our trading partners and the Administration to stabilize the system and bring tariffs down.” (“Capex” is biz-talk for “capital expenditure”.)

The sizeable capex growth he refers to related to AI goes to things like Cisco equipment, NVIDIA chips, and the massive spending by the likes of Amazon ($125 billion) and Google ($93 billion) on AI infrastructure. AI investment is thought to have contributed to more than half of the GDP growth in the US during the first half of 2025.

But then there’s the stuff that’s available in the supermarkets and on the shelves of Target and in the parking lots at car dealers: “Tariff volatility is increasing costs, particularly for tariff-exposed companies, including small businesses. We continue to urge our trading partners and the administration to stabilize the system and bring tariffs down.”

The increased costs are increased costs to businesses which then are going to be passed along to consumers. As previously mentioned, the purpose of a business is to make money, and for the Business Roundtable-caliber companies, the money goes to shareholders.

Many companies have been absorbing the costs of the tariffs during the past several months, but that means they are spending money that might otherwise go to shareholders. Consequently, that’s going to go by the wayside and prices are going to go up.

And then we have reduced employment, which is going to make it increasingly hard for people to pay for anything.

This whole MAGA thing just doesn’t seem to be going the way it was described.

Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings where he writes primarily for the right column.

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["Holiday Traditions in Harmony" by ChatGPT.]

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Good Kwanza, and if you celebrate Festivus for the Restuvus, hope your feats of strength outnumber your grievances. 

The Hustings is easing back but not taking off the couple of weeks up to New Years 2026. We continue to post updates to the center column and take your comments for right or left, though not on our normal, Monday-Friday daily basis.

So your opportunities to become a citizen pundit and help us fight the ravishes of journalism by social media are as good as ever.

To comment on center-column news/aggregate/analysis/context, and/or any of the comments by right- and left-column pundits, or even to address an issue you believe we’ve missed, please email editors@thehustings.news and indicate whether you lean right or left, politically, in the subject line so that we may post your civil, non-personal comments in the proper column. –Editors

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THURSDAY 12/18/25

Commentary by Rich Corbett

Democrats are suddenly discovering "affordability" as their new talking point now that Republicans control the White House and Congress. It's a remarkable pivot. After four years of presiding over the worst inflation in four decades, they're lecturing Americans about the cost of living.

The record is unambiguous: Consumer prices rose cumulatively by more than 21% during the Biden-Harris administration, compared to roughly 8% during Trump's first term. That isn't a temporary blip or a "global phenomenon" America alone suffered. It's a permanent shift upward in the cost of essentials. Groceries, energy, housing, vehicles: Everything families buy is meaningfully more expensive today than it was in January 2021, and those higher prices are now baked in as the new baseline — and much of it in 2025 still left over from the previous administration's policies.

This surge didn't happen by accident. It followed trillions in new federal spending pushed through when Democrats held unified control of government, combined with restrictive energy policies and regulatory bottlenecks that constrained supply at exactly the moment demand was being supercharged. Inflation wasn't "transitory" as they repeatedly claimed. It was persistent, painful and entirely foreseeable.

Real wages fell for most American workers during the height of the inflation, meaning families weren't just seeing higher price tags, they were losing ground even as they worked harder. Only in the final stretch, after the political damage was done, did annual inflation readings cool. But the cumulative hit to purchasing power remains.

Now, with voters having decisively rejected that economic record in 2024, Democrats want to pose as the champions of affordable living. The timing is convenient, but the hypocrisy is glaring. When prices were spiraling, the focus from the White House and congressional Democrats was on downplaying the problem, redefining "recession," or blaming everything from corporate greed to Vladimir Putin. Affordability wasn't a priority then.

Republicans now have the opportunity and the mandate to reverse course: Unleash American energy production, cut burdensome regulations, secure the border to ease pressure on housing and public services, and pursue pro-growth trade and tax policies that bring jobs and investment home. These steps won't deliver instant relief. 

Some, like strategic tariffs, may involve short-term adjustments.

But they attack the root causes of stagnation and high costs in ways the previous administration never seriously attempted.

Americans aren't looking for lectures on affordability from the architects of the inflation era. They're looking for results, and the new majority in Washington has both the responsibility and the political capital to deliver them.

Corbett is contributing pundit for The Hustings and author of his My Desultory Blog.

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THURSDAY 12/18/25

On Macaulay’s ‘Trump Talks Cars’ – Macaulay is, as usual, right on the money with this analysis of Dozy Don’s latest hyperbolic fact-bashing. (President Trump) knows nothing about the auto business, as he clearly illustrated in the recent White House photo op. –Albert Brooke/via Substack

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After five years online, The Hustings remains committed to fostering civil discourse between conservatives and liberals, the hard-right and progressive, right and left – whatever words you use to express your political beliefs. We trust in facts over false equivalencies and conspiracy theories and we seek to present a diversity of ideas, without echo chambers.

So do Hustings editors and yourselves a favor and become a Citizen Pundit. Email your comments to our center-column news/aggregate and/or left- or right-column commentary to editors@thehustings.news and please list your political leanings (left or right, or any of the adjectives mentioned above) so we may post your comments in the proper column.

Also note, you do not have to agree with all prevailing liberal thought to consider yourself “left” nor all prevailing conservative thought to consider yourself “right.”Of further note: The Hustings will ease off its usual daily (M-F) center-column posting schedule going into the holidays. But we know the type of news/aggregate we regularly cover will not slow down much, if at all, especially from the Trump White House. Please check in regularly, if not daily, through January 2 and send us your comments any time. –Editors

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MONDAY 12/15/25

Commentary by Stephen Macaulay

On December 3 “President Donald J. Trump is delivering major relief to American families by resetting the Biden Administration’s costly and unlawful Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards.” 

For those of you who are not familiar with this: the standards are the things that give rise to the “miles per gallon” that you hear about or see on the window stickers of new cars. The objective for getting more mpgs is to reduce the amount of fuel needed to power vehicles. Less fuel burned means reduced emissions. Which is a good thing for people who like to breathe.

While President Trump can’t just strike these standards, there are things like public comment that must be undertaken, let’s face it: No one is going to push back on this.

As is his wont, President Trump said a lot of things when the announcement was made.

And as is his wont, most of them were. . .exaggerations.

Here’s a look at some of the things he said:

///

“We’re officially terminating Joe Biden’s ridiculously burdensome horrible, actually, CAFE standards that imposed expensive restrictions and all sorts of problems. It gave all sorts of problems to automakers. And we’re not only talking about here, we’re talking about outside of our country because nobody could do it. Nobody wanted to do it and it was ridiculous, very expensive. It put tremendous upward pressure on car prices. Combined with the insane electric vehicle mandate, Biden’s burdensome regulations helped cause the price of cars to soar more than 25%. And in one case they went up 18% in one year.”

About the “nobody could do it.” The European Union has vehicle regulations that measure different things but that can be translated into miles per gallon, which presumably are behind the “expensive restrictions.”

The Biden “horrible” standard was a corporate average of 50.4 mpg in 2031.

Presently in Europe, if the CO2 regulations are translated into miles per gallon, cars must meet 56.5 mpg and light commercial vehicles 38 mpg.

Now, not in 2031.

China’s numbers are even better.

“Nobody could do it”? Seems that the Europeans that he has indicated are crumbling are doing a better job on this front.

The source of the “burdensome regulations” causing a 25% or even 18% price rise isn’t clear.

But there’s this from Kelley Blue Book as of December 10, 2025: 

“The new-vehicle ATP [average transaction price—a.k.a., what people actually pay] in November was $49,814, up 1.3% year over year.”

That’s right: it costs more now than it did when President Biden was sleeping or using the autopen or doing something else that he can be accused of. 

///

“I signed an executive order to end the unfair, expensive electric vehicle mandate. As you know, we had to have an electric car within a very short period of time, even though there was no way of charging them and lots of other things. It would have cost $5 trillion to build the charging plants.”

“Very short period of time?” Trump’s former colleague Elon Musk launched the first Tesla on the market in 2008. The mainstream Model S in 2012.

And as for that $5 trillion. . .according to S&P Global Market Intelligence:

“The nation's electric, gas and water utilities are directing substantial investments into infrastructure enhancements aimed at modernizing mature generation, transmission and distribution networks, and meeting new demand. These initiatives include the construction of new natural gas, nuclear, solar and wind power generation facilities, alongside the integration of advanced technologies such as smart meters, smart grid systems, cybersecurity protocols, electric vehicles and battery storage solutions.”

How much will the capital expenditure be between 2025 and 2029 for all that (note the electric vehicles are just one element)? Just over $1 trillion. One, not five.

///

“And as you know, in certain parts of the Midwest, they spent to build nine chargers, they spent $8 billion, so that wasn’t working out too well.”

The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula program is providing $5 billion and the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Discretionary Grant Program is providing $2.5 billion to build 500,000 chargers by 2030. So (1) there is $7.5 billion, not $8 and (2) that’s for 499,991 more chargers in five years.

///

“I’ve never had a group of people come to me more powerfully and really just devastated that they had to do it. It was killing them, than the automobile manufacturers, the Tailpipe Emissions Standards. And I can tell you your people at Ford were coming to me all the time and they were saying like, ‘Please, it doesn’t do anything and it’s killing us. And it’s driving the cost through the roof.’”

The “Tailpipe Emissions Standards” have been around for a long time, enacted in California in 1966, for the rest of the country for model year 1968. The Clean Air Act was passed in 1970, which created the EPA. Tailpipe standards were modified for model years 1994-1997, then in 2000, starting for model year 2004. Another tightening for model year 2017. Then the standards, that the Trump administration is lifting, for model years 2027 thorough 2032.

Evidently companies like Ford have been being killed for nearly six decades.

///

“Under the Trump administration $70 billion are now being invested in the American auto industry.”

What better source for investment numbers than the official White House website?

Well, a bit of a problem. If all the investments by auto companies are summed, the number is $43 billion, not $70 billion. 

Not that there’s anything wrong with $43 billion, but that figure is 39% lower than what’s claimed.

///

“Auto production has surged by 10% so far this year.”

According to the Omidia Production Outlook, which is an industry recognized source of automotive data:

“Entire-2025 is tracking to production of 15.56 million units, 3.1% below 2024’s 16.06 million and lowest since 14.765 million in 2022. Excluding medium-/heavy-duty trucks, light-vehicle production is pegged at 15.11 million in 2025, 2.4% below the prior year’s 15.48 million.”

Sorry. No 10% surge. A decrease, instead. 

///

“You see it, closed factories all over the place. Now they’re all opening up. In most cases, they’re being knocked down and new ones are being built in their place.”

How many new auto factories — old ones that had been closed and now reopened or torn down and rebuilt — have there been in the US in 2025?

Zero.

Macaulay is pundit-at-large for The Hustings, where he writes primarily for the right column.

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MONDAY 12/15/25

Commentary by Jerry Lanson

Given the daily horrors that pass for policy in the Trump administration, it’s little surprise some stories simply slip past below the radar. At other times, the news media take days to catch up to them.

Such was the case with a National Park Service decision last week that expunged MLK’s birthday and Juneteenth from the list of holidays on which entrance to the national parks is free. In their place, Americans were invited to enter the parks for free on Donald Trump’s birthday, June 14.

Though The New York Times was playing catch up when it posted the story on Monday, the paper did a good job of placing this particular action in context. “The changes,” it wrote, “follow previous moves by the Trump administration to take down materials mentioning slavery at national parks and come as part of a broader effort by the White House to erase or play down Black history at government sites.”

The park service’s action, in short, was one more prime example of the whitewashing of America under Donald Trump’s presidency. Whether stripping words like “race” and “racism” from government documents, trying to bully private sector companies and universities into eliminating any mention of diversity, equity and inclusion, or detaining citizens because of the color of their skin, this administration never seems to miss an opportunity to diminish the rich mix of ethnicities, cultures and races that have shaped the democratic, economic and human foundations of this country.

Nor is foreign policy exempt, as the administration turns its back on Ukraine and turns its sights – as in gun sights -- on Venezuela and the rest of Latin America. Last Friday, the Harvard historian Heather Cox Richardson posted a chilling essay noting dramatic changes in the Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy. It has turned its back, she writes, on “the global engagements that underpin the rules-based international order that the World War II allies put in place after the war to prevent another world war.”

The new strategy, she suggests, does much more, too.

“Observers,” she continued, “referred to the document as National Security Council Report (NSC) 88 and noted that it could have been written in just 14 words. White supremacists use 88 to refer to Adolf Hitler and ‘fourteen words’ to refer to a popular white supremacist slogan.”

Trump’s repeated reference in recent days to Somali people as “garbage” is one more example that he and his administration have thrown out any trace of subtlety in its escalating assault on people of all shades of color. That assault is evident, too, in the unrelentingly cruel actions of federal immigration officers. Two stories in the past week make that point.

A headline in Sunday’s Washington Post read, “The US citizens getting caught in Trump’s immigration crackdown.”

The article began with the story of a 15-year-old high school student, born in the Chicago area, who was chased three blocks by federal agents from a basketball court at which he was playing and tackled for no reason other than his skin tone.

“In Chicago and elsewhere, Latino US citizens and lawful residents describe being detained for hours, and in some cases days,” WaPo reported. “Others were not detained, but say they were assaulted because of the color of their skin.”

WGBH Public Radio reported last week that agents from the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) plucked people waiting for their naturalization ceremony from a line at Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall because they originally emigrated here from one of the 19 countries the administration classified on December 2 as “high risk.” The countries include Haiti, Somalia, the Republic of the Congo and Iran, among others.

The process of being eligible for a naturalization ceremony, the final step to becoming a US citizen, takes years.

While increasingly targeting citizens and would-be citizens of color, Trump’s ICE agents continue to round up undocumented immigrants around the country who have jobs, contribute to the economy, are raising families and have no criminal record. Some, like the Babson College student arrested just before Thanksgiving as she was about to fly home to Texas to surprise her parents, are so-called Dreamers, undocumented immigrations who arrived as small children and have lived in this country most of their lives. For many years they’ve been left alone. No longer.

And despite ICE’s oft-repeated assertion that it is only arresting really bad actors, data show an entirely different reality. The New York Times reported last week that 84 percent of those arrested in ICE crackdowns in Washington, D.C. between Aug. 11 and Sept. 10 had no criminal record.

Such stories and statistics have become so commonplace that too many of us shrug in resignation, which ultimately is a form of acceptance. That, tragically, appears to include most state and federal Democratic lawmakers, who could – and should – do far more to resist this tidal wave of tyranny. It’s an embarrassment.

“The lack of a unified [Democratic] voice comes as the crackdown on minority communities, including legal residents, has grown more aggressive.” The Washington Post wrote Tuesday.

The article noted a sharp discrepancy between the actions of Democrats holding elected office during the first Trump administration and today.

“When President Donald Trump imposed a travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries in 2017, Democratic advocates and lawmakers raced to airports across the country to protest,” wrote the WaPo. “They held news conferences and visited detention centers the following year when Trump began separating migrant children from their parents.

“Trump has unleashed even more draconian immigration policies in his second term …. But Democrats have not mounted the same visible pushback even as Trump has halted immigration applications from 19 countries, deployed federal agents into minority communities and called Somali immigrants ‘garbage’”

Abdullah Hammoud, the Democratic mayor of the Arab-majority city of Dearborn, Michigan, told the WaPo he fears things will get worse in the face of this timidity. “The fact we do not have a strong counterresponse from [Democratic] elected officials at all levels of government is the most frightening,” he said.

Certainly, some Democrats have consistently and courageously spoken out, among them California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy. But more prominent voices are needed and all must sustain their efforts. Instead, 11 months into Trump 2, the strongest and most sustained pushback is coming from civil liberties groups like the ACLU, immigrant support organizations such as LUCE immigrant justice network of Massachusetts, and ordinary citizens, such as the Chicagoans who took to blowing whistles whenever they saw ICE approaching.

This week, they were joined by the parishioners of a Catholic Church in Dedham, Massachusetts. St. Susanna Parish caused a stir in the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston when it displayed an outdoor Nativity scene with an unusual twist to mark the Christmas season. Shepherds, sheep and wise men gathered around the manager, but Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus were nowhere to be seen. They are replaced by a sign in blue letters that reads “ICE WAS HERE,” The New York Times reported. A smaller sign reassures passersby that “The Holy Family is safe in the Sanctuary of our Church.”

The Archdiocese ordered the parish to remove the signage, calling it “divisive political messaging,” the NYT reported. But courage can come from the grass roots. As of this writing, St. Susanna has refused.

This commentary originally appeared in Lanson’s Substack, From the Grassroots and is republished by permission.

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THURSDAY 12/11/25

Commentary by Stephen Macaulay

One of the characteristics that made America great is the willingness of its people to stand up for the little guy, regardless of the sacrifice. Americans didn’t let bullies push the weaker parties around. What was in it for us? The knowledge that the right thing — not the easy thing, not the popular thing, not the transactional thing — was being done because that is what we believed in: the right thing.

You may note the use of the past tense here.

That’s because of this exchange between Donald Trump and Dasha Burns of Politico:

Burns: On Sunday, your son, Donald Trump Jr., responded to a reporter’s question about whether you will walk away from Ukraine, and your son said, I think he may. Is that correct?

Trump: No, it’s not correct. But it’s not exactly wrong. We have to ... you know, they have to play ball. If they, uh ... if they don’t read agreements, potential agreements, you know, it’s, uh, not easy with Russia ’cause Russia has the upper ... upper hand. And they always did. They’re much bigger. They’re much stronger in that sense. I give Ukraine a lot of ... a lot of ... I give the people of Ukraine and the military of Ukraine tremendous credit for the, you know, bravery and for the fighting and all of that. But you know, at some point, size will win, generally. And this is a massive size, uh ... you ... when you take a look at the numbers, I mean, the numbers are just crazy.

Here we go again, with Trump and the game metaphor for the war in Ukraine. When he and JD Vance, with a tremendous lack of civility and decorum, attacked Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an Oval Office meeting back in February, there was this:

Trump: "You should be thankful. You don't have the cards. With us, you have the cards, but without us, you don't have any cards."

Back when America was great, there was no demand that anyone express thankfulness for our help. Doing the right thing was reward onto itself.

Zelenskyy, whose country was being relentlessly attacked by Russia, whose people were dying, said, “I’m not playing cards.”

He was — and he is — trying to save his country from an aggressor.

(Look: Zelenskyy could be a total prick. But there are some 36 million Ukrainians under attack, not because Zelenskyy is or isn’t a prick, but because Vladimir Putin wants to take their land. So shouldn’t our leaders be the bigger people and exhibit nobility, not pettiness?)

Trump’s reference to “if they don’t read agreements, potential agreements, you know, it’s, uh, not easy with Russia ’cause Russia has the upper ... upper hand” goes to an unsubstantiated claim that Zelenskyy hasn’t read a US peace proposal. In other words, he can blame things on Zelenskyy. (One wonders whether Trump has actually read the plan given his propensity to watch TV, day and night.)

“But you know, at some point, size will win, generally. And this is a massive size, uh ... you ... when you take a look at the numbers, I mean, the numbers are just crazy.”

There it is: The admission that Russia will beat Ukraine into submission because the US won’t help as it once would have.

Trump talks about numbers. So how about these: US defense spending is on the order of $850 billion per year. Russia’s spending is about $120 billion.

The US has 13,000 military aircraft. Russia has 4,300.

Armored vehicles? 360,000 for the US, 161,000 for Russia.

This is not to suggest that the US should go to war with Russia, but that the US could, if Donald Trump believed in the ethos that helped make America great, stand up to Putin and point back over his shoulder at the massive military might that the US has, Putin would undoubtedly rethink his approach. But as things stand, Trump’s actions show that he’s more inclined to let the aggressor take the spoils.

And what do we do instead with our military prowess? The Trump administration seems to think that using high-tech munitions on small go-fast boats in the Caribbean proves our strength.

During the Q&A about Ukraine and Russia, during which he claimed to have ended eight wars (How’d he do? Armenia and Azerbaijan have no ratified treaty and are still going at it; Israel and Hamas haven’t laid down arms; Cambodia and Thailand are fighting; Egypt and Ethiopia weren’t even at war), he suddenly, but predictably, said this:

“You know, think of it, if our election wasn’t rigged ... there was a rigged election. Now everyone knows it. It’s gonna come out over the next couple of months, too, loud and clear ’cause we have all the information and everything. But if the election wasn’t rigged in Stalin*, uh, you wouldn’t even be talking about Ukraine right now.”

Yes, if he’d been president instead of Biden there would have been no war is his claim — which he repeats over and over again, but you don’t hear him repeat his earlier claim about bringing the war to an end in a day. 

It is impossible to prove that Russia wouldn’t have attacked Ukraine had Trump been president in 2022.

It is simple to prove that Trump didn’t end the war on his first day in office.

And long after his last day in office his treatment of the Ukrainian people will be remembered.

==

*This quote is from the official Politico transcript. It isn’t clear why the most vicious dictator of the 20^th century is brought up in relation to the 2020 US presidential election.

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THURSDAY 12/11/25

In our latest Substack post we take sides and support the Algorithm Accountability Act, which would “impose a duty of care on the companies that utilize recommendations-based algorithms.”

It would reform Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act of 1996, which gives social media sites like Facebook, X-Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Bluesky, etc., carte-blanche to run lies, slander, conspiracy theories and the like, and pull readers to one political extreme or the other.

This is not, however, a left-column political position. It is not a right-column political position. 

We’re happy to say the bill proposed in the Senate is bipartisan. Its co-sponsors are Sens. John Curtis (R-UT) and Mark Kelly (D-AZ). 

We are happy to replace those above social media sites with this civil media site committed to no echo-chambers, no false equivalencies and with a love for and commitment to verified facts.

Whether you agree or disagree with us in our support of the Algorithm Accountability Act, and/or you have a strong opinion on any of the news/aggregate/analysis of our center column or the commentaries in the right and left columns, we want to hear from you. If there is a big issue you feel we’ve missed, we’d also like to hear about that too.

Become a Citizen Pundit with an email to editors@thehustings.news and please indicate in the subject line whether you lean left or right so we may post your comments in the proper column. --Editors

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TUESDAY 12/9/25

Commentary by Stephen Macaulay

It is probably a good thing that Face the Nation is on Sunday mornings.

If it were on a Friday or Saturday night some people might be inclined to participate in a drinking game: “Do a shot every time Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant says something that’s nonsense, misleading, obscuration, or otherwise not what the rest of the world understands to be reality.”

Within a matter of minutes there would be an enormous intake of alcohol.

Let’s take a look at some of Sunday, December 7.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You do think there is an affordability problem?

SEC. BESSENT: Sorry?

MARGARET BRENNAN: You do believe there's an affordability problem?

SEC. BESSENT: Oh, I think the Biden administration created a terr—

MARGARET BRENNAN: No, but now we're nearly 12 months in, you said the president would own the economy at this point.

SEC. BESSENT: I said that the Biden administration created the worst inflation in 50 years, and maybe for working Americans, the worst inflation of all time. And we have pulled that number down. . . .

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 12 months ago, when Joe Biden was still president, inflation was at 3%.

Where are we at now?

3%.

Sort of brings to mind George W. Bush’s line in September 2005 to then head of FEMA, Michael Brown: “doing a heck of a job, Brownie.” 

To be fair to Mr. Bessent, let’s continue with that answer:

“. . . - that Strategas research does something called the common man index. Under Biden, the accumulated inflation number, as measured by CPI, was about 20%. Their index showed 35. This year for the first time, the common man index is below the inflation index because the basket of goods for working Americans, food, gasoline, rent is coming down.”

Now, have you ever heard of Strategas?

Probably not, unless you’re involved in institutional investing (a.k.a., big money).

One might think that Bessent would rely on numbers generated from the department he runs, not an investment firm. But you’ve got to find the numbers where you can find them, right?

Have you every heard of the “common man index”?

Probably not, unless you’re following Strategas.

Now while whatever Bessent was trying to say — or maybe that’s not trying to say — there’s this, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which calculates the Consumer Price Index:

From September 2024 to September 2025, the unadjusted price of food has gone up 3%. The price of energy is up overall 2.8%, but while gas prices are down 0.5%, that’s more than offset by the amounts paid for things like electricity, which is up 5.1% during the same period. 

And rent? Well, the “Shelter” category in the CPI, which includes rent, is up 3.6%.

By this point, were the drinking game underway, there would be moderate tipsiness.

Margaret Brennan brought up the issue of farmers having economic issues, particularly those involved in harvesting soybeans.

Bessent, perhaps channeling the braggadocio of his boss, said, “I probably know more about any Treasury Secretary than- about agriculture since the 1800s and I can tell you that what farmers need is certainty, and we have put that in place with this trade deal. Twelve-and-a-half million metric tons this year, 25 million metric tons for the next three years, for soybeans, also sorghum, the- and lumber.”

The trade deal he is referring to is that with China.

It sounds as though they’re going to be buying a lot of ag products.

Which would be good for American farmers.

But it brings up the trade deal the first Trump Administration struck with China in 2020.

According to research by the Peterson Institute for International Economics (probably more well known than Strategas) published in 2022:

“In the end, China bought only 58% of the US exports it had committed to purchase under the agreement, not even enough to reach its import levels from before the trade war. Put differently, China bought none of the additional $200 billion of exports Trump's deal had promised.”

And as for that “certainty” Bessent refers to, the PIIE report goes on to note:

“After two years of escalating tariffs and rhetoric about economic decoupling, the deal did little to reduce the uncertainty discouraging the business investment needed to restart US exports.”

While much of what they’re referring to relates to manufactured products, there’s this, from a piece published last year in farmdoc daily, produced by the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign:

“The share of US soybean exports going to China increased from below 40% in the mid-2000s to around 60% from 2011 until plummeting to just 18% during the trade war in 2018.  China’s share of US soybean exports has since increased but not fully recovered to pre-trade war levels, averaging just over 50% since 2020.”

In other words, the Trump-initiated trade war with China in 2018 greatly reduced the amount of soybeans bought by China — and there has not been full recovery. So even if they follow through, seems like the farmers would be at a deficit had it not been for the Trump administration paying them $28 billion during 2018-19. (Soybean farmers got $7.3 billion of that.)

Brennan brought up the issue of affordability, which Bessant’s boss has referred to as “a con job” by the Democrats.

Bessant’s go-to response (well, you might think its Biden, but in this case it is not):

 “I think the President’s frustrated by the media coverage of what’s going on.”

That’s right: Blame the media for the rise in food prices.

But Bessant wants you to know things are OK:

“I will tell you that affordability has two components, there is inflation, and then there is real incomes. Real incomes are up about 1%.”

Let’s do a little math. If inflation is up 3% and real incomes are up 1%, then there is a 2% delta between those two numbers: the increase in wages is less than the increase in costs.

Bessent:

“The American people don't know how good they have it.”

Bottoms up!

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TUESDAY 12/9/25