The Personality Cult Closes Ranks

One does not question the Sun King

Immediately after last week’s historic blue tsunami, the Trump-era GOP briefly took up a circular firing-squad formation very dissimilar from their usual anti-reality positioning. Most significantly, Vice President JD Vance took to social media to blame the Iran War. As Andrew Egger wrote in the Bulwark: 

“This would be extraordinary stuff from any vice president—let alone Trump’s, with his mobland obsession with personal loyalty. Vance has found plenty of ways this year to get the word out about his own reservations about the Iran war. But this is the first time he’s said fuck it and just started posting on main. And why not? What has he got to lose? Vance’s odds of winning the presidency in 2028 have never been lower, and even he must see that there’s certainly no path there anymore as Donald Trump’s Bestest Little Guy.”

Vance wasn’t the only Republican with his knife out and pointed at his co-partisans last week. News outlets reported that Donald Trump was considering kicking Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth to the curb. As Jennifer Jacobs and Emma Nicholson wrote in CBS:

“President Trump has been asking advisers around him and on the phone whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth should stay in his job, following Republicans' catastrophic losses Tuesday night, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell CBS News. 

“Some White House aides have predicted some of the blame for GOP midterm losses will be trained on Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Central Command, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, who both played big roles in guidance on the Iran war.”

And indeed, Thomas Massie has dusted off the eight articles of impeachment against Hegseth that he introduced back in September, seeking to test just how much the winds have changed inside the House caucus. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries has already said that his side of the aisle will support impeachment.

Assistant AG for civil rights Harmeet Dhillon announced she’s actually leaving the sinking ship, though apparently for unrelated reasons, as Sonel Cutler reports in Mother Jones:

“Dhillon undid years of diversity, equity, and inclusion work at more than 300 colleges by launching aggressive investigations, lawsuits, and pressure campaigns. Now she’s leaving because she didn’t get a promotion.

“Dhillon had become increasingly frustrated that she had not been promoted to a higher post, MS NOW reported. She told the administration before the midterms that she planned to step down after the election.”

But soon the atmosphere reverted to the MAGA mean and the personality cult reasserted itself. On Friday, Trump announced that Stephen Miller would be made his new chief of staff, replacing Susie Wiles. As Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan and Tyler Pager report in the New York Times:

“The president’s choice sent a clear signal about the posture he intends to strike in his final two years in office and how little he intends to alter his approach in response to the most decisive political rout in half a century. He also put on center stage a figure who had already been a galvanizing target for Democrats intent on using their new powers in Congress to check the administration. …

“People close to Mr. Miller said he had shown no interest in compromising with congressional Democrats and was ready for a fight over subpoenas and investigations that are expected to emanate from the Hill. His top priority, they said, is rebuilding the fractured MAGA coalition and pursuing policies that will energize the voters who elected Mr. Trump in 2024.”

To be blunt: there is no figure in the Trump administration and MAGA universe to whom the term “Nazi” applies more straightforwardly than Miller. When out of power he relished in fantasies of the cruelty that they would inflict on immigrants and immigrant children once they returned to the White House. He wants nothing more in life than to engage in the largest ethnic cleansing in human history. He is a small-minded bigot who aspires to big atrocities. 

And in the second Trump term, he has by-and-large gotten his way. Greg Bovino and Kristi Noem’s heads may have rolled for the administration’s overreach in Minneapolis, but that operation had Miller’s fingerprints all over it. For one thing, Miller had a widely-reported meeting with ICE officials and agents in which he told them to stop doing even the very minimal legwork they did in advance of arrests. As Elizabeth Findell, Ruth Simon, Michelle Hackman and Tarini Parti reported in the Wall Street Journal last year:

“Agents didn’t need to develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, a longstanding practice, Miller said. Instead, he directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores. Miller bet that he and a handful of agents could go out on the streets of Washington, D.C., and arrest 30 people right away.”

Ever since that meeting, ICE has simply grabbed individuals who look wrong to them, a tactic the Supreme Court legitimized in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo and that has been known since as doing “Kavanaugh stops.”

For another, it was quite likely Miller’s idea to smear Alex Pretti as a “domestic terrorist” after agents murdered Pretti in cold blood.

Miller is the epitome of everything that is petty, cruel, illiberal, and anti-democratic in the Trump administration. To elevate him to chief of staff after the enormous rejection of the administration by voters last week says everything we need to know about how it will comport itself for the next two years.

Members of the personality cult wasted no time rallying behind Miller. Hegseth himself immediately lauded Miller as someone who “never backs down.” RFK Jr., often treated as something of a separate case compared to the rest of the GOP because of his political history, posted: “Next to me, Stephen Miller is the strongest MAHA supporter in the administration. It’s time to unleash the Kraken.” In response to Democrat Robert Garcia’s warning to Miller to “lawyer up,” 

Notably, Attorney General Todd Blanche’s response to Miller’s promotion was this: “Stephen Miller has a lawyer. It's me.” Actually, Todd, it sure as hell is not you. Will Scharf is White House counsel. You, Todd Blanche, are not. You also are not the White House press secretary, just like Dana White isn’t. You are, as I mentioned at the beginning of this brief explanatory paragraph, the attorney general of the United States. You might want to check into your current position and find out what it’s all about.

I will close this section with a few lines from a speech Stephen Miller gave the day his elevation to chief of staff was announced.

“If it wasn't for President Trump, the United States of America would not exist right now. This man saved America. He saved our military from collapse. He saved our economy from destruction.

“He saved our border from annihilation and he saved our country from threats at home and abroad, which would have been the end of the American dream forever. This man took a bullet for us. He faced down life in prison for us. He saved the Republican Party from the ash heap of history and has made it stronger, more popular and more resilient than ever before.

“We need to stand with the man who has stood with us and this country with every fiber of his being. It is the honor of my life to be President Trump's chief of staff, and I swear to you, and I pledge you, Mr. President, my absolute loyalty, my unwavering commitment and my total devotion to your success and the success of this country.”

Absolute loyalty, unwavering commitment, total devotion. The personality cult will survive the midterms defeat, and Miller will use every tool available to him to ensure it does so.

A few more post-midterm analyses

Several races are not yet finalized, most critically the Senate races in Alaska and Mississippi, and it has not even been a week since the election ended. More and more useful analyses of what exactly happened and its likely consequences are coming out by the day.

Alex Burness reports in Bolts:

“Out of all 17 states with the tightest 2024 presidential margins, the only one where the GOP is on track to control election administration moving forward is North Carolina—and that’s only because of a Republican power-grab in late 2024 to seize control from the Democratic governor.”

As I wrote last week, this election has dealt a huge blow to Republicans’ capacity to maliciously interfere with elections. Election administration generally will be further from the personality cult party’s control than it has been in years.

Adam Bonica has several interesting arguments:

“With wins in so many unexpected places, it is tempting to look for a secret campaign formula, but the wave was fundamentally driven by the underlying partisan makeup of the districts. A massive Democratic turnout advantage meant that baseline partisan composition predicted much of the movement, sweeping challengers into office wherever the underlying numbers gave them an opening. The seats that swung the hardest were younger, less college-educated, more Hispanic, and more urban.

“Across the ideological spectrum, Democratic candidates outperformed side by side, showing how a national mobilization wave lifts all boats. Despite consternation among the party establishment that DSA candidates would be a drag on the party, they gained on Harris’s 2024 share by about as much as Blue Dog–endorsed candidates. In this era of highly polarized and nationalized elections, the party swims or sinks as a coalition, not as factions. The lesson for the party from this is that the inter-factional disputes between centrists and progressives are a distraction when it comes to Democrats’ electoral fortunes.”

Geoffrey Skelly’s day-after analysis for Decision Desk HQ is also worth getting to:

“Democrats will likely control all 201 seats that former Vice President Kamala Harris carried in 2024, which would give the GOP zero crossover seats. This is something that has not happened in modern times — parties usually control at least a few seats that the other party’s candidate won in the last presidential race. The only outstanding race left to be projected in a Harris-won seat is New York’s 17th District, where Republican Rep. Mike Lawler trails Democrat Cait Conley about 52%-48%. Lawler isn’t done and dusted, but Conley will more likely than not win once solidly blue Westchester County finishes tallying its ballots (it had ballot scanning problems on Election Day).

“Democrats are also on course to win all 18 seats that Trump carried by fewer than 5 points in 2024. They also have won or lead in most seats that Trump carried by 5 to 10 points and close to half of the seats he carried by 10 to 15 points.”

They tried to steal the election

Let this not be buried alongside the Republican Party’s midterm hopes: they tried—relentlessly they tried—to interfere in the administration of this election, to suppress the freedom of the press, and just in general to make the election less free and less fair.

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board came out with the same smug and stupid take as George Mason economist Tyler Cowen, asking “So Trump Didn’t Steal the Elections?” with the subheader “Now watch as all those fantasies about ICE and ‘suppression’ disappear.”

Norm Eisen has a good thread with examples of how the “pro-voter coalition” effectively resisted and deterred efforts by the administration that it was, in fact, making. Walter Olson at Cato also responds: “The editorial’s chosen narrative requires a great forgetfulness about the actual record. It is clear that for the past 18 months, Trump has indeed been intent on messing with the midterms. 

The signs were clear with Trump’s multiple executive orders, beginning in March 2025, that asserted sweeping powers over elections, powers that neither the Constitution nor Congress has assigned to presidents. These efforts were to mature, if that is the word, into elaborate plans, pursued through dozens of lawsuits and threats of criminal prosecution, intended to compel states to submit their voter rolls to federal inspection and subsequently purge particular names at Washington’s direction. The administration continued with Trump’s abortive plan to install his appointees at the US Postal Service as deciders of who would be permitted to vote by mail. And it further continued with his meritless last-minute litigation seeking to interfere with vote tabulation in California and certification in Alaska. 

No, we did not imagine these things, nor did the nation’s election administrators, who’ve had to spend time and energy studying supposed new federal obligations and devising new contingency plans. Nor did the courts, when they, to their immense credit, blocked virtually all of the administration’s efforts. As late as Monday, in a moment all the more devastating for its quietness, the US Supreme Court denied, without explanation, a call for response, or noted dissent, the administration’s request to keep alive its absurd suit seeking to interfere with California’s ballot tabulation.

And let us not forget about extreme, mid-decade gerrymandering, something Trump explicitly called for and frequently received from GOP state legislators and governors.

On February 1, 2025 I was already able to draw on numerous examples of the administration’s attack on the press as well, which obviously intensified from there. Freedom of the press is among the necessary conditions for an election to be free and fair.

What happens now?

The next two years are going to be difficult. Without Republican votes to remove officers that have been impeached or override vetoes, reining in the mass deportation campaign or the administration’s military adventurism will be a steep hill to climb. In general, political scientist Juan Linz’s classic article “The Perils of Presidentialism” warns that the greatest danger occurs precisely when the president has completely lost the legislature and must go it alone to get what he wants. In this regard, I place the most hope in the power of state executive branches in our system, compared to Congress itself.

In the very short term, the lame-duck Congress is going to try to do what it can before the next Congress is seated. As John Light reports at Talking Points Memo:

“According to the administrative office of the U.S. Courts, this Congress has confirmed 57 federal judges. Before the end of the lame duck session, however, Trump wants 25 more.

“He also wants Congress to act on dozens of other open positions in his government for which nominations are pending.

“It’s a big ask to a Congress that already has a very busy schedule.

“In theory, if Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), maintains a break-neck pace, the nominees for judgeships will be able to make it through. But the Republican push to act on Trump’s orders could well define the lame duck Congress, spilling over into other legislative fights, as Trump looks to remake the judiciary to the greatest extent possible, and to staff up his administration amid what looks to be in the beginning of an exodus, with top, Senate-confirmed officials leaving their roles.”

We will see what they’ll be able to pull off in so short a time; senators are not known for moving quickly. But these ones have proven they can confirm nominees in big blocs when pushed to.

Looking ahead to the next Congress, Chris Geidner of Law Dork expects “lashing out,” but is cautiously optimistic about how it will play out in concrete practice:

“Shortly before 5 p.m. on the Wast Coast, reality — and not showmanship — was on display, as the Justice Department dismissed its election lawsuit against California. It was a whining, two-page document — decrying how the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, wouldn’t let the administration engage in a plan that everyone found was likely illegal.

“On Saturday, Judge Ana Reyes reminded Trump officials of another accountability path that can come from the other branches, as she announced her intention to name former D.C. U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu as the special master to investigate whether Justice Department and/or Interior Department lawyers committed any ethical violations in connection with their work in the East Potomac Golf Course case. …

“Trump and those remaining can lash out and complain, but there is a new landscape coming and, in some ways, already here. As for Congress, this is not going to be the Mike Johnson-John Thune ‘do what you want’ show any more, and Trump is intrinsically incapable of hearing ‘no.’ From anyone.

“But, ‘no’ is coming.

“Preservation letters are just the start.

“There will be requests for information, hearings, subpoenas, legislation, actual pushback against impoundment, litigation, the possibility of impeachments, and more.

“If you look at it like that, in an overwhelmingly Democratic House and strongly Democratic Senate, it makes sense why Trump would be lashing out on a Saturday afternoon.

“It does not, however, change reality.”

In the even longer term, the prospects for Reconstruction appear better with each passing day. Sam Wang has a very interesting argument:

“My analysis shows that when the national popular vote is within three points, there is about a one-in-three chance that the electoral vote goes the other way. This can help either party. If Democratic nominee John Kerry had flipped Ohio in 2004, he would have been the beneficiary. But logic struggles against the emotional impact of actual events. The memory of Republican popular-vote losers George W. Bush winning in 2000 and Donald Trump in 2016 have profoundly affected people’s thinking.

“As the 2004 Ohio example shows, even a medium-sized state can thwart popular opinion through Electoral College mechanisms. Many Republicans see Texas, the second-largest state by population, as central to their electoral strategy. This was not exactly true since Texas was a swing state. But still, a securely Republican Texas was seen as an advantage they would not give away.

“This week, they lost that advantage. Democrats won every statewide office and control of the Texas House, despite the partisan bias of its map. It is reasonable to think Texas may be in play in the 2028 Presidential race.”

If Texas is regularly in play in presidential elections, the incentive for Republicans to defend the Electoral College more or less vanishes. If the Supreme Court strikes down the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, as I suspect they would, actually ratifying an amendment might actually be on the table.

More on this to come.

The NVIDIA scandal

Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan, Julian E. Barnes and Tripp Mickle report in the New York Times:

“Secretary of State Marco Rubio oversaw the drafting of the highly classified memo this past spring warning top Trump administration officials that Nvidia’s chief executive, Jensen Huang, was in a close relationship with a Chinese spy, multiple people briefed on the matter said.

“The document was based on classified intelligence from electronic surveillance of Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen who was a senior executive at a Singapore-based company that was buying Nvidia’s advanced artificial intelligence chips and being investigated for illegally smuggling them into China. U.S. officials had concluded that Ms. Huang was in a close relationship with the Nvidia chief, who is no relation, and that she had been recruited to spy by China’s top intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security. …

Asked about Mr. Huang’s admission to his company about his affair with Ms. Huang, Mr. Trump told reporters on Sunday evening that he did not regret his own lack of action.

“‘No, I don’t think so,’ the president said. He added that he believed Mr. Huang should stay on as Nvidia’s chief executive.”

Josh Marshall has a good analysis in Talking Points Memo:

“Last month I had a conversation with a high ranking AI executive who told me that the fundamental reason for the U.S. lead over China in AI development was U.S. access to high-performance NVIDIA processors. The Biden administration placed export controls on those chips targeting China back in 2022. The Trump administration sort of loosened those controls though, for a variety of reasons, that shift in policy hasn’t translated into that much actual change in practice. This struck me at the time: this is a wildly anti-China administration; it’s a wildly pro-AI administration which premises everything on the need to maintain a strategic AI edge over China; but it’s more open to allowing China access to these chips that are central to U.S. dominance in AI? How can that possibly make sense? …

“Last spring, Marco Rubio oversaw the creation of a highly classified memo detailing the case against Alice Huang which was then circulated to top administration officials. Yet no top officials, including the president, took any action. They didn’t take any action against Jensen Huang or compel him to cut off contact with Alice Huang; and Jensen Huang remained one of Trump’s highest level advisors on national AI policy.

“Trump’s inattention or disregard is par for the course for everything we know about his attitude toward U.S. intelligence agencies. He sees them as meddlesome intruders on his freedom of action to make “deals,” driven by his own self-interest, whom he castigates as “deep state” enemies. We know this most from his dealings with Russia. But there’s every reason — and a good deal of evidence — to believe it applies across the board.”

Trump walks backwards into Hell

At the end of a 60 Minutes interview, host Ross Douthat poses the following hypothetical to Trump:

“Let's say you pass away, you're entering the next life, and all you have to do to enter paradise is feel love and forgiveness for James Comey, Nancy Pelosi, anyone who you have expressed hate for over the years. Do you think you can do it?”

Without any hesitation, Trump answers “I probably cannot do that, no, because I do hate some of my enemies and I always will.”

Around Liberal Currents

• The Final Struggle for Equal Recognition, by Silvaria Lysandra Zemaitis: Trans liberation says simply: We are who we say we are.
• The Evangelical Vote Will Return in 2028, by Holly Berkley Fletcher: Those writing obituaries for Christian nationalism need to hold off.
• Callais Backlash: The South Votes to Escape the Past, by Alan Elrod: Pro-democracy voters delivered a resounding message that the South wants to move forward and not backward.
• Weekly book reviews: In the Times of Global Capitalism, by Guillaume A. W. Attia: Books from Alessandro Stanziani, Clifton Crais, Trevor Jackson, Jeremy Adelman, and Branko Milanović.
• Trump's Epic Defeat (Neon Liberalism #98, with Andy Craig): The results in Mississippi and Texas are among the most revealing from the midterms.
• America Just Blue Itself: 2026 Election Roundup (Half the Answer #113, with Greg Sargent): What were the most exciting moments of the blue wave?
• Editor’s Notes: Was Democracy Ever in Peril?: The 2028 election just got drastically more secure.
• Liberal Currents Live: The Capitol Has Fallen: No insurrection necessary.
• Video: James Talarico and Texas: The Jacobin Show host David Griscom speaks to publisher Adam Gurri and contributing editor Ryan Geddie about Christianity in the Texas midterm race.
• Video: A Repudiation of Chud Conservatism: Associate editor Caitlin Green talks about the midterms as a rejection of the most disgusting aspects of MAGA.

Around the country and world

• “He’ll Be Clerk of One of the Country’s Largest Counties. He’s 19.” by Mack Liederman in the New York Times.
• “Trump Ally Loomer Was Paid Thousands for Political Tweets, People Familiar Say,” by Drew Harwell and Scott Nover in the Washington Post.
• “The U.S. Is Driving Away Young Scientists,” by Katrina Miller, Vimal Patel, Jeff Adelson and Irena Hwang in the New York Times.
• "Trump's Justice Department Has Failed to Award 75% of Anti-Trafficking Grants, Senator Finds," by Dan Rosenzsweig-Ziff for Reuters.
• “New Ohio House Bill Would Make It Easier for GOP to Override Acton Vetoes,” by Laura Hancock for Cleveland.com.
• “There Is No Place in a Functional Society for Elon Musk,” by Albert Burneko in Defector.
• “Poland Plunges Back into Court Battle After National Mourning,” from AFP.
• “What ‘Catastrophic’ South Africa Local Election Results Mean for ANC,” by Federica Marsi for Al Jazeera.
• “How Eisenkot's Bloc Aims to Undo Netanyahu's Reforms—Even Without a Government,” by Noa Shpigel in Haaretz.
• “‘Put the Posters in Charge’: Inside the Democrats’ Secret Strategy to Flood the Internet with Clips,” by Max Tani in Semafor.