Today... end of the week round up. Kimmel win, a sellout SCOTUS and more Import Taxes
TAT readers,
Phew, finally home from a long, time-constrained road trip to California to savor time with grandchildren and a couple of my dearest of old friends. I have missed pounding the keyboard in service to our nation, but today my keyboard is again, primed and ready for action against the ongoing Republican, far-right coup. This past Monday I wrote about a couple of different issues in a more abbreviated form due to my time constraints and will close out the week in a similar fashion. There are just so many things of importance occurring, that I may occasionally adopt this approach in the future as well.
Onward
First… an amazing victory for the resistance regarding reinstating Jimmy Kimmel!
Tuesday night, Jimmy Kimmel returned to our late night talk show lineup and let me be clear… this is a huge victory for true patriots. This wasn’t a court, a judge or committee giving approval for the return, but the product of a full-scale assault on the back accounts of the likes of Nexstar, Disney, Sinclair and ABC, by angry American citizens fed up with plutocratic control of all that we see, read, hear and watch. I hope that Paramount and their parent multi-national media conglomerate, Skydance Media, are paying attention as well. Make no mistake about it, this was oligarchy attempting to deny us our first amendment rights. Their failed attempt at mafioso styled firing, fits perfectly with Trump’s heavy-handed wannabe mafioso fantasies.
As I have often written, Oligarchy is un-American in the extreme. In fact, some of our foremost constitutional scholars consider our constitution, to be the “anti-oligarchy” constitution. The very concept of a handful of human beings controlling everything, denies all US voters, their equal rights to voice their thoughts about our system of government and who represents it. Apparently, no one bothered to tell Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, John Roberts and his fellow right-wing AJ/ Associate Justices this, when they voted to support Citizens United. Think of it this way, when Elon Musk and plenty of other power mongering oligarchs bought the last few Republican election wins, just a handful of them had more clout, than the rest of all other voters.
Democratic supporting oligarchs are also guilty, although to date, the left is not threatening our system of government while that the Republican Party, funded by oligarchs with nearly unlimited funds, are doing all possible to deprive all Americans, of our constitutional republic.
Amicus Brief to the US Supreme Court on the topic of Citizens United by the League of Women's Voters of the United States "Since our Nation’s founding, our constitutional story has been one of democratic progress, moving American democracy toward broader enfranchisement and more meaningful political participation for individual American citizens. See AKHIL REED AMAR, AMERICA’S CONSTITUTION: A BIOGRAPHY 423 (2005). Through constitutional amendments, our modern democracy has been constructed on the foundation of our original Constitution: the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed the right to vote free from racial discrimination; the Seventeenth Amendment gave the people in each State the right to vote for U.S. senators; the Nineteenth Amendment extended the franchise to women; the Twenty-fourth Amendment freed the federal election process from poll taxes; and the Twenty-sixth Amendment secured the right to vote for young adults. Statutory enactments, such as the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and campaign finance regulation beginning with the Tillman Act in 1907, have also been central to the story of our hard-won, modern, inclusive democracy. Prevention of improper corporate influence in the electoral process—like the extension of the franchise, anti-discrimination mandates, and the bedrock equality principle of one-person, one-vote—is a pillar of our modern democracy." - BRIEF OF THE LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS OF THE UNITED STATES - Amicus Brief - Citizens United
There is a critically important lesson to learn from the Kimmel resurrection story. Oligarchs and their congressional “hitmen,” are vulnerable, especially when their profits are involved. This is a powerful tool for those resisting the full frontal assault on our republic by the Republican Party, now fully defined by MAGA ideology. To put this bluntly, every single vote for a Republican supports the MAGA agenda. Every single Republican voter, voted MAGA, no matter how they whine and moan that they are those fictitious, “principled conservatives.” After a decade of MAGA and Trump, they knew exactly what they were voting for.
When it comes to Jimmy Kimmel, even the MAGA propaganda machine couldn’t generate conspiracy theories about Kimmel’s lack profitability (it is profitable) and not being a successful show (it is a successful show) fast enough, to escape the righteous anger of the American people. This will spread in time and we should not wait for it to happen. We must reinvigorate these assaults on the finances of the GOP and their oligarchs. Until now, we have been mostly constrained by a cowardly mainstream news media, surrendering law firms and universities, but we have just showed them that we can do it without them. We are also hampered by a DNC, devoid of courage, expertise and innovation. Hell, they are essentially in a self-imposed witness protection program. Don’t worry though. Americans love an underdog and righteous anger is the fuel that American patriots use to see underdogs to victory.
There are several tactics to inflict financial pain onto these cowards and sycophants, and we must wield all of them with the utmost zeal. Ratings and subscriptions were the Achilles Heel of Nexstar, Disney, Sinclair and ABC. I would suggest that we employ the same tactics against CBS and Paramount, until they stop pandering to the administration. Other oligarchs, such as the boardrooms of big oil, like ExxonMobil, Shell, Marathon, Chevron etc. must feel our intolerance too. There are powerful oligarchs in every major industry and each has an Achilles heel or two. Find them and exploit them until they “cry uncle!” The insurrectionist GOP is at war with America, and it’s time for those fighting back, to fly the black flag.
The economy
Yesterday, the White House announced import taxes on a variety of bizarrely grouped goods, like kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities, heavy trucks and upholstered furniture and pharmaceuticals. With consumer goods prices ticking up steadily and as warned by Fed Chairman, Jerome Powell, Trump tariffs are nearly the whole reason for our current, perpetual inflation. Across America, businesses can no longer absorb the increased prices they pay for tariffs and are now forced to raise prices even more. Trump and his greedy Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent don’t give a damn, so long as more tariff money goes into the national coffers. This is precisely what is meant by the old and very true saying… “tariffs are a tax on the people.”
"Tariffs are taxes imposed by one country on goods imported from another country. - Tariffs are intended to make domestic goods and services more competitive by making imported products more expensive. But in reality, tariffs burden domestic businesses and consumers. - Domestic goods that use foreign materials become more expensive to produce, resulting in lower profits, lower wages, and fewer jobs. - Increased production costs result in higher prices for the consumer, who cannot see that the increased cost is from tariffs, not quality, supply, or other factors. - These effects shrink the economy by reducing incentives to work and invest. - Because tariffs get invisibly baked into the price of goods, they violate the principle of transparency and their unintended consequences get masked. - Because tariffs disproportionately burden businesses and consumers who rely on the goods being tariffed, they also violate the principle of neutrality." - Tariffs Are Taxes Too - Tax Foundation.org - July 25, 2025
According to the displays of Christmas trees adjacent to Halloween goods in retail stores, these additional taxes will continue to take their toll on businesses and every single citizen as they prepare for the holidays. Still, Trump/ MAGA GOP voters, remain in their zombie-like state, clinging to each utterance from their Republican narrators, such as the White House, the GOP-led congress, every single Republican elected official and the blathering from FOX, Newsmax, OAN etc. They will remain supportive of the party, no matter how much pain the GOP imposes onto all of us, including their base. There is no help coming from the opposite side of the aisle. Like supporting Kimmel, we are going to have to tackle these GOP lawmakers, ourselves.
Today’s GOP congressmen are already terrified of the Midterms. They are either hiding out or appearing only in DC or on their favorite propaganda media sites. The more noise that we make about being displeased and furious with their support of the fascist administration, the better chances of ousting them from office. Already, long-established GOP representatives are quitting politics, ashamed and harassed at home for their subservience to a madman and his merry band of incompetents, conmen and political thuggery. The more noise we make, the more that will quit. Add this pressure to defunding their oligarchical campaign funding corporations, and their slight margin in the House of Representatives will vanish as fast as their moral spines, in the Trump/ MAGA era.
SCOTUS
Last but not least, the final arbiter of US law and the meaning of our constitution, lies with SCOTUS, the Supreme Court of the United States. In the Trump/ MAGA era, the court, packed by one of the most immoral Senators to ever sit in the US Senate, Mitch McConnell, has clearly demonstrated a penchant for subservience to MAGA, and especially their oligarchs. They continuously side with expanding the power of the executive over all other branches of government, a mainstay of Project 2025. They defended the abdication of Congressional authority by allowing preposterous “emergency” orders to facilitate the authoritarian power of a madman and his party. Worst of all, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader, John Thune, have ceded the “power of the purse” to the White House.
I have not been supportive of this court, especially over Citizens United, Abortion, allowing profiling of Latinos by ICE and even the alleged emergency powers to deploy US troops for no sane reason into our cities. Warrantless, masked, violent men and women, often without badges, to invade our streets, preying on everyone from the undocumented to US citizens in their draconian roundups, allegedly to remove the “worst of the worst.” They haunt courthouses, schools, churches, formerly protected places while they prey on the mostly innocent or less than dangerous criminals. They offer ICE and CBP jobs with monstrous signing bonuses and little training, outside of thuggery and willful violence against human beings.
Worst of all, they wield racism with the blessing of today’s SCOTUS. Yesterday, our SCOTUS allowed Trump to withhold $4 B in congressionally approved funds for overseas projects that saved and sustained millions of our fellow global citizens. There are already well over 300,000 deaths with two thirds of that number, children. The problem with yesterday’s ruling is that it deprives congress of their constitutional power of the purse and gives it over to the executive branch. This is literally, SCOTUS rewriting our constitution without due process.
Although all six Republican justices are complicit, it’s Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch that have shown the least amount of backbone and done most of the enabling of the Republican Party’s assault on our constitution. I could hardly be more disgusted with the lot of them. I have a special disdain for Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, both longtime-disingenuous, about their far-right ideology.
Thomas, a so-called “originalist” is nothing of the sort. For example, at the birth of our nation, black Americans who were enslaved, only were counted by a 3/5th ratio. In other words, our number of congressmen are determined by population. Slaves were not free, and this included voting, but at the ratification of the constitution, they approved the right for slave states, to count 3 out of every 5 slaves as part of the populace, in order to acquire more elected congressmen. This was called the “Three Fifths Compromise.” If Thomas was a true “originalist” this would still be his perspective. Recently, the court, Thomas included voted to allow racial profiling for ICE raids. This is as unconstitutional as it gets, especially when the alleged “emergency” order it is designed to facilitate, is preposterous and laughable to any sane thinker.
The recent allowance for Trump to “claw-back” the overseas funding, will now be postponed until after the Federal Fiscal year, which ends next week. After this, any ruling will likely be moot. Just like Chief Justice Roberts’ ridiculous “immunity” ruling, it allowed enough time to pass to make the decision obsolete. Now we’re stuck with a felon for president and all because Roberts and his fellow “originalists,” refuse to stand up for our constitution and which is literally in their job description.
Summary
It’s late and I’m still worn out from the 20 hour drive back to Texas, so this will be a rather succinct summary.
The bottom-line to this essay is that, this is why victories like the Kimmel win, are so important. When the people are deprived of our constitutional rights and to have our government run on constitutional principles, we become angry and rebellious. We are now at this point with the current administration. Beating back the multimedia oligarchs that ditched Jimmy Kimmel, is a powerful message to them. Money is the lifeblood of all political parties and I don’t believe for a moment, that when we cost them profits, that they will not pay attention. We must find and employ every possible way to inflict financial pain onto GOP supporting campaign donors, without exception.
We now must also vote with our feet, wallets, voices and if required, in the streets. Jimmy Kimmel’s win, is our win and a win for our republic. Wars are not won by single battlefield victories but by sustained pressure on the adversary. Victories though create momentum in wars and this is why we must string several victories together. We must continue to roll up victories until the Republican Party and their voters see that they chose poorly when they checked their ballots next to those with an “R” by their name. This is not our grandparents’ GOP. This version is tearing down our republic with each passing day and they don’t give a damn about your well-being, or mine.
When we have enough power, we must remove these insurrectionists from office. When complete, we must reverse Citizens United and impose strict, fully transparent campaign finance laws on all politicians. The longer we allow dollars to vote, we all lose. It really is that simple.
Onward patriots,
Publius Redux