MAKE IT MAKE SENSE: How far is too far?

Trump crosses the line, a way forward against oligarchy, new life in old songs

THE GIST: Revenge, retribution, and red lines

Donald Trump has spent the last eight months dismantling institutions, laying off hundreds of thousands of federal workers, occupying cities, conducting mass deportations, and — just yesterday — forcing a government shutdown and calling for the military to fight an “enemy within.” It’s all happened so fast and on such a vast scale that it’s been hard for people to process, let alone react.

But when Trump turns the machinery of government to work against a single public figure, people notice, for better or for worse — it brings things into focus. You can see that in the overwhelming response to ABC’s cancellation of comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s show. And with Trump’s Department of Justice bringing likely groundless charges against former FBI Director James Comey, he’s finally gone too far, right?

Attorneys Norman Eisen, Richard W. Painter, and Virginia Canter see Comey’s indictment as a watershed moment: “If the Trump administration can do this,” they write,” then no American is safe from political prosecution.” And a distinguished group of former judges, led by J. Michael Luttig, concurs:

For the first time in American history, the bedrock First Amendment right of American citizens to disagree with their president and their government and to express their views and opinions on any matter they wish — including their president — is under unprecedented attack by the President of the United States

If that is true (putting aside the fact that the regime has been ignoring the First Amendment all year when it comes to, say, student activists), where is the response commensurate with the threat?

Recall that Trump’s longstanding anger at Comey rests on the notion that he was protecting Hillary Clinton, after the FBI found no grounds to bring charges against her for use of a private email server. Trump ran on “Lock her up,” after all.

And in 2024, Trump ran again on the promise he would get back at those who’d wronged him. As former rival Mitt Romney pointed out this week, “He said he was gonna have revenge and retribution, and he is.”

Trump has — as former White House staffer Miles Taylor reminded us last week — already promised more indictments. Might he return to old obsessions and try to bring charges against Clinton? He has influential allies who’ve been keeping the idea alive. He’s already accused former President Barack Obama of treason. Would he go further and find a U.S. attorney willing to bring a charge?

And would that, at last, signal that it’s time for a real change? And what could that look like? A general strike? Protests that get that critical 3.5 percent of people in the streets every day? A response from congressional Democrats that goes beyond a spirited defense of healthcare subsidies (important as those are)?

BIGGER PICTURE: A new perspective on fighting oligarchy

When we talked to author and activist Cory Doctorow yesterday about his new book, Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What To Do About It, a lot of the conversation was bleak. The book, after all, details how and why the digital services we’ve come to depend on have gotten steadily worse, even as the founders-turned-oligarchs behind them have become wealthy beyond belief, with dire consequences for daily life, the environment, and our politics.

But his new book also concerns what to do about all of this, and Doctorow made a critical point about what that might look like: Because the sheer degree of monopolization so clarifies the connections between so many societal problems, it has the potential to reframe public perceptions — and, he thinks, to spark a mass movement capable of fixing the mess.

When we understand that all the things we’re angry about are downstream of concentrated corporate wealth and power, then we have the makings of a coalition of a movement that crosses so many of our boundaries. And I think the only precedent for this is the growth of the term ecology back in the 70s, where before ecology was in our lexicon, you had people who cared about owls and people who cared about the ozone layer. They didn’t care about the same thing because they didn’t understand that charismatic nocturnal avians are connected to the gaseous composition of the upper atmosphere.

And this idea, this frame, this word turned a thousand issues into a movement. And I think we’re on the verge of that.

There are no instant or individual solutions. Collective power — people power — is the only real answer to the problem of concentrated wealth, Doctorow suggests, and while there’s a lot of work ahead, he already sees the beginning of long-term change.

SOMETHING DIFFERENT: Astral traveling

Portuguese composer, guitarist, and sound artist Rafael Toral has spent most of his career experimenting at the limits of electronic music. Post-pandemic, he began collaborating regularly with improvising musicians, incorporating acoustic instruments alongside the computers, and working with jazz ensembles. On his latest album, Traveling Light, he finds a surprising balance, leading an electroacoustic ensemble through a series of ethereal, beautiful interpretations of tunes from the Great American Songbook that are both familiar and very much unlike anything you’ve heard before.

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Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images